Queer Men in Nazi Germany
Three gay friends in a Berlin apartment, ca. early 1930s. US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Note on Terminology
People have long used a variety of terms to describe their gender expression and their sexual desires, activities, and identities. The Pink Triangle Legacies Project aims to be intentional in the language we use to describe LGBTQ+ people in the past and present. Throughout our resources, we use the terminology individuals used for themselves whenever possible. When that information is not available, we describe their actions. When referring collectively to LGBTQ+ people, we use the phrase queer and trans. While some use “queer” as an umbrella term that includes gender identity, we choose to name trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people explicitly—especially at a moment when their histories and lives are being targeted and erased. We recognize that some LGBTQ+ people find the term queer offensive because of its use as a slur, and they may never identify as queer. We respect that. In the spirit of transforming the pink triangle from a badge of imprisonment into a symbol of liberation, we join those who have reclaimed the term queer to destigmatize it, take away its power from those who use it as an insult, and fill it instead with respect, affirmation, and self-empowerment. We employ it as an inclusive and expansive term that encompasses gay, lesbian, bi, asexual, pansexual, and additional sexual identities, as well as people whose identities shift over time or who reject fixed categories altogether. If you are uncomfortable using the term queer, we invite you to use LGBTQ+ instead. Above all, we ask that we treat one another’s identities with respect.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nazi Party ran on a campaign to restore Germany to its former glory by building a “racially pure” National Community. This national community would only consist of strong, able-bodied men and women of the so-called Germanic Aryan race. The Nazis identified several groups of people who would not be allowed to stay in the German National Community.
First and foremost, the Nazis viewed Jews as their primary enemy. They did not view Jews as people with a different religion or culture. They believed that Jews were a different and inferior race. Ultimately, the Nazis’ antisemitic policies culminated in the genocide of 6 million Jews across Europe. Nazi leadership also argued that other groups posed a deep, racial threat to the German people. These included the Roma and Sinti, as well as people with disabilities. Once in power, the Nazis initiated the mass murder and genocide of 500,000 Roma and 300,000 Germans with disabilities.
The Nazis targeted other groups for their beliefs or actions. This included Soviet prisoners of war, political opponents, trade unionists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others. According to Nazi ideology, these groups could be brutally punished and forced to change their behaviors so they could be reintegrated into the National Community. Others still, like Black people, were forced out of Germany, forcibly sterilized, and murdered.
The Nazi regime also made it clear that there would be no place for queer and trans people in the new National Community. They initiated the most violent attack on LGBTQ+ people in recorded history.
There were three primary reasons that the Nazis viewed queer and trans people as threats to the National Community: (1) They claimed that LGBTQ+ people didn’t do their “duty” of having children. In other words, they viewed homosexuality as a threat to the German birthrate. (2) They believed that “the homosexual lifestyle” reversed the “natural” gender roles by turning men feminine and women masculine. (3) They argued that queer and trans people would only be loyal to each other, not to the government.
Nazi leaders did not believe that people were born queer or trans. They believed that engaging in the “homosexual lifestyle” was a choice. Their policies against LGBTQ+ people, therefore, were officially aimed at “curing,” “converting,” or “reeducating” them, not killing them. But, as this essay demonstrates, the Nazis' anti-LGBTQ+ policies were violent and ultimately killed thousands of queer and trans people.
Out of everyone in the LGBTQ+ community, the Nazis viewed queer men to be the most dangerous. This was because men had access to positions of leadership in national politics, the economy, and the military. So, a queer man could “infiltrate” Nazi organizations and do damage in a way that a lesbian woman could not, because those leadership roles were not open to women. As a result, the Nazi regime focused most of its resources and efforts on hunting down and finding queer men. Evidence shows, though, that the Nazis also harassed, tortured, and arrested queer women and gender nonconforming people when they learned about their existence.
This essay focuses on how the Nazis treated queer men specifically. The regime often labeled all men who engaged in same-sex activity as “homosexuals,” regardless of how those men understood their own identities. We use the term queer men to acknowledge that not all of them were gay or homosexual; some may have been bisexual or questioning. Explore our additional thematic essays to learn how the Nazis treated other members of the LGBTQ+ community.
When Germany was first created as a nation in 1871, it had a national anti-gay law called Paragraph 175 written into its criminal code. The law criminalized “unnatural indecency between men,” which the court interpreted as “sex-like acts” between two men. When the Nazis came to power in January 1933, the leadership believed that the law’s existing wording placed too many constraints on law enforcement and the judicial system. In June 1935, they amended the law to read “a man who commits indecency with another man, or allows himself to be misused indecently, will be punished with prison.” The lack of an explicit definition for “indecency” was intentional, allowing law enforcement agents and judicial officials to arrest and convict as many men as possible. After the law’s amendment, anything from holding hands, a kiss, or even a look that lingered too long could be considered “indecent” and punishable.
A major goal of the Nazis was to protect the German birthrate. Any threat to the reproduction of the “master race” was viewed as existential. In October 1936, Heinrich Himmler established the Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion, located in Berlin. Officials collected “pink lists” from local law enforcement, which contained the names of suspected gay men. After apprehending the men, the Nazis would use torture to force them to turn over the names of other gay people. Through these techniques, the Nazis conducted individual arrests and large-scale raids. In Hamburg alone, over 230 men were arrested in a single night in 1937.
The men who were arrested under Paragraph 175 faced fines and a prison sentence. They were also subjected to having their licenses revoked, being fired from their jobs, having their degrees taken away, being evicted from their housing, or being kicked out of organizations.
After the Nazi amendment of Paragraph 175, the number of arrests and convictions of queer men skyrocketed, rising by an astounding 740%. In total, the Nazis arrested 100,000 men under Paragraph 175, and 53,480 of them were ultimately convicted.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 so-called “repeat offenders” were sent to a concentration camp after serving their prison sentence. These were men who had been arrested more than once under Paragraph 175 or who were otherwise considered to be a particular threat to society. When all prisoners arrived at the camps, they were stripped of their possessions, clothing, and names. By 1938, the concentration camps had a standardized badging system with colored triangles that marked the reason for internment.
Homosexuals were assigned the pink triangle. According to testimony, pink triangle prisoners were often kept isolated from other prisoners, given harsher work details, and sometimes, less food. Allegedly, these harsher conditions were meant to “toughen” and reorient the men back to being straight. In addition to this, pink triangle prisoners were subjected to medical experiments, sterilization or castration, and harassment from their fellow prisoners. Research by historian Geoffrey Giles shows that 65% of all pink triangle prisoners (around 4,500 to 6,500 men) perished in the concentration camps.
For a full overview of the Nazi persecution of queer and trans people, read our introductory essay.
SOURCES
For a list of English-language, peer-reviewed sources used for this essay, visit the Pink Triangle Legacies Project's bibliography.
Featured Profiles
The following profiles from our LGBTQ+ Stories from Nazi Germany initiative tell the true stories of queer men who lived during the era of the Holocaust.
