Week 7: Radicalization and the Approach of War

Image right: The legend on this wartime poster reads: “You Are the Front.” Source: German Propaganda Archive at Calvin College.

I. Nazi Germany and Gay Men
A. The Legacy of Weimar: § 175
B. Phases in the Persecution of Gay Men
1) Spontaneous Violence, 1933-1935
2) Centralization and Persecution, 1936-1939

Image: The El Dorado, a gay nightclub in Berlin, 1932
Image: Berlin police guarding the El Dorado after its closure, March 5, 1933
Image: Nazi officials remove books from Magnus Hirschfeld's "Institute for Sexual Research" (6 May 1933)
Image: Book-burning in front of the Kroll Opera House, May 10, 1933
Image: The "Columbia House," site of a Gestapo prison in Berlin (c. 1930)
Image: Castle Lichtenburg, site of an early concentration camp (1933-1937)
Image: Joseph Meisinger, Head of the Reich Office for Combatting Homosexuality and Abortion (1936-1938)

Chart: Total Convictions under Article 175, 1934-1939

Arrestee
Image above: A writer who was arrested for homosexuality by the Düsseldorf Gestapo office in 1938. USHMM, Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Abteilung Rheinland.

GayInmate
Image above: Mugshot of a prisoner, accused of homosexuality, who arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp on June 6, 1941. He died there a year later. USHMM, Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau.

II. Elements of Radicalization
A. Purging the Conservatives and “Monocracy”
B. The SS State-Within-A-State 
C. Rearmament and the 'Four Year Plan'
D. Racial Policy

Image: Konstantin von Neurath, Foreign Minister (1933-1938)
Image: Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister (1938-1945)
Image: Franz Gürtner, Minister of Justice (1932-1941)
Image: Otto Georg Thierack, Minister of Justice (1942-1945)   

Image: Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of Security Police (1936-1942)
Image: Kurt Daluege, Chief of Order Police (1936-1943)
Image: Arthur Nebe, Chief of Criminal Police (1936-1944)
Image: Conference with Himmler, Heydrich, Artur Nebe (Kripo), and Heinrich Müller (Gestapo)
Image: Exterior of Gestapo Headquarters, Berlin
Image: Interior Hallway, Gestapo Headquarters

Chart: Organizational Chart of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA)
Chart: Organizational Chart of the Police Apparatus, 1941

III. Why Radicalization in 1938-1939?

Image left: The cover of a special edition of the magazine “German Infanty” on the campaign in Poland, September 1939. The original is 30,2 x 22,5 cm in size. Source: Deutsches Historisches Museum.
Identifications:

Normenstaat: a political system in which state action is constrained by relatively fixed legal norms.
Massnahmenstaat: one in which the pursuit of political goals—in this case, racial ones—are not constrained by law or bureaucratic machinery.

Magnus Hirschfeld; Director of the Institute for Sexual Studies (Institut für Sexualforschung)

§175 of the Criminal Code 

Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA), est. 27 September 1939

Higher SS and Police Leaders

“Asocials” 

Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion

Four-Year-Plan
Hermann Göring, Reich Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan

Lebensraum—“Living Space” 

Blitzkrieg
Proclamation of “Total War” (February 1943)

Identification card of a conscript civilian laborer from the Soviet Union, who was employed in Braunau am Inn (Hitler's hometown) in 1942. In 1944, over 2,000,000 Soviet civilians were employed in Germany, the largest proportions in agriculture (723,646) and heavy industry (752,714). The original ID-card measures 14,8 x 21 cm. Source: Deutsches Historisches Museum.