Was Adolf Hitler Gay? – Mythbusting Berlin

“Anyone who thinks of homosexual *love* is our enemy. We reject anything which emasculates our people and makes it a plaything for our enemies, for we know that life is fight, and it is madness to think that men will ever embrace fraternally.”
Heinrich Himmler – May 14th 1928

The early morning air of June 30th 1934 at the Hotel Hanselbauer in Bad Wiessee was thick with the kind of damp Bavarian chill that seeps into the bones.

But the cold outside was nothing compared to the ice in the heart of the man stepping out of the convoy of Mercedes limousines. Adolf Hitler, wearing a leather trench coat and clutching a riding crop, marched past the stunned SS guards and kicked open the door to a bedroom.

Inside lay Ernst Röhm, the scarred, bellicose leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA)—the Nazi street army that had battered Hitler’s way to power. He was groggy with sleep, perhaps hungover. He was also likely in bed alone, though the man in the adjacent room, SA Obergruppenführer Edmund Heines, was decidedly not; Heines was discovered in bed with a young male stormtrooper.

This moment, the ignition spark of the ‘Night of the Long Knives’, is the pivotal scene in the drama of Nazi sexuality.

For years, Hitler had dismissed warnings about the ‘homosexual clique’ running his militia. He had turned a blind eye to the scandals of the Munich underworld, protecting Röhm as an indispensable soldier.

Yet, on that morning in Bad Wiessee, the narrative shifted violently.

When Hitler returned to Berlin to justify the extrajudicial murders of his old comrades to the Reichstag, he didn’t speak of political rivalry or the army’s demands. He spoke of a moral cleansing. He painted a lurid picture of a sect of perverts conspiring against the German spirit.