How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Unlike some of the shipwrecked young men with whom he lived, he had none of the vices of youth. He neither smoked nor drank. He had nothing to do with women—not, so far as can be learned, because of any abnormality but simply because of an ingrained shyness. (1.1.101)
In this excerpt, Shirer is describing young Adolf Hitler in his late teens and early twenties. This passage is the first of many throughout The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich where homosexuality is represented as an "abnormality," a "perversion," or, as in many cases, a sign of something rotten at the core.
Quote #2
There is a great deal of morbid sexuality in Hitler's ravings about the Jews. This was characteristic of Vienna's anti-Semitic press of the time, as it later was to be of the obscene Nuremberg weekly Der Stuermer, published by one of Hitler's favorite cronies, Julius Streicher, Nazi boss of Franconia, a noted pervert and one of the most unsavory characters in the Third Reich. (1.1.144)
As Shirer records, Hitler claims in Mein Kampf that Jewish Austrians were "largely responsible" for prostitution and white slavery in Vienna (1.1.143). Here's a question worth asking, though: Does Shirer's obvious revulsion for the "perversion" of certain Nazi Party members echo Hitler's own "morbid" obsession with the alleged sexual vices of Jewish Austrians? All this reminds Shmoop of the U.S. during the Jim Crow era, when racist whites were obsessed with the supposed sexual designs that black men had on their white wives and daughters.
Quote #3
A tough, ruthless, driving man—albeit, like so many of the early Nazis, a homosexual—he helped to organize the first Nazi strong-arm squads which grew into the S.A. (1.2.42).
This brief description of Ernst Roehm suggests that Shirer perceived a fundamental contradiction between homosexuality and "tough," "ruthless," or "driving" masculinity. As elsewhere in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, his comments seem to associate homosexuality with the "perversion" or "feminization" of masculinity.
Quote #4
"I know Esser is a scoundrel," Hitler retorted in public, "but I shall hold onto him as long as he can be of use to me." This was to be his attitude toward almost all of his close collaborators, no matter how murky their past—or indeed their present. Murderers, pimps, homosexual perverts, drug addicts, or just plain rowdies were all the same to him if they served his purposes. (1.2.84)
It seems clear that "murderers," "pimps," and gay men were "all the same" to Shirer too, albeit in a different way than they were "all the same" to Hitler.
Quote #5
But the brown-shirted S.A. never became much more than a motley mob of brawlers. Many of its top leaders, beginning with its chief, Roehm, were notorious homosexual perverts. Lieutenant Edmund Heines, who led the Munich S.A., was not only a homosexual but a convicted murderer. These two and dozens of others quarreled and feuded as only men of unnatural sexual inclinations, with their peculiar jealousies, can. (2.5.15)
Wow. Just... wow. Even though some might argue that Shirer's views were not unusual in his time, the association that he makes here between homosexuality and the criminal act of murder is really over the top. Once again, Shirer seems to be implying that men like Roehm were not simply gay in addition to being Nazis, but rather that their homosexuality and Nazi allegiances were somehow part of the same spectrum of "perversion."
Quote #6
No other party in Germany came near to attracting so many shady characters. As we have seen, a conglomeration of pimps, murderers, homosexuals, alcoholics and blackmailers flocked to the party as if to a natural haven. (2.5.19)
Shirer is starting to sound like a broken record at this point. Is it weird to want to talk out loud to him in passages like this? Like, we get it, dude: you think gay men are perverts. But how's about you get back to that other thing you're supposed to be telling us about—you know? What the members of the Nazi Party actually did?
Quote #7
Hitler did not care, as long as they were useful to him. When he emerged from prison he found not only that they were at each other's throats but that there was a demand from the more prim and respectable leaders such as Rosenberg and Ludendorff that the criminals and especially the perverts be expelled from the movement. This Hitler frankly refused to do. (2.5.16)
Ah yes, the more "respectable" leaders of the Nazi movement. Don't go reading this passage and walking away with the thought that Hitler was an early supporter of LGBTQ+ rights. He wasn't. He really, really wasn't. What's interesting about his actions during the early days of Nazism, though, is that when push came to shove, he seemed much more interested in a man's usefulness to the movement than in his sexual identity. Or at least, that seems to have been the case for certain select members of his entourage. Maybe he thought he could blackmail them if they didn't support the party line.
Quote #8
Nor was he lucky in love, though all his life he mistook his philanderings, which became notorious in his years of power, for great amours. His diaries for 1925-26, when he was twenty-eight and twenty-nine and just being launched into Nazi politics by Strasser, are full of moonings over loved ones—of whom he had several at a time. (2.5.32)
Hitler spends a considerable amount of time in Mein Kampf dwelling on the sexuality of Jewish men, and Shirer points out that their alleged vices were among the would-be Fuehrer's "morbid" fascinations. But throughout The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer himself seems fascinated by the sex lives of powerful Nazis.
Quote #9
There are dark hints too that she was repelled by the masochistic inclinations of her lover, that this brutal tyrant in politics yearned to be enslaved by the woman he loved—a not uncommon urge in such men, according to the sexologists. (2.5.79)
Don't think that Hitler himself escapes Shirer's fascination with the sex lives of the Nazis. Shirer seems thrilled to share some of the seedier aspects—from his perspective, at least—of Hitler's love affair with Geli Raubal.
Quote #10
On January 25, the day on which Goering was showing Hitler the police record of Blomberg's bride, he also spread before the Fuehrer an even more damaging document. This had been conveniently provided by Himmler and his principle aid, Heydrich […], and it purported to show that General von Fritsch had been guilty of homosexual offenses under Section 175 of the German criminal code and that he had been paying blackmail to an ex-convict since 1935 to hush the matter up. (3.10.27)
By 1938, Hitler seemed to have become far less willing to tolerate homosexual activity among the ranks of the Nazi Party or his top Army and Navy brass. When Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich of the Nazi Gestapo framed General Freiherr Werner von Fritsch for homosexual acts—which were considered criminal in Germany at the time—Hitler demanded the resignation of the outraged Commander in Chief of the Army. (3.10.30)