Torture of Gay Men & Transgender People under Nazi Regime - Nazi Germany

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the nature of human sexuality became an important area of scientific investigation and debate. Germany was at the forefront of this development, not least because of debates regarding Paragraph 175 which from 1871 banned sexual relations between men.

Even though there were groups who supported the decriminalization of sexual relations between men such as the large, moderate-left Social Democratic Party or the more radical Communist Party, there were also groups who advocated for making this statute stricter. Among them were mainstream religious organizations as well as various moderate and right-wing political parties such as the radically right-wing Nazi Party which officially opposed any efforts to decriminalize sexual relations between men. Wilhelm Frick, a Nazi member of the Reichstag – the parliament of Nazi Germany, stated in 1927 that “men committing unnatural sexual acts with men must be persecuted with utmost severity because such vices will lead to the disintegration of the German people.”

Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in January 1933. In the first two and a half years of the Nazi regime, the government enforced Paragraph 175 similarly to the way it was enforced in the Weimar Republic. At this time, the Nazis also used other means to target Germany’s gay community, for example, they closed meeting places, arrested repeat offenders, and shuttered presses.

However, after in 1935 the Nazi regime revised Paragraph 175 and it began prosecuting men in far greater numbers for violating this statute. The revision broadly expanded the type of acts subject to punishment and dramatically increased the number of men punished under the statute.

The new version of Paragraph 175 had two additional sections: 175a and 175b.

Section 175a listed four specific behaviors that the Nazis saw as particularly egregious violations of Paragraph 175. These included: a man coercing another man to have sex; a man initiating sexual relations with a male subordinate or employee; a man having sexual relations with a male minor under the age of 21; and a man engaging in prostitution with another man.

The Nazi regime saw men who engaged in these behaviors as particularly harmful, because they believed that these men were corrupting other men. According to 175a, these acts could result in a sentence of up to ten years hard labor in a prison. Within the context of the German criminal justice system, this was a comparatively long and harsh prison sentence.

Among the homosexual men arrested under the Nazi revised paragraph 175 belonged Harry Pauly, a German theater actor from Berlin who spent most of his time with other actors, both at the theater and in nightclubs, where gay men gathered. When the Nazis came to power, some gay men, especially those who were Jewish, were killed by Nazi sympathizers. Harry's friend "Susi," a drag queen, was stabbed to death. In 1936 Harry was arrested and imprisoned in a camp at Neusustrum, where he was first placed in solitary confinement and later had to do the heaviest work in the marshes for 12 hours a day. After 15 months he was released. In 1943, however, after Harry was turned in by two boys pressured by the Gestapo to denounce gay men, he was once again sentenced under paragraph 175. This time he was released after only eight months because his friends in the theater intervened on his behalf. Harry was then drafted into the army but wherever he went, people knew of his 175 conviction and called him homophobic slurs. Harry could not stand it and deserted twice. Finally, as punishment, he was sent to a special combat unit in which almost everyone was killed, yet he was the only one to miraculously survive.


When reforming the statute in 1935, Nazi jurists had a chance to extend Paragraph 175 to women. However, they chose not to do so because the Nazi leaders saw lesbians as women who had a responsibility to give birth to racially pure Germans, called “Aryans.” The Nazis concluded that Aryan lesbians could easily be persuaded or forced to bear children.
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