• Public

  • Public
  • Network
  • Groups
  • Featured
  • Popular
  • People

In 1945, Samuel Igra, a German Jew who had spent the war in England, published a book, Germany's National Vice, claiming that "there is a causal connection between mass sexual perversion" and German war crimes during both world wars. This was a new element not present in the 1930s antifascist discourse. Igra approvingly quoted British diplomat..., who wrote in 1938 that "The explanation for this outbreak of sadistic cruelty may be that sexual perversion, in particular homo-sexuality, are very prevalent in Germany." He argued that since both Judaism and Christianity have traditionally condemned homosexuality, "the Jews were the natural enemies of homosexual Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Röhm". Igra wrote: I think it is reasonable to hold that the psychological forces that let loose the sadistic orgies of the concentration camps, the mass murders in Germany, ... and the subsequent atrocities in the occupied countries may be attributed mainly to one source and that this source is the moral perversion which was rampant among the Nazi leaders and which had its typical embodiment in Hitler himself. British scholar Gregory Woods describes Igra's book as "a sustained and obsessive pursuit of the myth of Fascistic homosexuality". Igra's argument is undermined by his failure to explain the Nazi persecution of homosexuals or to justify his claim that homosexuality increases antisemitism. According to Woods, Igra's claims have "reappeared at regular intervals ever since the war".