Regarding the Röhm scandal, he commented, "We fight the scandalous §175, everywhere we can, therefore we must not join the choir of those among us who want to banish a man from society because he is homosexual." German writer Klaus Mann (himself homosexual) wrote in a polemical essay, "'Vice' and the Left" (1934), that homosexuals had become the "Jews of the antifascists". Other anti-Nazis, such as Kurt Tucholsky writing in the left-liberal Die Weltbühne in 1932, rejected the idea of attacking opponents for their personal lives. According to British historian Daniel Siemens, it was the Nazis, not the left, who were most responsible for the lasting impression of the SA as homosexual.
Hitler exaggerated the homosexuality in the SA in order to justify the 1934 purge of the SA leadership (the Night of Long Knives). Gay antifascists had to stay in the closet in order to avoid rejection by their movement. Leftists, even those who were themselves gay, continued to hold an aversion to all non-monogamous or non-heterosexual sex. In the Soviet Union, Maxim Gorky claimed that "Eradicate homosexuals and fascism will disappear". Speculation on the supposed homosexuality of various Nazi leaders, especially Rudolf Hess, Baldur von Schirach, and Hitler himself, was popular in the media of the exiled German opposition. Wackerfuss states that Reichstag conspiracy appealed to antifascists because of their preexisting belief that "the heart of the Nazis' militant nationalist politics lay in the sinister schemes of decadent homosexual criminals".
Nevertheless, the matter was so politically explosive that it was aired at van der Lubbe's trial in Leipzig. There was no evidence for these claims, and in fact Heines was several hundred kilometers away at the time. The book claimed that a clique of homosexual stormtroopers led by Heines set the Reichstag fire van der Lubbe remained behind and agreed to accept the sole blame because of his desperation for affection Bell was killed to cover it up. The worldwide bestseller The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror (1933)-a brainchild of KPD politician Willi Münzenberg-claimed that Röhm's assistant Georg Bell, who was murdered in early 1933 in Austria, had been his pimp and had procured Reichstag arsonist Marinus van der Lubbe for Röhm. In 1931, the SPD revealed Röhm's homosexuality in an effort to prevent or delay the Nazi seizure of power at a time when the defenders of Weimar democracy sensed that they were running out of options. Leftist paramilitaries taunted the SA with shouts of Geil Röhm ("Hot Röhm!"), "Heil Gay" ( Schwul Heil) or "SA, Trousers Down!" ( SA, Hose runter!). Heil Eulenburg!" after Frick called for harsh penalties for homosexuality. For example, in 1927, SPD deputies heckled Nazi deputy Wilhelm Frick, shouting "Hitler, heil, heil, heil. Confronted with the rise of Nazism, they exploited a stereotype associating homosexuality with militarism that had been established during the Eulenburg affair and exploited the homosexuality of a few Nazis, especially Ernst Röhm, for propaganda. Historian Christopher Dillon comments, "While far from German Social Democracy's finest hour morally. Contemporaries noted the hypocrisy of this approach. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and Communist Party of Germany (KPD) were the primary supporters of repealing Paragraph 175, the German law criminalizing homosexuality, but they also opportunistically used accusations of homosexuality against political opponents. The myth is nearly as old as the Nazi party itself. In 1928, the Nazi Party responded to a question about their position on Paragraph 175, the German law criminalizing homosexuality, writing that "Anyone who even thinks of homosexual love is our enemy." History Origins Nazi propaganda asserted that "homosexual emancipation was a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the German Volk's morality".
Īccording to Laurie Marhoefer, a small number of gay men belonged to a covert faction within the Nazi party that favored gay emancipation while denigrating feminists, Jews, and leftists. Adolf Hitler signed an edict that SS and police personnel would be subject to capital punishment if caught engaging in homosexual activity. Some underwent castration or other Nazi human experimentation aimed at "curing" homosexuality. About 100,000 were arrested, 50,000 convicted and some 5,000 to 15,000 interned in Nazi concentration camps, where they were forced to wear pink triangle badges. In Nazi Germany, homosexuals were persecuted. Ernst Röhm, a prominent Nazi known for his homosexuality