Burns had evidently been reading Heiden’s 1944 book Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power. In it Heiden, a German-born Jewish journalist, discussed the homosexuality of several early Nazis, notably the head of the SA, Ernst Röhm, and wrote that “assuredly the pressure of public censure has distorted more characters, weakened more moral resistance, created more dishonesty toward oneself and others among modern homosexuals than among other people.”
