While Adolf Hitler is today recognized as the central figure of Nazism, he was a less important player when the Nazi ideology was first composed.

The first leader was Ernst Roehm, who met Hitler at a meeting of a socialist terrorist group called the Iron Fist and "saw in Hitler the demagogue he required to mobilize mass support for his secret army" (Hohne:20). With Roehm's backing, Hitler became the first president of the party in 1921 and changed its name to the National Socialist German Worker's Party. Soon after, the Sturmabteilung (Storm Troopers) or the SA became its military arm. The SA was created by Gerhard Rossbach. Both Roehm and Rossbach were homosexuals.

Roehm "projected a social order in which homosexuality would be regarded as a human behavior pattern of high repute...he flaunted his homosexuality in public and insisted that his cronies do the same. What was needed, Roehm believed, was a proud and arrogant lot who could brawl, carouse, smash windows, kill and slaughter for the hell of it. Straights, in his eyes, were not as adept in such behavior as practicing homosexuals" (Snyder:55).

Rossbach wasn't just SA's father, he also built the largest post-war youth organization in Germany, named the Schilljugend (Schill Youth) in honor of a famous Prussian soldier. "Both Rossbach's Storm Troopers and the Schilljugend "were notorious for wearing brown shirts which had been prepared for German colonial troops, acquired from the old Imperial army stores" (Koehl:19). Rossbach was "the most important single contributor of the pre-Hitler youth movement" (Waite,1969:210). Rossbach's adjutant was Edmund Heines, noted for his ability to procure boys for sexual orgies.

One man who had a big influence on Hitler was Jorg Lanz Von Liebenfels. In 1958, Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Daim published Der Mann der Hitler die Ideen gab ("The Man Who Gave Hitler His Ideas") in which he called Lanz the true "father" of National Socialism. Lanz was a former Cistercian monk who had been excommunicated for homosexuality (Sklar:19).

In February of 1933, Hitler banned pornography, homosexual bars and bathhouses, and groups which promoted "gay rights" (Plant:50). Ostensibly, this decree was a blanket condemnation of all homosexual activity in Germany, but in practice it served as just another means to find and destroy anti-Nazi groups and individuals. "Hitler," admit Oosterhuis and Kennedy, "employed the charge of homosexuality primarily as a means to eliminate political opponents, both inside his party and out" (Oosterhuis and Kennedy: 248). Although Nazi rhetoric listed homosexuals among the unfit, the Nazis never targeted homosexuals for destruction. To the contrary, unless the homosexual in question was Jewish, or a political enemy, the Nazi organization was often protective of homosexuals.

Roehm and Rudolf Hess, two of Hitler's closest friends were not the only homosexuals on key positions in the Nazi party. Reinhard Heydrich, mastermind of the first pogrom, Kristallnacht, and of the death camps, and Walter Funk, Reich Minister of Economics (and Hitler's personal financial advisor) were also homosexuals. "The first years of terrorism against the Jews were carried out by the homosexuals of the SA. The first concentration camp, as well as the system for training its brutal guards, was the work of Ernst Roehm. The first pogrom, Kristallnacht, was orchestrated in 1938 by the homosexual Reinhard Heydrich." (Robinson:25).

On June 28, 1934 on 'The Night of the Long Knives" Ernst Roehm was killed. Hitler claimed it was because Roehm was a homosexual but this Hitler had known and accepted for 15 years. "Hitler eliminated his closest friend Roehm and certain SA leaders as potential rivals. The strictly political motivation of this ruthless power play was initially too obvious to be entirely denied, but later it was conveniently obscured by charges of homosexual depravity" (Haberle:369f). Otto Strasser, in his book, The German St. Bartholemew's Night (which has not been published in English), mentions sixteen of these highly placed homosexualist officials who survived the massacres of June 30 and retained their posts (Igra:82).

Some homosexuals were indeed interned in Nazi work camps. These were followers to a "gay activist" called Magnus Hirschfield, while the homosexuals on key positions among the Nazis were followers to Adolf Brand, another "gay activist". Brand's followers didn't accept the followers of Hirschfield.

Some of the guards and administrators responsible for the infamous concentration camp atrocities were homosexuals themselves, e.g. Max Bielas. "Max Bielas had a harem of little Jewish boys. He liked them young, no older than seventeen. He had a kind of parody of the shepherds of Arcadia, their role was to take care of the camp flock of geese. They were dressed like little princes...Bielas had a little barracks built for them that looked like a doll's house...Bielas sought in Treblinka only the satisfaction of his homosexual instincts" (Steiner:117f).

I think this homosexual dimension of the Nazi history is still being overlooked by a lot of people.