Forthcoming Study of Homosexuality in Nazi Ranks: Stormtrooper Families

[J. Duncan]

This social science book takes a look at the relation between homosexuality and the early Nazi stormtroopers.

http://www.amazon.com/Stormtrooper-Fami ... 205&sr=1-1


"Stormtrooper Families: Homosexuality and Community in the Early Nazi Movement" by Andrew Wackerfuss

[seaburn]

I'd be interested in reading that.......It put me in mind of something I read in 'Hitler's Gladiator' - Charles Messenger. Page 46

Sefton Delmer a newspaper correspondent from the UK's Daily Express was based in Berlin in the 1930's. He flew with Hitler, Sepp Dietrich and the new 'SS-Begleit-Kommando 'Der Führer' from Berlin to Pomerania. He was intrigued by these 'body guards' and wrote as follows:

"....Four or five of them there were. But I can remember only Durr by name, a thick set, flat nosed, fair haired boxer with cauliflower ears. Some of the other men looked strangely delicate for bodyguards - almost effeminate. When they took photographs out of their wallets and started showing them round with remarks like 'isn't he sweet!', I began to wonder whether the Stabschef [Röhm] had a hand in their selection. But delicate though they looked, they were tough alright - as they showed us a few hours later that evening"

[wmco3]

"Stormtrooper Families: Homosexuality & Communtiy in the Early Nazi Movement" is now
published. Amazon may show it not-yet-availble yet, but it is--I have a copy. An early review is below,
along with the Amazon order link.

http://reviewsbyamoslassen.com/?p=38141

http://www.amazon.com/Stormtrooper-Fami ... r+Families

[wmco3]

Here's another review:

https://booksbymeri.wordpress.com/2015/ ... ackerfuss/

[wmco3]

Here are some more review of "Stormtrooper Families: Homosexuality & Community During
the Early Nazi Movement."

NEW YORK JOURNAL BOOK REVIEW
http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-re ... r-families

TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION
https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/ ... wackerfuss

[Haven]

This is the dissertation that was transformed into the monograph.

THE STORMTROOPER FAMILY: HOW SEXUALITY, SPIRITUALITY & COMMUNITY SHAPED THE HAMBURG SA
Andrew Thomas Wackerfuss

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgetown University, 2008.; Includes bibliographical references.; Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. The dissertation explains the attraction of the stormtroopers (Sturmabteilung; SA), the Nazis' paramilitary band of "political soldiers" in the city of Hamburg. It argues that social networks and personal relationships - including family ties, religious affiliations, and sexual bonds among stormtroopers - represented the primary means of recruiting and integrating new members into the Nazi movement. The SA emphasized the social, emotional, and political benefits that young men could accrue by joining the group, which established an array of social welfare systems during the dismal days of the depression. In return for food and housing, male camaraderie, a sense of ersatz family, and the promise of social and economic integration into the local community, young stormtroopers became the Party's foot soldiers. SA pubs and barracks were simultaneously places of refuge and sites of violence, where the stormtroopers were taught to strive for a sacrificial death that Party propagandists could use to argue for Nazi heroism, Communist criminality, and republican inability to maintain order in the German state.; Hamburg's stormtroopers claimed to defend their communities and families. The stormtroopers' justifications for their violence are unintelligible outside this local context, which in Hamburg often featured appeals to Hanseatic independence, economic autonomy, and gendered authority for aspiring merchant men over their families and neighborhoods. Stormtroopers claimed altruistic motivations and heroic self-sacrifice, but their main concern was with keeping their own threatened places in the local hierarchy. SA men mobilized political, racial, and gendered arguments for their own authority, worked to align differing organizations behind a common Nazi banner, and built structures that sheltered them from the inherent clash between their ideas and reality. The stormtroopers' political mobilization was thus a quest for local personal status carried out in the context of a national political struggle.

PDF Link: https://repository.library.georgetown.e ... sequence=1

[wmco3]

The book had been revised and edited. Most specialized dissertations can't be converted to
monographs easily, although there are exceptions.

If you don't care about details, then you may as well just read the earlier PhD dissertation.

If you want the complete revised and edited version, then the officially
published book would be the preferred publication.

[Michate]

THE STORMTROOPER FAMILY: HOW SEXUALITY, SPIRITUALITY & COMMUNITY SHAPED THE HAMBURG SA
Andrew Thomas Wackerfuss
...

IOW they successfully copied the communists.