M. Burleigh and W. Wippermann Persecutions of Different Minorities Persecutions of Siniti and Roma, Hereditary Ills, Asocials and Homosexuals Source: M. Burleigh and W. Wippermann, The Racial State, Germany 1933-1945 (Oxford, 1991), pp.113-122, 136-156, 167-176, 182-192. Part A, B, C, D, E, F, G Part D Having selected a number of suitable asylums, including Grafeneck, Hadamar, Bernburg, Brandenburg, Hartheim and Sonnenstein, SS personnel carried out technical "modifications" and teams of selected medical and nursing staff moved in. In the latter case, group initiation and indoctrination were employed to minimise the likelihood of dissent. The forms marked with red "+" were sent to Gekrat, which forwarded lists of names to the asylums concerned. The lists of names were usually longer than the number of those to be taken away, a device used to involve the asylum staff in the "selection" of their own charges. The lists of names were accompanied by precise instructions on the patients' belongings or on the need to restrain or sedate persons who became difficult. A standard letter, notifying the patients' relatives of the transfer was to be sent out after the person had been relocated. 23 Although at first those transferred were sometimes glad to be going on an outing, with complaints from those left behind, this mood soon gave way to terror at the regular arrival of the vans which never brought patients back. Although those involved in the program preferred to delude themselves that those transferred were unaware of their fate, there is substantial evidence to the contrary. Long-term residents were severely traumatised by being removed from their accustomed habitat; others tried to cling on to nursing staff they knew and trusted or uttered a few words of apparent resignation; some had to be put in strait-jackets or handcuffs to get them into the vans. Asylum staff subsequently began to encounter deep suspicion in the course of carrying out injections or electro-shock therapy. The patients "selected" were transferred to special asylums where they were subjected to a perfunctory medical check, photographed, and killed in gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, or vans into which carbon monoxide was released from the front cab. Their corpses were burned in crematoria, whose ill-designed chimneys sometimes sent flames five metres high and which spread a pall of noxious smoke over the surrounding countryside. Relatives received notification of the patients' transfer and information that he/she has arrived safely', followed a week or so later, by a schematic letter of condolence announcing the person's demise. Sometimes these were given a personal touch, as in this extract from a letter to the parents of a small girl: Today the asylum accounting office received your credit transfer of RM20 intended for flowers for the grave of your little daughter Irmgard ... Concerning your little daughter, we can report that Irmgard was still overjoyed with the little coat, and above all with the lovely little dolly, which she had in her arms to the very end.' 24 Irmgard was in one of 275 (numbered) graves, each of which contained four corpses. The cause of death was usually selected from a range of diseases whose common characteristics were an absence of visible symptoms ¯ unless they existed already ¯ and a sudden onset. The extermination centres took elaborate precautions to conceal large number of deaths occurring in any one place. Each had its own registry office engaged in the falsification of death certificates, and each employed couriers to post the urns of ashes in surrounding towns. Despite these measures, the "euthanasia" program quickly became an open secret. The victims' clothing was returned to the original asylums. Families received two urns when they had one member in an asylum. Hairpins turned up in the ashes of males. The cause of death was given as appendicitis in cases where the patient had had their appendix removed years before. Parents who had removed their children from asylums were nonetheless notified of their unexpected death. The asylum personnel drank too much in local hostleries and made macabre jokes about the quality of fertilisers. People could smell death. Persistent relatives lobbied the authorities to discover the truth, and sometimes used the deaths columns of newspapers to vent their dissatisfaction with the answers they were given: His sudden death will always remain a mystery for us' or, Walter R., holder of the Iron Cross for service at the Front in 1914-18 ... Following days of great uncertainty we received news of his sudden death and of the cremation which had already taken place in Linz on the Danube.' 25 In a few asylums, ugly scenes occurred between the transport service personnel and the staff of the asylums as the latter sought to protect their charges. In one case, a crowd of local people gathered and the local mayor traced the name "Haarmann" (a notorious murderer) in the dust on the side of one of the buses. In other words, the regime's policies had come into serious conflict with ingrained moral precepts and compassion towards the weak. Of course, these seem to have subsequently gone into limbo in the case of the extermination of the Jews. Complications multiplied as awareness of the program spread. Relatives contacted clergymen, the judicial authorities, or contacts at various levels of the NSDAP. The judicial authorities began to ask awkward questions concerning patients who were wards of court. The following example, from evidence assembled by the higher public prosecutor's office in Dresden, is typical: The deaf and dumb cigar-maker Erich S., born in 1912, was committed by the courts to the Waldheim Asylum on 13 October 1937. In response to an inquiry from the higher public prosecutor, the asylum stated on 15 February 1940 that the object of the committal would be attained, if in future S. could be maintained in an institution for the deaf and dumb. The implementation of this recommendation was impossible, however, because on 27 February 1940 S. was transferred in a group transport to an asylum whose name is not known at Waldheim. The higher public prosecutor tried unsuccessfully to reach the Community Patients Transport Service by telephone; the municipal relief office in Berlin had not heard of the company. However in response to a written inquiry, Dr Schmitt of the provincial asylum in Brandenburg informed them that S. had died as a result of pneumonia on 16 March 1940. 26 Although the Reich Ministry of Justice, which had misgivings about the legality of the program, merely confined itself to passing on complaints to the Ministry of the Interior and the Reich Chancellery, one judge ¯ Lothar Kreyssig ¯ instituted criminal proceedings against Bouhler for murder. 27 Summoned to the Ministry of Justice, Kreyssig was shown Hitler's authorisation, which, however, he refused to accept as an adequate legal basis for what had been done. He was subsequently prematurely retired. Similarly, while individual churchmen like the Protestant Pastor Paul Braune protested against the program, both confessions controlled asylums, which co-operated in the program, and corporate ecclesiastical protest was confined to behind the scenes negotiations concerning access to the sacraments of those to be killed 28 . This was to compromise with those responsible for the program. The churchmen's conscience-stricken passivity was dramatically disturbed by a sermon delivered by the Bishop of Muenster, Cardinal Clemens August Count von Galen on 3 August 1941. In his passionate and embarrassingly specific address, this conservative clergyman stated unequivocally: Never under any circumstances may a human being kill an innocent person apart from war and legitimate self-defence.' 29 He stated further: If you establish and apply the principle that you can kill "unproductive" fellow human beings then woe betide us all when we become old and frail! If one of us is allowed to kill the unproductive people then woe betide the invalids who have used up, sacrificed and lost their health and strength in the productive process. If one is allowed forcibly to remove one's unproductive fhuman beings then woe betide loyal soldiers who return to the homeland seriously disabled, as cripples, as invalids. If it is once accepted that people have the right to kill "unproductive" fellow humans ¯ and even if it only initially affects the poor defenceless mentally ill ¯ then as a matter of principle murder is permitted for all unproductive people, in other words for the incurably sick, the people who have become invalids through labour and war, for us all when we become old, frail and therefore unproductive. Then, it is only necessary for some secret edict to order that the method developed for the mentally ill should be extended to other "unproductive" people, that it should be applied to those suffering form incurable lung disease, to the elderly who are frail or invalids, to the severely disabled soldiers. Then none of our lives will be safe any more. Some commission can put us on the list of the "unproductive", who in their opinion have become worthless life. And no police force will protect us and no court will investigate our murder and give the murderer the punishment he deserves. Who will be able to trust his physician any more? He may report his patient as "unproductive" and receive instructions to kill him. It is impossible to imagine the degree of moral depravity, of general mistrust that would then spread even through families if this dreadful doctrine is tolerated, accepted and followed. Woe to mankind, woe to our German nation if God's holy commandment Thou shalt not kill', which God proclaimed on Mount Sinai amidst thunder and lightning, which God our Creator inscribed in the conscience of mankind from the very beginning, is not only broken, but if this transgression is actually tolerated and permitted to go unpunished. 30 Copies of the sermon were duplicated, to be leafleted eventually by the RAF, sensitive since the Nazis had made black propaganda out of the alleged bombing of the Bethel asylum. Galen's action was soon followed by a number of individual clerics. Although there was talk among Nazi leaders of hanging the Bishop of Muenster, detention in concentration camps for denouncing the program ¯ although this reason was never given ¯ was confined to lesser clergy who decided to emulate him. It is not clear whether the protests, which ensued after Galen's sermon prompted Hitler to halt the official program on 24 August 1941. It is unlikely that he did so because, as was later claimed, he was confronted by a hostile crowd on a Bavarian station when his train happened to halt beside a train being loaded with mentally-handicapped children. More likely, the program was halted because the original target figure had been reached. 31 According to an internal T-4 reckoning, up to 1 September 1941 70,273 persons had been "disinfected". Further statistics produced later that year, which took into account persons killed other than by gassing, indicated that 93,251 beds had been "released" from among the 282,696 beds reserved for mental patients. Disquiet among sections of the population lent added urgency to the regime's ongoing efforts to win, if not support, then collusive passivity for the "euthanasia" program. The oblique approach was in evidence in these examples culled from school mathematics books: Question 95: The construction of a lunatic asylum costs 6 million RM. How many houses at 15,000RM each could have been built for that amount? Question 97: To keep a mentally ill person costs approx. 4RM per day, a cripple 5,50RM, a criminal 3,50RM. Many civil servants receive only 4RM per day, white-collar employees barely 3,50RM, unskilled workers not even 2RM per head for their families. (a) Illustrate these figures with a diagram. According to conservative estimates, there are 300,000 mentally ill, epileptics etc., in care. (b) How much do these people cost to keep in total, at a cost of 4RM per head? (c) How many marriage loans at 1,000RM each... could be granted from this money? 32 Films stigmatising the mentally and physically handicapped were produced from the mid-1930s onwards. In October 1939 Brack commissioned one of the Grekat staff, Hermann Schweninger, a failure with cinematic pretensions, to make propaganda films on "euthanasia", designed for the day when the program would operate in the light of legality. 33 The scripts, written in conjunction with physicians involved in the program, latched on to pre-existing formats. The usual object was to contrast the expense put into maintaining "ballast existences" with the limited therapeutic "results" achieved. To this end, Schweninger sought out locations which would emphasise: The marvellous situation of the asylums in the countryside. The vast expanse of the asylum area in the case of so-called pavilion system asylums. The attractiveness and care devoted to the gardens and grounds of the asylums. The good ways in which the buildings have been converted. The aesthetic value of old castles and monasteries, which are still used today as asylums. The marvellous view from the asylums. and inside: The almost luxurious interior settings. Their modernity and costliness. 34 By way of dramatic contrast, Schweninger was instructed to seek out particularly photogenic hopeless cases, some of them being given a temporary reprieve from the gas chambers situated in former palaces until the cameramen had passed through. The most glaring and shocking types, for example, idiotic and deformed children as well as adults of a similar appearance. Totally stunted types in contrast to the beauty of the gardens, art, etc. 35 But preparations for the documentary approach were abruptly shelved in late 1940 as the program encountered opposition. In line with Goebbels' dictum that the best propaganda works indirectly', the T-4 film-makers switched over to the feature film approach. Human interest stories would soften the stark realities of what was being done by occluding the issues in a mist of pseudo-moral dilemmas. Decisions being taken by the State in terms of cold, global statistics were thrust back on to each individual film-goer through the agency of sentiment. "Euthanasia" was presented as everyone's choice. Those cunning considerations were apparent in the film I Accuse , which was released in August 1941. The main plot, which exploits the medical drama/pioneering scientist genres, concerned a professor of pathology, Heyt, whose young wife Hanna develops multiple sclerosis. This is diagnosed by the family physician, Lang, one of Hanna's former admirers. Lang is a convinced opponent of "euthanasia" although his convictions are gradually eroded throughout the film, by, inter alia , his confrontation with a horrendously deformed child whose life he had managed to save as a baby. Both Heyt and Lang endeavour to alleviate Hanna's suffering, her husband by devising a cure in his laboratories. Faced with the limits of his own ingenuity, Heyt resolves to help his wife die. Hanna's brother brings an action against Heyt for murder, which allows the film-makers to rehearse the issues through the device of a concluding courtroom drama. The six jurors adopt different stances, but the spokesmen of "consensus" argue that the law needs to be changed to permit "mercy killings", a view which dovetailed felicitously with the regime's intentions. Lang makes his road to Damascus; the tormented scientist-hero emerges clean. From the script of I Accuse : Hanna (continuing to speak): I wish that was the end. Heyt : It is the end, Hanna. Hanna: How I love you, Thomas... ( He weeps ) Hanna: I wish I could give you my hand, Thomas. 36 The retired Major's speech from the jury scene: Don't get me wrong, gentlemen, but when one deploys hundreds of thousands of physicians, sisters, and nurses, and puts up vast buildings with laboratories and medicaments and God knows what, simply in order to keep a few pitiful creatures alive, who are either too crazy to get anything out of life, or a threat to the community, or in general just like animals - and that at a time, when one doesn't have enough people, room, or the wherewithal to keep the healthy in health, or to properly provide for tmothers of new born babies ¯ then that is the most harebrained nonsense! The State has the duty firstly to look after the people who in general are the State ¯ namely for workers ¯ and as far as those are concerned who would like to die, because they were once healthy and now cannot endure any longer ¯ my view is that the State, which demands from us the duty to die, must give us the right to die... I am an old soldier, and I know what I am talking about. 37 I Accuse was seen by 18 million people. According to a lengthy SD report, apart from a docile press the reactions were mixed. The film was unpopular in Roman Catholic areas, where the clergy endeavoured to discourage people from seeing it. Some regarded it as an attempt by the State to refute charges made in Galen's sermon. Younger physicians reacted positively to the film; lawyers were concerned about the legislative foundations for "euthanasia". The "broad masses of the German people" also reacted affirmatively to I Accuse , although they thought it essential that careful [...] References: 23.For examples see Noakes, Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919¯1945: A Documentary Reader , Vol. 3, pp. 1028¯9. 24.Ernst Klee, Was sie taten ñ Was sie werden. Aerzte, Juristen und andere Beteiligte am Kranken- oder Judenmord (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), p. 204. 25.Klee, Euthanasie' , p. 249 for several examples. 26. Ibid. , p. 240. 27.On Kreyssig, see Klee, Euthanasie' , pp. 209f. 28.On Braune, see Klee, Euthanasie' , pp. 211f. 29.For Galen's sermon see Noakes and Pridham, Nazism 1919¯1945: A Documentary Reader , Vol. 3, pp. 1036ff,; see also Peter Loeffler (ed.), Bischof Clemens August Graf von Galen. Akten, Vols, 1¯2 (Mainz, 1988), 2, nr. 341, pp. 874ff,; Klee, Euthanasie' , pp. 334ff. 30.Noakes, Pridham, Nazism 1919¯1945: A Documentary Reader , Vol. 3, p. 1038. 31.Klee, Euthanasie' , pp. 33ff. 32.R. Dorner (ed.), Mathematische Aufgaben aus der Volks-Gelaende und Wehrkunde , 1. Teil ( Mittelstufe ) (Frankfurt am Main, 1936), p. 21; reprinted in Tuchel (ed.), Kein Recht auf Leben' , p. 47. See also Klee, Euthanasie' , p. 53. 33.For the background to these films see, above all, the definitive study by Ludwig Rost, Sterilisation und Euthanasie im Fdes Dritten Reiches'. Nationalsozialistische Propaganda in ihrer Beziehung zu rassenhygienischen Massnahmen des NS-Staates (Husum, 1987); Karl-Heinz Roth, Filmpropaganda fuer die Vernichtung der Geisteskranken und Behinderten im Dritten Reich', Beitraege zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik , Vol. 2 (Berlin, 1985), pp. 125ff. In English see Erwin Leiser, Nazi Cinema (London, 1974), pp. 89ff.; David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema 1933¯1945 (Oxford and London 1983), pp. 121¯34; Michael Burleigh, “Euthanasia' and the Cinema in Nazi Germany', History Today , 40 (1990), pp. 11¯16. Both authors would like to thank Ludwig Rost for advising us on this subject. Copies of the earlier Racial Political Office of the NSDAP documentary films, e.g. Suenden der Vaeter and Erbkrank , are in our possession. We would like to thank the Filmarchiv, Koblenz and the Filmarchiv der DDR, East Berlin. 34.Roth, Filmpropaganda', pp. 135¯6. 35. Ibid. 36.Roth, Sterilisation und Euthanasie , p. 255. Michael Burleigh would like to thank Ludwig Rost for copies of Liebeneiner's script for I Accuse and other documents connected with the film. 37. Ibid. , p. 269. Part E The Persecution of the "Asocial" In the 1966 edition of the Brockhaus Encyclopedia , the word "asocial" is defined as follows: The "asocial" ("unsocial") are persons who conduct themselves in a refractory manner towards the most basic legal and moral requirements of society.' 49 If we accept this definition, then every society', including that of Nazi Germany, has the right to describe as "asocial", and hence to exclude, persons who will not or cannot fulfil its more or less arbitrarily established "basic legal and moral requirements". This view determined the policies of the courts and compensation agencies in what were until recently the two German states. Persons whom the Nazis designated "asocial", and who wore black triangles in the concentration camps, are still not recognised as having been victims of Nazi persecution. This is to overlook two points: firstly, the incontrovertible fact that the Nazis themselves hardly fulfilled the most basic legal and moral requirements' of society; secondly, that the principles of National Socialist society stemmed from an unscientific and inhuman racial ideology. 50 In the Nazis' view of the world, "asocial" and criminal behaviour was not determined by either individual choice or the social environment, but rather was innate, and hence heritable. In line with many so-called "criminal-biologists", they called for the fight against crime to be conducted according to criminal-biological criteria. Criminal character substances', as Hans Frank put it in 1930, must be permanently excluded from the national community', i.e. sent into perpetual exile. 51 More important, however, was the elimination of the capacity to reproduce' of these criminal character substances'. This meant that the individuals concerned were to be either sterilised or castrated. Only in this way would it be possible to maintain the purity of our morality and of the race'. The recommendations of the National Socialist legal expert, who himself was sentenced to death in 1946 by a Polish court for crimes committed while General Government of Poland, were transformed into reality. Immediately after the "seizure of power" the National Socialists began to solve the "asocial" and criminal question in accordance with criminal-biological criteria. Persons who were accused of being "asocial" or criminal were compulsorily sterilised in accordance with the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Progeny. 52 This was not expressly permitted by the law, but the Hereditary Health Courts found a loophole. They claimed that in addition to the "feeble-mindedness" mentioned in the law, there was also a form of "camouflaged" or "social feeble-mindedness". This meant that persons were compulsorily sterilised who were unaffected by any of the illnesses specified by the law, and who were perfectly capable of passing the intelligence tests which it prescribed. They were simply accused of deviating in some way from the healthy instincts of the Volk' with regard to social or sexual behaviour. As we shall see below, in view of the prevailing double morality of the Third Reich, this last point particularly affected women. Far more women were accused of "social feeble-mindedness" than men, because of either the frequency of their changes of sexual partner or their having had illegitimate children. 53 However, the National Socialists did not only content themselves with curbing "criminal character substances" in this fashion. They also endeavoured to exclude both criminals and the "asocial" as permanently as possible from the "national community". The first organised raids against beggars and vagrants occurred in September 1933, in order both to present an image of a "cleaner" Germany to foreigners and to help channel charitable donations into worthwhile' causes. 54 As a series of guidelines issued by the Ministry of Propaganda put it: The psychological importance of a planned campaign against the nuisance of begging should not be underestimated. Beggars often force their poverty upon people in the most repulsive way for their own selfish purposes. If this sight disappears from the view of foreigners as well, the result will be a definite feeling of relief and liberation. People will feel that things are becoming more stable again, and that the economy is improving once more. A successful action against the nuisance of begging can have important propaganda benefits for the "struggle against cold and hunger". Once the land has been freed of the nuisance of beggars, we can justifiably appeal to the propertied classes to give all the more generously for the Winter Aid Programme now being set in motion by the State and the Party. 55 Although the police too perhaps as many as 100,000 vagrants and beggars into "protective custody", most of them were soon released, for the regime had not considered where to put them. 56 Still, the Nazis had scored a propaganda success, even though the homeless quickly filtered back to the streets and doss-houses, making a nonsense of the government's statistical claims to have diminished the number of vagrants. Independently of this essentially cosmetic exercise, the welfare authorities subjected the homeless to tighter controls and made benefit claims as difficult as possible. "Orderly wanderers" received a Vagrants' Registration Book, which recorded their progression through approved overnight shelters. "Disorderly wanderers" on the other hand could be arrested and assigned to compulsory labour schemes or incarcerated. The welfare authorities used the power to issue these permits as a means of getting rid of whole categories of vagrants. Women vagrants, for example, were simply never issued with Registration Books, while in north Germany welfare agencies simply confiscated the permits of those they deemed "unfit to wander". The welfare agencies also played a leading part in reducing the statistics of the homeless through more drastic action. In 1933 the Hamburg Homelessness and Vagrancy Department recommended that Beggars registered as inhabitants of other towns must be ruthlessly removed by the police for a lengthy period into a concentration camp as far away as possible from Hamburg'. In 1936 the same department further manipulated the statistics concerning those claiming welfare by despatching single male claimants to a labour camp fifty mils north of the city where they had to word eight hours a day and sleep in mass dormitories. Those who refused to go were re-categorised as "work-shy" and excluded from benefit payments. Such measures enabled the welfare authorities to claim that between September 1934 and 1937 the number of single male claimants had fallen from 5,721 to under 1,500. The unpaid benefits amounted to savings of several millions. Finally, the welfare agencies could avail themselves of legally dubious care and custody orders to detain "difficult cases" in closed institutions. Many of those detained in the Home for the Destitute at Farmsen were subsequently quietly subsumed into the so-called "euthanasia" program. 57 Hamburg was also the scene of attempts to implement slum clearance without simply dispersing the "asocial" inhabitants to the periphery, as had been the case with earlier, analogous measures. At first, the regime simply lashed out indiscriminately at the inhabitants of the slums in response to a strike by dockers and harbour-workers against the "seizure of power". Demolition teams moved in to clear up a hiding place for criminals, prostitutes and shady characters, and therewith a breeding ground for Communism'. Subsequently, academic urban sociologists decided to give this policy greater precision by lending their expertise to the process of sifting the biological wheat from the chaff. Electoral statistics were used to locate nests of Communists'. Police records were used to establish the incidence of rent disputes, family c, fights, and sexual delinquency. The records of the probation and welfare agencies were combed to locate juvenile delinquents and the long-term unemployed. The object of so much assiduity was to create a "criminal geography" which would enable the authorities to direct the demolition squads with a hitherto unknown precision, and to bring those not capable of improvement under control; and to eradicate the hereditary properties of the hopelessly biologically deficient'. 58 Both policing and the penal system began to be suffused with racial-biological criteria. "Disorderly wanderers" were among those affected by the Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals of 24 November 1933, which enabled the police to keep persons with two or more criminal convictions in unlimited preventive detention. 59 A criminal-biological expert report determined who was to be detained, and whether or not the person could be castrated. 60 The ensuing tightening up of the criminal law, and the deterioration of conditions in "normal" prisons and places of correction, were similarly in accordance with criminal-biological, or racist, criteria. Concretely, this meant that both the sentence imposed, and subsequent treatment in prison, were dependent upon the criminal-biological classification of the offender. To this end, from 1935 onwards all prisons and correctional institutions in Prussia were instructed to carry out "criminal-biological investigations" on their inmates. Similar measures were applied to juvenile offenders throughout the Reich under a decree concerning the punishment of juveniles issued on 22 January 1937. 61 Special "criminal-biological collection points" were established in Berlin, Freiburg, Muenster, Leipzig, Halle, Hamburg, and Koenigsberg to carry out the prescribed tests. Robert Ritter's Criminal-Biological Research Unit within the Ministry of Public Health decided in doubtful cases. Policy towards the "asocial" and "habitual criminals" was further radicalised following Himmler's appointment as Chief of the German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior on 17 June 1936. Himmler's object was clearly to remove responsibility for the "solution" of the "asocial question" from the courts and normal correctional institutions. 62 On 23 February 1937 he ordered that about 2,000 professional or habitual criminals and those who offend against public decency should be taken into police preventive custody'. Like "protective custody", the imposition of police "preventive custody" ( Vorbeugungshaft ) took place without any prior legal proceedings. Like persons in "protective custody", those detained in "police preventive custody" were sent to concentration camps and set to work in the enterprises of the burgeoning SS economic empire. However, this practice ¯ which was not sanctioned by either the law or any ministerial decree ¯ soon encountered criticism from the justice authorities, who resented both Himmler's efforts to appropriate this area of activity and the Criminal Police's attempts to follow the Gestapo in evading legal controls. Himmler regularised the situation on 14 December 1937. The following passage is taken from the circular of the Reich and Prussian Minster of the Interior of 14 December 1937 on "the preventive fight against crime": Those to be considered asocial are persons who demonstrate through behaviour towards the community, which may not in itself be criminal, that they will not adapt themselves to the community. The following are examples of the asocial: Persons who through minor, but repeated, infractions of the law demonstrate that they will not adapt themselves to the natural discipline of a National Socialist state, e.g. beggars, tramps, (Gypsies), whores, alcoholics with contagious diseases, particularly sexually transmitted diseases, who evade the measures taken by the public health authorities. 63 This enabled the Criminal Police to take into "preventive custody", and hence to send to concentration camps, persons who had not been concretely charged with a criminal or political offence. It sufficed to have been sentenced for a previous offence, or as the decree significantly put it, to have demonstrated an unwillingness to conform to the natural discipline of National Socialist state'. The decree also concretised and extended the circle of persons to be taken into "preventive custody". It spoke of for example [!] beggars, tramps, (gypsies), whores alcoholics with contagious diseases, particularly sexually transmitted diseases, who evade the measures taken by the public health authorities', and of persons against whom it can be proved that on two occasions they have turned down jobs offered to them without reasonable grounds, or who, having taken on a job, have given it up again after a short while without a valid reason'. These persons were to be designated "work-shy". Persons were also to be sent to concentration camps whose behaviour, while not criminal, gives offence to the community', and who had demonstrated that they would not become a part of the community'. In other words, the "asocial" had been effectively criminalised. The Gestapo were entrusted with the first major wave of arrests, carried out between 21 and 30 April 1938, since the operation required no particular police skills. 64 This was because the information the Gestapo required was supplied by, inter alia , the local labour exchanges. Apart from those with more than 30 per cent disabilities, the operation excluded members of the NSDAP, SA and SS. Those arrested were questioned and then sent to Buchenwald. By June the recently centralised Reich Criminal Police Office was ready to implement its own more comprehensive plans for the detention of the able-bodied "asocial". Heydrich ordered that each regional district police headquarters was to fulfil a quota of a t least 200 arrests. Those arrested were to be sent to labour and improvement camps', or in other words Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Dachau. Only males capable of work' were to be arrested. The raids on doss-houses, overnight shelters, and hostels began in the early hours of 13 June. In Hamburg alone, the Criminal Police detained 700 people instead of the 200 Heydrich had asked for. Judging by a list of persons abducted from one hostel in Bielefeld, the Criminal Police were far from scrupulous about whom they took away: L. Kurt, born on 19.2.1888 in C. Worker. Arrived 30.3.38. L has asthma and chronic bronchial catarrah, suffers from his stomach also. He required hospital treatment from 11.4¯29.4.38. S. Walter, born on 2.5.1893 in W. Barman. Arrived: 18.5.1938. In recent years S has not had regular employment. He has been staying in various institutions because of his chronic alcoholism. In this case one is dealing with a psychopath, who because of his addiction to drink will never hold a regular job or be made to settle down. L. Bernhard, born on 3.8. 1884 in B. Worker. Arrived: 10.6.1938. L came from a job on the Reichsautobahn, from which he had to be dismissed because his papers were not in order. Before that he spent some time in the workhouse at Brauweiler. He hoped to seek work form here as soon as his papers had been put in order. Sch. Albert, born on 2.6.1899 in O. Surveyor's assistant, has been with us since 2.6.1938. He came from a labour camp, where he had been living for about a year. His great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were drunks. He himself: rachitic deformation of the lower jaw, as a result of which he cannot chew his food properly and therefore suffers from stomach problems. His physical condition is such that Dr Blumke thinks that hospitalisation is necessary. 65 As we saw in an earlier chapter, these raids ¯ which "netted" perhaps as many as 11,000 people ¯ encompassed Jews with previous convictions and many Sinti and Roma. The latter were arrested simply because they were "Gypsies". 66 The overall motivation behind these waves of arrests, which were collectively known as the Reich Campaign against the Work-Shy', was economic. By 1938, rearmament and preparations for war had converted the mass unemployment of the early 1930s into a genelabour shortage. This was reflected in the requisitioning of 120,000 foreign agricultural labourers in early 1938, and in subsequent labour procurement measures like compulsory labour service for girls. More specifically, the rounding up of "able-bodied" vagrants under the guise of "crime prevention" coincided with the development by the SS of industrial enterprises as adjuncts to their concentration camp system. The Gestapo raids took place on the same day as the SS founded their German Earth and Stone Quarry Ltd, which ran quarries, granite, and brick works in the proximity of Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Flossenburg and Neuengamme. This point was made explicitly by SS-Oberfuehrer Ulrich Greifelt, who was Himmler's link with the Four-Year Plan apparatus: The chief of the SS administration has created the ideal means in the concentration camps for achieving the productive deployment of the labour potential of criminal and political prisoners. They have established, or are in the process of establishing, production centres for costly building materials, which are needed for the major construction enterprises of the Fuehrer ... In view of the tight situation on the labour market, national labour discipline dictated that all persons who would not conform to the working life of the nation, and who were vegetating as work-shy and asocial, making the streets of our cities and countryside unsafe, had to be compulsorily registered and set to work. Prompted by the Office for the Four-Year Plan, the Gestapo intervened with considerable energy. Simultaneously, the Criminal Police took on tramps, beggars, Gypsies, and pimps, and finally those who are currently undertaking a labour training cure in the concentration camps, which are admirably suited for this purpose. 67 References: 49.Roth, Filmpropaganda', pp. 188¯9. 50. Brockhaus Enzyklopaedie (Wiesbaden, 1966, 17th revised edition), p. 792. 51.Nazi policy towards the asocial' was heavily influenced by the criminal-biological presuppositions of the Italian racial ideologist Cesare Lombroso, whose works were translated and popularised by Hans Kurella. See Cesare Lombroso, Die Ursachen und Bekaempfung des Verbrechens , authorised translation by Hans Kurella and E. Jentzsch (Berlin, 1902), and his Der Verbrecher in anthropologischer, aerztlicher und juristischer Beziehung (Hamburg, 1890¯6), 3 vols.; C. Lombroso and G. Ferrero, Das Weib als Verbrecherin und Prostituierte. Anthropologische Studien , authorised translation by Hans Kurella (Hamburg, 1894). Although Lombroso's theories were rarely directly cited because of his Jewish origins, his influence on the work of leading criminal-biologists' in the Third Reich was unmistakable. See Robert Ritter, Ein Menschenschlag. Erbaerztliche Untersuchungen ueber die ñ durch 10 Geschlechterfolgen erforschten ñ Nachkommen von Vagabunden, Jaunern und Raeubern (Leipzig, 1937); Ferdinand von Neureiter, Kriminalbiologie (Berlin, 1940). The persecution of the asocial' is usually only treated peripherally in works dealing with the Nazi period. The literature on this theme is very scanty. Among the most important works are Detlev Peukert, Arbeitslager und Jugend-KZ. Die Behandlung “Gemeinschaftsfremder” im Dritten Reich', D. Peukert, Juergen Reulecke (eds.), Die Reihen fast geschlossen. Beitraege zur Geschichte des Alltags unterm Nationalsozialismus (Wuppertal, 1981), pp. 413¯43; Heidrun Kaupen-Haas (ed.), Der Griff nach der Bevoelkerung. Aktualitaet und Kontinuitaet nazistischer Bevoelkerungspolitik (Noerdlingen, 1986); Jeremy Noakes, Social Outcasts in the Third Reich', in Richard Bessel (ed.), Life in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1987), pp. 83¯96; Patrick Wagner, Das Gesetz ueber die Behandlung Gemeinschaftsfremder', Beitraege zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik , Vol. 6 (Hamburg, 1988), pp. 75¯100; Wolfgang Ayass, Ein Gebot der nationalen Arbeitsdisziplin. Die Aktion “Arbeitsscheu Reich” 1938', Beitraege zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik , Vol. 6 (Hamburg, 1988), pp. 43¯77, and his Vagrants and Beggars in Hitler's Reich', in Richard J. Evans (ed.), The German Underworld: Deviants and Outcasts in German History (London, 1988), pp. 210¯37. 52.Hans Frank in the Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte , 1 (1930), p. 298. 53.For examples see Ernst Klee, Euthanasie' , pp. 34ff.; the definitive study of compulsory sterilisation is Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus. Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik ; see also Karl-Heinz Roth (ed.), Erfassung zur Vernichtung. Von der Sozialhygiene zum Gesetz ueber Sterbehilfe' (Berlin, 1984) and Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie (Goettingen, 1987), pp. 151ff. For an interesting local study see Sabine Krause, Zwangssterilisation in Bremerhaven (1934¯1945). Eine Fallstudie' (unpublished M.A. thesis, Freie Universitaet, Berlin, 1989). 54.For examples see Bock, Zwangssterilisation , pp. 401ff. 55.Klee, Euthanasie' , pp. 34ff. 56.Ayass, Vagrants and Beggars', p. 213. 57. Ibid. , pp. 213¯14. Ibid. , pp. 225ff. 58.Karl-Heinz Roth, Staedtesanierung und “ausmerzende” Soziologie. Der Fall Andreas Walther und die “Notarbeit 51” der “Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft” 1934¯1935 in Hamburg', in Carsten Klingemann (ed.), Rassenmythos und Sozialwissenschaften in Deutschland (Opladen, 1987), pp. 370ff. 59.Gesetz gegen gefaehrliche Gewohnheitsverbrecher vom 24.11.1933', Reichsgesetzblatt 1933 , Part 1, p. 995. 60.See Klee, Euthanasie' , pp. 37ff. 61.Jugenstrafvollzugsordnung 22.1.1937'. See also Martin Guse et al. , Das Jugendschutzlager Moringen ¯ ein Jugendkonzentrationslager', in Hans-Uwe Otto, Heinz Suenker (eds.), Soziale Arbeit und Faschismus. Volkspflege und Aussonderung in der Fuersorgeerziehung in Westfalen von 1933¯1945 (Weinheim, 1989). 62.On the following see Peukert, Arbeitslager und Jugend-KZ', pp. 418ff., and Ayass, Ein Gebot der nationalen Arbeitsdisziplin', pp. 44f. 63.Grundlegender Erlass ueber die vorbeugende Verbrechensbekaempfung durch die Polizei des Reichs- und Preussischen Ministers des Innern vom 14.12.1937', Reichssicherheitshauptamt-Amt V (ed.), Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekaempfung (Berlin, 1942), p. 41. 64.See Ayass, Ein Gebot der nationalen Arbeitsdisziplin', pp. 45ff. 65.Hauptarchiv der von Bodelschwingschen Anstalten, Bestand 2, No. 12¯45, cited by Ayass, Ein Gebot der nationalen Arbeitsdisziplin', p. 57. 66. Ibid. 67.Talk by SS-Oberfuehrer Ulrich Greifelt delivered in January 1939. Nuernberger Dokumente , No. 5591, pp. 104ff. Part F Judging by what is know of the physical condition of those arrested, and by the nature of the work they had to carry out in the camps, it seems that the "cure" Greifelt ironically spoke of was intended to be lethal. This seems to be confirmed by the large number of fatalities among the "asocial" inmates of Buchenwald. This apparently, contradictory result can be explained by the fact that the arrests and detentions in concentration camps were designed to terrify those not arrested ¯ and indeed the working population as a whole ¯ into renewed efforts on behalf of the economy. Anyone contemplating dropping out was well advised to think again. The measures taken against the "asocial" were solely based upon Himmler's decree on crime prevention of 14 December 1937. There was never a formal law on the "asocial". However, there were various attempts from 1940 onwards to pass what in the Nazis' hyper-German speech was called a Community Aliens Law ( Gemeinschaftsfremdengesetz ). 68 These plans ran into difficulties with the Ministry of Justice, which wished to defend its areas of competence from Himmler's ever-expanding security empire. What this law would have entailed can be seen from a draft classificatory system on the "asocial", prepared on a postcard by a Munich law professor, Mezger, for a conference on this issue, and from an advanced draft of the projected law, produced by the printing workshop in the prison at Tegel. Dr Edmund Mezger Professor of Law in the University Munich 25 March 1944 Kaulbachstr. 89 Ministerial Director Grau Ministry of Justice Berlin Wilhelmstrasse 65 Dear Ministerial Director In the question of the "classification" of criminals under discussion, I have decided on the following scheme: Situation Criminals Criminals by virtue of conflict Criminals by virtue of development Criminals by virtue of opportunity Character Criminals Criminals by virtue of inclination Criminals by virtue of tendency Criminals by virtue of condition Yours faithfully Heil Hitler Your loyal Dr Mezger The experience of decades has shown, that the criminal fraternity is continuously replenished from inferior clans. The individual members of these clans always mate with individuals from equally bad clans. This means that inferiority is transmitted from generation to generation, quite often intensifying into criminality. Most of these people are neither willing to join, nor capable of joining, the national community. They lead a life which is alien to the ideas of the community, have no feelings for society, are often incapable if not hostile to a life within the community, and are in any case community aliens. It is an old demand of those organisations entrusted with the public welfare that community aliens (asocials) be compulsorily maintained; because of their inability to become part of the community they become a permanent burden on society. Up to now, existing welfare legislation only recognises custody in cases of proven helplessness or of voluntary committal... The social order will need a legal basis for taking community aliens into compulsory custody, beyond the inadequate possibilities of existing welfare legislation. The governments of the time of the system [i.e. in the Weimar Republic] failed in the case of community aliens. They did not make knowledge of eugenics and criminal biology the basis of sound welfare and criminal policies. Liberalistic thinking only saw the "rights" of the individual, and was more concerned with the protection of rights vis a vis the power of the state than with the wellbeing of the community. In National Socialism the individual does not count as far as society is concerned. Measures introduced by the Reich Criminal Police after the seizure of power, based upon a gradually developing National Socialist police law against community aliens, developed from this principle. It was increasingly recognised that the treatment of community aliens was a matter not so much for the welfare authorities as for the police. According to National Socialist thinking, welfare can only be accorded to people who are not just needy but also worthy of it. Community aliens who only harm the national community do not need welfare, but rather compulsion based on action by the police, designed either to retrieve them as worthwhile members of the national community or to prevent their causing further harm. Protection of the community is therefore the first priority. The draft law concerning treatment of community aliens must fulfil these requirements, in so far as it incorporates existing police measures, refashions them, and creates a legal basis for further judgements in criminal cases involving community aliens, as well as for the [...] The Persecution of Homosexuals A homosexual recalls 1933: Then came the thunderbolt of the 30 January 1933, and we knew that a change of the political climate had taken place. What we had tried to prevent, had taken place. Over the years, more and more of my political friends disappeared, of my Jewish and of my homosexual friends. Fear came over us with the increasingly co-ordinated pressure of the Nazis. For heaven's sake not to attract attention, to exercise restraint. 1933 was the starting-point for the persecution of homosexuals. Already in this year we heard of raids on homosexual pubs and meeting places. Maybe individual, politically uneducated homosexuals who were only interested in immediate gratification did not recognise the significance of the year 1933, but for us homosexuals who were also politically active, who had defended the Weimar Republic, and who had tried to forestall the Nazi threat, 1933 initially signified a reinforcing of our resistance. In order not to mutually incriminate ourselves, we decided to no longer recognise each other. When we came across each other in the street, we passed by without looking at one another. There were certainly possibilities for us to meet, but that never happened in public. For a political homosexual, visiting places, which were part of the homosexual subculture was too dangerous. Friends told me that raids on bars were becoming more frequent. And someone had written on the wall of the subway tunnel of the Hamburg S-Bahn between Dammtor station and the main station, "Street of the Lost". That was some sort of film or book title. We found this graffiti very amusing, for most of us tried to cope with the thing by developing a sort of gallows humour. 75 Homosexuals were not recognised as victims of Nazi persecution in either post-war German State. 76 This is despite the fact that those who were forced to wear the pink triangle in concentration camps were particularly harshly treated by guards and fellow inmates alike. There are several reasons for this unsatisfactory state of affairs. Firstly, it is a reflection of widespread continuing prejudice against homosexuals, and of the natural reticence of the victims to publicise persecution posited upon sexual preference. Secondly, it is a consequence of the fact that the Nazis' harsher 1935 interpretation of paragraph 175 of the 1871 Reich Criminal Code, criminalising "acts of indecency" as well as sexual intercourse between to men, was not repealed until 1969. Concretely, this meant that men who had been sent to concentration camps because of their sexual preferences could be punished after 1945 under the same law. In East Germany, the Nazis' emendations to the law were partially abrogated in 1950, and homosexual acts between consenting adults of eighteen years of age or over were legalised in 1968. However, in the GDR too, homosexuals were not numbered among Hitler's victims. Neither post-war German state has a distinguished record in this area. In a recent election contest in Schleswig-Holstein, the CDU incumbent candidate tried to smear his SPD rival with the charge that his party advocated sex with minors. Thadvent of Aids has also become a means to collect votes and percentage points on the pretext of restoring "traditional morality". Although in the GDR there were real efforts to demystify homosexual activities and to "normalise" homosexual partnerships, foreigners determined to be HIV positive were simply deported. 77 This fact received less attention than the regime's well-publicised investment in research on Aids. For most of the medieval and early modern periods, the penalty for homosexual acts was death. Under the impact of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, certain German states, beginning with Bavaria in 1813, decriminalised homosexuality. The significant exception was Prussia, whose benighted legislation concerning the issue was carried over in 1871 on to the Reich as a whole. Text of Paragraph 175 of the 1871 Reich Criminal Code: A male who indulges in criminally indecent activity with another male, or who allows himself to participate in such activity, will be punished with imprisonment. If one of the participants is under the age of twenty-one, and if the offence has not been grave, the court may dispense with the sentence of imprisonment. 78 Since it was difficult in practice to prove what had taken place in private between two men, before the turn of the century convictions under Paragraph 175 amounted to on average 500 per annum. This does not mean that homosexuals had an easy time of it. While the number of successful prosecutions may have been limited, the opportunities for "informal" prosecution were immense. During the Kaiserreich, homosexuals were particularly vulnerable to blackmailers, known as Chanteure on the homosexual scene. Blackmail, and the threat of public exposure, resulted in frequent suicides or suicide attempts. Nonetheless, gradually a recognisable homosexual subculture developed, particularly in the big cities, which afforded individuals some degree of anonymity. During the First World War, Berlin alone had about forty homosexual meeting places, ranging from elegant bars to ordinary pubs, all largely staffed by homosexuals. In Berlin there were also spectacular homosexual dances, where men were (temporarily) allowed to dance freely with other men. Otherwise, there were a number of homosexual meeting places, notably the "queers' way" in the Tiergarten, or in Hamburg the "Tabakgaertchen", as well as private baths and less salubrious places. 79 Most homosexuals, however, seem to have preferred small circles of the like-minded, where they could talk and socialise in the privacy of their own homes. The beginnings of a homosexual rights movement in Germany are closely associated with Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935). 80 Through an association called the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, founded in 1897, Hirschfeld sought to enlighten the public about homosexuality and to bring about the repeal of Paragraph 175. A petition to this effect was supported by, inter alia , Gerhart Hauptmann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Karl Kautsky, Max Liebermann and the socialist leader August Bebel, the only leader of a German political party ever to bother to find out at first hand about the life of homosexuals in that country. He was also the first person publicly to reveal the existence of "pink lists", on which the police recorded the names of homosexuals regardless of whether they had been convicted of homosexual activities or not. This is not to claim that the political Left had a monopoly of virtue on this subject. The correspondence of Marx and Engels contains periodic aspersions against homosexuals ¯ as it does against Poles and Jews ¯ and in the 1890s German Social Democrats sought to make political capital out of a number of homosexual scandals involving prominent persons. This was so in the cases of Friedrich Krupp, Prince Phillip zu Eulenburg, and Kuno von Moltke, all close associates of the Kaiser himself. In 1902, for example, the SPD's Vorwaerts ran an article under the headline "Krupp auf Kapri", revealing that the Italian police had brought charges against the industrialist. 81 The Weimar Republic brought an initial liberalisation of the climate of opinion, but not changes in the law. Homosexual meeting places and magazines proliferated, while books and films appeared which dealt with the subject in a comparatively open way. In 1919 Hirschfeld founded the Institute for Sexual Science, devoted to the scientific discussion of marital problems, sexually transmitted diseases, laws relating to sexual offences, abortion, and homosexuality. Greater openness concerning homosexuality resulted in an attempt by the conservative governmental coalition in 1925 to tighten up the law. Operating under the assumption that a minority of "Ur-Homos" were using the new climate to propagate their sexual preference among heterosexual men, a group of civil servants drafted an amendment to the law known as E 1925. This attempt to turn the clock back resulted in counter-proposals from Hirschfeld's Scientific-Humanitarian Committee concerning the reform of all laws pertaining to sexual matters. The first reading of E 1925 took place in the Reichstag on 22 June 1927. The Catholic Centre, German People's Party (DVP), and German National People's Party (DNVP) coalition received vocal support from the fourteen Nazi deputies, with Wilhelm Frick claiming, Naturally it is the Jews, Magnus Hirschfeld and his racial comrades, who have taken the lead and are trying to break new ground, just as in general the whole of Jewish morality has ruined the German people.' Despite the opposition of the SPD and KPD, the draft went through to committee stage. Following a leftwards change in the political composition of the Reichstag, the committee eventually met on 16 October 1929. Conservative committee members claimed that sexuality was not a private matter and that the object of legislation should be to maintain the generative "powers of the nation". They were outvoted, however, fifteen to thirteen, by representatives of the SPD, KPD, and DDP, who recommended the legislation of homosexual acts among consenting adults. The advent of the Nazi regime soon nullified this considerable achievement. This had been made clear in an article in the Voelkischer Beobachter on 2 August 1930 which said, We congratulate you, Herr Kahl and Herr Hirschfeld, on this success! But don't you believe that we Germans will allow such a law to exist for one day when we have succeeded in coming to power.' Like the conservative press in general, Nazi newspapers contained denunciations of Hirschfeld as "the big boss of the perverts" and alarmist articles whenever we happened to speak about reform of Paragraph 175 in schools. 82 References: 68.See Peukert, Arbeitslager und Jugend-KZ', p. 415; Wagner, Das Gesetz ueber die Behandlung Gemeinschaftsfremder', pp. 80ff. 69.BA Koblenz R 22/944, pp. 228f., cited by Norbert Frei, Der Fuehrerstaat (Munich, 1987), pp. 203¯8. 70.See also Diemut Majer, Fremdvoelkische' im Dritten Reich (Boppard, 1981). 71.Letter from Reich Justice Minister Thierack to Bormann dated 13 October 1942, cited by Bruno Blau, Das Ausnahmerecht fuer die Juden in Deutschland (Duesseldorf, 1954), p. 116. 72. Richterbrief' , 1 June 1943, cited by Heinz Boberach (ed.), Richterbriefe. Dokumente zur Beeinflussung der deutschen Rechtsprechung 1942 bis 1944 (Boppard, 1975). 73. Richterbriefe', 1 January 1943 and 1 June 1943, cited in ibid.. 74.Runderlass des Reichsministers des Innern 18.7.1940, “Richtlinien fuer die Beurteilung der Erbgesundheit”', Ministerialblatt des Reichs- und Preussischen Ministers des Innern , 5 (4 July 1940), p. 1591. 75.Interview with an anonymous subject, published in Hans-Georg Stuemke, Rudi Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen. Homosexuelle und Gesundes Volksempfinden' von Auschwitz bis heute (Hamburg, 1981), p. 238. See also Burkhard Jellonek, Homosexuelle unter dem Hakenkreuz. Verfolgung von Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich (Paderborn, 1990) for a regional study of the persecution of homosexuals. 76.For an informed discussion of the issue of compensation, see Hans-Georg Stuemke, Homosexuelle in Deutschland. Eine politische Geschichte (Munich, 1), pp. 132ff. See also S. Romey, Zu Recht verfolgt? Zur Geschichte der ausgebliebenen Entschaedigung', Projektgruppe fuer die vergessenen Opfer des NS-Regimes in Hamburg e.V. (eds.), Verachtet ñ Verfolgt ñ Vernichtet. Zu den vergessenen Opfern des NS-Regimes (Hamburg, 1986), pp. 220¯45. 77.Stuemke, Homosexuelle in Deutschland , pp. 166ff.; H. W. Wieland, Realer Sozialismus: DDR integriert Homosexuelle', Du & Ich , 19 (1987), pp. 71¯3. 78.Reprinted in Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals (Edinburgh, 1987), p. 206. 79.For these remarks on the homosexual scene' see Stuemke, Homosexuelle in Deutschland , pp. 22ff. and the catalogue Eldorado'. Homosexuelle Frauen und Maenner in Berlin 1850¯1950 (Berlin, 1984). 80.On Hirschfeld see Charlotte Wolff, Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology (London, 1986). 81.Stuemke, Homosexuin Deutschland , pp. 40ff.. See also B. Engelmann, Krupp, Legenden und Wirklichkeit (Frankfurt, 1970); for the Eulenburg affair see also E. Ebermayer, Glanz un d Gloria verblasst. Der Fall Fuerst Philipp zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld', Der neue Pitaval , Vol. 14: Skandale (Munich, 1967), pp. 115¯64. 82.For attempts to reform paragraph 175 see Stuemke, Homosexuelle in Deutschland , pp. 53ff. and Stuemke, Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen , pp. 39ff. Part G Official Nazi Party statements on the issue were another matter. This was not unconnected with the fact that the leadership of the NSDAP included at least one notorious homosexual. The SA leader Ernst Roehm openly attended homosexual bars and meeting places and belonged to the main homosexual organisation, the League for Human Rights. In keeping with a form of character assassination first explored with Friedrich Krupp, the German Left attempted to smear the Nazi movement with the charge of homosexuality, despite the fact that the SPD and the KPD had recently endeavoured to decriminalise the issue. The SPD Muenchener Post ran a series of articles entitled "National Socialism and Homosexuality" with headlines like "Stammtisch 175", or "Brotherhood of Proofs in the Brown House". The party's Rheinische Zeitung warned, Parents, protect your sons from "physical preparation" in the Hitler Youth.' Similarly, both the KPD with its claim that homosexuality was "un-proletarian", and assorted left-wing anti-fascist groups with their talk of "Hitler's queer friend Roehm", made the mistake, as Kurt Tucholsky noted, of attempting to compete with the Nazis on a ground of, which they were the acknowledged masters, namely the calculated appeal to the "healthy instincts" of the German people. 83 If, at first, even Heinrich Himmler was prepared to protect Roehm ¯ The object of these attacks is Staff Chief Roehm whom the Jews and their lackeys have regarded as the most unpleasant and feared leader of the SA and SS since the creation of the Party' ¯ this mood changed once the Nazis were in power. Specifically, Hitler feared that Roehm's efforts to transform the SA into a militia were alienating the army, and hence represented a threat to Hitler's own power. There is no evidence that in June 1934 Roehm was contemplating a Putsch . Nazi propaganda, however, justified Hitler's ensuing murder of his SA associates in terms of striking down a putative conspiracy, the restoration of "law and order" against the anarchic gangsterism of the SA, and last but not least, as a cleansing operation against sexual "deviants". Thus the Koelnische Zeitung reported on 1 July 1934 that the Fuehrer could no longer tolerate the fact that millions of upright people should be burdened and compromised by abnormally-inclined creatures'. This perversion of the issues involved ¯ namely Hitler's resort to murder to resolve a political power struggle ¯ was highly effective. Many "upright" and "normally-inclined" members of the NSDAP and "national comrades" found Hitler's measures against "asocial and diseased elements" both "upright" and "normal". The murder of homosexuals evidently corresponded with "the healthy instincts of the people", including many who were otherwise totally opposed to the regime. A report by the Social Democratic Party in exile (SOPADE), concerning the public reactions to the Roehm affair (30 June 1934), observed: Baden... The immediate result of the murders was great confusion, both as regards the way they were viewed and as regards their future political consequences. On the whole, Hitler's courage in taking decisive action was stressed the most. He was regarded practically as a hero. Hitler's slandering of the victims, their homosexuality, and their 30,000-Mark meals, was at first also adjudged heroic. As to what repercussions to the events of the 30th June and their aftermath will be, an agreed and definitive answer cannot yet be given. Our comrades report that Hitler has won strong approval and sympathy from that part of the population, which still places its hopes in him. To these people his action is proof that he wants order and decency. Other sections of the population have been given cause for thought. 84 The Nazis' persecution of homosexuals predated the Roehm affair. On 6 May 1933 students of the Berlin School for Physical Education demolished the Institute for Sexual Science. The 12,000 books in the library were burned on the Opernplatz to the singing of the "Deutschlandlied". A bust of Hirschfeld was ceremonially hanged and then thrown on a bonfire. This is an eyewitness account of the destruction of Magnus Hirschfeld's institute for Sexual Science: On 6 May at 9.30 a.m. a few vans with about one hundred students and a band with brass instruments appeared before the Institute. They took up military formation and then, accompanied by music, forced their way into the building. Since the office was not open yet, they found no member of staff in the building, only a few cleaning ladies and a man who sympathised with the staff. The students demanded entrance to all the rooms; in so far as these were locked, like the reception rooms on the ground floor, which were no longer in use, or the present office of the World League for Sexual Reform, they broke through the doors. Since the ground floor rooms had nothing much to offer them, they went up to the first floor, where they emptied inkwells over papers and carpets, and turned to private bookshelves. They took with them what appeared to be suspect, in line with what they had on so-called "blacklists"... Most of the other pictures, photographs of representatives types, were taken off the walls. They played football with them, so that a great mess of broken glass and crumpled pictures remained. When one of the students objected that this was medical material, another answered that it was irrelevant, that their task was not to confiscate a few books and pictures, but to destroy the institute... The occupants of the Institute had thought that this plundering would be the end of the matter, but at 3pm several vans arrived with SA men, who declared that the confiscation must continue, because the Squad in the morning had not had enough time to clear everything out totally. This second troupe once again searched the whole building, and using a lot of baskets, loaded two large lorries with valuable books and manuscripts. From the insults they used it became clear that most of the authors represented in the special library were well known to the students. Not only Sigmund Freud, whose picture was thrown down the stairs and taken away, received the soubriquet "the Jewish swine Freud", but also Havelock Ellis was called "the pig Havelock Ellis"... Again and again they asked when Dr Hirschfeld would be coming back. As they put it, they wanted a "tip" concerning when he would return. Even before the plundering took place, on several occasions SA men were in the Institute asking after Dr Hirschfeld. When they were told that he was abroad because of his malaria, they replied: Then hopefully he will snuff it without us; then we won't need to string him up or beat him to death.' ...The number of books from the Institute's special library which were destroyed amounted to over one hundred thousand. The students carried a bust of Dr Magnus Hirschfeld in a torchlight parade, and threw it on a bonfire. 85 The Roehm affair then provided Himmler with the pretext to order the central registering of all persons engaged in homosexual activities, particularly in so far as this concerned politically prominent individuals. The fruits of this police work were soon in evidence in the form of the public character assassination of General Fritsch and members of Roman Catholic religious orders. In 1935 Paragraph 175 was amended with Paragraph 175a, which henceforth encompassed any form of "criminal indecency" between men or behaviour which was likely to offend "public morality" or "arouse sexual desires in oneself or strangers". Concretely, this meant that if one man glanced at another in an "enticing" way, he could be prosecuted under Paragraph 175a. Paragraph 175a: A term of imprisonment of up to ten years or, if mitigating circumstances can be established, a term of imprisonment of no less than three years will be imposed on: Any male who by force or threat of violence and dangerto life and limb compels another man to indulge in criminally indecent activities, or allows himself to participate in such activities; Any male who forces another male to indulge with him in criminally indecent activities by using the subordinate position of the other man, whether it be at work or elsewhere, or who allows himself to participate in such activities; Any male who indulges professionally and for profit in criminally indecent activities with other males, or allows himself to be used for such activities or who offers himself for the same. Paragraph 175b: Criminally indecent activities by males with animals are to be punished with imprisonment; in addition, the court may deprive the subject of his civil rights. 86 In practice, "public morality" was interpreted by the Criminal Police. Specifically, in 1936 Himmler created a Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion, led by Josef Meisinger, who was subsequently executed by the Poles in 1947 as the "Butcher of Warsaw". 87 The SS were particularly vociferous in their call for the death penalty for homosexual acts. In May 1935 their house journal, Das Schwarze Korps , ran an article by SS-Untersturmfuehrer Professor Eckhardt, entitled "Unnatural Indecency Deserves Death", which justified this demand with the arcane wisdom that "Nordic-Germanic" States had generally punished homosexuality with greater severity than the "western-Latin" Peoples ¯ in the former case, as Himmler observed in a speech, by drowning the offenders in peat-bogs. These differences of practice, the article claimed, were a reflection of the "Nordic-Germanic people's" purer consciousness of "the idea of race". Hence', they had clearly recognised that homosexuality was a degenerate and racially-destructive phenomenon', and therefore' present-day Germany should reach back to the primeval Germanic point of view' by instigating the eradication of degenerates'. An immediate consequence of Himmler's appropriation of this area of police activity was an incremental increase in the number of prosecutions under Paragraph 175. While in 1934 766 males were convicted and imprisoned, in 1936 the figure exceeded 4,000 and in 1938 8,000. Moreover, from 1937 onwards many of those involved were sent to concentration camps after they had served their "regular" prison sentence, in accordance with Himmler's decree of 14 November 1937 concerning the preventative fight against crime'. Himmler spelled out the racial-ideological arguments for this pathological homophobia in a speech to a conference of SS officers in February 1937. As a consequence of the First World War, Germany had lost two million men. There were also, he calculated, two million homosexuals in the population. This meant that Germany's "sexual balance sheet" had gone into deficit, because four million men capable of sex' had either died or had renounced their duty to procreate' on account of their sexual proclivities. A people of good race' could not afford this imbalance. Instead of fulfilling its candidature for world power and world domination', Germany would sink into insignificance' within fifty years because some of its racially pure' and sexually capable' male population did not want to produce children or have sexual contact with women. Sexual behaviour was no longer a matter for the individual, for it involved the life and death of a people, world power or "swissification"'. The following is part of Heinrich Himmler's speech to SS-Gruppenfuehrer on 18 February 1937 concerning the "question of homosexuality": If you further take into account the facts I have not yet mentioned, namely that with a static number of women, we have two million men too few on account of those who fell in the war, then you can well imagine how this imbalance of two million homosexuals and two million war dead, or in other words a lack of about four million men capable of having sex, has upset the sexual balance sheet of Germany, and will result in a catastrophe. I would like to develop a couple of ideas for you on the question of homosexuality. There are those homosexuals who take the view: what I do is my business, a purely private matter. However, all things, which take place in the sexual sphere are not the private affair of the individual, but signify the life and death of the nation, signify world power or "swissification". The people which has many children has the candidature for world power and world domination. A people of good race which has too few children has a one-way ticket to the grave, for insignificance in fifty or a hundred years, for burial in two hundred and fifty years... Therefore we must be absolutely clear that if we continue to have this burden in Germany, without being able to fight it, then that is the end of Germany, and the end of the Germanic world. Unfortunately, we don't have it as easy as our forefathers. The homosexual, whom one called "Urning", was drowned in a swamp. The professional gentlemen who find these corpses in the peat-bogs are certainly unaware that in ninety out of a hundred cases, they have a homosexual before them, who was drowned in a swamp, clothes and all. That wasn't a punishment, but simply the extinguishing of abnormal life. It had to be got rid of, just as we pull out weeds, throw them on a heap, and burn them. It was not a feeling of revenge, simply that those affected had to go... In the SS, today, we still have about one case of homosexuality a month. In a whole year, about eight to ten cases occur in the entire SS. I have now decided upon the following: in each case, these people will naturally be publicly degraded, expelled, and handed over to the courts. Following completion of the punishment imposed by the courts, they will be sent, by my order, to a concentration camp, and they will be shot in the concentration camp, while attempting to escape. I will make that known by order to the unit to which the person so affected belonged. Thereby, I hope finally to have done with persons of this type in the SS, so that at least the good blood, which we have in the SS, and the increasingly healthy blood, which we are cultivating for Germany, will be kept pure. However, this does not represent a solution to the problem for the whole of Germany. One must not have any illusions about the following. When I bring a homosexual before the courts and have him locked up, the matter is not settled, because the homosexual comes out of prison just as homosexual as before he went in. Therefore the whole question is not clarified. It is clarified in the sense that this burden has been identified, in contrast to the years before the seizure of power. 88 References: 83.On this theme see W. U. Eissler, Arbeiterparteien und Homosexualitaet. Zur Sexualpolitik von SPD und KPD in der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 1980). 84. Deutschland-Berichte der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Sopade) (1934), Vol. 1, p. 198. See also Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth'. Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1987), pp. 84ff. 85.Stuemke, Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen , pp. 163¯6. 86.Plant, The Pink Triangle , p. 206. 87.Stuemke, Homosexuelle in Deutschland , p. 112. 88.For Himmler's speech, see Stuemke, Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen , pp. 217¯21. Back to the top