Radicalisation - Policies Towards Asocials and Homosexuals

Who were asocials

• Term used by Nazis to describe people who were deemed to be social outcasts

• Included criminals, the ‘work shy’, tramps, beggars, alcoholics, prostitutes, homosexuals and juvenile delinquents

• Nazi policies introduce tough measures against them and gives the police more power to enforce them

Policies towards asocials

• September 1933 - regime began a mass round-up of ‘tramps and beggars’, many were young homeless, unemployed people

• Nazis did not have enough space in concentration camps to house all of these people (roughly 300,000-500,000)

• Nazis began to differentiate between ‘orderly’ and ‘disorderly’ homeless - orderly were fit to work, no convictions, disorderly were sen as criminals and sent to camps

• 1936 - before the Olympics in Berlin, the police rounded up large numbers of ‘tramps and beggars’ from the streets in order to create an image of a dynamic society to the rest of the world

• 1936 - an ‘asocial colony’ was set up - known as Hashude, in northern Germany - with the aim of re-educating asocials so they can be integrated into society

• 1938 - even bigger round-up of beggars - most were send to Buchenwald concentration camps and few survived the harsh treatment

Nazi views of homosexuals + the beginning of policies towards them

• Homosexuality was outlawed in Germany before 1933

• Most Nazis viewed homosexuals as degenerate, perverted and a threat to the racial health of German people

• 1933 - The beginning of a Nazi purge of homosexual organisations and literature - clubs were closed down, organisations for gay people were banned and gay publications were outlawed

• May 1933 - Nazi students attacked the Institute of Sex Research (a gay organisation), and burned its library

• They also seized the institute’s list of names and addresses of gay people - how the persecution of gay people began

1934-35 policies towards the homosexuals

• 1934 - the Gestapo began to compile lists of gay people

• In the same year, the SS eliminated Rohm and other leaders of the Nazi SA who were homosexuals

• 1935 - the law of homosexuality was amended to widen the definition of homosexuality and to impose large penalties on those convicted

• After the law was changed - over 22,000 men were arrested and imprisoned between 1936 and 1938

1936-38 policies towards the homosexuals

• 1936 - Himmler created the Reich Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion

• 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality - 50,000 of which were convicted

• Some held in camps or rearrested by the Gestapo or SS even after serving time in prison

• Many imprisoned were subjected to ‘voluntary castration’ to ‘cure’ them of their’ perversion’

• 60% of gay prisoners died in the camps

• Lesbians did not suffer the same degree of persecution as they were considered to be ‘asocial’ rather than degenerate