The Röhm scandal resulted from the public disclosure of Nazi politician Ernst Röhm's homosexuality by anti-Nazis in 1931 and 1932.
Röhm was an early member of the Nazi Party and was close to party leader Adolf Hitler. In the late 1920s, he lived in Bolivia where he wrote letters to a friend, Karl-Günther Heimsoth, in which he candidly discussed his sexual orientation. Röhm's double life began to fall apart when he returned to Germany in 1930 and was appointed leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party's original paramilitary wing. Although the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Communist Party of Germany supported the repeal of Paragraph 175, the German law criminalizing homosexuality, both parties utilized homophobia to attack their Nazi opponents and inaccurately portrayed the Nazi Party as dominated by homosexuals. Their goal was to prevent or delay the Nazi seizure of power, which ultimately occurred in early 1933.
Beginning in April 1931, the SPD newspaper published a series of front-page stories about alleged homosexuality in the SA, which turned out to be based on forgeries. SPD leaders set out to obtain authentic evidence of Röhm's sexuality and, if possible, convict him under Paragraph 175. Röhm was tried five times, but never convicted. During the German presidential election in March 1932, the SPD released a pamphlet edited by ex-Nazi with Röhm's letters to Heimsoth. This second round of disclosures sparked a plot by some Nazis to murder Röhm, which fell through and resulted in additional negative press for the party.
The scandal came to national attention as a result of the beating of Klotz by Nazi deputies in the Reichstag building on 12 May 1932 as revenge for his publication of Röhm's letters. Many Germans saw this attack on democracy as more important than Röhm's personal life. The Nazis' electoral performance was not affected by the scandal, but it affected their ability to present themselves as the party of moral renewal. Hitler defended Röhm during the scandal. The latter became completely dependent on Hitler due to loss of support in the Nazi Party. Hitler had Röhm and his friends murdered in 1934, citing both his homosexuality and alleged treachery. After the purge, the Nazi government systematically persecuted homosexual men.
Background
Ernst Röhm (1887–1934) was one of the early leaders of the Nazi Party and built up its paramilitary wing, the (SA), which violently attacked communists and other perceived enemies of the German people. He was a friend of future German dictator Adolf Hitler and in 1923 he was convicted of treason for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch. After he was elected to the Reichstag and went to live in Berlin in 1924, he frequented homosexual establishments, including the Eldorado club. In 1929, Röhm joined the homosexual association (League for Human Rights) and became known to many figures in Berlin's homosexual community. Röhm resented having to conceal his sexual orientation and was as open about it as it was possible to be without stating it. In 1925, a man he had hired as a prostitute robbed him; Röhm reported the man to the police. Although Hitler found out about this incident, he did not take action.
Röhm–Heimsoth letters In 1928, the homosexual, nationalist physician Karl-Günther Heimsoth wrote a letter to Röhm questioning a passage in the latter's autobiography, ("The Story of an Arch-Traitor"). As part of a denunciation of conservative, bourgeois morality, Röhm had written, "The struggle against the cant, deceit and hypocrisy of today's society must take its starting point from the innate nature of the drives that are placed in men from the cradle… If the struggle in this area is successful, then the masks can be torn from the dissimilation in all areas of the human social and legal order". He blamed bourgeois morality for causing suicide. Röhm's arguments about morality found little support among other Nazis.
Heimsoth asked if Röhm intended this passage as a criticism of Paragraph 175, the German law prohibiting sex between men. Röhm replied, stating "You have understood me completely!" He told Heimsoth that he had initially intended to be more explicit, but toned the passage down on the advice of friends. Röhm and Heimsoth befriended each other and spent time together at homosexual meeting places in Berlin. They corresponded while Röhm was in Bolivia, where he had emigrated in 1928 to work as a military advisor. Both men saw their homosexuality as compatible with Nazism; Heimsoth hoped that Röhm could lead the Nazi Party to become accepting of homosexuality. In his letters, Röhm discussed his sexual orientation in unambiguous language, once describing himself as "same-sex orientated" () and saying he had an aversion to women.
Political views of homosexuality In 1928, the Nazi Party responded negatively to a questionnaire about their view of Paragraph 175, and declared "Anyone who even thinks of homosexual love is our enemy". Nazi politicians regularly railed against homosexuality, claiming that it was a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the German people. They promised to have homosexuals sterilized if they took power. The majority of Nazis held traditional moral beliefs and found Röhm and his associates, some of whom were homosexual, intolerable. At this time any civil servant or officer whose homosexuality was discovered would have been dismissed, regardless of whether a violation of Paragraph 175 could be proven. The SA's tacit tolerance of homosexuals in its own ranks was in contrast to this. This tolerance was dependent on remaining discreet and certainly not publicly known, lest it bring the SA's hypermasculine image into question. Röhm tried to separate his private and political life, but historian Laurie Marhoefer writes that "most Nazis considered supposedly private matters like sexuality intensely public and political". Biographer comments, "If Ernst Röhm was at all revolutionary, he was revolutionary in his demand that National Socialism and German society accept him as he was—a man who desired other men".
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and Communist Party of Germany (KPD) were the primary supporters of repealing Paragraph 175, but they opportunistically used accusations of homosexuality against political opponents. Contemporaries noted the hypocrisy of this approach. Confronted with the rise of Nazism, they exploited a stereotype associating homosexuality with militarism that had been established during the Eulenburg affair. In 1927, SPD deputies heckled Nazi deputy Wilhelm Frick, shouting "Hitler, heil, heil, heil. Heil Eulenburg!" after Frick called for harsh penalties for homosexuality. The SPD initiated the Röhm scandal in an effort to prevent or delay the Nazi seizure of power at a time when the defenders of the Weimar Republic's democracy sensed that they were running out of options.
Development of the scandal Röhm's return to Germany
Röhm returned to Germany at Hitler's request in November 1930, and was officially appointed chief of staff of the SA on 5 January 1931. This appointment was seen by many as the second most powerful office in the Nazi movement, but Röhm's position was weakened by his homosexuality and he was dependent on Hitler's personal support. His predecessor, Franz von Pfeffer, wrote that Röhm had been appointed "probably, also because of his inclinations... [which] offered a useful point of attack at any time".
Röhm's appointment was opposed from the beginning by some in the SA who saw it as cementing the subordination of the SA to the Nazi Party's political wing. His homosexuality was seized upon by those who disagreed with the organizational reforms but could not openly criticize Hitler without breaking with Nazism, because of the Führer principle. Hitler said that the personal life of a Nazi was only a concern for the party if it contradicted the fundamental principles of Nazism. The leader of the Berlin SA, Walther Stennes, rebelled against the SA leadership and declared that he and his followers would "never serve under a notorious homosexual like Röhm and his (male prostitutes)". On 3 February, Hitler dismissed Stennes's objection, stating, "The SA is not a girls' boarding school". Röhm's appointment of old friends to powerful positions in the SA aroused the ire of his opponents, but contrary to popular perceptions, not all these men were homosexual and they were appointed due to perceived loyalty rather than sexuality.
The internal opposition to Röhm intensified in February 1931 when Hitler replaced Stennes with Paul Schulz, who promoted two suspected homosexuals, Edmund Heines and Karl Ernst, within the Berlin SA. Rumor had it that Ernst was only promoted because of an intimate relationship with , a friend of Röhm's who was not a member of the party or SA. Many Berlin SA personnel disagreed with these appointments, complaining about the "Röhm-Röhrbein-Ernst Triple Alliance", which was perceived as a homosexual clique. It was incorrectly claimed by Röhm's opponents that "large circles of Berlin party comrades are informed about the gay clubs", and these rivals noted with satisfaction that the perceived homosexual cliques were exposed in the left-wing media. On the night of 26 June, a Nazi named Walter Bergmann was arrested at a Berlin pub where he had found Ernst and Röhrbein together. Bergmann shouted, "Look at these parasites on the party, these , these damned ass-fuckers who let the party's reputation go to hell". Although Röhm asserted in one of his letters to Heimsoth that the party had become "accustomed to my criminal idiosyncrasy", Marhoefer concludes that this "was wild optimism or self-delusion".
Röhm's double life became unsustainable in the face of his higher profile and the rising popularity of the Nazi Party. He became more circumspect than before, avoiding homosexual clubs. His friend Peter Granninger procured young men between 16 and 20 years old and brought them to apartments owned by Granninger and for sexual encounters. When an unemployed waiter in Munich, Fritz Reif, tried to blackmail him in April 1931, it was reported in the press. By the beginning of 1931, newspapers started to allude to his homosexuality, leading Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels to write in his diary on 27 February that the Nazi Party was seen as "the Eldorado of the 175-ers".
The 1931 press campaign On 14 April 1931, the SPD newspaper began reporting a series of front-page stories on the "hair-raising depravity in the Section 175 sense" that it argued was rampant in the Nazi Party. The first story claimed that Röhm and Heines were part of a homosexual clique in the SA and that they walked arm-in-arm with Hitler, citing an unnamed former Nazi (possibly Otto Strasser). The second article, published on 23 April, reported on Röhm's dalliances with a male prostitute. The third accused the Nazis of hypocrisy for condemning homosexuality in public but turning a blind eye to homosexuals in its own ranks, reporting that Hitler had ignored various reports of Röhm's homosexuality. The claimed without evidence that German youth were endangered by Röhm's homosexuality and coined the word to describe the alleged moral dissolution of the SA. Other SPD and KPD newspapers repeated the reports.