Heroes and Gay Nazis (2005) - full transcript
What do you think of gay Nazis?
- I don't understand Nazis,
especially gay Nazis.
I have a bald head,
but it's not a political statement.
A Nazi is Nazi
and therefore disgusting.
Boots turn me on,
white shoestrings, color contrast...
I find black and white extremely hot.
But when they have that mentality,
I can't really get into them.
If they'd lived in the time they admire
so much, they'd have been exterminated.
Now, that's totally perverse!
In the name of the organizing committee,
I welcome you to this manifestation
of the NPD [German National Democratic
Party] and the Free Nationalistic Resistance.
Obedience and loyalty
Obedience and loyalty...
men,
HEROES & gay nazis
a film by
Rosa von Praunheim
photographed by
Lorenz Haarmann, BVK
I'm André. At the moment
I'm living in Berlin.
Originally I'm from Leipzig
and have lived in Dresden and Potsdam.
I'm a classic "Oi" skinhead with roots
in the traditional skinhead scene.
I define it as a culture.
It's a culture of masculinity
that has to do with honor.
To me, the potential for violence means
having the courage to defend myself.
When I land in a situation where
I have to defend myself or someone else,
the warrior in me comes through.
If someone in the gay scene asks,
I say I'm right-wing.
If someone in the right-wing scene asks,
I say that I'm gay.
But very many stay hidden.
Even in the NPD [ultra right-wing
German National Democratic Party]
I know several who are gay or bisexual,
some in steady relationships.
I call them the gay sediment
of the movement, and there are many.
There are people...
Regarding the NPD, I know of a guy
who had to beat off when he saw
somebody else's NPD membership card.
Someone like that
might be moved to join the party
due to his fetish,
not out of political conviction.
I was quite well-known in Germany
because of my political escapades.
Now I work in advertising
and direct marketing.
May I leave some flyers here
for the closing party tonight?
Basically, it's a gay party,
but whoever fits the dress code, S/M etc....
Exceptional people will get in.
I didn't wake up one day, let's say
Jan. 3, 1984, and say, "Now I'm homosexual."
Rather, emotions developed in me,
sexual feelings and desires arose
which completely contradicted
my political position.
According to that political position,
to put it bluntly,
gays, Jews, gypsies etc.
were all lumped together,
and they were all bad.
It took time for me to realize who I am.
You were always playing
hide-and-seek.
In the press you were treated
as one of the most important neo-Nazis,
and you seemed to enjoy it.
At the time, I liked playing with the media.
It was fun and exciting
to be a sort of mini-star.
I underestimated
the power of images
and greatly overestimated my ability
to deal with the media.
I'm Alexander Schlesinger. I live in Berlin,
formerly in Dresden and Cologne.
I was born and raised in East Germany.
Now I'm looking for work here in Berlin.
A gay guy was telling me
about the gay-bashing hotline.
The boys and girls working there
have big ethical problems
because it's young Turks and Moroccans
and such who are beating up gays.
Strangely, so-called right-wing
skinheads seldom attack gays.
Of course, anything can happen
with the lunatic fringe,
but generally these liberal gays have to deal
with facts that don't fit their world view.
That's the reality.
Sit, damn it!
I think many gays
are for laxer immigration laws
so they don't have to travel
to fuck foreigners.
That's a bit vulgar,
but it's best to tell it like it is.
A rather Christian question:
Do you regret what you did?
After all, it put you in prison.
No, I don't regret anything
because to this day, I think the way
I was treated in Germany was very wrong.
That's the main reason why
I was politically active for so long.
In my opinion, wearing the swastika
shouldn't be forbidden in Germany.
Let the crazies run around
with their swastikas.
The ban gives value to the symbol
and makes it what it was for us:
something forbidden,
seductive and powerful.
I'm cheeky enough to say
this is a very democratic opinion.
I still think that Rudolf Hess should have
been freed, that he was murdered in prison.
Those views haven't changed.
Rudolf Hess Memorial March
Germany 1990
MARTYR FOR GERMANY,
RUDOLF HESS...
FRANCE HONORS THE MEMORY
OF RUDOLF HESS
I saw that Hess had become
a martyr for the neo-Nazi scene.
The facts are, he was in prison too long,
and he has a place a history.
If it hadn't become so radical, people of all
views could have supported his rehabilitation.
Rudolf Hess
Minister of the Third Reich
Deputy of the Führer
As loyal as the old Storm Trooper
is to the Führer,
that is how loyal the Führer is
to his old Storm Troopers.
Professor Bernd Ulrich Hergemöller
Historian
Hess's youth is very well documented:
his relationships to friends,
the love letters, the poems...
- To men? -Yes.
Professor Lothar Machtan, Historian
It's known that other Nazis had nicknames for Hess:
"Miss Hess" or "Black Emma".
Jürgen Rieger, Attorney
Activist for German racial purity.
There were rumors,
but I doubt Hess was
a practicing homosexual.
He was uninterested in women,
and he only married because
Hitler was the matchmaker.
The Secretary for Economic Affairs
Funk was also homosexual...
In his case,
he was observed
chasing after such types
as young male musicians.
Axmann, the last Reich Youth Leader,
was also homosexual.
A leader of the Nazi
League of German Girls told me that.
I belong to one of the right-wing parties,
never mind which one.
Alexander Schlesinger
My party boss knows me,
and he knows I'm gay.
He told me, "You know,
what our members do in bed
"or behind closed doors
doesn't interest us.
"Our interest is that they stand up
for our platform and work with us
"to represent our political values
and our social views to the people,
"who maybe then will vote for us."
STOP THE NAZIS
FIGHT RACISM
ABOLISH CAPITALISM
I'm a freelance journalist and an educa-
tional consultant, and I'm active politically.
I'm a member of the Anti-Fascist Union
for Victims of the Nazi Regime.
Part of my résumé is that
I was in the neo-Nazi scene for 9 years,
from 1982 until '91,
between the ages of 13 and 22.
I became a functionary of the NPD,
and I was a founding member of the
German Folk Union as a political party.
For years this building housed
the NPD headquarters in Nuremberg
and their youth schooling center,
all with the landlord's blessing.
At the same time, there has always been
a gay sauna in the building.
Of course, that provoked the NPD
and led to altercations.
Time and again, sauna customers
were verbally attacked.
I came out as gay
in the old East Germany.
I knew already at 13
that I tended in that direction.
Later, between 14 and 16, I gradually
came out to the people I felt close to.
Most of them were coincidentally Nazis,
you could say.
There I saw that if people accept you,
they'll overlook your being gay.
The fight against gays isn't so much
a fight against men who sleep with men;
it's against a lack of masculinity,
against weakness.
I've had diabetes since I was four. That
led to my getting into the neo-Nazi scene.
In 1982, when I was 13,
I was living in Nuremberg with my mother.
I went to a government office to apply
for the status of a disabled person.
The man who handled my application
was also deputy director of the local NPD.
Before I left, he gave me literature
about the party and its youth organization.
German women...
German faithfulness...
German wine and German song...
As a skinhead,
I'm more into the hetero movement.
The gay scene doesn't interest me much
because it's mostly fetishism.
The people look tasty,
but there's nothing behind it.
That gives me nothing.
But isn't the hetero skinhead scene
very right-wing and violent?
Well, hetero skinheads are
a little rougher and wilder.
When things really start jumping
at an Oi concert,
it's something you won't experience
in the gay scene.
Don't you get emotionally confused
and fall in love with hetero skinheads?
I've never fallen in love
with a hetero skinhead.
There's a subconscious barrier that
prevents the unthinkable, and that's okay.
I also don't try to seduce heterosexuals,
although the way they are
usually fits my ideal of what a man should be
more nearly than the boys in the gay scene.
This isn't correct. This is a common
soldier's uniform with a major's epaulets.
I was an officer
in the former East German army.
Our political upbringing in East Germany
was very focused on national identity.
We were taught always to revere
our socialist German homeland.
I think that was good.
After reunification I joined - don't laugh -
the revised East German socialist party.
It's policies definitely appealed to me:
social justice...
You should sit, damn it!
But then they started
their multicultural babble:
"Germany is the world's welfare office,
and everyone is welcome."
When I saw where it was going,
I left the party.
I had a very sheltered childhood, and
when I entered the right-wing scene at 13,
it was the first time I made contacts
outside of school and went out at night.
I didn't have the feeling
I was an outsider sitting on the sidelines.
They attached great importance
to making us feel welcome and involved.
We gay men are drawn toward
a masculine ideal. I'm an intolerant gay.
I can't deal with screaming queens.
Impossible! I didn't become gay
to get turned on by feminine creatures.
I'm gay because I like men,
and a man is something else.
Not screeching off to CSD
in plush and high heels. Oh my God, no!
Ever since homosexuals exist,
we've been aware of a schism.
After all, a real man has to desire women.
That's the view of our society and culture.
We have to cope with that.
One solution is hyper-masculinity.
Professor Rüdiger Lautmann
Sociologist
Right-wing types will certainly prefer
this athletic solution.
Certainly, it's logical that in a group
that is between 80% and 90% men
and women are subordinate,
masculinity is very important.
Due to my disability, I had the drawback
that I'm not the type of guy
who runs through the jungle and swings
on vines from tree to tree while howling,
nor am I a street fighter.
I compensated from the beginning
by concentrating on political theory.
Good morning, gentlemen.
- Good morning, First Lieutenant, sir!
When you joined the army, was there a
subconscious gay desire to be among men?
In principle, I won't say yes and I won't
say no. Does that answer the question?
It's not a field shirt,
it's called a blouse.
Believe what I tell you.
May I touch you?
- Yes. Thank you.
There are gay organizations like
Green Berets International
who meet in the woods and do military drills
and enjoy themselves immensely.
"Line up" means behind each other, boys.
The group leader reports, saying my rank,
his rank and how many men in the column.
Lieutenant Filly, Lance Corporal Trauner
is present with 5 men at Position One.
Thank you. At ease.
We have the simple assignment
of answering a question:
Who can pee the farthest?
You can decide which men
have the fullest bladders.
They may then urinate,
and we will measure the distance. -Good.
Green Berets International is the first
registered association of gay men in uniform.
In January of 1997 six comrades
got together and said, "Let's do it!"
They officially registered the association
as a company to secure its legal status.
Membership has grown tremendously,
partly due to media coverage.
Usually in coverage of gay events
like Christopher Street Day,
one side of the gay scene predominates:
namely, the feminine,
the men in women's clothes.
By order of the First Lieutenant:
Dismissed!
We're on the other side.
We like to go our way in uniform.
We meet on weekends and do our thing.
One rule is that we dissociate ourselves
from the radical right.
We don't want to copy the German army.
Then you might as well join their reserves.
We just want to live out our uniform fetish
in combination with sex.
We register each maneuver
with the police
in order to avoid accusations
that we're doing something illegal.
Here we are at the sperm slide.
Have fun sliding!
Our association dissociates itself clearly
from the radical right.
Also, our members have to sign
an agreement: no weapons.
The guys aren't allowed to bring along
even toy guns or paintball guns.
Being gay doesn't make a person
a better human being.
A gay person can be a racist.
A gay person can be anti-Semitic.
What led to the reprisals
against the Jews?
It's known that international Jewish organi-
zations agitated against the Third Reich,
steered from America.
Newspapers exist as proof.
That's played down because Jewish influence
on the world powers is huge, unfortunately.
It just happens once in a while
that funny, macabre jokes get told
about some Jew or rabbi or child fucker
or whatever, and you laugh along
because you're with friends having fun.
You don't really notice
how stupid or grotesque that is.
Is that true?
You knew Gottfried Küssel,
the song writer...
Basically, Gottfried Küssel was a very
peaceful, harmless, artistic, quiet person.
In the film "The Truth Will Set You Free"
he sings about making Jews bleed. Harmless?
Do you recognize his nose?
His nose is hard to place.
If it's crooked and ugly,
Then punch him in the face.
from
"The Truth Will Set You Free" 1992
He's not human, he's a Jew
Don't stop to think, just stomp him out
I'm not someone who reads the book
of morality before laughing at a joke.
Don't stop to think,
just "BANG"
He's not human, he's an ape
Don't stop to think, don't stop to think
Just "BANG"
No comment.
You could show a bit of tact.
the funeral of
Michael Kühnen 1991
The last 70 supporters follow Austria's
party boss to the Führer's final roll call.
His life was struggle.
His life is over.
His struggle is not.
Honor to our dead:
With Michael Kühnen,
a German hero has gone to eternity.
Herr Kühnen told me he had HIV, and now,
unfortunately, he has succumbed to it.
He assured me personally that he
was neither a homo, nor did he have AIDS.
I had no way to verify that.
I had to take his word for it.
Was Herr Kühnen homosexual?
I've heard rumors, but I'm not aware
of anything that proves the allegation.
Here's a copy of the Kühnen
commemorative postage stamp. -Incredible.
Tell us about your profession.
I'm a television journalist.
I've been a journalist for about 16 years.
My work focuses on political extremism,
sects, organized crime...
Kühnen was a very captivating
as well as a very dangerous figure.
Most of us think of Nazis as representing
a murderous terror regime
that killed with unmatched cruelty.
Feeling that, you approach Michael Kühnen
thinking you'll meet a monster:
brutal, threatening, etc.
Then you meet a polite man
who shakes your hand
and sits down cultivatedly at the table
with his political opponent,
and you're perplexed.
When did you meet Kühnen?
- 1984.
We'd invited him. He stood there
and made a speech which had three points:
Why am I a nationalist? Why am I a social-
ist? Why must we take power in Germany?
He fit those points together
with such impressive brilliance
that I, with my 18 years,
was flabbergasted.
I went to him and said,
"You're the man. You're my man.
"I'm all wound up.
What can I do to be part of it?"
German television 1978
After decades of re-education and
changing waves of reporting in the media
about Hitler: first, as the "carpet biter",
then the effort to find a perspective closer
to historical truth during the Hitler wave;
the time seems right for us to go public
with our picture of Adolf Hitler,
to name our sources, and to say why we
see Hitler as one of the greatest Germans.
Kühnen came from a good middle-class family
and was politically active very early.
He joined an NPD youth group at 14
and was active at school.
At the end of the 70's he gained access
to the "Friends of the NSDAP" in Hamburg,
and that's where he really blossomed.
Kühnen had a plan:
he wanted a new, legal SA [Storm Troops].
He wanted to dominate the streets,
to be in the vanguard
of masses of new Storm Troopers.
Hamburg 1977
Comrades, citizens of Hamburg, this is a rally
of the National Socialist Action Front.
It is our goal to live
and to fight for Germany.
We are also ready, if necessary,
to die for Germany.
The National Socialist Action Front...
Retreat!
Of course, I knew of
Michael Kühnen and Ewald Althans.
Jörg Fischer
Especially Kühnen had
a very charismatic personality.
I didn't find him charismatic, but maybe
I'm too demanding.
I'm Burkhard Schröder. For 15 years
I've been an author and journalist.
specializing in neo-Nazism and racism.
I know personally most of the so-called
comrades who are politically active.
Do neo-Nazis love the press?
Yes, they love the press like everyone does.
I think Kühnen was one of the first
in that milieu who understood
the classic advertising maxim:
"There's no such thing as bad publicity."
We, the media,
made Kühnen into what he was.
He used us.
It was give and take.
He said in a speech in Dresden,
"The magazine Spiegel
"made me into the most dangerous
German neo-Nazi, and that's what I am!"
He could have said,
"The Spiegel gave me a medal."
Young people came from former
East Germany and asked for his autograph!
They knew him from anti-West propaganda
on TV as the most dangerous neo-Nazi.
They didn't know the right-wing politicians,
but they all knew Kühnen.
And he got a kick
out of giving them autographs.
His homosexuality was never really
a subject of discussion.
He was represented and accepted
by many as the Führer.
German television 1978
We want the end of the parties ruling here
and the end of Jewish influence in Germany.
We're not rowdies as the press claims.
We're for order and decency.
We've never struck the first blow, but
the time of putting up with everything is over!
I knew I was gay quite early.
At 17 things started getting intense
with an NPD functionary.
I'd been in love with him for some time.
We'd done a lot together politically,
and I always tried to get close to him.
The first time you had sex
was in Dresden?
Yes, yes. I had to think for a moment,
but it was in Dresden. -Do you remember it?
We drank a few beers, and then I...
"Let's watch a video." Before, I'd overcome
myself and rented a heterosexual sex film.
So we were watching that...
I remember. I guess everyone does.
- And? -It was disappointing.
It was disappointing.
Maybe that's so for everyone.
The first time...
- How old were you? -17.
We kept sliding closer,
and then we started fondling each other.
Interesting was that he touched me first.
We met again the next day.
He'd gone home that night.
We didn't mention what we'd done.
In the 4 years we met to have sex,
sometimes 3, 4, 5 times a week,
not once did we talk about sex.
The word "gay" was never said.
My first long relationship
started in 1988.
We moved together,
and the people in the house didn't mind.
I sort of blackmailed my parents. I said,
"Guess what, I'm gay. I live with a guy.
"If that's okay with you, come to our
housewarming. If not, stay away."
They were there, and since then, it's fine.
Weren't the others very hostile?
Did you have to defend yourselves?
No, because nobody knew.
When I think about it today...
The situation was so ambiguous...
It was so stifling and hidden...
It was deforming.
German television "Hamburg Journal"
March 10, 1987
Correction: "In the 'Hamburg Journal' of
Feb. 24, 1987, between 7:15 and 8 o'clock,
"it was claimed: '...and of all people,
the Führer Kühnen is homosexual.'
"This claim is false. Correct is, I am not
homosexual." Signed: Michael Kühnen.
Did you know at that time
that Kühnen was gay? -My God, no.
There were no rumors?
- No, none.
It's funny how one party official put it:
"Whether a comrade at home has sex
with his hamster, his toaster, or his wife
"doesn't matter, if he does his political work
and doesn't make his sex life public."
Jürgen Rieger, Attorney
Activist for German racial purity.
I'm an attorney and farmer.
In my capacity as a lawyer,
I have contact with nationalistic Germans.
One of them was Michael Kühnen.
Did you notice Kühnen's homosexuality?
Did he talk about it? Were there rumors?
Initially, Michael Kühnen
kept very quiet about that.
Then Kühnen went abroad,
hoping to make international contacts.
In France, he connected
with Michel Caignet
who owned a gay magazine
and later published Kühnen's treatise.
In the long run, the connection to Caignet
was damaging to Kühnen.
These are the magazines of Michel Caignet,
the first open gay in the neo-Nazi scene.
Caignet's plan was to establish
a gay organization
within the neo-Nazi movement.
Once he went public,
he was banned from the scene,
and that was the beginning
of the "AHC", the anti-homo campaign
that snowballed from there.
The homosexual tragedy
in the movement. A hard story...
Kühnen had to go into exile.
He was facing a long-term prison sentence,
and we decided he should leave.
Freedom
for
Michael
Kühnen
Then a conference was called,
and Kühnen's own chosen deputy
was caught having sex with a man.
It was like a boil bursting open.
Of course, the deputy, Kühnen's trustee
with full powers of authority,
was told to pack up and get out
because he was scum.
That led to other people speaking up:
"Wait a minute. I am, too."
Like: "If you live in a glass house,
don't throw stones."
Suddenly, homosexuals were popping up
throughout the movement.
Hatred was deliberately stirred up,
which led to a young neo-Nazi in Hamburg
being murdered because he was gay.
It was a witch hunt, and you were defying
death to be in the scene and openly gay.
German television 1981
A lynch-law murder by right-wing extremists
made headlines.
The victim, Johannes Bügner,
was in the National Socialist Action Front
which was founded by Michael Kühnen.
The victim was homosexual.
He frequented the men's bar Can-Can
near Hamburg's main railroad station.
Formerly the Terminus, the bar has long been
a meeting place for right-wing extremists.
Under the pretext that they
had orders from the Führer Kühnen,
the culprits - seen here -
lured the unsuspecting Bügner into a car.
They drove with him
through Barsbüttel to Sternwarde.
Here in the country,
far from houses, in the midst of fields,
Bügner, 26, was stabbed 22 times,
and his body was dragged into a ditch.
For Kühnen it was a shock.
He knew about the scene's anti-gay sentiment
but didn't dream it could go as far as murder.
In no uncertain terms,
he dissociated himself from the murderers.
He dedicated a pamphlet
to the gay victim
which presented him as a martyr
to the movement.
I remember reading that pamphlet,
"National Socialism and Homosexuality",
and I cried my eyes out.
I cried and couldn't stop
because my world had fallen apart.
The man I'd believed in was homosexual.
That was my opinion, that Kühnen
had written his political death warrant.
After reading that pamphlet,
I knew he was done for as a politician.
He wrote that Nazism and homosexuality
are compatible. More than that...
When he writes that a gay neo-Nazi
is better than a straight one
because he's better
as a soldier in the trenches:
he doesn't have wife and kids to think about,
but only the beloved comrades around him...
That doesn't promote emancipation;
I read: "Gays are better cannon fodder."
He wrote, "We need soldiers."
Then he brought in the ancient Greeks,
the fighting units of male lovers in Sparta,
and what not.
Naturally, it was an enormous provocation.
Nazis out! Nazis out!
It astounded me that among Kühnen's
adversaries, there were also gays.
Kühnen opponents sing:
On a lamppost near the Chancellery
Hang gay Kühnen and his deputy
And all the Nazis gather there
To see the hanging faggot pair
As once died SA chief Röhm...
You sang that? -We did.
Even among his closest supporters,
Kühnen's position was pulverized.
Have you called it off?
Yes. We've crossed the street,
so the event is over.
the funeral of Michael Kühnen
Kassel, Germany May 3, 1991
A neo-Nazi leader with AIDS...
Unthinkable, even for his truest disciples.
I even heard rumors
that his death was expedited.
He was sent off to die painfully of AIDS.
His comrades vanished.
He died a wretched, lonely death. Then
at the funeral, there were ringing speeches:
"Comrade, we'll never forget you."
I found it ridiculous.
Dear comrade Michael,
you live on in our hearts.
Michael, you are a victim
of these times,
and their omnipresent
anti-humanness.
But he became a legend...
When someone's so famous
that people steal his ashes...
Well, it won't happen to me.
In life, despised as gay
by most of the movement,
once dead, he was good enough
to serve as blooded witness to the cause.
after Kühnen's funeral
Kassel, Germany May 3, 1991
Nazis out! Nazis out!
I have to say I'm shaken.
It confirms that national-political work
in West Germany is impossible.
The stupefaction of the people
is too advanced.
When I'm in my hometown
or somewhere else in the East,
I can wear my outfit and do national-
political work without being molested.
I feel seriously threatened here.
I'll be glad to get back
to my formerly socialist homeland.
That's all I have to say.
A new documentary film
by Winfried Bonengel is fuel for controversy.
"Profession: Neo-Nazi" premieres Thursday.
Focus: the leadership of the New Right.
The media was hunting
for Kühnen's successor.
They found a bunch of lost,
bewildered souls,
and in me they found someone
who could tie a tie and had a shop in Munich.
German television report
"Profession: Neo-Nazi" 1993
In the Munich office of the New Right,
the 27-year-old Althans holds sway.
No shaved-headed underdog, he is chic,
modern, cynical, and obsessed with power.
I want to have our people completely.
I want them totally.
I want to bind them
into a closed community like a sect.
The people should be absorbed
in our ideological community 24 hours a day.
What led up to the trip to Auschwitz,
the trip that landed you in prison?
That's a sad story.
We were in Cottbus, and they said,
"Let's go to Auschwitz."
While shooting the film?
- Yes.
Out of the blue. No plan, no preparation.
Just "We want to go there."
I said, "OK, let's go."
On a visit to the gas chambers at Auschwitz,
Bonengel's film shows the self-named Führer
as a callous, unscrupulous demagogue,
greedy for fame.
Shocked spectators
at the scene of horror.
It's not pseudo-science! Cyanide gas
would've turned the bricks Prussian blue.
Yes, indeed! As a German I stand here
and protest that millions of people are misled
by this mockup!
Filmmaker
Althans, the main figure in the film,
is very exhibitionistic and craves recognition.
If Althans had understood the risk
of going to prison for what he said in the film,
he wouldn't have said it.
In Auschwitz?
- Yes. He did time for denying the Holocaust.
I contacted many lawyers,
spent a lot of money, arranged court orders,
all in an effort to keep Winfried
from spreading that untruth.
What's presented in his film and in the end
put me in prison are not my own words.
I never advocated that opinion,
and nevertheless, for so-called "remarks"
I was in prison for years.
I got stuck in a high-security prison
for 21 months,
isolated from the outside population,
chased around the yard
mornings before sunrise
for 45 minutes with hardened criminals:
and I should apologize?
No way.
Auschwitz was too deeply symbolic.
Certain stupid, inhuman remarks are
no longer tolerated and lead to prosecution.
Western Cemetery
Munich
This book, The Last Homeland,
lists the Munich celebrities buried here.
Here we have him:
359, number 3-1.
Ernst Röhm,
Captain (retired); politician. Died in 1934.
What do you think
he liked to do sexually?
I know a police file
on a good friend of Röhm's,
Gerhard von Prosch,
who was later sent to Dachau.
Archivist, Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial
Prosch preferred boys between 15 and 20.
That could reflect Röhm's predilection.
It says here, "A young man told me
that Herr von Prosch
""blew him' once or twice.
"By that he meant that von Prosch
took Wüstinger's member into his mouth.
"Wüstinger claims he received
app. 50 marks for that."
Prosch thought the Nazis had repealed the
law against homosexuality, Paragraph 175.
He told the police chief,
"Because Röhm himself took me to this boy,
"I was convinced that kind of sexual contact
is no longer against the law."
Here we are. Ernst Röhm.
The whole family is buried here.
There in the middle:
"Ernst Röhm, Captain".
His mother died half a year later. -Yes.
"Railway inspector-general's widow".
Didn't Ernst Röhm live with his mother?
They shared a flat
at Hohenzollern Strasse 110.
I'm Sven Reichardt. I'm an historian
at the University of Konstanz.
My field is the history of fascism
between the world wars.
In that context
I've studied Ernst Röhm,
Chief of Staff of the SA [Storm Troops]
from 1931 until his death in 1934.
Ernst Röhm was born in Munich in 1887.
The elixir of Röhm's early life
was World War I.
He experienced comradeship on the front
and was a high achiever in the military.
For him, Germany's surrender in 1918
was the ultimate disaster.
He didn't have much use for women.
Dr. Susanne zur Nieden
Historian
His emotional life intensified in WWI
where men bled and sweated together.
Good friends were killed and he cried...
But who knows? Maybe such men don't cry.
He loved his comrades,
and he loved young men.
It wasn't until 1924 that Röhm, as he later
wrote, "discovered" his homosexuality.
We're here in the Court Gardens.
This has always been
a classic gay cruising area.
Soldiers were stationed here at the
Court Gardens near the Royal Residence.
That means hundreds of hot,
young soldiers were always milling around.
In the 1920's, the newspapers called this
the homosexual market place of Munich:
"Disgraceful!"
There's a public toilet at the exit which
gay men still frequent to this day.
As far as Adolf Hitler's interest
in Ernst Röhm goes,
I'd say the role played by homosexuality
was nonexistent or very small.
They were friends on a first-name basis.
They'd met and become close in 1919.
In the early days, Hitler was dependent
on Röhm, the machine gun king
who could procure weapons and
set up arms depots and ammunition dumps.
Hitler needed the Storm Troops
as a potential attack force.
You can't overthrow the government
without the threat of violence.
For that, Röhm is perfect.
He's Hitler's best friend
and is ready to kill anyone
who tries to harm his buddy Adolf.
The SA was an ambitious organization,
and Röhm made it into a mass organization.
When he took over in January of 1931,
there were 77,000 Storm Troopers.
One year later, there were 291,000.
Röhm's own actions aren't so brutal.
He doesn't commit murders, he arranges them.
But in appearance and bearing,
he's all man, a real man, a real killer.
And he's gay.
"Attention!
Today: a mass gassing of gays.
"All you filthy gay swine:
"Do you really think,
just because we have a shitty gay mayor
"and it seems 'in' these days
to spread AIDS,
"that you can frolic shamelessly
in the capital of our Reich?
"Watch out, you gay pigs.
You'll see.
"Soon the papers will be full of stories
about gay hunts, gay ambushes, etc.
"I'm one of many who hates your guts.
"You really deserve to be gassed,
you amoral, thoughtless spreaders of disease.
"You're the main source of AIDS,
which can wipe out a healthy folk.
Bastian Finke
Gay Counseling Center
"That's the number one reason
to hate you, hunt you, kill you."
VIOLENCE AGAINST GAYS
We're there for you
That was a notice
posted anonymously in a gay chat room.
Of course, it was reported to the police,
but they never found out who wrote it.
And it's not the only case?
- Things like it pop up regularly.
There have been cliques
within this movement
whose members, usually in groups,
but sometimes individually...
These supposed skinheads,
who aren't skinheads in my view,
would go to toilets and parks
with the intention of beating up gays.
When I'd get wind of that,
they had considerable trouble with me.
I always had enough people to back me up.
We'll get you all!
We'll get you all!
Röhm had a circle of young people...
I'd call them male hustlers.
They'd meet in the flat
of a confidant named Peter Graninger.
Röhm didn't cruise the toilets personally.
He'd have boys sent to him in private flats.
The Nazi Party started using
professional ads, some of them with Röhm.
One of the rent-boys sees
Röhm's picture and thinks:
"He's famous. I can blackmail him."
But Röhm doesn't play along.
He's comfortable with his homosexuality
and has the boy arrested for blackmail.
Due to his status in the SA,
Röhm's position was very secure.
Even though it was public knowledge,
nothing happened to him. He didn't go to jail.
A warrant was issued under Paragraph 175,
but it was never served.
LOVE LETTERS OF CAPTAIN RÖHM
WARM BROTHERHOOD IN THE BROWN HOUSE
Sex Life in the Third Reich
The National-Pederastic Workers Party
THE LOVEPLAY
OF CAPTAIN RÖHM
New Letters that Expose the Hitler Swamp
THE BROWN HOUSE OF HOMOSEXUALS
The Homosexual Trail
Lengthens from Munich to Berlin
In 1931 and '32, the Social Democratic Party
started campaigns against Ernst Röhm.
There were dark insinuations
in the Munich Post
in which Röhm's letters are mentioned,
among other things.
DUE TO RÖHM'S NATURE
SHALL THE WORLD BE RICHER
The Perverse Letters of a Hitler Minion
Then the Berlin police asked the
Munich police to help confiscate the letters.
They saw them as important evidence
to prove that Röhm was really gay.
RÖHM PROSTITUTES UNEMPLOYED YOUTHS
The papers print the letters: "A homosexual
Chief of Staff corrupts our German youth!"
There's a suggestive cartoon
that shows young Storm Troopers
presenting their bottoms
for Röhm's greedy inspection.
In our eyes, the German youth of the future
must be slender and supple:
swift as greyhounds, tough as leather,
and hard as Krupp steel.
Hitler publicly supported Röhm,
saying the SA isn't a girl's school,
it's a league of rough fighting men.
Private matters are unimportant.
There are two factions.
Hitler shields his friend because he needs
this violent man of action at his side.
Others find the scandal so dangerous
that they consider liquidating Röhm.
They even dug up assassins
who were ready to murder Röhm.
Which didn't happen.
Professor Sven Reichardt
Historian
Röhm's adversaries in the Nazi Party
were strong: Rosenberg, Goebbels, Hess...
They said it was very bad for the Party,
which was naturally against homosexuality.
On the other hand, Ernst Röhm
was in a very high and mighty position,
the vice-Führer, so to speak,
and a practicing homosexual.
It can be a problem that people don't
expect gays to have such political values.
Clear the streets for German youth!
Within the party leadership
there's a quite sophisticated attitude:
"True, we're not pro-gay, but if a member
is gay and has a national awareness
"and belongs to the German folk
and wants to fight for that, fine."
In my party - as I said, I don't want to say
which of the many right-wing parties it is -
I've had many positive experiences:
visiting family fathers with my friend,
discussing politics, listening to records...
Below the leadership, in the rank and file,
opinions are more extreme.
They can erupt in anti-gay violence.
Once in a while some dumb wanker
might say to me, "You gay sow."
I'll say, "Don't take it so hard.
We know what we're fighting for."
Things are better than we're told.
If you're in the NPD and openly gay,
you don't necessarily live safely.
I'm Lothar Machtan. I teach modern history
at the University of Bremen.
My last book is The Hidden Hitler,
the Double Life of a Dictator.
It's interesting that in Hitler's life,
it wasn't until 1926
that women played a role.
The man was 37 years old.
That's more than a bit unusual.
On the other hand,
he didn't live without social contacts.
He wasn't a hermit or a loner; rather,
he lived in communities made up of men.
Hail working men!
Hail my Führer!
It began with the relationship
with August Kubicek
who wrote a memoir
that exists in several variations.
August Kubicek
a friend of the young Hitler
But that they shared a bed
is nevertheless worthy of attention.
It continues with the friendships
Hitler made in the home for men.
The sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld
called the homes for men
subcultural centers of homosexuality.
Hitler is a legitimate object
of historical science.
Professor Rüdiger Lautmann, Sociologist
But Machtan's material doesn't amount
to more than a logically consistent thesis
for an essay of 30 pages.
No testimony exists of anyone
who saw Hitler in bed with somebody.
There's only speculation.
ADOLF HITLER
IN THE FIELD
by Hans Mend
Then there's the evidence
of Hitler's war comrade Mend,
that Hitler had a homosexual relationship
with fellow soldier Ernst Schmidt in WWI.
Professor Lothar Machtan
Historian
The problem is proof.
Professor Bernd Ulrich Hergemöller
Historian
If you turned it around and searched
so intensely for female figures,
you'd come up with
about the same number.
But there's no proof of a lover,
no proof of sexual contact with men,
nor with women.
I consider it very likely
that after 1934, he lived out
this homosexuality only in sublimated form.
May I ask a personal question?
- Yes. -Are you homosexual? -No.
"Evil comes from evil."
That's the basic idea when sexual deviation
is seen as the source of political havoc.
In the search for what to blame
for political disaster -
it probably started already
in the Old Testament -
there's always sexual deviation,
and homosexuals can be blamed.
A Lothar Machtan belongs to this tradition.
from "SKIN FLICK"
cazzo film
Male organizations like the Hitler Youth,
the army, the SA, the SS...
They always had a magical attraction
for gay men. That's the simple truth.
I'd like to add the fact
that I know many...
Don't hit me. It's just the simple truth.
I won't name names, but many gay men
find it an incredible sexual kick
to fuck under a swastika flag.
In Berlin alone, I know two
who have them over their beds.
I know a photo book
from the Nazi era about the SS
which, of course,
doesn't show their crimes.
It idealizes the SS as brave,
courageous warriors.
And many of the photos show them naked.
For instance, in the shower.
Did that turn you on?
Yes, it did.
It was very erotic.
There was a right-wing
gay milieu in Berlin.
Naturally, in Munich as well.
They met at the Bratwurst Glöckl.
I'm Michael Beck. I'm the proprietor
of the Bratwurst Glöckl here in Munich.
In the 20's and 30's
there were many student tables here.
In that time, a table established itself
with regulars who came for years.
One of them was Röhm.
Later, many from the SA came here.
Some of those he knew
from the Bratwurst Glöckl and other places
were given important positions in the SA:
Paul Röhrbein, Karl Ernst, Edmund Heines;
all important SA leaders,
one in Berlin,
another in charge of East Germany,
one of the biggest SA divisions.
Edmund Heines
Police President of Breslau
Heines was predominantly homosexual.
- He was also exceptionally brutal
and committed many violent crimes.
In Silesia he pursued
his sadistic inclinations quite openly.
Near Breslau he set up
his own private little concentration camp
where he could indulge himself.
There he could torture and kill
his private prisoners.
There is a small group
who are wild about the old Nazi era.
They do things like wearing
SS uniforms during sex
and playing through things that happened
in concentration camps as S/M games.
For instance, one is the SS doctor,
and the other is the Jew.
They find that sexually stimulating.
Sadomasochistic games.
- Yes, usually with bondage.
Sometimes it goes in the direction
of sex with weapons: knife, pistol, whatever.
It goes as far as playing out executions.
July 9, 1933
Since January 30th [when we took power],
the die is cast for Germany.
And I don't believe that the opponents
who laughed at us then
are still laughing today!
The question was: What's to be done with the SA?
It had always been seen as
the storm troops for the so-called "civil war".
At some point it would
become unnecessary, at the latest
when the communist and social democratic
organizations had been destroyed.
That led to a conflict
between Röhm and Hitler,
who had decided quite early that
the official armed force would be the Army.
Röhm thought it should be the SA.
The army generals claimed that Röhm would
try to take over. He had foreign contacts,
and there were other allegations,
including his homosexuality.
For a long time Hitler wavered
over Röhm's fate. Could he be fired?
Certainly, the decision
on how to deal with Röhm was difficult.
Then a sham conference of SA leaders was
set up at Bad Wiessee on June 30, 1934.
The excuse was that SA men
had attacked some diplomats,
and the leaders must discuss
how to control such unbridled violence.
So the SA leaders met at Bad Wiessee.
Hitler showed up surprisingly early.
At 6:00 in the morning, Hitler arrived
at the Pension Hanselbauer with SS men.
The story is that Hitler, pistol in his hand,
said, "Röhm, you're under arrest."
Then they broke into other rooms
and found Edmund Heines
in bed with his chauffeur.
Later, Goebbels used that as propaganda,
calling it a revolting, vomit-inducing scene.
On the front page of the Nazi paper for
July 2nd was the notice: "Ernst Röhm Shot".
The Thanks of the Nation
In Unshakable Loyalty to Adolf Hitler
Hitler also used it politically.
On July 13, 1934, he made a speech
in which he tried to justify the action
and explain why it was necessary
to have some 150 people shot,
among them SA leaders,
but also many opponents of the regime.
The life the Chief of Staff had begun
to lead, and with him a certain circle,
was intolerable for every
National Socialistic sense of values!
Claiming to have cleaned out a nest of homosexuals
helped him legitimate the broken taboo of murder.
Besides, Röhm's scandals
had always been a bother.
The worst thing was that,
out of a certain common orientation,
a sect had begun to form within the SA
which was the core of a conspiracy,
not only against the morality of a healthy folk,
but also against
the security of the state.
Albert Knoll, Archivist,
Dachau
What happened after Röhm's death?
- For gay people, life worsened dramatically.
A few days later,
the first police raid occurred in Munich.
Röhm's friend Graninger was sent to the
Dachau concentration camp for being gay.
The idea was to turn
homosexuals into heterosexuals
through hard work and little food.
That was how the Nazis thought.
Once the Jews had been eliminated,
it's certain that gays
would have become the new main target,
and the Nazis would have tried
to wipe out gay people completely.
Dr. Susanne zur Nieden
Historian
In 1935, a year after Röhm's murder,
the anti-gay law, Paragraph 175,
was harshened.
The criminal police tripped over themselves
trying to make more arrests than the Gestapo.
The result was a persecution of gays
beyond anything seen elsewhere in Europe.
I didn't run out and say, "The radical right
scene is shit, and in 4 years
"I'll be doing anti-fascist work."
But there were two main reasons
why I left the scene:
the vicious attacks in 1991
on homes for foreigners seeking asylum;
and contradictions involving homosexuality.
One can deal with it openly
without it being negative.
Soon after I left the right-wing scene,
I met my first real friend. We had
a genuine, acknowledged relationship.
These days I'm involved
in social movements and programs.
It doesn't cost anything.
We'll demonstrate Sunday
on Alexanderplatz.
That's good.
It's high time we stand up
against the whole mess.
Well said. Just so!
Between 1940 and '42 there was
a relatively horrible regiment here at Dachau.
They carried out punishments
with extreme ruthlessness in this camp,
also on the gay prisoners.
For instance, wrists and ankles
were tied together over the back,
and the inmate
was left dangling on the rope.
Many gay men were murdered.
The numbers are still unclear.
Estimates are between 5,000 and 15,000.
Alone in Berlin,
50,000 homosexual men were arrested.
If you count all who went to court and...
Here it gets difficult,
and no one dares to talk about it:
if you count the gay Jews, the gay gypsies,
then you're in the hundreds of thousands.
BEATEN TO DEATH
AND DENIED
TO THE HOMOSEXUAL VICTIMS
OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM
Right-wing parties do discuss the murder
of gay men in concentration camps.
They can legitimize it more easily
by pointing out that the anti-homosexual law
as formulated by the Nazis,
Paragraph 175-A,
remained in force in Germany until 1969.
Still in the 60's, the Constitutional Court
handed down decisions
according to which the imprisonment
of gay men in concentration camps
didn't contradict the law
of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Therefore, the survivors
weren't eligible for compensation
because, according to valid law,
it was still legal to imprison them.
How do you deal with the contradiction,
that the Nazis persecuted gays?
It's not really a contradiction.
And you say the Nazis persecuted gays.
Well, gays were persecuted and
imprisoned in the Soviet Union until 1990.
You can't judge other times by the
knowledge and awareness we have today.
The people's attitude to homosexuality
was very different then.
In the time of the Third Reich,
in the Soviet Union in the 30's,
in practically every country in the world
there were laws forbidding sex between men.
Of course, from our knowledge
and life style today, we condemn that.
But we can't damn our forefathers
just because they lived
under different circumstances.
I'm thinking now of my friend
who was 19 years old.
Here it says,
"Beaten to death and denied."
Pierre Seel
sentenced to a
concentration camp
for homosexuality
That was indeed our situation.
But he had to go still further.
He was eaten alive...
... by the dogs of the concentration camp
at Schirmeck-Vorbruck.
Excuse me when I say this today...
I can't forget that.
I want to forget it,
but I can't.
"Heil comrades: I'd like to know
what you think of homosexuals.
"My opinion: I hate this riffraff
and don't see why they should be tolerated.
"It's against the foundation of life.
For me, it's a defect in the survival instinct.
"Unfortunately, things have gone so far
that these abnormal AIDS spreaders
"can marry and adopt children..."
"Homosexuals are sick, but incurable.
"We must ever and again
eradicate the degenerate seed."
I distance myself from
the Nazi content.
That's not my world.
Some of the sites were new to me.
But you consider yourself
politically right-wing, conservative...
Yes. I could support what I found
on the Young Conservatives' home page,
but I might not get along
with what they do individually.
I'd put it this way: maybe in right-wing
conservative or nationalistic parties,
the percentage of homophobic members
might be a little bit higher.
But there are anti-gay members
of the left-wing PDS, of the liberal SPD,
and no doubt,
there are Greens who can't stand gays.
Let's not pretend that anti-gay feeling
is a conservative-nationalistic idiosyncrasy.
For me you're just a perverted swine
Your kind sticks it in from behind
You've got no interest in the female race
I'll tell you what you are right to your face
Germany isn't alone
when it comes to gays in the radical right.
Look at Holland...
Fortuyn was an important example:
leader of a right-wing populist force, and gay.
Pim Fortuyn
Holland
And as far as my research goes,
he never tried to hide it.
Jörg Haider
Austria
When Haider comes, order prevails.
There's justice in the land,
and all the things that are wrong
will be mucked out!
The city is boiling over
with the rumor that Haider is gay.
Anyone who is here illegally and is caught
stealing, housebreaking or robbing
shouldn't have any rights in Austria
and should be thrown out immediately!
A right-wing politician who refuses to age,
surrounded by 20 dashing young men
who all shop at Donna Karen:
sooner or later you start to wonder.
In England it's an open secret
that segments of the skinhead scene are gay.
Many in the right-wing music scene
are openly gay and celebrate fetishism.
Many young neo-Nazis know that,
and for them,
right extremism is a comfortable way
to live out their fetish.
The AIDS plague among you rages and blows
It turns you queens into orphans and widows
The homo at his orgies, feeling good today,
Finds himself tomorrow lying in his grave
Normal, not gay!
Vote NPD now
I found it a bit stupid of the NPD:
"Normal, not gay!"
Gay is also somehow normal. But if
they'd asked me to put up such posters,
I wouldn't have said no.
Perverse & abnormal: gay engagement rings
Perverse & abnormal: two men marrying
Perverse & abnormal:
getting children by adoption
Perverse & abnormal!
How about castration?
What do you think of gay Nazis?
- I have no esteem for Nazis, gay or straight.
Klaus Wowereit,Berlin's openly gay mayor
It's one of the great challenges to our society
that some young people
have learned nothing from history.
We thought the problem was the old gen-
eration, and it would die with them. Not so.
There are still anti-Semites,
still homophobes in our society.
Whether they're gay or not
is beside the point.
See how much we hate you
There's no doubt about it
We want you out of Germany
Now's the time to shout it
Go to the jungle where you ought to be
You'll like screwing monkeys in the trees
Top leaders of right-wing extremism
in Germany were gay in the past.
Some leaders are gay now.
I'd say that of the present-day militants,
of the classic neo-Nazis,
between 10% and 15% are gay.
Perverse & abnormal! Perverse & abnormal...
Obedience & loyalty, obedience & loyalty
- I don't understand Nazis,
especially gay Nazis.
I have a bald head,
but it's not a political statement.
A Nazi is Nazi
and therefore disgusting.
Boots turn me on,
white shoestrings, color contrast...
I find black and white extremely hot.
But when they have that mentality,
I can't really get into them.
If they'd lived in the time they admire
so much, they'd have been exterminated.
Now, that's totally perverse!
In the name of the organizing committee,
I welcome you to this manifestation
of the NPD [German National Democratic
Party] and the Free Nationalistic Resistance.
Obedience and loyalty
Obedience and loyalty...
men,
HEROES & gay nazis
a film by
Rosa von Praunheim
photographed by
Lorenz Haarmann, BVK
I'm André. At the moment
I'm living in Berlin.
Originally I'm from Leipzig
and have lived in Dresden and Potsdam.
I'm a classic "Oi" skinhead with roots
in the traditional skinhead scene.
I define it as a culture.
It's a culture of masculinity
that has to do with honor.
To me, the potential for violence means
having the courage to defend myself.
When I land in a situation where
I have to defend myself or someone else,
the warrior in me comes through.
If someone in the gay scene asks,
I say I'm right-wing.
If someone in the right-wing scene asks,
I say that I'm gay.
But very many stay hidden.
Even in the NPD [ultra right-wing
German National Democratic Party]
I know several who are gay or bisexual,
some in steady relationships.
I call them the gay sediment
of the movement, and there are many.
There are people...
Regarding the NPD, I know of a guy
who had to beat off when he saw
somebody else's NPD membership card.
Someone like that
might be moved to join the party
due to his fetish,
not out of political conviction.
I was quite well-known in Germany
because of my political escapades.
Now I work in advertising
and direct marketing.
May I leave some flyers here
for the closing party tonight?
Basically, it's a gay party,
but whoever fits the dress code, S/M etc....
Exceptional people will get in.
I didn't wake up one day, let's say
Jan. 3, 1984, and say, "Now I'm homosexual."
Rather, emotions developed in me,
sexual feelings and desires arose
which completely contradicted
my political position.
According to that political position,
to put it bluntly,
gays, Jews, gypsies etc.
were all lumped together,
and they were all bad.
It took time for me to realize who I am.
You were always playing
hide-and-seek.
In the press you were treated
as one of the most important neo-Nazis,
and you seemed to enjoy it.
At the time, I liked playing with the media.
It was fun and exciting
to be a sort of mini-star.
I underestimated
the power of images
and greatly overestimated my ability
to deal with the media.
I'm Alexander Schlesinger. I live in Berlin,
formerly in Dresden and Cologne.
I was born and raised in East Germany.
Now I'm looking for work here in Berlin.
A gay guy was telling me
about the gay-bashing hotline.
The boys and girls working there
have big ethical problems
because it's young Turks and Moroccans
and such who are beating up gays.
Strangely, so-called right-wing
skinheads seldom attack gays.
Of course, anything can happen
with the lunatic fringe,
but generally these liberal gays have to deal
with facts that don't fit their world view.
That's the reality.
Sit, damn it!
I think many gays
are for laxer immigration laws
so they don't have to travel
to fuck foreigners.
That's a bit vulgar,
but it's best to tell it like it is.
A rather Christian question:
Do you regret what you did?
After all, it put you in prison.
No, I don't regret anything
because to this day, I think the way
I was treated in Germany was very wrong.
That's the main reason why
I was politically active for so long.
In my opinion, wearing the swastika
shouldn't be forbidden in Germany.
Let the crazies run around
with their swastikas.
The ban gives value to the symbol
and makes it what it was for us:
something forbidden,
seductive and powerful.
I'm cheeky enough to say
this is a very democratic opinion.
I still think that Rudolf Hess should have
been freed, that he was murdered in prison.
Those views haven't changed.
Rudolf Hess Memorial March
Germany 1990
MARTYR FOR GERMANY,
RUDOLF HESS...
FRANCE HONORS THE MEMORY
OF RUDOLF HESS
I saw that Hess had become
a martyr for the neo-Nazi scene.
The facts are, he was in prison too long,
and he has a place a history.
If it hadn't become so radical, people of all
views could have supported his rehabilitation.
Rudolf Hess
Minister of the Third Reich
Deputy of the Führer
As loyal as the old Storm Trooper
is to the Führer,
that is how loyal the Führer is
to his old Storm Troopers.
Professor Bernd Ulrich Hergemöller
Historian
Hess's youth is very well documented:
his relationships to friends,
the love letters, the poems...
- To men? -Yes.
Professor Lothar Machtan, Historian
It's known that other Nazis had nicknames for Hess:
"Miss Hess" or "Black Emma".
Jürgen Rieger, Attorney
Activist for German racial purity.
There were rumors,
but I doubt Hess was
a practicing homosexual.
He was uninterested in women,
and he only married because
Hitler was the matchmaker.
The Secretary for Economic Affairs
Funk was also homosexual...
In his case,
he was observed
chasing after such types
as young male musicians.
Axmann, the last Reich Youth Leader,
was also homosexual.
A leader of the Nazi
League of German Girls told me that.
I belong to one of the right-wing parties,
never mind which one.
Alexander Schlesinger
My party boss knows me,
and he knows I'm gay.
He told me, "You know,
what our members do in bed
"or behind closed doors
doesn't interest us.
"Our interest is that they stand up
for our platform and work with us
"to represent our political values
and our social views to the people,
"who maybe then will vote for us."
STOP THE NAZIS
FIGHT RACISM
ABOLISH CAPITALISM
I'm a freelance journalist and an educa-
tional consultant, and I'm active politically.
I'm a member of the Anti-Fascist Union
for Victims of the Nazi Regime.
Part of my résumé is that
I was in the neo-Nazi scene for 9 years,
from 1982 until '91,
between the ages of 13 and 22.
I became a functionary of the NPD,
and I was a founding member of the
German Folk Union as a political party.
For years this building housed
the NPD headquarters in Nuremberg
and their youth schooling center,
all with the landlord's blessing.
At the same time, there has always been
a gay sauna in the building.
Of course, that provoked the NPD
and led to altercations.
Time and again, sauna customers
were verbally attacked.
I came out as gay
in the old East Germany.
I knew already at 13
that I tended in that direction.
Later, between 14 and 16, I gradually
came out to the people I felt close to.
Most of them were coincidentally Nazis,
you could say.
There I saw that if people accept you,
they'll overlook your being gay.
The fight against gays isn't so much
a fight against men who sleep with men;
it's against a lack of masculinity,
against weakness.
I've had diabetes since I was four. That
led to my getting into the neo-Nazi scene.
In 1982, when I was 13,
I was living in Nuremberg with my mother.
I went to a government office to apply
for the status of a disabled person.
The man who handled my application
was also deputy director of the local NPD.
Before I left, he gave me literature
about the party and its youth organization.
German women...
German faithfulness...
German wine and German song...
As a skinhead,
I'm more into the hetero movement.
The gay scene doesn't interest me much
because it's mostly fetishism.
The people look tasty,
but there's nothing behind it.
That gives me nothing.
But isn't the hetero skinhead scene
very right-wing and violent?
Well, hetero skinheads are
a little rougher and wilder.
When things really start jumping
at an Oi concert,
it's something you won't experience
in the gay scene.
Don't you get emotionally confused
and fall in love with hetero skinheads?
I've never fallen in love
with a hetero skinhead.
There's a subconscious barrier that
prevents the unthinkable, and that's okay.
I also don't try to seduce heterosexuals,
although the way they are
usually fits my ideal of what a man should be
more nearly than the boys in the gay scene.
This isn't correct. This is a common
soldier's uniform with a major's epaulets.
I was an officer
in the former East German army.
Our political upbringing in East Germany
was very focused on national identity.
We were taught always to revere
our socialist German homeland.
I think that was good.
After reunification I joined - don't laugh -
the revised East German socialist party.
It's policies definitely appealed to me:
social justice...
You should sit, damn it!
But then they started
their multicultural babble:
"Germany is the world's welfare office,
and everyone is welcome."
When I saw where it was going,
I left the party.
I had a very sheltered childhood, and
when I entered the right-wing scene at 13,
it was the first time I made contacts
outside of school and went out at night.
I didn't have the feeling
I was an outsider sitting on the sidelines.
They attached great importance
to making us feel welcome and involved.
We gay men are drawn toward
a masculine ideal. I'm an intolerant gay.
I can't deal with screaming queens.
Impossible! I didn't become gay
to get turned on by feminine creatures.
I'm gay because I like men,
and a man is something else.
Not screeching off to CSD
in plush and high heels. Oh my God, no!
Ever since homosexuals exist,
we've been aware of a schism.
After all, a real man has to desire women.
That's the view of our society and culture.
We have to cope with that.
One solution is hyper-masculinity.
Professor Rüdiger Lautmann
Sociologist
Right-wing types will certainly prefer
this athletic solution.
Certainly, it's logical that in a group
that is between 80% and 90% men
and women are subordinate,
masculinity is very important.
Due to my disability, I had the drawback
that I'm not the type of guy
who runs through the jungle and swings
on vines from tree to tree while howling,
nor am I a street fighter.
I compensated from the beginning
by concentrating on political theory.
Good morning, gentlemen.
- Good morning, First Lieutenant, sir!
When you joined the army, was there a
subconscious gay desire to be among men?
In principle, I won't say yes and I won't
say no. Does that answer the question?
It's not a field shirt,
it's called a blouse.
Believe what I tell you.
May I touch you?
- Yes. Thank you.
There are gay organizations like
Green Berets International
who meet in the woods and do military drills
and enjoy themselves immensely.
"Line up" means behind each other, boys.
The group leader reports, saying my rank,
his rank and how many men in the column.
Lieutenant Filly, Lance Corporal Trauner
is present with 5 men at Position One.
Thank you. At ease.
We have the simple assignment
of answering a question:
Who can pee the farthest?
You can decide which men
have the fullest bladders.
They may then urinate,
and we will measure the distance. -Good.
Green Berets International is the first
registered association of gay men in uniform.
In January of 1997 six comrades
got together and said, "Let's do it!"
They officially registered the association
as a company to secure its legal status.
Membership has grown tremendously,
partly due to media coverage.
Usually in coverage of gay events
like Christopher Street Day,
one side of the gay scene predominates:
namely, the feminine,
the men in women's clothes.
By order of the First Lieutenant:
Dismissed!
We're on the other side.
We like to go our way in uniform.
We meet on weekends and do our thing.
One rule is that we dissociate ourselves
from the radical right.
We don't want to copy the German army.
Then you might as well join their reserves.
We just want to live out our uniform fetish
in combination with sex.
We register each maneuver
with the police
in order to avoid accusations
that we're doing something illegal.
Here we are at the sperm slide.
Have fun sliding!
Our association dissociates itself clearly
from the radical right.
Also, our members have to sign
an agreement: no weapons.
The guys aren't allowed to bring along
even toy guns or paintball guns.
Being gay doesn't make a person
a better human being.
A gay person can be a racist.
A gay person can be anti-Semitic.
What led to the reprisals
against the Jews?
It's known that international Jewish organi-
zations agitated against the Third Reich,
steered from America.
Newspapers exist as proof.
That's played down because Jewish influence
on the world powers is huge, unfortunately.
It just happens once in a while
that funny, macabre jokes get told
about some Jew or rabbi or child fucker
or whatever, and you laugh along
because you're with friends having fun.
You don't really notice
how stupid or grotesque that is.
Is that true?
You knew Gottfried Küssel,
the song writer...
Basically, Gottfried Küssel was a very
peaceful, harmless, artistic, quiet person.
In the film "The Truth Will Set You Free"
he sings about making Jews bleed. Harmless?
Do you recognize his nose?
His nose is hard to place.
If it's crooked and ugly,
Then punch him in the face.
from
"The Truth Will Set You Free" 1992
He's not human, he's a Jew
Don't stop to think, just stomp him out
I'm not someone who reads the book
of morality before laughing at a joke.
Don't stop to think,
just "BANG"
He's not human, he's an ape
Don't stop to think, don't stop to think
Just "BANG"
No comment.
You could show a bit of tact.
the funeral of
Michael Kühnen 1991
The last 70 supporters follow Austria's
party boss to the Führer's final roll call.
His life was struggle.
His life is over.
His struggle is not.
Honor to our dead:
With Michael Kühnen,
a German hero has gone to eternity.
Herr Kühnen told me he had HIV, and now,
unfortunately, he has succumbed to it.
He assured me personally that he
was neither a homo, nor did he have AIDS.
I had no way to verify that.
I had to take his word for it.
Was Herr Kühnen homosexual?
I've heard rumors, but I'm not aware
of anything that proves the allegation.
Here's a copy of the Kühnen
commemorative postage stamp. -Incredible.
Tell us about your profession.
I'm a television journalist.
I've been a journalist for about 16 years.
My work focuses on political extremism,
sects, organized crime...
Kühnen was a very captivating
as well as a very dangerous figure.
Most of us think of Nazis as representing
a murderous terror regime
that killed with unmatched cruelty.
Feeling that, you approach Michael Kühnen
thinking you'll meet a monster:
brutal, threatening, etc.
Then you meet a polite man
who shakes your hand
and sits down cultivatedly at the table
with his political opponent,
and you're perplexed.
When did you meet Kühnen?
- 1984.
We'd invited him. He stood there
and made a speech which had three points:
Why am I a nationalist? Why am I a social-
ist? Why must we take power in Germany?
He fit those points together
with such impressive brilliance
that I, with my 18 years,
was flabbergasted.
I went to him and said,
"You're the man. You're my man.
"I'm all wound up.
What can I do to be part of it?"
German television 1978
After decades of re-education and
changing waves of reporting in the media
about Hitler: first, as the "carpet biter",
then the effort to find a perspective closer
to historical truth during the Hitler wave;
the time seems right for us to go public
with our picture of Adolf Hitler,
to name our sources, and to say why we
see Hitler as one of the greatest Germans.
Kühnen came from a good middle-class family
and was politically active very early.
He joined an NPD youth group at 14
and was active at school.
At the end of the 70's he gained access
to the "Friends of the NSDAP" in Hamburg,
and that's where he really blossomed.
Kühnen had a plan:
he wanted a new, legal SA [Storm Troops].
He wanted to dominate the streets,
to be in the vanguard
of masses of new Storm Troopers.
Hamburg 1977
Comrades, citizens of Hamburg, this is a rally
of the National Socialist Action Front.
It is our goal to live
and to fight for Germany.
We are also ready, if necessary,
to die for Germany.
The National Socialist Action Front...
Retreat!
Of course, I knew of
Michael Kühnen and Ewald Althans.
Jörg Fischer
Especially Kühnen had
a very charismatic personality.
I didn't find him charismatic, but maybe
I'm too demanding.
I'm Burkhard Schröder. For 15 years
I've been an author and journalist.
specializing in neo-Nazism and racism.
I know personally most of the so-called
comrades who are politically active.
Do neo-Nazis love the press?
Yes, they love the press like everyone does.
I think Kühnen was one of the first
in that milieu who understood
the classic advertising maxim:
"There's no such thing as bad publicity."
We, the media,
made Kühnen into what he was.
He used us.
It was give and take.
He said in a speech in Dresden,
"The magazine Spiegel
"made me into the most dangerous
German neo-Nazi, and that's what I am!"
He could have said,
"The Spiegel gave me a medal."
Young people came from former
East Germany and asked for his autograph!
They knew him from anti-West propaganda
on TV as the most dangerous neo-Nazi.
They didn't know the right-wing politicians,
but they all knew Kühnen.
And he got a kick
out of giving them autographs.
His homosexuality was never really
a subject of discussion.
He was represented and accepted
by many as the Führer.
German television 1978
We want the end of the parties ruling here
and the end of Jewish influence in Germany.
We're not rowdies as the press claims.
We're for order and decency.
We've never struck the first blow, but
the time of putting up with everything is over!
I knew I was gay quite early.
At 17 things started getting intense
with an NPD functionary.
I'd been in love with him for some time.
We'd done a lot together politically,
and I always tried to get close to him.
The first time you had sex
was in Dresden?
Yes, yes. I had to think for a moment,
but it was in Dresden. -Do you remember it?
We drank a few beers, and then I...
"Let's watch a video." Before, I'd overcome
myself and rented a heterosexual sex film.
So we were watching that...
I remember. I guess everyone does.
- And? -It was disappointing.
It was disappointing.
Maybe that's so for everyone.
The first time...
- How old were you? -17.
We kept sliding closer,
and then we started fondling each other.
Interesting was that he touched me first.
We met again the next day.
He'd gone home that night.
We didn't mention what we'd done.
In the 4 years we met to have sex,
sometimes 3, 4, 5 times a week,
not once did we talk about sex.
The word "gay" was never said.
My first long relationship
started in 1988.
We moved together,
and the people in the house didn't mind.
I sort of blackmailed my parents. I said,
"Guess what, I'm gay. I live with a guy.
"If that's okay with you, come to our
housewarming. If not, stay away."
They were there, and since then, it's fine.
Weren't the others very hostile?
Did you have to defend yourselves?
No, because nobody knew.
When I think about it today...
The situation was so ambiguous...
It was so stifling and hidden...
It was deforming.
German television "Hamburg Journal"
March 10, 1987
Correction: "In the 'Hamburg Journal' of
Feb. 24, 1987, between 7:15 and 8 o'clock,
"it was claimed: '...and of all people,
the Führer Kühnen is homosexual.'
"This claim is false. Correct is, I am not
homosexual." Signed: Michael Kühnen.
Did you know at that time
that Kühnen was gay? -My God, no.
There were no rumors?
- No, none.
It's funny how one party official put it:
"Whether a comrade at home has sex
with his hamster, his toaster, or his wife
"doesn't matter, if he does his political work
and doesn't make his sex life public."
Jürgen Rieger, Attorney
Activist for German racial purity.
I'm an attorney and farmer.
In my capacity as a lawyer,
I have contact with nationalistic Germans.
One of them was Michael Kühnen.
Did you notice Kühnen's homosexuality?
Did he talk about it? Were there rumors?
Initially, Michael Kühnen
kept very quiet about that.
Then Kühnen went abroad,
hoping to make international contacts.
In France, he connected
with Michel Caignet
who owned a gay magazine
and later published Kühnen's treatise.
In the long run, the connection to Caignet
was damaging to Kühnen.
These are the magazines of Michel Caignet,
the first open gay in the neo-Nazi scene.
Caignet's plan was to establish
a gay organization
within the neo-Nazi movement.
Once he went public,
he was banned from the scene,
and that was the beginning
of the "AHC", the anti-homo campaign
that snowballed from there.
The homosexual tragedy
in the movement. A hard story...
Kühnen had to go into exile.
He was facing a long-term prison sentence,
and we decided he should leave.
Freedom
for
Michael
Kühnen
Then a conference was called,
and Kühnen's own chosen deputy
was caught having sex with a man.
It was like a boil bursting open.
Of course, the deputy, Kühnen's trustee
with full powers of authority,
was told to pack up and get out
because he was scum.
That led to other people speaking up:
"Wait a minute. I am, too."
Like: "If you live in a glass house,
don't throw stones."
Suddenly, homosexuals were popping up
throughout the movement.
Hatred was deliberately stirred up,
which led to a young neo-Nazi in Hamburg
being murdered because he was gay.
It was a witch hunt, and you were defying
death to be in the scene and openly gay.
German television 1981
A lynch-law murder by right-wing extremists
made headlines.
The victim, Johannes Bügner,
was in the National Socialist Action Front
which was founded by Michael Kühnen.
The victim was homosexual.
He frequented the men's bar Can-Can
near Hamburg's main railroad station.
Formerly the Terminus, the bar has long been
a meeting place for right-wing extremists.
Under the pretext that they
had orders from the Führer Kühnen,
the culprits - seen here -
lured the unsuspecting Bügner into a car.
They drove with him
through Barsbüttel to Sternwarde.
Here in the country,
far from houses, in the midst of fields,
Bügner, 26, was stabbed 22 times,
and his body was dragged into a ditch.
For Kühnen it was a shock.
He knew about the scene's anti-gay sentiment
but didn't dream it could go as far as murder.
In no uncertain terms,
he dissociated himself from the murderers.
He dedicated a pamphlet
to the gay victim
which presented him as a martyr
to the movement.
I remember reading that pamphlet,
"National Socialism and Homosexuality",
and I cried my eyes out.
I cried and couldn't stop
because my world had fallen apart.
The man I'd believed in was homosexual.
That was my opinion, that Kühnen
had written his political death warrant.
After reading that pamphlet,
I knew he was done for as a politician.
He wrote that Nazism and homosexuality
are compatible. More than that...
When he writes that a gay neo-Nazi
is better than a straight one
because he's better
as a soldier in the trenches:
he doesn't have wife and kids to think about,
but only the beloved comrades around him...
That doesn't promote emancipation;
I read: "Gays are better cannon fodder."
He wrote, "We need soldiers."
Then he brought in the ancient Greeks,
the fighting units of male lovers in Sparta,
and what not.
Naturally, it was an enormous provocation.
Nazis out! Nazis out!
It astounded me that among Kühnen's
adversaries, there were also gays.
Kühnen opponents sing:
On a lamppost near the Chancellery
Hang gay Kühnen and his deputy
And all the Nazis gather there
To see the hanging faggot pair
As once died SA chief Röhm...
You sang that? -We did.
Even among his closest supporters,
Kühnen's position was pulverized.
Have you called it off?
Yes. We've crossed the street,
so the event is over.
the funeral of Michael Kühnen
Kassel, Germany May 3, 1991
A neo-Nazi leader with AIDS...
Unthinkable, even for his truest disciples.
I even heard rumors
that his death was expedited.
He was sent off to die painfully of AIDS.
His comrades vanished.
He died a wretched, lonely death. Then
at the funeral, there were ringing speeches:
"Comrade, we'll never forget you."
I found it ridiculous.
Dear comrade Michael,
you live on in our hearts.
Michael, you are a victim
of these times,
and their omnipresent
anti-humanness.
But he became a legend...
When someone's so famous
that people steal his ashes...
Well, it won't happen to me.
In life, despised as gay
by most of the movement,
once dead, he was good enough
to serve as blooded witness to the cause.
after Kühnen's funeral
Kassel, Germany May 3, 1991
Nazis out! Nazis out!
I have to say I'm shaken.
It confirms that national-political work
in West Germany is impossible.
The stupefaction of the people
is too advanced.
When I'm in my hometown
or somewhere else in the East,
I can wear my outfit and do national-
political work without being molested.
I feel seriously threatened here.
I'll be glad to get back
to my formerly socialist homeland.
That's all I have to say.
A new documentary film
by Winfried Bonengel is fuel for controversy.
"Profession: Neo-Nazi" premieres Thursday.
Focus: the leadership of the New Right.
The media was hunting
for Kühnen's successor.
They found a bunch of lost,
bewildered souls,
and in me they found someone
who could tie a tie and had a shop in Munich.
German television report
"Profession: Neo-Nazi" 1993
In the Munich office of the New Right,
the 27-year-old Althans holds sway.
No shaved-headed underdog, he is chic,
modern, cynical, and obsessed with power.
I want to have our people completely.
I want them totally.
I want to bind them
into a closed community like a sect.
The people should be absorbed
in our ideological community 24 hours a day.
What led up to the trip to Auschwitz,
the trip that landed you in prison?
That's a sad story.
We were in Cottbus, and they said,
"Let's go to Auschwitz."
While shooting the film?
- Yes.
Out of the blue. No plan, no preparation.
Just "We want to go there."
I said, "OK, let's go."
On a visit to the gas chambers at Auschwitz,
Bonengel's film shows the self-named Führer
as a callous, unscrupulous demagogue,
greedy for fame.
Shocked spectators
at the scene of horror.
It's not pseudo-science! Cyanide gas
would've turned the bricks Prussian blue.
Yes, indeed! As a German I stand here
and protest that millions of people are misled
by this mockup!
Filmmaker
Althans, the main figure in the film,
is very exhibitionistic and craves recognition.
If Althans had understood the risk
of going to prison for what he said in the film,
he wouldn't have said it.
In Auschwitz?
- Yes. He did time for denying the Holocaust.
I contacted many lawyers,
spent a lot of money, arranged court orders,
all in an effort to keep Winfried
from spreading that untruth.
What's presented in his film and in the end
put me in prison are not my own words.
I never advocated that opinion,
and nevertheless, for so-called "remarks"
I was in prison for years.
I got stuck in a high-security prison
for 21 months,
isolated from the outside population,
chased around the yard
mornings before sunrise
for 45 minutes with hardened criminals:
and I should apologize?
No way.
Auschwitz was too deeply symbolic.
Certain stupid, inhuman remarks are
no longer tolerated and lead to prosecution.
Western Cemetery
Munich
This book, The Last Homeland,
lists the Munich celebrities buried here.
Here we have him:
359, number 3-1.
Ernst Röhm,
Captain (retired); politician. Died in 1934.
What do you think
he liked to do sexually?
I know a police file
on a good friend of Röhm's,
Gerhard von Prosch,
who was later sent to Dachau.
Archivist, Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial
Prosch preferred boys between 15 and 20.
That could reflect Röhm's predilection.
It says here, "A young man told me
that Herr von Prosch
""blew him' once or twice.
"By that he meant that von Prosch
took Wüstinger's member into his mouth.
"Wüstinger claims he received
app. 50 marks for that."
Prosch thought the Nazis had repealed the
law against homosexuality, Paragraph 175.
He told the police chief,
"Because Röhm himself took me to this boy,
"I was convinced that kind of sexual contact
is no longer against the law."
Here we are. Ernst Röhm.
The whole family is buried here.
There in the middle:
"Ernst Röhm, Captain".
His mother died half a year later. -Yes.
"Railway inspector-general's widow".
Didn't Ernst Röhm live with his mother?
They shared a flat
at Hohenzollern Strasse 110.
I'm Sven Reichardt. I'm an historian
at the University of Konstanz.
My field is the history of fascism
between the world wars.
In that context
I've studied Ernst Röhm,
Chief of Staff of the SA [Storm Troops]
from 1931 until his death in 1934.
Ernst Röhm was born in Munich in 1887.
The elixir of Röhm's early life
was World War I.
He experienced comradeship on the front
and was a high achiever in the military.
For him, Germany's surrender in 1918
was the ultimate disaster.
He didn't have much use for women.
Dr. Susanne zur Nieden
Historian
His emotional life intensified in WWI
where men bled and sweated together.
Good friends were killed and he cried...
But who knows? Maybe such men don't cry.
He loved his comrades,
and he loved young men.
It wasn't until 1924 that Röhm, as he later
wrote, "discovered" his homosexuality.
We're here in the Court Gardens.
This has always been
a classic gay cruising area.
Soldiers were stationed here at the
Court Gardens near the Royal Residence.
That means hundreds of hot,
young soldiers were always milling around.
In the 1920's, the newspapers called this
the homosexual market place of Munich:
"Disgraceful!"
There's a public toilet at the exit which
gay men still frequent to this day.
As far as Adolf Hitler's interest
in Ernst Röhm goes,
I'd say the role played by homosexuality
was nonexistent or very small.
They were friends on a first-name basis.
They'd met and become close in 1919.
In the early days, Hitler was dependent
on Röhm, the machine gun king
who could procure weapons and
set up arms depots and ammunition dumps.
Hitler needed the Storm Troops
as a potential attack force.
You can't overthrow the government
without the threat of violence.
For that, Röhm is perfect.
He's Hitler's best friend
and is ready to kill anyone
who tries to harm his buddy Adolf.
The SA was an ambitious organization,
and Röhm made it into a mass organization.
When he took over in January of 1931,
there were 77,000 Storm Troopers.
One year later, there were 291,000.
Röhm's own actions aren't so brutal.
He doesn't commit murders, he arranges them.
But in appearance and bearing,
he's all man, a real man, a real killer.
And he's gay.
"Attention!
Today: a mass gassing of gays.
"All you filthy gay swine:
"Do you really think,
just because we have a shitty gay mayor
"and it seems 'in' these days
to spread AIDS,
"that you can frolic shamelessly
in the capital of our Reich?
"Watch out, you gay pigs.
You'll see.
"Soon the papers will be full of stories
about gay hunts, gay ambushes, etc.
"I'm one of many who hates your guts.
"You really deserve to be gassed,
you amoral, thoughtless spreaders of disease.
"You're the main source of AIDS,
which can wipe out a healthy folk.
Bastian Finke
Gay Counseling Center
"That's the number one reason
to hate you, hunt you, kill you."
VIOLENCE AGAINST GAYS
We're there for you
That was a notice
posted anonymously in a gay chat room.
Of course, it was reported to the police,
but they never found out who wrote it.
And it's not the only case?
- Things like it pop up regularly.
There have been cliques
within this movement
whose members, usually in groups,
but sometimes individually...
These supposed skinheads,
who aren't skinheads in my view,
would go to toilets and parks
with the intention of beating up gays.
When I'd get wind of that,
they had considerable trouble with me.
I always had enough people to back me up.
We'll get you all!
We'll get you all!
Röhm had a circle of young people...
I'd call them male hustlers.
They'd meet in the flat
of a confidant named Peter Graninger.
Röhm didn't cruise the toilets personally.
He'd have boys sent to him in private flats.
The Nazi Party started using
professional ads, some of them with Röhm.
One of the rent-boys sees
Röhm's picture and thinks:
"He's famous. I can blackmail him."
But Röhm doesn't play along.
He's comfortable with his homosexuality
and has the boy arrested for blackmail.
Due to his status in the SA,
Röhm's position was very secure.
Even though it was public knowledge,
nothing happened to him. He didn't go to jail.
A warrant was issued under Paragraph 175,
but it was never served.
LOVE LETTERS OF CAPTAIN RÖHM
WARM BROTHERHOOD IN THE BROWN HOUSE
Sex Life in the Third Reich
The National-Pederastic Workers Party
THE LOVEPLAY
OF CAPTAIN RÖHM
New Letters that Expose the Hitler Swamp
THE BROWN HOUSE OF HOMOSEXUALS
The Homosexual Trail
Lengthens from Munich to Berlin
In 1931 and '32, the Social Democratic Party
started campaigns against Ernst Röhm.
There were dark insinuations
in the Munich Post
in which Röhm's letters are mentioned,
among other things.
DUE TO RÖHM'S NATURE
SHALL THE WORLD BE RICHER
The Perverse Letters of a Hitler Minion
Then the Berlin police asked the
Munich police to help confiscate the letters.
They saw them as important evidence
to prove that Röhm was really gay.
RÖHM PROSTITUTES UNEMPLOYED YOUTHS
The papers print the letters: "A homosexual
Chief of Staff corrupts our German youth!"
There's a suggestive cartoon
that shows young Storm Troopers
presenting their bottoms
for Röhm's greedy inspection.
In our eyes, the German youth of the future
must be slender and supple:
swift as greyhounds, tough as leather,
and hard as Krupp steel.
Hitler publicly supported Röhm,
saying the SA isn't a girl's school,
it's a league of rough fighting men.
Private matters are unimportant.
There are two factions.
Hitler shields his friend because he needs
this violent man of action at his side.
Others find the scandal so dangerous
that they consider liquidating Röhm.
They even dug up assassins
who were ready to murder Röhm.
Which didn't happen.
Professor Sven Reichardt
Historian
Röhm's adversaries in the Nazi Party
were strong: Rosenberg, Goebbels, Hess...
They said it was very bad for the Party,
which was naturally against homosexuality.
On the other hand, Ernst Röhm
was in a very high and mighty position,
the vice-Führer, so to speak,
and a practicing homosexual.
It can be a problem that people don't
expect gays to have such political values.
Clear the streets for German youth!
Within the party leadership
there's a quite sophisticated attitude:
"True, we're not pro-gay, but if a member
is gay and has a national awareness
"and belongs to the German folk
and wants to fight for that, fine."
In my party - as I said, I don't want to say
which of the many right-wing parties it is -
I've had many positive experiences:
visiting family fathers with my friend,
discussing politics, listening to records...
Below the leadership, in the rank and file,
opinions are more extreme.
They can erupt in anti-gay violence.
Once in a while some dumb wanker
might say to me, "You gay sow."
I'll say, "Don't take it so hard.
We know what we're fighting for."
Things are better than we're told.
If you're in the NPD and openly gay,
you don't necessarily live safely.
I'm Lothar Machtan. I teach modern history
at the University of Bremen.
My last book is The Hidden Hitler,
the Double Life of a Dictator.
It's interesting that in Hitler's life,
it wasn't until 1926
that women played a role.
The man was 37 years old.
That's more than a bit unusual.
On the other hand,
he didn't live without social contacts.
He wasn't a hermit or a loner; rather,
he lived in communities made up of men.
Hail working men!
Hail my Führer!
It began with the relationship
with August Kubicek
who wrote a memoir
that exists in several variations.
August Kubicek
a friend of the young Hitler
But that they shared a bed
is nevertheless worthy of attention.
It continues with the friendships
Hitler made in the home for men.
The sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld
called the homes for men
subcultural centers of homosexuality.
Hitler is a legitimate object
of historical science.
Professor Rüdiger Lautmann, Sociologist
But Machtan's material doesn't amount
to more than a logically consistent thesis
for an essay of 30 pages.
No testimony exists of anyone
who saw Hitler in bed with somebody.
There's only speculation.
ADOLF HITLER
IN THE FIELD
by Hans Mend
Then there's the evidence
of Hitler's war comrade Mend,
that Hitler had a homosexual relationship
with fellow soldier Ernst Schmidt in WWI.
Professor Lothar Machtan
Historian
The problem is proof.
Professor Bernd Ulrich Hergemöller
Historian
If you turned it around and searched
so intensely for female figures,
you'd come up with
about the same number.
But there's no proof of a lover,
no proof of sexual contact with men,
nor with women.
I consider it very likely
that after 1934, he lived out
this homosexuality only in sublimated form.
May I ask a personal question?
- Yes. -Are you homosexual? -No.
"Evil comes from evil."
That's the basic idea when sexual deviation
is seen as the source of political havoc.
In the search for what to blame
for political disaster -
it probably started already
in the Old Testament -
there's always sexual deviation,
and homosexuals can be blamed.
A Lothar Machtan belongs to this tradition.
from "SKIN FLICK"
cazzo film
Male organizations like the Hitler Youth,
the army, the SA, the SS...
They always had a magical attraction
for gay men. That's the simple truth.
I'd like to add the fact
that I know many...
Don't hit me. It's just the simple truth.
I won't name names, but many gay men
find it an incredible sexual kick
to fuck under a swastika flag.
In Berlin alone, I know two
who have them over their beds.
I know a photo book
from the Nazi era about the SS
which, of course,
doesn't show their crimes.
It idealizes the SS as brave,
courageous warriors.
And many of the photos show them naked.
For instance, in the shower.
Did that turn you on?
Yes, it did.
It was very erotic.
There was a right-wing
gay milieu in Berlin.
Naturally, in Munich as well.
They met at the Bratwurst Glöckl.
I'm Michael Beck. I'm the proprietor
of the Bratwurst Glöckl here in Munich.
In the 20's and 30's
there were many student tables here.
In that time, a table established itself
with regulars who came for years.
One of them was Röhm.
Later, many from the SA came here.
Some of those he knew
from the Bratwurst Glöckl and other places
were given important positions in the SA:
Paul Röhrbein, Karl Ernst, Edmund Heines;
all important SA leaders,
one in Berlin,
another in charge of East Germany,
one of the biggest SA divisions.
Edmund Heines
Police President of Breslau
Heines was predominantly homosexual.
- He was also exceptionally brutal
and committed many violent crimes.
In Silesia he pursued
his sadistic inclinations quite openly.
Near Breslau he set up
his own private little concentration camp
where he could indulge himself.
There he could torture and kill
his private prisoners.
There is a small group
who are wild about the old Nazi era.
They do things like wearing
SS uniforms during sex
and playing through things that happened
in concentration camps as S/M games.
For instance, one is the SS doctor,
and the other is the Jew.
They find that sexually stimulating.
Sadomasochistic games.
- Yes, usually with bondage.
Sometimes it goes in the direction
of sex with weapons: knife, pistol, whatever.
It goes as far as playing out executions.
July 9, 1933
Since January 30th [when we took power],
the die is cast for Germany.
And I don't believe that the opponents
who laughed at us then
are still laughing today!
The question was: What's to be done with the SA?
It had always been seen as
the storm troops for the so-called "civil war".
At some point it would
become unnecessary, at the latest
when the communist and social democratic
organizations had been destroyed.
That led to a conflict
between Röhm and Hitler,
who had decided quite early that
the official armed force would be the Army.
Röhm thought it should be the SA.
The army generals claimed that Röhm would
try to take over. He had foreign contacts,
and there were other allegations,
including his homosexuality.
For a long time Hitler wavered
over Röhm's fate. Could he be fired?
Certainly, the decision
on how to deal with Röhm was difficult.
Then a sham conference of SA leaders was
set up at Bad Wiessee on June 30, 1934.
The excuse was that SA men
had attacked some diplomats,
and the leaders must discuss
how to control such unbridled violence.
So the SA leaders met at Bad Wiessee.
Hitler showed up surprisingly early.
At 6:00 in the morning, Hitler arrived
at the Pension Hanselbauer with SS men.
The story is that Hitler, pistol in his hand,
said, "Röhm, you're under arrest."
Then they broke into other rooms
and found Edmund Heines
in bed with his chauffeur.
Later, Goebbels used that as propaganda,
calling it a revolting, vomit-inducing scene.
On the front page of the Nazi paper for
July 2nd was the notice: "Ernst Röhm Shot".
The Thanks of the Nation
In Unshakable Loyalty to Adolf Hitler
Hitler also used it politically.
On July 13, 1934, he made a speech
in which he tried to justify the action
and explain why it was necessary
to have some 150 people shot,
among them SA leaders,
but also many opponents of the regime.
The life the Chief of Staff had begun
to lead, and with him a certain circle,
was intolerable for every
National Socialistic sense of values!
Claiming to have cleaned out a nest of homosexuals
helped him legitimate the broken taboo of murder.
Besides, Röhm's scandals
had always been a bother.
The worst thing was that,
out of a certain common orientation,
a sect had begun to form within the SA
which was the core of a conspiracy,
not only against the morality of a healthy folk,
but also against
the security of the state.
Albert Knoll, Archivist,
Dachau
What happened after Röhm's death?
- For gay people, life worsened dramatically.
A few days later,
the first police raid occurred in Munich.
Röhm's friend Graninger was sent to the
Dachau concentration camp for being gay.
The idea was to turn
homosexuals into heterosexuals
through hard work and little food.
That was how the Nazis thought.
Once the Jews had been eliminated,
it's certain that gays
would have become the new main target,
and the Nazis would have tried
to wipe out gay people completely.
Dr. Susanne zur Nieden
Historian
In 1935, a year after Röhm's murder,
the anti-gay law, Paragraph 175,
was harshened.
The criminal police tripped over themselves
trying to make more arrests than the Gestapo.
The result was a persecution of gays
beyond anything seen elsewhere in Europe.
I didn't run out and say, "The radical right
scene is shit, and in 4 years
"I'll be doing anti-fascist work."
But there were two main reasons
why I left the scene:
the vicious attacks in 1991
on homes for foreigners seeking asylum;
and contradictions involving homosexuality.
One can deal with it openly
without it being negative.
Soon after I left the right-wing scene,
I met my first real friend. We had
a genuine, acknowledged relationship.
These days I'm involved
in social movements and programs.
It doesn't cost anything.
We'll demonstrate Sunday
on Alexanderplatz.
That's good.
It's high time we stand up
against the whole mess.
Well said. Just so!
Between 1940 and '42 there was
a relatively horrible regiment here at Dachau.
They carried out punishments
with extreme ruthlessness in this camp,
also on the gay prisoners.
For instance, wrists and ankles
were tied together over the back,
and the inmate
was left dangling on the rope.
Many gay men were murdered.
The numbers are still unclear.
Estimates are between 5,000 and 15,000.
Alone in Berlin,
50,000 homosexual men were arrested.
If you count all who went to court and...
Here it gets difficult,
and no one dares to talk about it:
if you count the gay Jews, the gay gypsies,
then you're in the hundreds of thousands.
BEATEN TO DEATH
AND DENIED
TO THE HOMOSEXUAL VICTIMS
OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM
Right-wing parties do discuss the murder
of gay men in concentration camps.
They can legitimize it more easily
by pointing out that the anti-homosexual law
as formulated by the Nazis,
Paragraph 175-A,
remained in force in Germany until 1969.
Still in the 60's, the Constitutional Court
handed down decisions
according to which the imprisonment
of gay men in concentration camps
didn't contradict the law
of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Therefore, the survivors
weren't eligible for compensation
because, according to valid law,
it was still legal to imprison them.
How do you deal with the contradiction,
that the Nazis persecuted gays?
It's not really a contradiction.
And you say the Nazis persecuted gays.
Well, gays were persecuted and
imprisoned in the Soviet Union until 1990.
You can't judge other times by the
knowledge and awareness we have today.
The people's attitude to homosexuality
was very different then.
In the time of the Third Reich,
in the Soviet Union in the 30's,
in practically every country in the world
there were laws forbidding sex between men.
Of course, from our knowledge
and life style today, we condemn that.
But we can't damn our forefathers
just because they lived
under different circumstances.
I'm thinking now of my friend
who was 19 years old.
Here it says,
"Beaten to death and denied."
Pierre Seel
sentenced to a
concentration camp
for homosexuality
That was indeed our situation.
But he had to go still further.
He was eaten alive...
... by the dogs of the concentration camp
at Schirmeck-Vorbruck.
Excuse me when I say this today...
I can't forget that.
I want to forget it,
but I can't.
"Heil comrades: I'd like to know
what you think of homosexuals.
"My opinion: I hate this riffraff
and don't see why they should be tolerated.
"It's against the foundation of life.
For me, it's a defect in the survival instinct.
"Unfortunately, things have gone so far
that these abnormal AIDS spreaders
"can marry and adopt children..."
"Homosexuals are sick, but incurable.
"We must ever and again
eradicate the degenerate seed."
I distance myself from
the Nazi content.
That's not my world.
Some of the sites were new to me.
But you consider yourself
politically right-wing, conservative...
Yes. I could support what I found
on the Young Conservatives' home page,
but I might not get along
with what they do individually.
I'd put it this way: maybe in right-wing
conservative or nationalistic parties,
the percentage of homophobic members
might be a little bit higher.
But there are anti-gay members
of the left-wing PDS, of the liberal SPD,
and no doubt,
there are Greens who can't stand gays.
Let's not pretend that anti-gay feeling
is a conservative-nationalistic idiosyncrasy.
For me you're just a perverted swine
Your kind sticks it in from behind
You've got no interest in the female race
I'll tell you what you are right to your face
Germany isn't alone
when it comes to gays in the radical right.
Look at Holland...
Fortuyn was an important example:
leader of a right-wing populist force, and gay.
Pim Fortuyn
Holland
And as far as my research goes,
he never tried to hide it.
Jörg Haider
Austria
When Haider comes, order prevails.
There's justice in the land,
and all the things that are wrong
will be mucked out!
The city is boiling over
with the rumor that Haider is gay.
Anyone who is here illegally and is caught
stealing, housebreaking or robbing
shouldn't have any rights in Austria
and should be thrown out immediately!
A right-wing politician who refuses to age,
surrounded by 20 dashing young men
who all shop at Donna Karen:
sooner or later you start to wonder.
In England it's an open secret
that segments of the skinhead scene are gay.
Many in the right-wing music scene
are openly gay and celebrate fetishism.
Many young neo-Nazis know that,
and for them,
right extremism is a comfortable way
to live out their fetish.
The AIDS plague among you rages and blows
It turns you queens into orphans and widows
The homo at his orgies, feeling good today,
Finds himself tomorrow lying in his grave
Normal, not gay!
Vote NPD now
I found it a bit stupid of the NPD:
"Normal, not gay!"
Gay is also somehow normal. But if
they'd asked me to put up such posters,
I wouldn't have said no.
Perverse & abnormal: gay engagement rings
Perverse & abnormal: two men marrying
Perverse & abnormal:
getting children by adoption
Perverse & abnormal!
How about castration?
What do you think of gay Nazis?
- I have no esteem for Nazis, gay or straight.
Klaus Wowereit,Berlin's openly gay mayor
It's one of the great challenges to our society
that some young people
have learned nothing from history.
We thought the problem was the old gen-
eration, and it would die with them. Not so.
There are still anti-Semites,
still homophobes in our society.
Whether they're gay or not
is beside the point.
See how much we hate you
There's no doubt about it
We want you out of Germany
Now's the time to shout it
Go to the jungle where you ought to be
You'll like screwing monkeys in the trees
Top leaders of right-wing extremism
in Germany were gay in the past.
Some leaders are gay now.
I'd say that of the present-day militants,
of the classic neo-Nazis,
between 10% and 15% are gay.
Perverse & abnormal! Perverse & abnormal...
Obedience & loyalty, obedience & loyalty