Pink Triangle
The Nazi persecution of gays
Journalist Danny Lee gives a concise rundown of the events that led to the deaths of at least 15,000 gay men at the hands of the Nazis
Before World War II, radical artistic movements – such as the Dadaists (who were deliberately anti-art and anti-sense) – and political groups such as the Communists flourished in Berlin. The city, famous throughout the world for its relaxed attitude towards sex, was also the centre of Germany's gay community.
In addition, the German capital was the site of the Institute for Sexual Science. This had been founded in 1919 by pioneering sexologist and homosexual reformer Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935). His term to describe homosexuals – 'the third sex' – was in common use in the city at the time.
From freedom to tyranny
Despite Berlin's vitality, the city was like an isolated ship in a
storm-tossed sea, thrown from crisis to crisis. In November 1918, from
two Berlin balconies less than a mile apart, the leaders of both the Social
Democratic Party and the Spartacists (who later formed the nucleus of
the German Communist Party) proclaimed rival German republics.
However, the following January, after a Spartacist uprising, the movement's leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were tortured and murdered by right-wing army officers with whom the Social Democratic government felt it had to make a deal to ensure its survival. After the election of a National Assembly a few days later, Weimar, a small town outside Berlin, was made the new capital.
The Weimar Republic proved to be notoriously unstable. In the year of its birth, 1919, Adolf Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, one of many small, equally violent, racist groups. They had considerably less appeal for Berliners and other northern Germans than they had in parts of southern Germany, such as Bavaria. Nevertheless they played successfully on anxieties about out-of-control inflation, rising unemployment and feelings of humiliation and frustration left over from the country's defeat in World War I and the massive reparations that it had been compelled to agree to. By offering up the Jews and anyone they considered to be 'deviant' as scapegoats for all that was wrong, these parties began to grow in size. And Hitler and his National Socialists, or Nazis, began to achieve increasing importance.
On 30 January 1933, Germany's president Paul Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor. Among other restrictive actions, the Nazis began closing all gay bars and clubs and, in February, opened the first concentration camps. A national boycott of all Jewish businesses and professions was ordered at the beginning of April. And, in May, Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science was closed and, a short time later, all of his books were burned – a fiery end to the first gay rights movement.
'The Night of the Long Knives'
In 1936, Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer SS and head of the Gestapo,
told the Germans: 'Just as we today have gone back to the ancient Germanic
view on the question of marriage mixing different races, so too in our
judgment of homosexuality – a symptom of degeneracy which could destroy
our race – we must return to the guiding Nordic principle: extermination
of degenerates.' But it had taken the Nazis some time to reach such a
clear view against homosexuality.
Although the Nazi Party had always been officially anti-gay, in its early years many groups who opposed these Fascists lampooned them as homosexual. Hitler's 15-year friendship with the chief of staff of the SA (Sturmabteilung – storm troopers or 'Brown Shirts'), Ernst Röhm – who was publicly known to be gay after he appeared in court on homosexuality charges in 1925 – lent credence to this propaganda. Despite the gossip about his sexuality, Röhm was central to the Nazis' rise to power, transforming the Brown Shirts from a few embittered ex-soldiers in the early 1920s into the three-million-strong vehicle for Nazi terror that the storm troopers became in the early 1930s.
The Nazis' initial ambivalence towards gays evaporated quickly when, in 1934, Röhm and 300 others were charged with conspiring to overthrow Hitler, who ordered their execution without trial. Following this purge – the 'Night of the Long Knives' – Röhm's homosexuality was cited as another reason for his murder.
Paragraph 175
With the SA chief out of the way, Nazi attacks on the gay community
escalated rapidly, and in 1935, the Law for the Protection of German Blood
and German Honour was passed. This amended the existing Paragraph 175
of the Reich Penal Code:
An unnatural sex act committed between persons of male sex or by humans with animals is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights might also be imposed.
However, whereas previously the only punishable offence had been anal intercourse, the new Paragraph 175a ushered in 10 new possible 'acts' between men as crimes worthy of punishment, including kissing, embracing and having homosexual fantasies. Despite this, many anti-Nazis still attacked the Fascists as homosexual, and in revenge, the Nazis became increasingly vicious, later exporting their persecution of gays to the countries they occupied.
Diseased, not sub-human
Nazis did not refer to gays as Unter Menschen (sub-human) in
the way they did Jews. Homosexuals were regarded as diseased and in need
of treatment. As a result, thousands were subjected to torture, often
ending in death, in an attempt to deter them from being gay. Nevertheless,
the 'diseased' tag did not protect gays from incarceration.
When homosexuals first began arriving in prisons and concentration camps, they were marked out with 'Paragraph 175' written on their backs. As hundreds of inmates turned into thousands, this badge was changed to a pink triangle, in the same way that the label Juden ('Jew') was changed to a yellow Star of David. Pink triangles were also used for sex offenders such as paedophiles, further associating gays with 'perverts'.
Since Nazis regarded women as mere vessels for bearing children, lesbianism was never a major issue. Gay women were never attacked in the same way that gay men were persecuted. Homosexual men were seen as a threat to the state and likely to reduce the potential for waging war and purifying the Germanic race.
A long history of worldwide persecution
Nazis were by no means alone in their persecution of gays. The infamous
Paragraph 175 had been added to the Reich Penal Code as long ago as 1871,
more than 60 years before Hitler took power. It was just one more development
in a long line of legislation around the world aimed at punishing homosexuals.
In England, for example, there is an extensive history of persecuting gays: as long ago as 1290, carrying out homosexual acts was punishable by death. At the same time as the Nazi persecution in Germany, the oppression of gays on the other side of the Channel was also accelerating. According to Richard Davenport-Hines’ 1990 study Sex, Death and Punishment, in 1938 Britain there were 134 prosecutions for sodomy and bestiality, 822 for attempted sodomy and indecent assault and 320 for gross indecency. In 1952, there were 670, 3,087 and 1,686 prosecutions, respectively. Through a law known as 'the blackmailer's charter', homosexual acts between consenting male adults remained illegal in England until 1967. Even today, schools are restricted in what they can teach about homosexuality.
However, some progress has been made. The Civil Partnership Act 2004 now allows same-sex couples in the UK to form a legal relationship in which they are treated in the same way as opposite-sex couples who have been married in a civil ceremony.
In Germany, homosexual acts remained criminalised until the late 1960s, and gays convicted under the Nazis were not pardoned until 1998. Unlike other victims of the Nazis, none of them has received compensation for what they went through.
How many died?
The number of gay men who died at the hands of Hitler's Reich has
never been fully established. It is not clear how many people lived in
the gay community before or after World War II, and since many who were
executed received no trial, there is only patchy evidence of how many
were imprisoned or sent to their deaths.
Nevertheless, researchers estimate that some 50,000 men were convicted for committing homosexual acts, and that 15,000 gays died in Auschwitz alone, often as a result of being worked to death. At present, according to the historian Rictor Norton, the estimates for the total number of gay men who were killed by the Nazis range from 10,000 (undoubtedly too low) to 430,000 (probably too high).
