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Some Further Thoughts on WND and The Pink Swastika
more from Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Due to the utter inability of some conservatives and Christian fundamentalists to see facts for what they are, I thought I would elaborate a bit on Nazi anti-homosexuality legislation in relation to the outright laws and distortions of history published in the Christian fundamentalist anti-gay polemic, The Pink Swastika:
The claim made by some conservatives is that because anti-homosexuality laws were on the books before the establishment of the Third Reich, the Nazis were not really anti-homosexual. This is obviously a baseless argument, given that the Nazis not only continued anti-homosexual legislation but strengthened it. Clearly, the pre-existence of anti-homosexuality laws are beside the point. In any event, sexual mores under the Weimar Republic were relaxed and homosexual clubs operated openly before the rise of National Socialism.
The Nazis framed their opposition to homosexuality in the same way today’s Christian fundamentalists do, that it posed a threat to the health and survival of the Aryan race, that it was like a disease to be stamped out and eradicated through any means possible.
Nazis persecution of homosexual males began just weeks after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 (in other words, the very minute they could legally do anything about it) and it became steadily more repressive. As the Holocaust Encyclopedia (313-14) relates, “Some 20 relevant regulations, secret commands, and special rules were enacted, from which the proceedings of the Nazis against homosexuals can be understood.”
Unless, of course, you are one of the authors (or fans of) The Pink Swastika.
The Holocaust Encyclopedia gives three periods of Nazi measures
- 1933-35: “An immense propaganda effort in 193” and “police and Gestapo terror tactics as well as other planned actions against homosexuals, their clubs, and their meeting places,” including Article 175, “which outlawed male homosexual acts.”
- 1936-39: The establishment “of a special administrative body, the Reich Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion” and the second anti-homosexual campaign of the Third Reich, “the so-called Cloister Trials directed against Catholic clerics with eager and aggressive demagoguery.”
- 1939-45: “The extension of physical terror and the formal legalization of deportations to concentration camps, the intrudction of capital punishment in ‘especially serious cases,’ and increased efforts to legalize forced castration.”
In 1928, Hitler had made his position clear:
Supreme lex salus populi!
Communal welfare before personal welfare!
Those who are considering love between men or between women are our enemies. Anything that emasculates our people and that makes us fair game for our enemies we reject, because we know that life is a struggle and that it is insanity to believe that all human beings will one day embrace each other as brothers. Natural history teaches us a different lesson. Might makes right. And the stronger will always prevail against the weaker. Today we are the weaker. Let us make sure that we will become the stronger again! This we can do only if we exercise moral restraint. Therefore we reject all immorality, especially love between men, because it deprives us of our last chance to free our people from the chains of slavery which are keeping it fettered today.
The rate of prosecutions for homosexuality increased dramatically after 1936. “Whereas just 1,000 people were convicted in 1934, there were already 5,310 in 1936 and 8,562 two years later. Between 1933 and 1945 about 50,000 male homosexual adults and juveniles were sentenced by Nazi criminal courts:
1933 — 853
1934 — 948
1935 — 2,106
1936 — 5,310
1937 — 8,271
1938 — 8,562
1939 — 7,614
1940 — 3,773
1941 — 3,735
1942 — 3,963
1943 (first quarter) — 966
1944-45 — ?
The first homosexual was sent to a concentration camp in 1933.
Between 5,000 and 15,000 of those sentenced by the courts were deported to concentration camps after serving their sentence” or were brought directly there by the Gestapo.
Even other concentration camp inmates despised these “moral degenerates.” Of those sent, some 3,000 “were murdered or died.”
In 1935, Paragraph 175 which originally outlawed anal intercourse was broadened to include all types of male homosexual contact and later interpreted by the courts to include a kiss or even a look.
The infamous Nuremberg Laws of 1935 actually took place after these attacks on Germany’s homosexual population. This is not to compare the two in terms of ferocity, but merely to put into perspective Nazi opposition to homosexuality. This opposition was so strong that in 1936 special dispensation had to be made (by Himmler) for the Olympic Games being held in Berlin: foreign foreigners were not to be targeted.
According to Das Schwarze Korps (the official SS newspaper), in 1937 there were two million German homosexuals. Das Schwarze Korps wanted them all dead. All two million of them.
Like fundamentalist Christians, the Nazis apparently believed homosexuals could be reformed or re-education, either through use of punishment or psychology. In 1944 the Nazis even tried the use of synthetic hormones to “cure” homosexuals. It didn’t work of course, and all the patients died. Those who were deemed “predisposed” homosexuals were to be castrated before being put to work for the Reich.
By the way, Article 175 remained in effect in Germany until 1994 (though it had been revised in 1969 and 1973), and the Nazis were not punished for their anti-homosexual activities. Not at the Nuremberg Trials and not at any time afterward.
It’s difficult to see through all this where the homosexuals found time to organize and run the National Socialist Party, which was busily rounding them up and throwing them in jail, or worse. The ideas behind The Pink Swastika are flawed, just as the research is flawed or misused. The whole book is a travesty of intellectual dishonesty on a grand scale, an insult to homosexuals and the study of history alike, and to the intelligence of all who read it.
Sources:
“Swastika, Pink Triangle and Yellow star: The Destruction of Sexology and the Persecution of Homosexuals in Nazi Germany,” by Erwin J. Haeberle, The Journal of Sex Research 17 (1981), 270-287.
The Holocaust Encyclopedia, by Walter Laqueur and Judith Tydor Baumel (Yale University Press, 2001)
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8 Responses to Some Further Thoughts on WND and The Pink Swastika
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Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Jan. 2nd, 2011 at 8:32 am
Incidentally, in 1952 our own U.S. Congress passed a law to prevent homosexuals from entering the country, saying they were “afflicted with a psychopathic personality” and if they were discovered after they had entered they were to be deported, a ruling that was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1967:
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 par. 212 (a) (4), 8 U.S.C., par 1182 (a) (4), 1964, also known as the McCarran Act.
Boutilier v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 387 U.S. 118, 1967. Boutilier had been in the U.S. for 12 years and his mother, stepfather, and three sisters lived here. He had no convictions for “illegal homosexual behavior.”
Sarah Jones
Jan. 2nd, 2011 at 4:28 pm
Revisiting the not so distant past should serve as a reminder of where hate of the other can take us. Demonizing others is the weapon of the morally depraved, running on nothing but hate and division. The modern day GOP uses many of these tactics, and while I’m not likening them to Nazis, I am appalled by their ease with such tactics and their failure to take responsibility for their actions. The fact that they’ve aligned themselves with the “christian” right makes this even more disturbing.
Shiva (Moderator)
Jan. 2nd, 2011 at 10:12 am
I have to admit I know very little on this subject but would like to ask, how much of the homosexual attacks could have been used for solidifying people’s loyalty to Hitler much in the same way as blaming the Jews was? Was it truly a hatred of Homosexuality or grasping a part of the German society at that time that could be used in a propaganda type manner to show that Hitler was strengthening the people by eliminating the weaker people? Was he creating a nationalistic band of core Germany that would follow him who were not “weak” so to speak? Those who needed an enemy during a time of terrible economic conditions? Poorly asked Im sure but I hope you understand what I am asking
Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Jan. 2nd, 2011 at 11:13 am
Hitler was a product of his time, religion, and geography. He was anti-Semitic and anti-gay. I remember in college when I suggested it was wrong to simply “demonize” Hitler in order to explain him, that we needed to understand his context, that like us, he had started out as a baby and grown up in a certain place and time, and that perhaps as late as 1918 he didn’t know who he was politically. But the chaplain disagreed vehemently. He was perfectly content to simply demonize Hitler as though that explained everything. It doesn’t. We have to try to understand him and demonology and doctrines of evil don’t do that.
Historians argue about how much of a pragmatist Hitler was. There was in my opinion something there. He was not afraid to channel feelings, fears, emotions, to get his way. He used the ultra-extremists in his own ranks and then “betrayed” the revolution by selling out to the industrialists and the army and purged Röhm and his followers just as he eliminated others. He even let Streicher fall for behavior outrageous even to Nazis.
But I don’t see how anyone can read his writings (including not only Mein Kampf, the essential starting point) but his Table Talk edited by Hugh Trevor Roper, and come away thinking he was not anti-Semitic or anti-homosexual. To suggest that because he may have entertained “sexual perversions” of his own (and we don’t know that he did) does not mean he was not repulsed by homosexuality.
But even if Hitler was, as I believe, a homophobe and an anti-Semite, I don’t know that Hitler honestly believe Jews had somehow betrayed the Reich or weakened it or caused it’s defeat, or that he honestly believed homosexuals would destroy society. But was more than willing to harness these popular sentiments, just as fundamentalists and Republicans and others are today.
It’s a good question, Shiva. Historians will continue to debate it. But that’s why I always urge people not to limit themselves to a single source of information, or even one or two. We translated articles out of Der Angriff (1929) when I was in college, from the biweekly insert “Heim und Welt” (Home and World) which addressed Nazi women’s issues and I could not limit myself to simply reading and translating these (in horrible fraktur no less) but had to read other sources to put it all into context.
Like Palin, Hitler carefully crafted and managed his public image. He was just better at it.
Shiva (Moderator)
Jan. 2nd, 2011 at 11:58 am
I guess your sentence
“But was more than willing to harness these popular sentiments, just as fundamentalists and Republicans and others are today.”
was exactly what I was looking at. But then again a man who had no problem killing millions could very well hate homosexuals and Jews for more than just cementing his position
Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Jan. 2nd, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Absolutely.
Jay Jordan Hawke
Jan. 2nd, 2011 at 10:43 am
Excellent article! Anyone who wants to research this further, I especially recommend the following books as a starting point: “The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps” by Heinz Heger and “I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror” by Pierre Seel.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Jan. 2nd, 2011 at 10:56 am
Thank you, Jay. There are a great many excellent, informative – and moreover – accurate books out there about Nazism and homosexuality under Nazism. For those with access to JSTOR there are many excellent scholarly articles by historians, sociologists, and so forth. There is absolutely no need to resort to books like The Pink Swastika, which is nothing but the distillation of prejudice and a distortion of history. Thank you for making some recommendations for further reading. I hope people will take the time to education themselves on the subjects raised here. A single post like mine cannot begin to do it justice, only establish a point of departure for further discussion.