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69 of 97 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Worth 1.5 stars: I am so not convinced, November 10, 2001
It can take years for valuable works of foreign scholarship to be translated into English. All the more irritating that the one book Basic Books should translate almost contemporaneously should be this lemon. Lothar Machtan has done some useful research into the peripheral world of Nazi intrigue and blackmail. And the thesis that Hitler was gay is not completely implausible. But otherwise, this is a remarkably tendentious book. Some of the most impressive work in gay studies has been to examine the socialcultural millieu of the homosexual lifestyle. But from this book scholars like George Chauncey or Randolph Strumbach have clearly been wasting their time. For Machtan's portrait of early German homosexuality relies on the dated and partial work of Magnus Hirschfeld. Clearly not a subsitute for a thorough analysis, Machtan breathlessly cites Hirschfeld to state that homosexuals could be found in hostels (all of them?), the army (during mass conscription?), prison (under the fearlessly light regime that Hitler underwent?) and among lovers of Wagner (?!). Machtan does not distinguish between homosexuality, homosociality, misogyny, misanthropy, and contempt for independent women. There is little appreciation that one's sexual orientation isn't necessarily an invariable quality like the colour of one's eyes. There is no systematic discussion of gender ideology in the Nazi party that would put perspective on Hitler's views. The main evidence for Hitler's homosexuality, that he was cold and distant around women, suffers from the fact that Hitler tended to be cold and distant around men. If there is little evidence of any great heterosexual love in his life, there is no more evidence of any great homosexual one. Finally, and most unforgiveably, there is no real discussion of the Nazi ideology towards homosexuals, and no real systematic analysis of what they actually did to them. Clearly detailing Nazi cruelty towards homosexuals would complicate Machten's thesis too much. So much for general problems of evidence. What about Machten's specifics? On the inside cover 10 men are listed as the "homosexual or homosexually inclined men among Hitler's most intimate friends and supporters." The homosexuality of one of these men (Rohm) has been publicly known since the thirties. Another (Kurt Ludecke) was a homosexual blackmailer on the periphery of Hitler's circle. The evidence that the other eight were homosexaul ranges from plausible to weak to non-existent. Emil Maurice, Hitler's chauffeur, doesn't seem to be homosexual at all, and indeed his main sexual interest appears to have been in Hitler's niece. Most of the others were married, several had children. One of these was August Kubizek, Hitler's friend in pre-war Vienna. He was married with a child, and after the Anschluss a Nazi accused him of corruption. Nothing came of this, but Machtan gratuitously adds without evidence that this accusation was also an attack on his homosexuality. It suits Machtan to interpret the weak and naive personalities of Kubizek and Rudolph Hess, as homosexual ones, as well as friendships with homosexuals as evidence of homosexuality. Machtan devotes a chapter to the accusation of Hans Mend, who claimed that Hitler actively carried on a homosexual relationship during the first world war at the front. There are several problems with this, such as the fact that it is not corroborated by Hitler's other colleagues at the front, or the fact that before 1933 Mend had been convicted of petty criminal offenses, or that in 1932 Mend had tried to get money by writing a sycophantic account of Hitler's war years. Machtan devotes another chapter to the reminisces of two obscure pro-Nazi homosexuals, Hans Ziegler and Erich Ebermayer, which amounts to little more than gossip. He portays the night of the long knives as a cunning and well thought out plan to exterminate anyone who knew of Hitler's homosexuality. But Ian Kershaw points out in Hubris that the Rohm Purge was simply not that well structured or thought out in advance. Moreover, if Hitler was as promiscous as Machtan suggests, how could he be sure he would never be exposed? Why do people only trade in innuendo and never speak out directly? If Hitler sought to exterminate people who knew of his secret, why does Machtan quote, (second-hand of course) the evidence supposedly acquired by one prominent Bavarian opponent who later died peacefully in his bed? I could go on about the over-elaborate 1932 plot in which Hitler supposedly secretly slanders Rohm so he can look good defending him, a plot that could have backfired so easily. There is also the questionable assumption that all evidence of blackmail must have been about Hitler's homosexuality. And there is the misquotation from Mein Kampf. Hitler blamed the supposedly Jewish press in pre-war Vienna for attacking the Kaiser. Without any evidence from the text, Machtan states these attacks must have been related to the homosexual scandals in the kaiser's entourage. Indeed, Hitler's anger over these attacks must have been the cause of his anti-semitism! At this point Machtan is simultaneously reductionist, tendentious and disingenous, and so is his whole book.
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