IS IT POSSIBLE, is it legitimate, to speak of a “gay genocide” under the Nazis before and during World War II? There’s no debating that the Nazis rounded up and killed a number of people for being gay, but does this make it a “genocide” in the same sense that their program to exterminate the Jews clearly was (as well as the Roma people and other ethnic minorities)? The question becomes, what is meant by a “genocide” as opposed to another type of crime against humanity, such as a massacre or state terrorism? Is it a matter of sheer numbers? Is it a question of intent, as some have argued, a concerted effort to wipe out an entire ethnic group? Is it the scope of the violence, or the level of involvement of the aggressor?
Let me try to address these questions with reference to the Nazis’ treatment of gay people in the 1930s up to 1945. First, it should be stated at the outset that the number of people who were killed for their sexual orientation was small relative to the number of Jews (and others) who were exterminated. But was there a plan or an intention to kill every homosexual that could be found, or even a large proportion of them?
Henry Huttenbach, an eminent genocide scholar, concluded back in 1999 (as quoted in The Encyclopedia of Genocide, Volume 1) that “the victimization of male homosexuals under the Nazi regime in no way approaches the category of genocide and should not be classified as such.”* Five to 15,000 gay people died, not necessarily from intentional killing but in many cases from overwork and neglect, similar to what happened to political prisoners, Soviet soldiers, and criminals. The latter three were notconsidered categories of genocide by the Nuremberg tribunals. Huttenbach concludes the numbers were simply too small to be considered a genocide.
One reason for the small numbers is that gay people could hide their stigma in various ways, such as by marrying a person of the opposite sex. Jews, in contrast, had to be registered as such from the time of birth and were readily identified by official records as well as familial relations. It also appears to be the case that the Nazis had no grand plan or program in place to kill all homosexuals. They just wanted to eradicate their influence on the rest of society.
Other scholars, such as Adam Jones (in Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 2nd Edition, 2010), have taken a harder line, arguing that homosexual men doin fact belong in the category of genocidal victims under the Nazis. One piece of evidence is a speech delivered by Heinrich Himmler to the SS academy at Bad Toelz, in which he pledged: “Like stinging nettles we will rip them [homosexuals]out, throw them on a heap, and burn them. Otherwise … we’ll see the end of Germany, the end of the Germanic world.” Later, he would proclaim to his Finnish physiotherapist, Dr. Felix Kersten: “We must exterminate these people root and branch.” Homosexuals were seen by Himmler and the Nazis as antisocial misfits, a category of “useless” people who contributed little to society and did not produce children for the Fatherland. On the contrary, by their very presence they “infected” heterosexual males with negative or degenerate ideas that ultimately weakened the State.
Hateful words were spoken by Himmler and others, to be sure, but let us go back to the official definition of genocide adopted by the United Nations in 1948. Pressed by legal scholar and activist Raphael Lemkin, the UN voted in that year to define genocide as “the intent to destroy—wholly or in part—a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” Clearly the UN is adhering to a rather literal definition of the prefix “geno-.” A more expansive definition would include political and ideological groups, such as the systematic extermination of the Communists in Indonesia in 1965. Nor did the UN definition include sexual minorities such as homosexuals and lesbians (who may in fact constitute a “geno-” category in an unusual sense). But since only the UN definition is valid for international courts, homosexuals were not included in reparations after World War II, and criminals like Himmler were never charged for crimes against homosexuals.
Other questions emerge with respect to the historical circumstances of the “gay holocaust.” First, were there orders to kill homosexuals and, if so, who issued these orders? If not, were those who died in labor camps simply worked to death? To some extent these questions echo a larger question about the Holocaust, sometimes described as the “functionalist” versus “intentionalist” positions in Nazi history. Did Hitler have a master plan and intend to kill all the Jews from the start, or did he and his inner circle, along with his bureaucracy, improvise as they went along?
This debate continues to this day. Many historians have concluded that it was probably Himmler, not Hitler, who issued the specific order to round up the Jews for incarceration and eventual extermination, and it was undoubtedly Himmler who also gave the order to go after gay males. Himmler was the true ideological kingpin for any would-be “gay genocide.” (Lesbians, by the way, were practically absent from these considerations, largely because women in general were not seen as a potential threat to the Reich. Also, despite their sexual orientation, lesbians were still women and thus capable of producing children for the State.)
One of the fascinating aspects of German history is how the country went from a relatively open sexual society, almost a free-for-all in some cities, during Weimar times in the 1920s, to the repressive culture of the 1930s. The Nazis went after gay men because they represented the modern world, with new ideas about culture, art, politics, and theater. Since they tend to be among the avant-garde in nearly every field of the arts, they had to be destroyed. Goebbels once declared: “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun.” The word “culture,” then as now, was a code word for liberals, Jews, and gays. The person who best personified these characteristics was Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a renowned physician and sexologist who represented everything that the Nazis detested. He was a Jew, a socialist, a progressive, a homosexual, a sometime cross-dresser, and a humanitarian.
A question that could impinge on this discussion is one with which I have grappled: is it possible that Hitler himself was gay? I ask this question with the proviso that the word “gay” in our sense was not used by the Nazis. After much research and reading of contemporary accounts, I concluded (as detailed in two books, The Genocidal Mindin 2006 and Sexual Politics in Nazi Germanyin 2011) that Hitler was not in fact homosexual—which is not to say that he was heterosexual either, strictly speaking. His erotic relations were entirely with women and involved various perversities, but I doubt that he ever consummated the sex act with anyone. That said, many of Hitler’s friends and early supporters, especially those in the SA, such as Ernest Rohm, were known to be homosexual. They were tolerated so long as they served a useful purpose. When they became expendable, as when Hitler had to decide whether to hitch his fortunes to the SA or the SS, the result was total destruction of the former in the so-called “Night of Long Knives” on June 30, 1934. This is when the entire leadership of the SA was wiped out, including Ernest Rohm, his lover, and a number of other gay leaders who were literally killed in their beds in the night. In making this decision, Hitler’s options were framed by the differing power bases represented by the two factions: the SA had broad popular support and was committed to socialism and “continuous revolution,” while the SS had the support of the Wehrmacht (the unified armed forces) and the industrial elite, notably the Krupp family—a constituency for which “continuous revolution” was not a desirable state of affairs.
To firm up my contention that the assault on homosexuals does not constitute a “genocide” as such, let me educe some additional facts and figures. While 50,000 to 63,000 men were convicted of homosexual crimes between 1933 and 1944, including 4,000 juveniles, only 5,000 to 15,000 perished in the camps. These numbers stand in relation to the 56.4 million people who died from all causes in World War II, which was the bloodiest war in human history. Seen in this context, the fraction of people who died as a result of their sexual orientation comes to less than two hundredths of one percent of the total (0.02 percent). Compare that to the twenty million Russians who died, the six million Poles (17.4 percent of the population, half of them Jews), and nearly six million Jews (ten percent of the total number killed in World War II). But the number of gay people who died is also an infinitesimal fraction of the total number of gay people who presumably inhabited the areas under German control. Interestingly, if we assume that five percent of any given population is LGBT, then 300,000 LGBT Jews were killed by the Nazis, though their deaths had nothing to do with their sexual orientation.
The argument by intention, the notion that the Nazis wanted to kill off all homosexuals, is also not persuasive. Although the language used by Himmler and others was genocidal, the actual process was not. Certainly there was no concerted plan or effort to eliminate every homosexual on the planet, as was the case for Jews. Gays were killed in only two countries, Germany and Austria. Those in allied or occupied countries were not rounded up at all.
What’s more, even if the intention were present, it’s doubtful that the Nazis had the means to carry it out. Gays could usually “pass” for straight, as noted, retreating into the closet by getting married or just by keeping a low profile. Suspected Jews, on the other hand, were analyzed into their third generation to see if they had any Jewish ancestors. Indeed, since gay people are not related genetically but share only a sexual orientation, it would seem that a gay genocide analogous to the Shoah was simply not in the cards.
* In my book Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology (1982), I defined genocide in the following way: “Genocide is the deliberate destruction, in whole or in part, by a government or its agents, of a racial, sexual, religious, tribal, ethnic, or political minority.”
Jack Nusan Porter, PhD, born in Ukraine in December 1944, is a child survivor of the Holocaust. He is currently a research associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard. He maintains a website www.drjackporter.com.
