Homosexuality
-
I know that some people may be offended by the title, and to be honest, that is their loss. I am simply using the terminology used in the 1930s and 1940s. The experiences of lesbians in Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, were complex and multifaceted, shaped by broader Nazi ideologies and policies on sexuality,…
-
I am always surprised why there is so little known about Danish war crimes in the context of the Holocaust. Is it that perhaps most of the Danish Jews survived? Are we, therefore, given the Danes a pass? Something I said many times before when it comes to the Holocaust is that none of the…
-
Die Geheime Staats Polizei, better known as the Gestapo, was set up on the 26th of April 1933, 93 years ago today. The Gestapo was an essential element in the Nazi terror system. The Gestapo ruthlessly eliminated opposition to the Nazis within Germany and its occupied territories and, in partnership with the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service),…
-
This blog is not to judge the women who had sex with the Nazis during World War 2. It is just to highlight the fact that it did happen, not only in brothels, but that is where I will focus on in this blog. I could have called the blog “Sleeping with the enemy” but…
-
Paragraph 175 was a law which was introduced on May 15, 1871, in Germany, just after Otto von Bismarck unified Germany into a nation-state, forming the German Empire. Ironically the law remained in place until a few years after the other German re-unification. The law was abolished in 1994. It made sexual relations between males…
-
Gilbert Bradley was a British man who became known through his poignant love letters from World War II. Drafted into the army in 1939, he met and fell in love with Gordon Bowsher, a wealthy man who worked for his father’s shipping business. Their relationship flourished in secrecy, as homosexuality was illegal in Britain at…
-
When you look at the picture, you would assume it is the mugshot of a hardened criminal. But you couldn’t be further from the truth. The picture is of Hans Scholl. He was arrested and later murdered for exposing the criminals that arrested him. There wasn’t an awful lot of resistance in Germany against the…
-
This is not a scientific fact it is solely based on my own observations. It seems to be that a lot ,if not all, dictators behave like a toddler. The whole world revolves around them and they get very cross if someone doesn’t want to play with them. Hitler was one of these toddler like…
-
It should come as little surprise that away from the carnage of the Western Front, soldiers sought solace in whatever pleasures they could find. Amid the chaos of the First World War, the harsh realities of trench warfare often fueled desires as primal as the will to survive. During the bloodiest phases of the war,…
-
Heroes don’t always wear capes or dressed in uniforms. Sometimes, they are just ordinary people. I say ordinary, but they are often anything but ordinary, as with Fredy Hirsch. I first heard of Fredy a few years ago. As a birthday gift, I recently received the book The Librarian of Auschwitz. While the story centres…
History of Sorts 