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.
(Men, Heroes and Gay Nazis)
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.
Was Hitler perfect? -Compared to whatever human being
existed in the world, he was the most perfect person.
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.
I said, there are people saying that holocaust doesn't exist
and I want to have the right to freedom of speech to discuss this open.
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.
(Memorial March for Rudolf Hess, Wunsiedel 1990)
("France pays tribute in honor 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, Reichsminister and Hitler's deputy)
As loyal as the old Storm Trooper is to the Führer,
that is how loyal the Führer is to his old Storm Troopers.
(Prof. Dr. Bernd Ulrich Hergemöller, historian, University of Hamburg)
Hess's youth is very well documented: his relationships to friends,
the love letters, the poems... -To men? -Yes.
(Prof. Dr. Lothar Machtan historian, University of Bremen)
It's known that other Nazis had nicknames for Hess:
"Miss Hess" or "Black Emma".
(Jürgen Rieger, attorney, chairman of "nationalist race club")
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.
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."
My name is a Jörg Fischer, I'm a freelance journalist and an educational consultant,
and I'm politically active. I'm a member of 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.
(Prof. Dr. Dr. Rüdiger Lautmann, sociologist, University of Bremen)
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 organizations 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.
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.
(Funeral of Michael Kühnen, 1991)
The last 70 supporters follow Austria's party boss to the Führer's final roll call.
("His life was a struggle. His life is ended. His strugle is not. Honour 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 socialist? 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?"
("Panorama", 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.
("Panorama", 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.
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.
("Panorama", 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.
("Hamburger Journal" of NDR TV, 10.3.1987)
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, chairman of "nationalist race club")
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.
(Assasin - right extremists arrested)
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)
("Neo-nazi Kühnen - Aids!")
So the neo-Nazi with AIDS - this was unthinkable even for his most faithful ones.
It went so far, that even I myself heard rumors that his death was violent.
So he was sentenced to dying, the painful AIDS death and nothing was left from friendship.
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 the funeral of Michael Kühnen, Kassel, 3.5.1991)
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.
(Film review "Occupation: Neonazi", NDR, 1993) ...is alarming document about leaders of New Right
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 mock-up!
(Winfried Bonengel, film maker) So much happened thanks to this movie.
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.
(Westfriedhof, 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 Prosh, who was also sent to Dachau.
(Albert Knoll, archivist, Dachau Concentration camp memorial site)
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,
"l 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 1 10.
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.
(Suzanne zur Nieden, historian, Technische Universität Berlin)
His emotional life intensified in WW I, 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 are the main spreaders of AIDS, capable for infecting the healthy nation."
(Bastian Finke, Maneo- Gay Phone victim assault assistance)
"That's the number one reason to hate you, hunt you, kill you."
("Violence on gays, we are here 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 Münchener 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 prostituted young unemployed")
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.
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, youth friend of 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.
(Prof. Dr. Dr. Rüdiger Lautmann, sociologist, University of Bremen)
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 Battlefield")
Then there's the evidence of Hitler's war comrade Mend,
that Hitler had a homosexual relationship with fellow soldier Ernst Schmidt in WW I.
(Prof. Dr. Bernd Ulrich Hergemöller, historian, University of Hamburg)
The problem is, that if you were checking it from the other side -
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 Cazzo Film movie "SKIN FLICK")
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 Haines, police president of Wroclaw)
Heines was predominantly homosexual. -He was also exceptionally brutal
and committed many violent crimes.
In Silesia he pursued his sadistic inclinations quite openly.
Near Wroclaw 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.
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 Concentration camp memorial site
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.
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 so good, yeah.
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, silented to death / homosexual sacrifices 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, prisoner of concetration camp, uncovering of memorial table, Berlin 1997)
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...
Germany is definitely not unique. In Netherlands there were quite serious talks recently,
that the leader of most significant rightwing-populist powers was gay.
And as far as my research goes, he never tried to hide it.
(Jörg Haider, FPÖ - Austrian Freedom Party)
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! 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, reigning mayor of Berlin)
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 generation, 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...