ABSTRACT
After the war, most of Europe was devastated, its physical infrastructure destroyed, its social institutions in ruinous disarray. Queer psychopaths, pansies, and degenerates were sometimes named as secret plotters, but there was a definitional problem: The psychopath acted mostly unconsciously, the degenerate was a rampaging beast, and the pansy was frivolous and silly – they lacked the cunning, foresight, or mental ability to collaborate with the Communists. The queer degenerates, inverts, and pansies of the pre-War era were sometimes portrayed as inclined to treason. The queer traitor took precedence over other queer criminals during the Cold War of the 1950s. British or American citizens defecting to the Soviet Union, such as National Security Agency analyst Bernon F. Mitchell and British Embassy employees Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, were invariably labeled "homos" on the flimsiest of evidence, or no evidence at all. Spying was in itself sufficient evidence of homosexuality, and homosexuality was sufficient evidence of espionage.
