From at least 1927 onwards, […] the [NSDAP] had never concealed its overt hostility towards homosexuals, pointing out that:
We [the party] are of the contrary opinion, that these people of the paragraph 175, i.e. unnatural sex acts between men, must be fought with all our might, because such a vice must lead the German people to ruin. Naturally it is the Jews again, Magnus Hirschfeld and those of his race, who, here again, act as guides and as initiators, at a moment when all of Jewish morality is indeed devastating the German people. (Tamagne 2000: 444–5)15
[…]
Until the start of the war those homosexuals who wished to steer clear of the police and the Gestapo tried to emigrate. When it was possible, homosexuals with ties to communist, socialist or [other] anti‐fascist groups chose to go on fighting from abroad. To do this, they had to emigrate illegally, sometimes fleeing the country in perilous conditions (Stümke and Finkler 1981).
[…]
Research reveals an overrepresentation of young working‐class men among those who were persecuted. They were the main victims of the system. Several explanations have been put forward by historian Carola von Bülow (1999: 62–9). According to her, the younger men had less experience and so were less able to conceal their sexual preferences. This made them easy prey for the police. Research also reveals a preponderance of men from working and middle‐class backgrounds.
According to John Fout (2000) it is even possible to assert that 90% of those who were arrested, imprisoned and sent to camps were working class. The remaining 10% from the upper end of the social scale were arrested under sub‐paragraph 175a of the Criminal Code, for having had sex with partners over 15 years of age. As a result, the history of homosexuals under the Third Reich is primarily that of working‐class men, those least able to defend themselves in the face of [Fascism] and the least well equipped to tell the story of their suffering.
In the period 1940–45 the proportion of homosexuals in the concentration camps was scarcely more than 1% of all detainees (ibid: 332). There were a few hundred of them, perhaps, as opposed to thousands or even tens of thousands of common criminals or political detainees.21
Sociologist Rüdiger Lautmann has found that of all the men held in a concentration camp for homosexuality, 50% had been sent there from a police station, 12% by the Gestapo and 33% from a prison (1977: 364). The preponderance of detainees sent to the camps by the police shows the central rôle the police played in applying an arrest policy based, as we saw earlier, on denunciations, raids and betrayals extracted under duress.
Compared with the other categories of detainees, homosexuals had fewer outside resources. Other factors also affected them, such as the stigmatisation of homosexuality (Fraser and Honneth 2005: 24), a sentiment that was exacerbated in the concentration camps.
What is more, they were systematically assigned to the toughest penal units (kommandos), which significantly increased their mortality rate. Stone or gravel quarries (Kiesgrube), clay quarries (Tongrube) brickworks (Klinkerwerk) or even bomb disposal units were known to be the most deadly, and these were the tasks homosexuals were assigned to.
(Emphasis added. I wanted to highlight the NSDAP quote because it is practically identical to what most neofascist gentiles believe today: they assert that homosexuality is something that ‘the Jews’ induce to lower white birth rates and otherwise damage the white race’s health.)
Click here for events that happened today (June 2).
1891: Takijiro Onishi, Axis admiral, existed.
1940: Fascist submarine U‐101 sank British ship Polycarp forty‐one miles south of Lands End in southwestern England at 0300 hours, then Fascist submarine U‐58 sank British coastal defense vessel HMS Astronomer twenty miles off Scotland’s northeast coast at 0600 hours after a six‐hour chase and three torpedoe hits; four humans died.
1941: Before dawn, Axis bombers assaulted Manchester and Salford in England in the early hours of the day, leaving seventy dead and eighty‐six seriously injured. Two Axis dictators met again at the Brenner Pass on the Italian–Austrian border, and Vichy published antisemitic legislation based on the Reich’s laws; among it was the prohibition of Jews from holding public office. Vichy also claimed to have shot down a Bristol Blenheim over Syria–Lebanon. In light of the successful campaign at Crete, Göring boasted that there was no such thing as an unconquerable island, hinting a similar fate for Britain. As for the killings of Axis paratroopers by civilians at Crete, Göring officially ordered reprisals to be conducted as if the killers were partisans.
1942: About fifty Jews from Berlin arrived at Theresienstadt in occupied Czechoslovakia. They were the first German Jews to arrive at this camp. Additionally, troops of German 90th Light Division and Italian Trieste Division mounted a new attack on the French‐held fort of Bir Hakeim, Libya, and the Axis began a five‐day bombardment of Sevastopol. On Soviet ground, the Axis’s large weapons such as the 600mm Mörser Karl mortars and the 800mm ‘Gustav’ railway gun went into deployment. From the air, hundreds of sorties delivered five hundred tons of high explosives, damaging port facilities, fuel tanks, and water pumps at the cost of only one Ju 87 dive bomber. Coincidentally, Axis bombers attacked Canterbury, England, and Vichy granted the Third Reich the use of the port of Bizerta, Tunisia to bring in food, clothing, and other supplies not directly related to the military, but troops, military equipment, and ammunition were explicitly disallowed.
1943: Luftwaffe bombers attacked Kursk.
1944: Sofia approached the Western Allies for terms of surrender, and coincidentally secret peace talks began between Bucharest and the Soviet Union in Stockholm. Berlin ordered Albert Kesselring to relinquish Rome, and Major General Nobuo Tanaka ordered a final attack at Imphal, India despite overwhelming odds. Near Kohima to the north, Axis troops evacuated from the village of Naga.