Gay Nazis

Abstract

Most histories on the development of homosexual identity in Germany focus on the 19th-century origins of the first homosexual rights movement, the thriving queer culture in large cities like Berlin during the 1920s, the extensive advocacy done by the liberal sexologist Magnus Hirschfield, and the ultimate eradication of all this progress by the Nazi regime. Consequently, these histories focus primarily on left-wing progressive homosexual advocacy groups like Hirschfield’s WhK (Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee; German for Scientific-Humanitarian Committee). Comparatively, less attention is paid to a smaller, but nevertheless significant cohort of right-wing male homosexual activists — or masculinists — like Adolf Brand and Hans Blüher who rejected notions that same-sex desiring men constituted an effeminate “third sex”. In their view, homoeroticism was the ultimate expression of virility and male camaraderie, and they fused this idea with nationalist, racialist, and antisemitic views in order to formulate a right-wing position against repealing Paragraph 175, Germany's anti-sodomy law. World War One (WWI) was a crucial event which allowed homosexual veterans to affirm their desires more boldly without being labelled as weak and unmanly — their war experience allowed them to defend their reputation as macho and patriotic men. This paper investigates the historical, social, and psychological reasons why many early Nazis, especially those who joined the SA, were attracted to Brand and Blüher’s ideas. The SA’s relative tolerance for homosociality provided a safe space for many homosexuals in the movement. However, this was extremely problematic for the political side of the Nazi Party whose hegemonic heterosexual masculine image came under question after a series of SA scandals in the early 1930s, and ultimately took deadly actions to quash non-heteronormative elements of the movement.