What did hitler think of gay people
We National Socialists will soon bring them before the law and condemn them. On May 15, , he died at the age of 67 in Nice, where he worked to his last days trying to set up an institute similar to the one in Berlin. Under Nazi law, homosexuality was deemed non-Aryan and as such homosexuals were far more persecuted in Nazi Germany than under the Weimar regime.
For Himmler and other Nazi ideologues, homosexuals—like Jews—were the incarnation of degeneracy. Many German gays, like Jews, nevertheless assumed that the Nazis would change their policies once they were in power. Hatred of homosexuals was determined by both party ideology and the personal obsessions of the leaders, and especially of Heinrich Himmler, the main originator of the plan to exterminate homosexuals.
[] After learning of Hitler's remark, Himmler drafted a decree mandating the death penalty to any member of the SS or police who was found guilty of engaging in a homosexual act. The nationalist right emphasized das Volk, the purity of race and blood, and the role and sanctity of family life.
Jews always attempt to support sexual relations among siblings, between people and animals, or between men. The Berlin physician Magnus Hirschfeld zealously opposed Article In , he founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, which campaigned for the repeal of Article and for education on homosexuality.
For a time, Hirschfeld and his allies sought support for their efforts from the Soviet Union, but their sympathy for that country declined when increasing numbers of Soviet homosexuals began to be committed, as a result of a decree by Stalin, to mental hospitals.
They scattered documents around, destroyed research equipment and material, and carried the books out of the library. As George Z. Homosexuality was classed as a “degenerate form of behaviour” in Nazi Germany that threatened the nation’s “disciplined masculinity”. The Napoleonic Code of served as the model for this kind of progress.
There were around bars of this type in Berlin alone. The topic of homosexuality appeared frequently in the German press, literature, and film of the day. The Nazis believed that homosexuals were weak and effeminate men who were not fit to fight for the nation. These deeds are nothing but vulgar, depraved crimes, and we will punish them by banishing or hanging the guilty.
Several days later, the Nazis assembled a large crowd to watch the burning of an impressive number of books and documents, and a bust of Hirschfeld, in front of the Berlin Opera. The cult of masculinity that the Nazis propagated blinded some. Grune and other homosexuals in Germany felt the impact of the new regime within weeks of Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January InFebruary, police and Storm Troopers began enforcing orders to shut same–sex bars and clubs.
New clubs, bars, and other meeting places for gays and lesbians were opening all the time. Under the influence of the French Revolution, Bavaria repealed in the law that imposed penalties on homosexual unions. The Weimar Republic came under increasingly frequent attack for condoning too great a degree of sexual laxity.
Around a hundred students forced their way into the building and began demolishing the Institute. In its pursuit of the “perfection” of the Aryan race, Nazi Germany did not hesitate to persecute and punish homosexuality in the Third Reich. They saw Jews and homosexuals as outsiders and inferior human beings who threatened the purity of der Volk.
In a speech on 18 August Hitler argued homosexuality in the Hitler Youth should be punished by death. Soon afterwards, the German government stripped him of his citizenship. The Jews were accused of lowering the moral standards of the Germans, and above all of directing efforts aimed at destroying the Aryan race and reducing the population.
Nothing has been published about the thousands of Polish homosexuals who became death camp victims. In Poland, no one writes about the tragic fate of homosexuals during the Nazi era. Everyone was discussing it. Despite many legal barriers, the Committee helped create a place where gays and lesbians could meet.
Hirschfeld was abroad at the time he would never return to Germany and witnessed the destruction of his institute in a newsreel in a Paris cinema. The government of Hannover soon followed suit. In the mid s, rising inflation and the economic recession strengthened Nazism.
That afternoon, other trucks arrived full of Nazi storm troopers who finished the job.