in November 1933 von Fritsch had indulged in a homosexual act with a professional male prostitute in a dark corner of the Berlin Wannsee railway station. The charge rested on the depositions of a professional blackmailer named Otto Schmidt, who had been caught two years after the incident during Himmler’s drive against homosexuals. It was a framed charge, resting on a similarity of names. The man Schmidt had seen at the Wannsee station was a retired officer with a monocle named von Frisch, but it was not difficult for the Gestapo to convince Schmidt that he should implicate General von
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