ABSTRACT
With the support of new legal definitions of crime, a tightly knit national police and security apparatus, and a public opinion manipulated by propaganda and demagogy, the rate of prosecutions greatly increased after 1936. Whereas just a thousand people were convicted in 1934, there were already 5310 in 1936. Two years later, the statistics referred to 8562 legally valid convictions. The police and prosecution departments, in the words of a regular commentary on crime figures, acted ‘with ever growing vigourₑ against ‘these moral aberrations which are so harmful to the strength of the Volk’ 15 And Prosecutor-General Wagner stressed what one could not have expected to be otherwise after all the investment in propaganda and police searches: ‘the public, through its increased level of reporting, also [supports …] the fight against these offences. Broadly speaking, no more homosexual acts were committed […] than before, but they were recorded and prosecuted on a much larger scale than before.’ 16 Whereas between 1931 and 1933 a total of 2319 persons were put on trial and found guilty of offences under §175 of the Penal Code, this figure rose nearly tenfold in the first three years after the tougher redefinition of offences. In the years from 1936 to 1938 the number convicted came to 22,143. No reliable data are available for the war years after 1943, so that the total number of convictions for homosexuality in the ‘Third Reich’ can only be estimated — roughly 50,000 men according to Wuttke. But the Gestapo or the Reich Offfice had considerably more on record as suspects or as presumed partners. Between 1937 and 1940 there were more than 90,000 men and youths. 17
