The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals

by Richard Plant

This is the first comprehensive book to appear in English on the fate of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. The author, a refugee from Nazi Germany, examines the climate and condtions that gave rise to a vicious campaign against Germany's gays, directed by Himmler and his SS - a war that resulted in tens of thousands of arrests and thousands of deaths.

In this Nazi crusade, homosexual prisoners were confined to death camps where, forced to wear pink triangles, they constituted the lowest rung in the camp hierarchy. The horror of camp like is revealed through diaries, documents never before translated from the German, and interviews with and letters from survivors.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer, World War II, Holocaust, War

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the harder reads for me over the Holocaust because it had more of a personal twinge to it than the other books that I have read. The book focuses primarily on the plight of homosexual men during the holocaust. We are aware of the fact that numerous jewish individuals died during this event, but most people are not aware of the other 5 million people that died. There is a mix of various other classes of individuals that died during this horrendous event of our history. One of these groups were homosexuals. They were put in the camps as well. This book focuses in on that.

Sometimes the other seems to go off on other tangents that does not focus entirely on the homosexual plight in the camps and holocaust, but once you get to the end you understand how it all ties together. I feel he could have organized the book slightly better, but overall you learn a great deal about a subject that seems to get swept under the rug a lot. This book will educate you on how it was possible for even gay men to be treated horribly during this time period. Also you will learn how the Nazi party would use homosexuality to weed out people they didn't like in their party. It is a book that will teach you something you didn't know about the Holocaust and as a result you will understand the modern day world better.

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book broke new ground when it was first published in 1986, and offers important historical context for the motives and ambitions of the Nazi regime.

When they took power, they were focused on retribution, and used the power of the state to attack those who were seen as undesirable. Plant make a good point about the "Night of the Long Knives" when the SA was dismantled and their leader, Roehm, murdered. This event, Plant argues, showed the public tolerance for political executions and the willingness of the regime to take extreme measures. Everything only became more extreme after that.

The fanaticism was on full display towards the end of the war, with defeat on the horizon, as Himmler insisted soldiers must be prosecuted, and punished, for sexual misconduct.

This book is a heavy read, but is a necessary one as a reminder of what can happen when hatred is given power.

[J.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Under the Nazi regime, homosexual men were confined to death camps where they were forced to wear pink triangles as a symbol of their crime. They were at the bottom of the camp hierarchy, brutalized and abused past the point of human endurance. In this book, the horror of life in the Nazi's concentration camps is revealed through diaries, interviews with, and letters from survivors.

Every school child learns that the Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews. Few are told of the other segments of "undesirables" who were forced into the same fate. The Roma (Gypsies), political prisoners, and homosexual men were among those also targeted for extinction.

So many young gay people today don't realize the important significance of the pink triangle ~ they think it just another symbol of pride, and don't realize that it has been reclaimed from a horrific history in which many men died for their sexuality. This book helps the common reader understand why Hitler began his hateful anti-homosexual campaign.

Through the survivor's stories, it paints a vivid portrait not only of the despicable depths of hatred to which men can sink, but it also shows us the undefeatable spirit of the human race to withstand and move on from such adversity. I cannot recommend this book enough ~ it is only through realizing what we have been through that we learn what we will be able to overcome.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Plant's The Pink Triangle was published in 1986, so it's not the most up-to-date source for this particular history. As the author notes, much of the documentation he would have liked to review was still behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany, and inaccessible to him as a US-based academic.

Nonetheless, the author does an excellent job of distilling what information was available to him, and he bookends his main text with a prologue and an epilogue relating his own experiences before and after the war. While Plant managed to escape Germany in 1933, many of his friends were not able to get out before the persecutions began, and he was never able to trace what happened to many of them during that dark period of modern European history.

Although The Pink Triangle is work of history, there is still much to be gleaned from it to understand how the Nazis initiated and executed their plans to erase multiple groups of "undesirables": not just the homosexuals, but the Jews, the Gypsies, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Communists, and so many others. As is always the case in human affairs, the names change over time, but the roles don't: Hitler, Himmler, and their cronies may be long gone, but their aims and their methods live on. We may not currently be living through an era of mass slaughter akin to the Third Reich, but the difference in outcomes between then and now is simply a matter of degree.

[hapit na madugta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although they were no longer compelled to wear the stigmatic pink triangle, they felt marked for life. And like so many victims of the Third Reich, most gays never recovered emotionally from the Nazi boomtowns of hell.

-Richard Plant

[Brett Glasscock · Rating 5 out of 5]

harrowingly sparse. a knowledge gap that may never really be filled

[Kirsten Dyck · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent and readable history, and covers a little-known aspect of the Third Reich. Highly recommended.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gives a new perspective to the Nazi's reign through the lenses of a smaller, oft reviewed group. It brings focus that many groups were targeted for ridiculous reasons.

[Love, Celina]

i don’t have much to say. but not in a bad way. it’s just a lot of information and the brutality isn’t really new to me. i went to school in Germany so we discussed the Third Reich at least once per semester starting in like 7th grade. And yet this was never really mentioned which is why i wanted to learn more about it. I didn’t realize Himmler was this obsessed with eradicating gay men from society but it lines up with them using century old stereotypes against minorities and amplifying them to justify their genocide. Their homophobia wasn’t new, just like their antisemitism wasn’t new.

Overall a well written account on the fate of queer men during the nazi regime.

[Mason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, but a bit hard to follow sometimes.

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

used it for my extended essay, very good info and very detailed

[Theo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took me forever to get through (my own fault), but this was such an important and informative book. Thanks to the author for examining this often understudied portion of Holocaust studies. An important read, especially now, to understand how the violent hate/propaganda campaigns escalated in the third reich, and how a tyrant used those to claw his way into, and maintain, power. What do they say? If we don’t learn history, we are doomed to repeat it.

[sofiac]

This is a great book for gaining a general perspective and understanding of what happened to queer men during Nazi Germany—more or less an introduction to this topic.

However, additional research is necessary if you want to know more about people’s lives back then. This work offers extensive information about political decisions made against the queer community, with chapters focused on specific figures such as Roehm and Himmler. I’m afraid the huge emphasis on them could leave out other relevant details about the persecution of gay men or the progress achieved in Berlin during the golden ages regarding LGBTQ+ community, with Hirschfeld as a pioneer. Nightclubs like Eldorado were crucial for queer people to meet and have fun in a society where they were rejected, even attended by Roehm.

I appreciate the inclusion of lesser-remembered figures like Helene Stoecker, Magnus Hirschfeld, Christopher Isherwood, among others, in this work, as they are not typically acknowledged in other writings.

This is an important book if you want to gain a foundational understanding of the queer community’s history.

[Iliyana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a difficult, painful read. But then again, the reading experience was nothing compared to the topic of the book itself and the horrors of WWII.
Richard Plant, motivated by his and his community's own experiences in Nazi-era Germany, now an American journalist, returns to his country of birth to research the regime's crimes against queer individual and perhaps find out what happened to his closest friends.
The author structures the book flawlessly in such a manner as to create a perfect balance between the hard facts, the historic narrative, and the personal story. To think about when he researched and when he published it, how he had to overcome the fear of returning to post-war Germany (he was also Jewish)… In my view, this work of non-fiction was a singular act of bravery.

[Ian (endofthebookshelf) · Rating 5 out of 5]

These men were among the millions murdered for their nature. Men who did nothing, simply lived and loved, that’s true cruelty. I am ashamed I walk down the street holding my boyfriend’s hand openly and didn’t know the extent of what our predecessors endured. The more you learn, the more ignorant you realize you are. This was a necessary read, I welcome the pain of remembering these men. May we gays never forget.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

“In many ways, the specters of the Third Reich still haunt us—not because groups of younger neo-Nazis may be hiding in South America and not because groups of younger neo-Nazis demand attention with recycled swastika ideologies and emblems. The specters begin to come to life whenever fanatical fundamentalists of any sect—religious or secular—take over a nation and call for a holy war against its most vulnerable and vilified minorities” (Plant 1986, pg. 187)

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

An illuminating study of an oft-overlooked class of "undesirables" during the Nazi era, but its admirable efforts to redress this under-examined subject are undermined by the book's episodic organization and by its superficial analysis, which is based mainly on anecdotal accounts and lacks much "real" data.

[Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it's admirable to tackle an underdiscussed subject, it's less admirable to a) not say much about it in the end, and b) not be particularly interesting.

[Douglas Campbell · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only vaguely engaging part was the epilogue.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Pink Triangle is structured in segments and in a strange way: we get a prologue which ties together with an accompanying epilogue to give a book-ended structure, and it begins with a trifecta of mini-biographies: a chapter on Magnus Hirschfeld, a chapter on Erich Roehm, and a chapter on Himmler. It then switches gears to a chronological telling of how Nazis persecuted homosexuals, how Nazis encamped homosexuals, with actual concentration camp relegated to the last chapter. As such, I wish to note to readers that its sub-title, "The Nazi War Against Homosexuals" is a more apt description of what's chronicled here than its main title, which is very similar to the book title The Men in the Pink Triangle which is exclusively about surviving the concentration camps. This book details the Nazi war against homosexuals from its onset to its rise to power and the fall thereof, so it deals in career assassinations, blackmail, the homophobic dogmas of key Nazi powerholders, and then finally the brutality of the camps in particular. Those looking for a more specific text on any of these sections might find Plant's book somewhat small for the broad swathes being covered.

Key takeaways for me in this book: the homophobic correspondence between Marx and Engels that appears early in the book, along with the book's general survey of how Communists and antifascists ultimately treated homosexuals in both polite German society and in fascist Germany, make for a sobering reminder that gay men in particular do not have any alliances; the left has castigated them historically as has the right. Some echoes of the pains of gay isolation still ring true today, where the segmentation of the community across racial, class, and cultural barriers does bring a cosmic sense of depressive loneliness that is often a through-line in gay life that is still brought up in queer novels, queer blogs, etc. But the myth-making of the left as a tolerant haven, as this book shows, is just that. Another elucidating detail to me was the wide gap between the acceptance of lesbians and the downright contempt for gay men; Plant is not a fool so he does provide the scant examples there are of lesbian persecution, all of which are important to understand, but by and large the discrepancy is both striking and rather obvious. Lastly, Nazi Germans didn't mind homosexuality in the cultures that they wished to see obliterated and degenerated, but found it intolerable amongst "their own." (I list these mainly to illustrate the less usual and/or "unsung" take-aways from a book like this, because it does cover a range of topics.)

While the epilogue clarifies the personal stake of the author in the stories of The Pink Triangle, I wonder if it would have worked as an introductory statement to wed the prologue and epilogue together. It makes for a quietly moving personal story that, if all were presented at the beginning, would give the sympathetic and emotional context for a book that can seem disjointed, especially since it transitions from unitary biographies to a somewhat larger narrative, as well as a bit purposefully detached. Plant says he needed the dispassion to even write the "In Camp" chapter, which is reasonable, but for better or for worse, as a reading experience The Pink Triangle varies from compelling to surprisingly slow. I do still recommend it especially if you were not previously introduced to the work of Magnus Hirschfield - the slogan "Justice through Knowledge" is one I still think about - in particular. A good book with some really good information, and a personal heart to it that is revealed a little too late.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incisive and surprisingly concise, but with room for further elaboration at certain points. I picked this book up due to Plant’s useful framing of the Nazi fixation on homosexuals by their perceived “contragenic” qualities, a term he borrows from Richard Deppe. As the Nazi orchestrator who spearheaded the anti-homosexual programs and who personally harbored the strongest gay-hatred, a psychological study of Heinrich Himmler, starting in his youth, gets an entire chapter. While certainly appreciated and illuminating in how a particular set of petit bourgeois neuroses can come to such violent fruition, isolating Himmler in this sense hung a bit heavy over the rest of the text given the lack of such treatment to those who carried out the programs at the lower levels.

Beginning with some contextualization in the form of an overview of the work of Magnus Hirschfield (and some brief nods to his spiritual predecessor Karl Ulrichs), Plant illuminates the environment in which the early German gay rights movement existed up through the end of the Weimar Republic, its obstacles, successes and failures. In the first category, we find the deteriorating hyperinflation of late Weimar and the sensational story of a murderer and police informant to Gustav Noske shaping public perceptions of homosexuals. To the last, one can perhaps attribute a certain trust given to the psychological and medical community, perhaps borne of compromise in seeking the legalization of homosexual acts. This medicalization eventually becomes a rather tragic irony, from attempts by the Nazis to “cure” homosexuality by mandated trips to brothels, to the castration and hormone experiments of the camps.

However, as the Nazis were seeking to thoroughly criminalize and punish something that sits uneasily somewhere between a particularized identity and a simple, naturally occurring human behavior, the revised Paragraph 175 of the German penal code and its enforcement necessarily became somewhat nebulous. While, according to Plant’s estimates, this led to the internment of only 63,000 of Germany’s population of approximately 1.2 million gays (compared to the deaths of roughly two-thirds of European Jews), this also allowed the charge of Paragraph 175 to be used in a frivolous manner against political enemies. I’ll highlight one such example, from the Gestapo’s 1935-37 anti-Catholic campaign as one of a few surprising moments of levity in an otherwise expectedly dour book.

“What they had hoped to achieve was clearly stated by Heydrich in a confidential letter circulated to Gestapo headquarters […]: to bring before the public a large number of clerics convicted of unnatural sex acts in order to discredit the Church as a haven for degenerates and enemies of the state. […] The first target the Gestapo chose was a small congregation of lay brothers in Waldbreitbach. […] These brothers, nominally supervised in a rather informal arrangement by the Franciscans, concerned themselves mainly with the care of hospitals for handicapped or retarded juveniles and adults. […] One member, a Brother Leovigil, had been under suspicion for a while but had not been transferred or dismissed. […] In the Waldbreitbach case, the Nazi agent in charge had called one of the feebleminded patients as a witness while several of the arraigned brothers were seated in the front row of the courtroom. The patient was asked by the prosecutor whether among those present he could identify any person who had attempted to seduce him. […] The patient nodded and then pointed to the judge. The court adjourned in disarray.” p. 132-133

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN EXCELLENT SUMMARY OF THE TREATMENT OF GAYS UNDER THE THIRD REICH

Author Richard Plant wrote in the Prologue to this 1986 book, “I fled Frankfurt am Main on February 27, 1933, the day the Reichstag went up in flames. I was fortunate. My father, however, a physician, a veteran, a Socialist, and a Jew, had been arrested several weeks earlier. Because a few of his patients, though nominally members of the Nazi Party, intervened in his behalf---this was possible during the early years of the Third Reich---he came home after only one month of imprisonment. He insisted I leave Germany as quickly as possible for … Switzerland, and enroll in the university there… Only years later did I realize how lucky I had been. Although the anti-Jewish and the anti-gay laws became officially part of the Nazi onslaught of terror in 1934-35, the crusade against various minorities had really begun long before. Brown-shirted gangs of trigger- and hammer-happy youths, in an outbreak of ‘spontaneous’ national outrage, had vandalized Jewish stores or thrashed the patrons of the few timid gay bars in Frankfurt.

“By June 1933, a few Swiss newspapers had reported with near incredulity that Hitler’s threats in ‘Mein Kampf’ to expunge his enemies had not been empty posturing… The Swiss never alluded to the Nazis’ anti-gay crusade---in part because this movement began in full only in June 1935, but also because in the 1930s no self-respecting publication would dare to discuss such a delicate subject… After 1933 the Nazis forcibly dissolved all independent youth organizations, even the Catholic ones, hurled accusations of ‘homosexual degeneracy’ against their leaders, and embarked on a campaign to enforce strictly heterosexual behavior.” (Pg. 1-3)

He explains in the Introduction, “This book seeks to throw some light in a corner of modern history that has thus far remained too much in the shadows: the persecution of homosexuals under the Third Reich… many facets of the Nazi regime have not received full popular and scholarly attention; they have been crowded out, so to speak, by the horror of the major atrocity, the extermination of the Jews. The attempted systematic destruction of other, numerically smaller groups also caught in the maw of Nazi terror, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Gypsies… and nonconforming clergymen can only be presented [in this book] marginally.” (Pg. 13)

He continues, “The same omission can be found in nearly all major histories of the Third Reich… Consider William Shirer… In ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ … [and] in none of his [other] major works… does Shirer call attention to Hirshfield’s pioneering studies, the early German gay rights movement, or the subsequent Nazi crusade against the gays. Shirer’s sins of omission are matched by his sins of commission. In discussing Hitler’s indifference to criminals on his staff, Shirer notes: ‘No matter how murky their past or indeed their present... Murderers, pimps, homosexuals, perverts or just plain rowdies were all the same to [Hitler] as they served their purpose.’” (Pg. 18)

He recounts, “On November 15, 1941, Himmler issued the Führer’s Decree Relating to Purity in the SS and Police. Henceforth any SS or police officer engaging in any indecent behavior with another man… was to be condemned to death.. This seems to have been the last ruling to make Germany (homo-free). The absence of further decrees should not be taken to mean that homosexuals were now left alone; the Gestapo kept arresting suspects until the Russians had encircled Berlin.” (Pg. 117)

He observes, ‘In general, the Dutch had shown little sympathy for their invaders… many Dutch families hid Jews, at considerable risk to themselves. And it appears that the average Hollander had little interest in turning a homosexual countryman over to the Nazis. Dutch homosexuals ‘passed’ relatively easily and melted into the general population. Some went underground… the Nazi crusade against the homosexuals in the Netherlands must be called a failure.” (Pg. 123)

He acknowledges, “All statistics must be regarded with caution. We do not know, for example, how many gays were detained in a specific camp during a specific month. No irrefutable figures are available. The Nazi penal bureaucracy was concerned with no more than a prisoner’s name, age, and reason for detention… And toward the end of the war, the SS burned countless documents.” (Pg. 153)

He notes, “After a homosexual arrived in camp, he underwent the first experience of all newcomers: he was seized by a profound trauma. He was battered, kicked, slapped, and reviled. According to at least one witness, homosexuals and Jews were not only given the worst beatings, but their pubic hair was shorn; others lost only their head hair.” (Pg. 163)

He reports, “Rudolf Hoess…commandant of … Auschwitz, explained in his memoirs that he ordered homosexuals isolated to make it easier to control them. Hoess developed the ‘salvation through work’ theory, which he tried out on homosexuals … It was intended to make the depraved deviants work so hard that they nearly collapsed from exhaustion. This, it was hoped, would ‘straighten them out.’ Hoess admitted that it did not always work out this way, but he still kept them separated and assigned them to the cement works, from which it was nearly impossible to emerge alive.” (Pg. 164)

He points out, “Hardened criminals, when running a camp such as Flossenburg, would occasionally give a single homosexual a chance. A handsome young homosexual might improve his lot by becoming a dolly boy.” (Pg. 169)

‘Medical’ experiments also involved gays. “Dr. Varney’s … theory was probably based on the premise that homosexuals could become heterosexuals by hormone treatments… If successful, such treatments would aid Himmler’s unending efforts to produce more offspring, in conjunction with his directives to send homosexuals to bordellos for ‘conversion.’” (Pg. 176)

He outlines “five basic facts [which] seem to explain why most homosexual detainees were destroyed in the camps. 1. The homosexuals constituted one of the smaller minorities… 2. The homosexuals were a decidedly heterogeneous groups, and therefore hard to rally… 3. Inside the camps, the barracks were run either by criminals or antifascists… 4. Neither the hard-core criminals nor the antifascists were interested in cooperating with homosexuals… 5. Outside assistance was scant.” (Pg. 179-180)

He concludes, “Thus the fate of gays under the Third Reich may serve as a touchstone for all those victims swept away by the hurricane of hatred. To this day, the extent and impact of this catastrophe has not been fully understood. At the end of hostilities, when Allied soldiers first entered the concentration camps, they did not really comprehend what they saw. And despite the overwhelming flood of information about the Nazis’ infernal machine, we still have not understood what it may foreshadow. In many ways, the specters of the Third Reich still haunt us---not because a few elderly Nazis may be hiding in South America and not because groups of younger neo-Nazis demand attention with recycled swastika ideologies and emblems. The specters begin to come to life whenever fanatical fundamentalists of any sect---religious or secular---take over a nation and call for a holy war against its most vulnerable and vilified minorities.” (Pg. 187)

This book will be of great interest to anyone studying this topic.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well worth reading if you want to know about the plight of homosexuals by the hands of the Third Reich. If Richard Plant was still around I'd thank him for writing this book, but he is no longer with us because I didn't really know all that much about what my persecuted brothers (and sisters!) faced during WW2. Lest we forget.

I don't really. know how to review this book, but here are some quotes I recorded.

'On every corner, peddlers offered trinkets nobody wanted; street singers and itinerant musicians played endlessly in courtyards for people who could not afford to drop a few pennies into their caps. Many young men, without hope, sullen and bewildered, were filled with a rage that knew no release. [...] Men were hungry too long, and now they were angry and desperate.
Into this social cauldron was added the fifth and most poisonous ingredient: the Nazi Party.'

'He proffered the vision of a brave, sunny world of soldiering for those who had given up hope. His enemies he threatened with war and extinction. They would be eliminated "ruthlessly" (his favourite word) and "heads would roll."'

'Only when it was too late did some grasp that Hitler's program of wholesale destruction would indeed be carried out, its scope widening year after year. The initial misreading of the implications of the Nazis' policy of systematic violence was shared by almost all of those who were their victims: union leaders, shrewd politicians of the centre and right, Marxists, Jewish scientists, writers, lawyers and, of course, homosexuals of all professions and educational levels.'

'Hirschfield's motto was "Justice Through Knowledge."'

'SS physicians carried out pseudo-medical experiments on inmates without their consent and, it should be added, without proper scientific supervision. None of these tests ever brought results of any worth either to medicine or to war technology.'

'The specters begin to come to life whenever fanatical fundamentalists of any sect -religious or secular- take over a nation and call for a holy war against its most vulnerable and vilified minorities.'

[Eve · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars. The intro is kind of slow, but it is an important history, it gives scale, but it explains a lot about not only how homophobia & queerphobia is used to attack people, but it's also details clickbait.

I basically read this (via TTS) over the course of last night & this morning. I finished around -1211.

This is a very haunting book. I had to read it in 1 go because the information is valuable, especially since I have enough of a gap about the specifics of the holocaust, and because it helps explain present day homophobia & how normal nazi type shit is in USAmerican homophobia which in turn is tied to nazis being inspired by usa. But seriously, if i hadn't read from the end of the introduction thru the end in relatively 1 go (divided only by sleep), then i wouldn't have been able to finish this book. I mean it's a book detailing the holocaust, of course it's going to be heavy.

If you can't handle the tragedy this is, then the 1st chapter after Richard Plant tells his personal experience as a Holocaust survivor/refugee, that will detail Hirschfeld's activism, the longstanding bigotry against gays & even lesbians, & it will detail how yellow journalism/clickbait is indeed mainstream journalism & how that undermines liberation movements such as the kind Magnus Hirschfeld activisted for.

I don't remember if this was covered in the 1st chapter or not, but it seems some gay men went with the nazis in order to avoid being misgendered as non-men, such as Hirschfeld's activism sought to find out about the "third sex". Obviously, this was a bad move, but misgendering seems a minimum deal.

This is the kind of history that debunks the coverup that is "the road to serfdom" by Hayek. I want to mention that because conservatives/fascists still cling to that book to support nazis & attack marxists & social democrats.

So i want to send this book to family members, but idk how they cope when being triggered & i don't want to risk having their sympathy/empathy need to cry or whatever without me there etc

this books pacing & topical discussions remind me of john goode's fictional book "I'm just a girl" from his tales of foster high series. I couldn't find that book by goode on this site, but it's a somewhat personally influential book I've read in relatively one sitting like this book too. So i guess that's a formula???

[Hubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful introduction to an underdiscussed topic. Details prevailing attitudes in Germany on homosexuality, starting with homophobic statute Paragraph 175 originating during the German unification of 1871; discussing Hitler's murder of SA head Ernst Roehm (who was himself gay), setting up the shift in the balance of power to the SS; and culminating in the violent persecution of gay men both in civil society, and inside the concentration camps.

Author Robert Plant spends significant time on Nazi chief architect Heinrich Himmler, and his rationale for persecution of homosexuals, including a desire to build an Aryan utopia out of essentially eugenicist policies that encourage procreation among men and women.

Plant also details the fraught relations that developed between guards, inmates who acted as go-betweens (who would sometimes proffer food or protection for gay inmates in exchange for sexual favors), and the prisoners.

Plant starts and ends with personal anecdotes of his own life journey: his socialist, Jewish doctor father's early release from prison and avoidance of more severe punishment that would occur during the Reich's later years; his emigration to university in Switzerland and eventually fleeing to the States; and his search for dear friends as part of his research on this history.

Though published in 1986, the text still maintains a sense of urgency and currency, and encourages the reader to investigate further research done on the topic since then. Bravo to Plant for this groundbreaking work.

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

One I really needed to read, but never wanted to read. A reminder that progress is not linear, and, unfortunately, a practical thing to read in 2023. Plant documents and describes the anti-gay war that was pervasive throughout Nazi ascent to power and their reign. He returned to Germany not too many years after the war, and had considerable difficulty finding gay survivors to interview--understandably, since the laws making their existence and actions illegal remained enforceable law until 1967, 1969, and 1973. Published in English in 1986.

A fitting conclusion to this book (though I'm sure Plant would have stronger opinions on the current resurgence of proudly self-proclaimed neo-Nazis):
"In many ways, the specters of the Third Reich still haunt us--not because a few elderly Nazis may be hiding in South America and not because groups of younger neo-Nazis demand attention with recycled swastika ideologies and emblems. The specters begin to come to life whenever fanatical fundamentalists of any sect--religious or secular--take over a nation and call for a holy war against its most vulnerable and vilified minorities." -p.187

[Kimberley Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew this would be a heartbreaking read, but for the author, a gay Jew, to put himself through harrowing research into the horrors of the war that he escaped in 1938 (that many of his friends did not) in order to bring this little-studied aspect of the Holocaust to the public, is nothing short of heroic.

What made me angry was the sheer hypocrisy of the Nazi party, with SS guards using gay camp inmates as ‘dolly boys’ for their own sexual and sadistic gratification, as if there was any difference between them besides the uniform and a taste for torture.

The epilogue, Richard’s journey back to Germany from the US after the war, and his search for his best friend and reconnecting with others who escaped the clutches of the Nazis, was particularly heartbreaking. He includes intimate testimonies from people who experienced the camps.

I had no idea gay survivors of the camps were put into prison when they were liberated from the camps, because homosexuality was against law and they had obviously not served their time. This broke me.

[Puja Bharti · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book which is devoted to how "the Undesirable" during the Nazi period were ordered to extinction. Although in the Undesirable category, The Jews and Political prisoners were mixed but the Pink Triangle is a book that focuses on the situation of the pride community in the Nazi period and how it helped they get recognition all throughout the world. That book is tragic from chapter one and by the end of it, it ends on a hopeful note but all the things that are included in the book, the interview or the letters.... It can make a grown man rethink his actions. It was not a good time but the book is great. It goes into great details about how it started and a fairly optimistic prediction of how it will work out in the future. It is a book that can be added in school syllabus if LGBTQ+ history became a subject. But the book is so slow.... It starts slow and stays that way.

[☠Arianne Reads Horror ☠ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A subject that isn't written or spoken about often, this book goes into detail of the thoughts and opinions of nazi high command. Richard Plant does a thorough job of explaining the laws and regulations surrounding homosexuality during the nazi party's horrid time in power.

This books goes through the whole history, from just before Hitler came to power, to after the war. It explains in great depth each of the evil men that helped create the camps and rules that went alongside them.

Although not a long book, it's one that cannot be read in long bursts. The amount of information you're given is so vast that one chapter (although they are extremely long ones) was enough for one day for me.

Something that should be discussed more and taught more in schools, this book is a great introduction into learning more of the terrible things the nazis did.

[Sergey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A concise analysis of a part of history on gay men in the Holocaust that is often forgotten and swept away on the winds of hatred. The physical and moral damage of gay men cannot be understated, for the prisoners with the pink triangle never lived long, and if by miracle survived the concentration camps, were imprisoned for violations against Paragraph 175, stigmatized and shattered for life.



For the personal account of gays in the camp, The Men With the Pink Triangle is a good source (one of the first, and few, published accounts of a gay man's experience in the Holocaust).