Gay soldiers in the Wehrmacht

[Jaybird]

A topic on gay bars in the "Life in the Third Reich"-section made me think of this:

How hard was life for gay soldiers in the Wehrmacht? Of course they couldn´t be openly gay, thats for sure, but I guess now and then, people would find out.

I have once talked to a gay man who was drafted to the Kriegsmarine (the Navy-cliché ). We didnt talk about the military, but in terms of daily life, he told me that of course he was careful - still, many people where more tolerant than one would think, at least in big cities.

So is there any info on how gay soldiers where treated by their fellow soldiers? Where they some sort of funny outsider types, but still accepted, or where they really having a hard time?

[Bjørn from Norway]

Hello!
Very difficult to anwer correct. An example:

during the occupation of Norway, the German soldiers were popular among many girls and women, but less known - also by the gay ghetto environments. Numerous contacts were made between German soldiers and Norwegian homosexuals. German authorities did look the other way, it seems, as the only few arrests were made by Norwegian police, and that after several reports.
After the war, the girls were usually treated very bad, but nothing happened to the girls.

There are also known examples of "secret" gays appearing as Norwegian SS volunteers. This was known by many, but not accepted. Not many were turned in, so I guess it was the practice of keeping the eyes and ears in another direction.

B

[valtonen]

It is a documented fact that in Finland the German soldiers were told to be very careful in liasons with the opposite sex. It was not totally forbidden, but greatly discouraged. Therefore, many of the lower officers advised their soldiers to stick to men in getting a needed biological release - and so they did. Especially the Esplanade in central Helsinki was notorious to be "dangerous for finnish young men" just as the vicinnites of all garrisons. On the front the german Waffenbrüders were concidered by finnish soldiers to be a bit odd, because they "preferred" only masculine sex, which a clear no-no in the finnish army.

Artist Tuomo Laaksonen, better known in the world as "TOM OF FINLAND" due to his pornograpgic pictures of leather and/or military cled men having sex with one another, was a soldier during WW2 in Finland, and he greatly admired the uniformed german soldiers. He even had several steady german boyfriends with quite a range of military ranks.