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➀ Persecution had a political significance in Germany. This distinguishesit from persecution in other countries, where state persecution measuresand special penal laws were usually justified on religious or moral grounds.The persecution of homosexual men was pursued by the Nazi regime withparticular urgency and violence after the the so-called Night of the LongKnives . The homosexuality of some high SA leaders who were murderedin late June 1934 engendered anxious visions that stereotyped homosexualsin the Nazi organizations as a particularly grave political danger. Thenightmare vision of the homosexual as an enemy of the state was born.The image of the ‘enemy’ changed as persecution intensified in the citiesand began to spread throughout Germany in 1936: the homosexual ‘enemyof the state’ became the homosexual ‘enemy of the people’.2 Fighting homosexuality was a significant component of state populationpolicy. The racist birth policy insinuated that, because of the nature of theirrelations, homosexuals might dissuade other men from marriage and reproduction.This menacing vision was intensified and exaggerated by a sociopoliticalmodernization conflict between the Männerbünde (Leagues of Men)– conventional pillars of society that became highly politicized after 1933 –and the Nazi regime’s state-subsidized family policy. Caught up in the conflictbetween these two, homosexuals found themselves in the position of aquasi double enemy: state fears were expressed by the defamatory epithet‘population dud’ and the horror vision of the ‘seducer of youth’ who wouldspread homosexuality like an epidemic.3 Homosexual men were declared enemies of the Nazi dictatorshipbecause, it was claimed, they endangered the continued existence andfuture of the German people. Of course there were similar visions designedto provoke fear in other countries, and they are still disseminated today byreligious-orthodox fundamentalists. The main difference between the Naziregime’s policy on homosexuals on the one hand, and religious fanaticsexerting a homophobic influence on the state on the other, lies not so muchin the quasi-religious vision of communities that are regarded as homogeneous;rather, the decisive difference lies in the radical nature and intensitywith which the homophobic ideology was implemented during the Nazi periodin the form of state persecution measures.➃ Regional research conducted over the last five years in particular hasshown that the persecution of homosexual men was pursued systematicallyand with increasing urgency. It started with raids and concentration campinternments, and was intended as a deterrent. At the same time, theGestapo built up persecution structures, and from 1936 tried to recruit thepolice’s criminal investigation department for systematic persecution by anationwide mobilization. They succeeded partly because the criminal investigationdepartment was within Himmler’s sphere of influence, and partlybecause of his well-known threat that one of his criteria for judging theirwork would, in the future, be the amount of progress they made in persecutinghomosexuals. The criminal judiciary also significantly contributedtowards intensifying persecution. The drastic tightening of the special criminallaw against homosexuals in 1935 greatly intensified persecution; lendingit legitimacy and a legal character, and considerably expanding thescope of measures implemented. The pressure on the criminal judiciary toprosecute, and their keenness to serve the regime, made them just as fer-50