10 Key Lessons from the Nazi Persecution of LGBTQ+ People
Our team has identified the following ten lessons from the Nazi persecution of queer and trans people that can help us all better understand the history and homophobia and transphobia today.
Acknowledgements
The Pink Triangle Legacies Project thanks Sam Ellyson, River Friloux, Gabby Perales, Kerry Phipps, and Dr. Jake Newsome for their contributions in researching and writing this resource. Sam Ellyson also produced the resource as an engaging and educational series on our Instagram account.
We encourage you to also read our introductory essay The Nazi Persecution of Queer and Trans People for a more detailed exploration of this history.
1) Progress is Fragile & Must Be Constantly Defended
In the thirty years before the Nazis came to power, queer and trans Germans had built the most visible and dynamic LGBTQ+ community in the world to that point. This included a vast network of LGBTQ+ publications. Whether you were interested in politics, art, or sports, you could find a magazine, newspaper, or pamphlet for you. There was a combined readership of over 1 million people.
In Berlin alone, there were over 100 nightclubs, bars, cafes, restaurants, and businesses for the LGBTQ+ community. These spaces promoted the growth of vibrant queer and trans communities.
Berlin was home to the first LGBTQ+ rights organization in the world, led by Jewish, socialist, and gay physician Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. In 1919, he founded the Institute for Sexual Science, which was a pioneer in transgender advocacy and healthcare. He even worked with the Berlin police department to issue gender-affirming IDs to trans people to help shield them from discriminatory laws.
And then the Nazis were elected to power. They became the biggest political party in 1932 and, in January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the chancellor of Germany. Within weeks, they drove these vibrant queer and trans communities back underground and initiated the most violent attack on LGBTQ+ people in modern history.
Progress is fragile. It can always be destroyed or taken away. It requires both commitment and action to be defended.
2) Homophobia & Transphobia Have Long Been Political Tools of Extremist Movements
History shows us that anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in politics often frames LGBTQ+ communities as “confused,” a “lifestyle choice,” or a “fad.” Conservative politicians often point to the LGBTQ+ community as evidence of “moral decline,” especially during times of social change. So, we often see verbal attacks on queer and trans people framed as “taking back” the country and “restoring traditional values.”
This was the case in Germany, too. In the 1920s and early 1930s, while Germany was still a democracy, there were multiple conservative parties. They all had differing stances on the economy, geopolitics, and cultural issues. The Nazis revved up their homophobic rhetoric because they knew that doing so would rile up their base and unify the right.
They spewed hatred against queer and trans people at the same time as they fanned the flames of hatred against Jews, foreigners, and others they considered to be threats to racial purity or enemies of the state. So, tapping into homophobia and transphobia was a very strategic move on Nazis’ part to shore up support among conservative and religious voters who may not have agreed with other components of Nazism.
The Nazis understood how to manufacture a crisis to drum up support. They did it by calling the “homosexual lifestyle” a threat to Germany’s children. They also infamously scapegoated Jews. In 1930, Jews made up approximately 0.8% of the population in Germany. Yet, Nazi politicians falsely blamed Jews for the nation’s economic, political, and cultural problems.
Similarly, although less than 1% of Americans today identify as transgender or gender non-conforming, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement falsely asserts that trans people and “gender ideology” are an existential threat to women and girls that corrupt our nation’s youth and degrade American values.
Don’t give in to these historically tested propaganda tactics.
3) Today's Anti-LGBTQ+ Stereotypes are Dangerously Similar to the Ways the Nazis talked about Queer & Trans People
Some of the arguments that the Nazis made against LGBTQ+ people were unique to that time and place. For example, much of Nazi ideology was based on the international eugenics movement. They believed they could create a so-called master race through “better breeding.” Understanding and then controlling human sexuality was a central part of the Nazi regime. Dictating who could have sex with whom was the key to creating the master race through procreation.
In October 1936, Heinrich Himmler established the Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion. The Nazis viewed LGBTQ+ issues and reproductive issues as common related problems. The “threat” that homosexuality allegedly posed was to the German birth rate, by stealing offspring and future children from the Fatherland.
While those talking points were unique to 1930s Germany, in other aspects, the Nazis’ anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric is similar to the ways conservatives in other times and places have talked about queer & trans people. For example, Nazi leadership did not believe that people were born gay or trans. They believed that it was a lifestyle choice and that people could be “cured” or forced to give up the “vice” through violent conversion methods.
The main talking point that the Nazis fell back on time and time again was that queer people were pedophiles and were trying to “seduce" Germany’s youth into the "homosexual lifestyle.” They said it across the radio waves and published it in newspapers.
Even today, right-wing movements continue to call LGBTQ+ people "groomers" who are dangers to children. For decades, this claim was leveled against gay people. Now, the allegation is often targeted at trans people specifically. It's essential to acknowledge that this type of rhetoric isn't new, reminding us that we've faced this attack before. Queer and trans people have - and will continue to - outlive homophobes and fascists by fighting, staying true to ourselves, and joining together in solidarity in the fight for liberation.
4) Politicians Use Broad and Vague Terminology to Defend their Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation
Once the Nazis gained power in January 1933, they immediately began turning their anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric into anti-LGBTQ+ policies. They mostly used vague or broad language for their legislation in an attempt to garner more support and conceal their true intentions. Within weeks of Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, the party passed policies that forcibly shut down “establishments that promote immorality,” which meant that they closed the network of LGBTQ+ meeting spaces, bars, community centers, and organizations.
The Nazis also recognized the importance of controlling people’s access to information and shaping the public narrative. While they were spreading homophobic propaganda, they also took away the ability of LGBTQ+ people to defend and advocate for themselves. They immediately banned all LGBTQ+ publications.
In May 1933, a group of college students and Nazi stormtroopers looted the library of the Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science. The students burned over 20,000 books, unique artifacts, and research materials in the infamous book burnings in Berlin. The content of the world’s first LGBTQ+ archive went up in smoke, destroying the records of our history.
The biggest weapon in the Nazis’ arsenal was a law called Paragraph 175. It criminalized “unnatural fornication” between men. It had existed since the creation of the German nation in 1871. In 1935, the Nazis amended the law, and the new wording criminalized “indecency between men.” It was intentionally vague so that judges and prosecutors could interpret it as they saw fit, to convict as many men as possible. As a result, the number of arrests and convictions skyrocketed.
Republican politicians today use similarly vague rhetoric to describe their anti-LGBTQ+ efforts. Florida’s 2022 Parental Rights in Education law (the “Don’t Say Gay Bill”) claims to “protect children” from information that the government decides is not “age-appropriate.” The language of Republicans’ anti-trans laws say they are “protecting women and girls.”
Don’t be misled. “Family values,” “parents’ rights,” and other dog whistles for homophobia and transphobia are used to rally the right-wing. History shows that this tactic has worked before.
The American Civil Liberties Union offers an interactive resource that reports on anti-LGBTQ+ legislation proposed in each state. You can see detailed information about each piece of legislation. Common themes in these bills include targeting transgender people, limiting local protections, and allowing the use of religion to discriminate. The ACLU also provides information on how to take action to combat contemporary attacks on our rights. We encourage you to take a look at what is happening in your own state and across the country.
5) The Nazis' Violence against LGBTQ+ People Was Wildly Popular among Ordinary Germans
The Nazis’ violence against LGBTQ+ people was not simply a result of top-down perse-cution exclusively led by the government. The majority of the German population did nothing to question or resist the Nazis’ actions against queer and trans people. A significant portion of the citizenry went further, actively participating in the persecution. They knew that their voice could activate the power and violence of the regime against the people they denounced.
German citizens turned in queer and trans people into the Nazis in staggering numbers. The Nazi regime would not have been able to find and arrest as many LGBTQ+ people without neighbors, coworkers, landlords, strangers, and acquaintances turning them in. In one case in Hamburg, the number of denunciations of queer people rose so dramatically that a newspaper urged readers not to overburden their police departments until they could get caught up.
President Trump’s 2024 campaign riled up his base and united factions of the right wing by promoting discrimination and hatred against trans and queer people, feeding off and fanning ordinary Americans’ homophobia and transphobia. The MAGA base has cheered on as Trump issued sweeping executive orders that dismantle hard-earned rights away from LGBTQ+ Americans, especially those of trans youth.
The MAGA Administration continues to wage a concerted attack on transgender rights specifically and LGBTQ+ rights more broadly. However, government officials are not the only ones to blame. Ordinary Americans who voted for MAGA candidates, who continue to spew transphobic rhetoric, and who call the cops on transgender people are all responsible. We have seen what complicity and active participation in movements fueled by hatred and bigotry can lead to. We cannot let it happen again.
6) Queer and Trans People Resisted the Nazi Regime in a Number of Ways
Queer and trans people in Germany didn’t just accept everything the Nazi regime did to them without fighting back. Resistance took many forms. Some chose to withdraw from public life or emigrate to other cities or countries. Others found creative ways to hide. One group of lesbian friends in Berlin established a fake rowing club to give themselves an alibi for why they continued to meet.
Gad Beck was gay and considered by the Nazis to be a “half-Jew.” He was 19 when he made the decision to actively resist the Nazis. He joined Chug Chaluzi, a Jewish resistance group in his hometown of Berlin that provided rations and helped hide and smuggle Jews to safety. Gad believed being gay assisted his resistance activities: “As a homosexual, I was able to turn to my trusted non-Jewish, homosexual acquaintances to help supply food and hiding places.”
Others resisted in more forceful ways. Frieda Belinfante was a musician in the Netherlands who also lived semi-openly as a lesbian. She joined an underground resistance movement that was led by a gay artist named Willem Arondeus. Together, their group forged tens of thousands of IDs to help hide Jews from the Nazis. They even bombed the Amsterdam Population Registry Office in March 1943 so that the Nazis couldn’t compare the forged IDs against the originals in the office.
Frieda escaped and survived, but Willem was caught and executed. His final words to his lawyer were: “Please let the world know that homosexuals are not cowards.”
Today, we are witnessing the greatest coordinated legislative attack on LGBTQ+ Americans - especially trans and gender nonconforming Americans - in recent history. It is important to remember that there are many ways to resist, and you can draw inspiration from the stories of our queer and trans ancestors who fought back against the Nazis!
Already, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest the MAGA regime’s attacks. Some contact their elected officials. Others mobilize mutual aid networks or donate money to organizations doing the work. In the face of a movement that seeks to erase queer and trans visibility, our mere existence - out and proud - is resistance.
History shows us that as authoritarian movements consolidate more power, the opportunities for effective resistance shrink. However we do it, we have to resist now! Being united in our efforts is essential. An attack on one is an attack on all.
7) Appeasement is Never A Viable Option for Stopping Fascism, Especially if You're LGBTQ+
LGBTQ+ people are diverse and hold a wide range of political and social beliefs. In 1930s Germany, some gay men joined the Nazi Party because they believed in Nazi ideals. Nazi leaders kept those individuals around while they were useful, but eventually purged them from the party and sent them to the concentration camps, too.
Let’s take a look at the case of Friedrich Radszuweit as an example of the dangers of appeasement. He was a gay pioneer in Germany, building a publishing empire that produced many LGBTQ+ magazines. His “League of Human Rights” had over 10,000 members, and he used his position and wealth to advocate against anti-gay laws. But, as the Nazi party grew, Friedrich asserted that he wanted to remain “non-political.” This was probably to protect his business interests.
Friedrich told his readers that the Nazis’ homophobic rhetoric was just part of a campaign to get votes, and that the Nazis would not go after "respectable" gays. They would only go after “other” gays, like Jews. Friedrich spent the latter part of his life and the pinnacle of his publishing career appealing to the growing fascist party. He hoped that throwing the “less reputable” gays under the bus would gain him favor with the leaders of the far right movement. He was wrong.
Friedrich died of tuberculosis in 1932, so he didn’t live to see the Nazis immediately dismantle his LGBTQ+ publishing empire and destroy his life’s work when they came to power in January 1933. Friedrich's story demonstrates that appeasement is not a viable strategy for halting the rise of fascism. It also teaches us that the social acceptance of some members of the LGBTQ+ community should never be bought at the expense of the safety of others.
Those LGBTQ+ individuals who are continuing to support MAGA policies in light of severe, coordinated attacks on the community are repeating the same mistakes of LGBTQ+ individuals who appeased and supported the Nazis. When we look at history, we see that right-wing extremist movements will discard members of the LGBTQ+ community who support them when it is no longer advantageous. Our community must stand strong together to resist these attacks and not be blindsided by short-term, personal gain.
8) Authoritarians Target Groups Differently, but at the Same Time. Resistance Must Be Intersectional and Bring Together Coalitions.
As the Nazis sought to establish their “master race,” they targeted several groups as enemies. Although they would never have used the word, their persecution was intersectional. Their primary target was Jewish people, whom they sought to eradicate from Germany, and, eventually, the world. However, many other groups were targeted by the Nazis, including LGBTQ+ people, the Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others.
One prominent example of intersectional discrimination was the establishment of the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion. The Nazis viewed homosexuality and abortion as common threats to the reproduction of the master “Aryan” race. Within the concentration camps, the Nazis assigned badges to dehumanize and divide the inmates by reducing the inmates’ identities down to their “crime.” The pink triangle was used to mark queer men and some trans women. The black triangle was the badge for “social deviants.” Some lesbians who were sent to the camps were marked with a black triangle.
Successful resistance to fascism must also be intersectional. Although our organization focuses on the legacy of the pink triangle, we can’t forget that the pink triangle was only one of many. The fight against homophobia and transphobia also has to be the fight against antisemitism, racism, ableism, and other forms of dehumanization and marginalization. In the face of a strategy of divide and conquer, solidarity is our strength.
As Pastor Martin Niemöller famously articulated,
First they came for the socialists,
and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
9) The Holocaust Didn't Start with Gas Chambers. It Started with Words.
The Holocaust didn’t start with gas chambers. It started with words and stereotypes that went unchecked. Once elected to power, Nazi politicians turned these words into policies, slowly stripping away Jews’ rights over the course of 8 years before the mass murders began. The Nazis turned antisemitic rhetoric into antisemitic laws that radicalized over time to remove Jews from German society, then from German land, and ultimately from life itself.
The Nazi Party never got more than 38% of the votes in free elections. But once in power, they didn’t need every German to agree with their violent antisemitism. They just needed enough Germans to do nothing, to turn a blind eye as they turned the hate speech into laws.
The Nazis didn’t invent antisemitism, nor did they invent homophobia, xenophobia, or other forms of identity-based hate. But they spread propaganda, lies, and stereotypes because they knew that these words could be weaponized.
One reason the Nazis’ hate speech - and then policies - were so effective is because it targeted Jews, queer and trans people, disabled people and other minority groups whom much of German society already believed to be “socially deviant,” “criminals,” or “useless eaters.” Even if Germans did not support the stories of excessive violence associated with the concentration camps, most did not protest because the terrorization was leveled against groups who were already on the margins of society and garnered little sympathy.
The language and propaganda promoted by the MAGA movement today dangerously echo that of the Nazis in many ways. In Hitler’s manifesto, he argued that immigration leads to “blood poisoning” due to racial mixing. At a 2023 rally, Trump stated that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” This type of rhetoric from the Trump campaign rallied the MAGA movement behind these racist ideas and made immigration one of the most important issues of the 2024 election. MAGA rode the anti-immigrant sentiment to gain control of the White House and Congress.
Now back in the White House, President Trump has begun to implement his campaign promises, including his mass deportations, which have been carried out in violation of numerous immigrants’ and U.S. citizens’ constitutional rights. Most notoriously, the MAGA government unveiled a concentration camp-like facility in Florida to detain immigrants named “Alligator Alcatraz”. A month into its existence, prisoners there described the conditions as dehumanizing and torturous.
We’ve seen where these tactics have led before. History often rhymes; it’s time for us to listen. We must speak up and fight back against these blatant attacks on human rights before it is too late. The building of coalitions amongst targeted groups is key to fighting authoritarianism.
10) Democracy Does Not Inherently Protect LGBTQ+ Rights
Under Germany’s first democracy, known as the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), minorities gained more rights. Women gained the right to vote for the first time. In large cities, LGBTQ+ people won greater freedoms and social tolerance. In Berlin especially, police relaxed their enforcement of laws used against queer and trans people, like Paragraph 175. As a result, Berlin became a destination for queer and trans people from all over the world.
When the Nazis were elected to power in 1933, they began dismantling these rights and democracy itself, culminating in a fascist, authoritarian state. After the Allies defeated Nazi Germany in May 1945, queer and trans Germans hoped that the end of the war and victory of the democratic Allies also meant the end of their persecution. Many hoped for a return of the thriving LGBTQ+ culture that existed under the democratic Weimar Republic. Their hope was quickly extinguished.
The Allied liberators upheld the Nazi version of Paragraph 175 (Germany’s national anti-gay law), even imprisoning gay concentration camp survivors after liberating them from the camps. Gay survivor Pierre Seel later stated, “Liberation was only for others.” When democratic West Germany was created in 1949, it also chose to uphold and use the Nazi anti-gay law. This democratic government used a fascist law to arrest 100,000 queer men. Paragraph 175 was amended in 1969 but wasn’t fully repealed until 1994.
In the 1940s and 1950s, the United States also launched massive attacks on LGBTQ+ Americans. During this period, often referred to as the “Lavender Scare,” the federal government purged thousands of LGBTQ+ people from the federal workforce, especially the State Department. Homophobic politicians claimed that LGBTQ+ government workers posed a national security risk because enemies of the US could blackmail LGBTQ+ Americans into spying for them under the threat of forcibly outing them.
Beginning in the 1970s, LGBTQ+ activists reclaimed the pink triangle as a symbol to force their democratic governments to end the systemic discrimination of queer and trans people. After hard-fought victories in the wake of the Stonewall Riots, LGBTQ+ Americans faced especially horrifying backlash and discrimination during the Reagan years and the AIDS crisis. It was clear that even in democracies, LGBTQ+ people were second-class citizens.
Up to this very day, following important victories like marriage equality and the passing of workforce discrimination laws, conservatives and moderates in both major US parties have led an intense backlash against the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans, especially transgender people.
History shows us how democracies have also actively and systematically persecuted LGBTQ+ people. If we want a government that protects the rights of marginalized communities, we have to fight for it and actively build it. Over the course of this series, we have seen how far homophobia and transphobia have gone in the past.
It’s up to us to decide how far we let it go today.