Being gay could and often did result in persecution. Gay men in Germany were not a monolithic group, nor did the Nazi regime view them as such. However, the Nazi campaign against homosexuality and the regime’s zealous enforcement of Paragraph 175 made life in Nazi Germany dangerous for gay men. Identifying as a gay man was never explicitly criminalized in Germany. However, any man who had sexual relations with another man faced potential arrest in Nazi Germany, regardless of how he understood his own sexuality. It is important to note that not all of the men arrested and convicted under Paragraph 175 identified as gay. In some cases, this led to their imprisonment in concentration camps. Approximately fifty percent of these men were convicted. During the Nazi period, the police arrested about 100,000 men for allegedly violating this statute.
Paragraph 175 was the statute of the German criminal code that banned sexual relations between men. They also arrested large numbers of gay men under Paragraph 175. It is unclear how many of these men publicly or privately identified as gay or were part of gay communities and networks that had been established in Germany before the Nazi rise to power.īeginning in 1933, the Nazi regime harassed and dismantled these communities. This campaign persecuted men who had sexual relations with other men. The Nazi regime carried out a campaign against male homosexuality between 19.
