The years leading up to World War II and during the conflict saw great changes in the sexual habits of European societies. In the occupation years, as the French dealt with their humiliating defeat and surrender, the morality of sex in Vichy France changed. Within Germany in the s, many German Protestants and German Catholics shared the view that Jewish people were responsible for the sexual immorality that pervaded Weimar Culture.
Many church leaders supported the Nazis, welcoming radical measures against "public immorality" that included shutting down brothels, gay and lesbian bars, and nudist organizations. In the early s, Germany, and particularly Berlin , had developed a reputation for relaxed sexual mores. Until then, many bars frequented by members of the SA were well known as gay establishments, and there was no perceived tension between activism for greater rights for homosexuals and right-wing politics.
All of that would change when the virulently homophobic Heinrich Himmler became one of the most powerful people in the Third Reich. Close to half had been convicted, sent to labor camps , prisons, or penitentiaries, subjected to medical experiments , or forced to have sex with female prostitutes.
The association between sex, homosexuality, and Jewish people was supported by Catholic and Protestant church leaders and ultimately the Nazi regime. The reorganization of sexuality was at the heart of the Nazi project. It would be a mischaracterization, however, to declare that the Third Reich was repressive for everyone. For those who did not fall prey to its animus, the Nazi regime's overall goal was not to suppress sexuality, but to foster it as a distinctly Aryan privilege.
Nazi sexual politics harnessed two competing tendencies, playing into either when politically expedient: conservative currents of consternation and concern with sex on the one hand, and the greater historical trend of liberalization of heterosexual norms on the other, in order to execute a viciously homophobic and racist agenda.
