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Homosexuality and Comradeship: Destabilizing the Hegemonic Masculine Ideal in Nazi Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2018

Jason Crouthamel
Jason Crouthamel*
Affiliation:
Grand Valley State University
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Abstract

This article looks at the experiences and perspectives of homosexual men in Nazi Germany—in particular, at homosexual veterans of World War I. How did homosexual men perceive “hegemonic masculinity” and ideals of comradeship during the Third Reich? The central argument is that the Nazi regime's emphasis on heterosexuality as an essential masculine trait was contested by homosexual veterans, who attempted to exert agency by actively defining notions of “masculinity,” the nature of their homosexuality, as well as their status in the Volksgemeinschaft (people's community). The ways in which homosexual men perceived homosexuality in relation to hegemonic masculine norms were diverse: whereas some tried to argue for the compatibility of homosexuality and martial masculinity, those who were arrested often distanced themselves from their homosexual identity. The testimonies of veterans, available in Gestapo police interrogation records, suggest how subjective constructions of sexual identity both undermined and reinforced hegemonic masculine ideals.

Der vorliegende Aufsatz handelt von den Erfahrungen und Perspektiven homosexueller Männer im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, insbesondere denen von homosexuellen Veteranen des Ersten Weltkrieges. Wie haben homosexuelle Männer während des Dritten Reiches “hegemoniale Männlichkeit” sowie das Ideal des Kameradschaftlichen wahrgenommen? In der Tat stellten homosexuelle Veteranen die unter dem NS-Regime übliche Hervorhebung der Heterosexualität als wesentliches Merkmal von Männlichkeit in Frage. Sie versuchten aktiv ihren Handlungsspielraum zu bewahren, indem sie Vorstellungen über “Männlichkeit”, das Wesen ihrer Homosexualität sowie ihren Status innerhalb der Volksgemeinschaft selbst definierten. Wie homosexuelle Männer dabei Homosexualität in Bezug auf hegemoniale Männlichkeitsnormen wahrnahmen, war ganz unterschiedlich: einige machten sich für die Kompatibilität von Homosexualität und martialischer Männlichkeit stark, wohingegen diejenigen, die inhaftiert wurden, sich oft von ihrer Homosexualität distanzierten. Die in den Akten der Gestapo verfügbaren Verhöre zeigen somit, dass solche subjektiven Konstruktionen von sexueller Identität hegemoniale Männlichkeitsideale sowohl unterhöhlen als auch bekräftigen konnten.

Type
Article
Information
Central European History , Volume 51 , Special Issue 3: Masculinity and the Third Reich , September 2018 , pp. 419 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association 2018 

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Thomas Kühne for his insightful advice, which helped with revisions of this article. I am also grateful for feedback from Laurie Marhoefer, Michael Geheran, and Grace Coolidge, who offered their expertise and provided vital critical analysis, as well as from Karen Hagemann, who generously gave a thought-provoking critique of my arguments at a conference presentation on this topic. I am in debt to Daniel Brandl-Beck, a selfless colleague, for bringing my attention to the police files in the Landesarchiv Berlin, and to archivist Gisela Erler for her generous help there. My gratitude also goes to the anonymous peer reviewers for helping me to expand on and improve the article.

References

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2 The growing survey literature includes Jellonnek, Burkhard, Homosexuelle unter dem Hakenkreuz. Die Verfolgung von Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1990)Google Scholar; Whisnant, Clayton J., Queer Identities and Politics in Germany: A History, 1880–1945 (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2016), 204-41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Plant, Richard, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals (New York: Henry Holt, 1986)Google Scholar.

3 For an expert exploration of these tensions, see Giles, Geoffrey, “The Institutionalization of Homosexual Panic in the Third Reich,” in Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany, ed. Gellately, Robert and Stoltzfus, Nathan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 233-355Google Scholar; on the culture of the SA, see Hancock, Eleanor, Ernst Röhm: Hitler's SA Chief of Staff (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)Google Scholar; Wackerfuss, Andrew, Stormtrooper Families: Homosexuality and Community in the Early Nazi Movement (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5 These files are also explored (though without analysis of the arrestees’ military-service background) in Pretzel, Andreas and Roßbach, Gabriele, eds., Wegen der zu erwartenden hohen Strafe: Homosexuellenverfolgung in Berlin 1933–1945 (Berlin: Verlag Rosa Winkel, 2000)Google Scholar.

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21 Karl Günther Heimsoth, “Von Kampf und Ziel,” Der Eigene (1925): 527. Klaus Theweleit suggests, in his classic study, that the misogyny, violence, and homoeroticism found in the memoirs and writings of Freikorps members revealed universal male psychological tendencies. See Theweleit, Klaus, Male Fantasies, vols. 1 and 2, trans. Conway, Stephen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987)Google Scholar. I would argue instead that Freikorps obsessions with “comradeship,” violence, and the containing of “floods” all emerged out of the experience of trench warfare.

22 For examples of their correspondence, see Heinersdorf, Herbert, “Akten zum Falle” Röhm (II. Teil),” Mitteilungen des Wissenschaftlich-humanitären Kommittees 33 (April/August 1932): 391Google Scholar.

23 See also Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, 178; Hancock, Eleanor, “‘Only the Real, the True, the Masculine Held Its Value’: Ernst Röhm, Masculinity and Male Homosexuality,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 8, no. 4 (1998): 616-41Google Scholar.

24 Hancock, Ernst Röhm, 88-89.

25 See Eleanor Hancock's introduction to Röhm, Ernst, The Memoirs of Ernst Röhm, trans. Brooks, Geoffrey (London: Frontline Books, 2012)Google Scholar, xi. The 1928 German original was published under the title Die Geschichte eines Hochverräters.

26 Röhm, Memoirs, 170.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid., 171.

29 Ibid., 236.

30 Adolf Brand, “Politische Galgenvogel. Ein Wort zum Fall Röhm,” Eros—Extrapost des Eigenen 2 (1931): 1-3 (available at the SAB).

31 Letter from Adolf Brand of Nov. 20, 1933, in Hidden Holocaust?—Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany, 1933–45, ed. Günter Grau, trans. Patrick Camiller (London: Cassell, 1995), 34-35.

32 Ibid., 35-36.

33 Ibid., 35.

34 Oosterhuis and Kennedy, Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany, 7.

35 Hancock, Ernst Röhm, 145-47; Susanne zur Neiden, “Aufstieg und Fall des virilen Männerhelden. Der Skandal um Ernst Röhm und seine Ermordung,” Homosexualität und Staatsräson, ed. Susanne zur Neiden (Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 2005), 147-92.

36 Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, 302-4.

37 Geoffrey Giles, “The Institutionalization of Homosexual Panic in the Third Reich,” Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany, 238; see also idem, “Männerbund mit Homo-Panik: Die Angst der Nazis vor der Rolle der Erotik,” in Nationalsozialistischer Terror gegen Homosexuelle. Verdrängt und ungesühnt, ed. Burkhard Jellonek and Rüdiger Lautmann (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2002), 105-18.

38 Tamagne, Florence, A History of Homosexuality in Europe, vol. II (New York: Algora Publishing, 2004), 285Google Scholar.

39 Beachy, Robert, “To Police and Protect: The Surveillance of Homosexuality in Imperial Berlin,” in After the History of Sexuality: German Genealogies with and Beyond Foucault, ed. Spector, Scott, Puff, Helmut, and Herzog, Dagmar (New York: Berghahn, 2012), 115-20Google Scholar.

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45 Anonymous letter to the Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller, June 1935, in Grau, Hidden Holocaust, 57.

46 Ibid.

47 Anonymous letter to General Wilhelm Keitel, June 1935, in ibid., 58.

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49 For an excellent study of a Jewish veteran's crisis under the Nazi regime, see Large, David Clay, And the World Closed its Doors: The Story of One Family Abandoned to the Holocaust (New York: Basic Books, 2004)Google Scholar.

50 Pretzel, “Als Homosexueller in Erscheinung getreten,” 19.

51 This is emphasized in Pretzel, “Erst dadurch wird eine wirksame Bekämpfung ermöglicht,” 43-73.

52 Landesarchiv Berlin (LAB), A. Pr. Br. Rep. 030-02-05, Nr. 116, Gestapo report on Fritz H., Polizeipräsidium zu Berlin, Oct. 27, 1937.

53 LAB, A. Pr. Br. Rep. 030-02-05, Nr. 116, Gestapo report on Fritz H., Polizeipräsidium zu Berlin, Oct. 27, 1937.

54 LAB, A.Pr. Br. Rep. 030-02-05, Nr. 116, letter from the Ehren- und Disziplinärgericht der Deutschen Arbeitsfront, Gau Berlin, to the Polizeipräsidium Berlin, Oct. 14, 1938.

55 See the introduction to Dagmar Herzog, ed., Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe's Twentieth Century (New York: Palgrave, 2009), 5.

56 LAB, A. Pr. Br. Rep. 030-02-05, Nr. 58, Stapo Ins. VII, report on Herbert K., March 17, 1936.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 Crouthamel, An Intimate History of the Front, 15-40.

61 LAB, A. Pr. Br. Rep. 030-02-05, Nr. 95, Gestapo report on Goerd von der G., Dec. 1, 1937.

62 LAB, A. Pr. Br. Rep. 030-02-05, Nr. 529, Stapo Ins. VII report on Karl L., July 21, 1936.

63 Ibid.

64 LAB, A. Pr. Br. Rep. 030-02-05, Nr. 125, Stapo C 3 Berlin report on Albert H., Nov. 27, 1939.

65 Ibid.

66 “…. sprach mich der beschuldigte von B[.] mit den Worten an: ‘Hallo Kamerad, komm doch mal her!’ Ich fragte ihn, was denn los sei. Er antwortete mir: ‘Komm, wir wollen ficken gehen.’” See LAB, A Pr. Br. Rep. 030-02-05, Nr. 18, Stapo VII/H, report on Paul von B., Nov. 11, 1935.

67 LAB, A.Pr. Br. Rep. 030-02-05, Nr. 18, Stapo B3 report on Paul von B., Nov. 4, 1936

68 LAB, A.Pr. Br. Rep. 030-02-05, Nr. 18, letter from F. N. to SS-Oberscharführer Kurt W., Dec. 24, 1935.

69 LAB, A.Pr. Br. Rep. 030-02-05, Nr. 18, Beglaubigte Abschrift (603) 73. Ms. 59/37. He was arrested again for similar behavior in 1940; see Stapo C4 a-B.376/40, report, Sept. 21, 1940.

70 Himmler oscillated on this, allowing convicted men to be sent to the front later in the war; see Geoffrey J. Giles, “The Denial of Homosexuality: Same-Sex Incidents in Himmler's SS and Police,” in Herzog, Sexuality and German Fascism, 257.

71 See the instructions issued to medical officers for assessing homosexual acts by the head of the Luftwaffe, Medical Corps, June 6, 1944, in Grau, Hidden Holocaust?, 181-85.

72 See the report by Chief of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) General Keitel, May 19, 1943, in ibid., 176.

73 Staatsarchiv Würzburg, Gestapoakt, Leopold O., file 8873. I would like to thank Michael Geheran for generously sharing this source.

74 Snyder, Sex Crimes, 106-7.

75 Ibid., 109-10.

76 Ibid., 130. Snyder describes the Wehrmacht’s treatment of homosexuals, as well as the management of its military culture, as driven more by Prussian traditions than by Nazi ideology. See also Giles, Geoffrey J., “A Gray Zone Among the Field Gray Men: Confusion in the Discrimination against Homosexuals in the Wehrmacht,” in Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath, ed. Petropoulos, Jonathan and Roth, John K. (New York: Berghahn, 2005), 127-46Google Scholar. The centrality of enforcing male self-control in the Wehrmacht's prosecution of sexual crimes is also emphasized in Beck, Birgit, “Sexual Violence and its Prosecution by the Wehrmacht,” in A World at Total War: Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction, 1937–1945, ed. Chickering, Roger, Förster, Stig, and Greiner, Bernd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 320Google Scholar.

77 See Snyder, Sex Crimes, 112-17; Giles, “The Denial of Homosexuality,” 256-90.

78 On the significance of postwar interviews in documentary films, see Klaus Müller, “Totgeschlagen, totgeschwiegen? Das autobiographische Zeugnis homosexueller Überlebenden,” in Jellonek and Lautmann, Nationalsozialistischer Terror, 397-418.

79 Becker was interviewed by Klaus Müller for the documentary Paragraph 175 (produced and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Telling Pictures, 2000).

80 Emma Vickers, “The ‘Good Fellow’: Negotiation, Remembrance and Recollection—Homosexuality in the British Armed Forces, 1939-1945,” in Herzog, Brutality and Desire, 120.

81 For example, Stephen Bourne discovered in an interview in the 1980s with his heterosexual father that the latter knew of a sergeant in the 1950s Royal Air Force who was homosexual, “but it didn't bother anyone because he was liked and respected.” See Stephen Bourne, Fighting Proud: The Untold Story of the Gay Men Who Served in Two World Wars (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017), xiv-xv.

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83 Ibid., 151-59.

84 Ibid., 161-62.

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88 This criticism was originally presented at a conference organized by Mark Roseman and Richard Wetzell, titled “Beyond the Racial State: Rethinking Nazi Germany,” Indiana University, Oct. 23-25, 2009 (http://www.ghi-dc.org/fileadmin/user_upload/GHI_Washington/Publications/Bulletin46/163.pdf); see also Pendas, David O., Roseman, Mark, and Wetzell, Richard F., eds., Beyond the Racial State: Rethinking Nazi Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 6-11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Cocks, Geoffrey, “Sick Heil: Self and Illness in Nazi Germany,” in Eghigian, Greg, Killen, Andreas, and Leuenberger, Christine, eds., The Self as Project—Politics and the Human Sciences (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 95Google Scholar.