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Posted on 10/05/2001 1:36:59 PM PDT by CommiesOut

New book lifts covers on Hitler's "gay friendships"

    BERLIN, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Adolf Hitler had numerous 
homoerotic friendships in the 1920s and the dictator's later 
life can only be understood by taking into account his gay 
preferences, a German historian said on Friday. 
    In a book to be launched at next week's Frankfurt book fair, 
Lothar Machtan, Modern History Professor at Bremen University, 
hopes to shed new light on old speculation that the Nazi leader 
was a closet homosexual. 
    "Adolf Hitler was fond of men. He had a homosexual nature," 
Machtan told Die Welt daily in an interview due for publication 
on Saturday. "This seems at first quite trivial. But it is a 
detail that helps us to see his biography from another angle." 
    Machtan, author of "Hitler's secret -- the double life of a 
dictator", said the subject had been taboo among historians, 
partly because examining Hitler's private life might be seen as 
a step towards humanising him and excusing his crimes. 
    Machtan said there was also no irrefutable proof that Hitler 
was gay. 
    "The job of the historian is to examine the facts and put 
them together in a plausible way. From them comes indicative 
evidence that Hitler was fixated on his own sex his whole life, 
but a mistake in that can never be ruled out," he said. 
    "One must be very careful with the expression 'homosexual 
activities' because we do not know how Hitler lived them out. We 
can say that until the late 20s Hitler had a range of homoerotic 
friendships. Many of them were characterised by contemporaries 
as homosexual," he said. 
    Machtan said that from 1930 Hitler felt that his past could 
be used against him and this was behind his decision in 1934 to 
have killed many former gay friends from his time in Munich, 
including Ernst Roehm, the leader of his stormtroopers. 
    Tens of thousands of German gays later perished in 
concentration camps at the hands of the Nazis. 
    Machtan said he did not believe that Hitler's homosexuality 
had anything to do with his decision to murder Europe's Jews, 
although he said there was evidence that time spent living a gay 
lifestyle in Vienna had helped fuel his anti-Semitism. 
    Hitler suffered from prejudice against homosexuals but also 
benefited from his experiences in male societies in Munich where 
he learned to manipulate a kind of erotic charisma, he said. 
    "This kind of self stage-managing was completely new in 
those days. It was existential acting," Machtan said. "It 
initiated his career in the homosocial milieu of the men's 
associations and later on the stage of great politics." 
    ((Emma Thomasson, Berlin newsroom +49 30 2888 5142; fax: +49 
30 2888 5008)) 
 
05 OCT 2001 19:22:51

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