The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals

This is the first comprehensive book in English examining the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. Richard Plant, a German refugee, investigates the climate and conditions that enabled a systematic campaign against Germany's gay population, directed by Himmler and his SS. The campaign resulted in tens of thousands of arrests and thousands of deaths. Homosexual prisoners were sent to death camps, where they were forced to wear pink triangles and occupied the lowest position in the camp hierarchy. Plant draws on diaries, previously untranslated documents, and interviews and letters from survivors to document how the persecution was conducted, the ideological beliefs that motivated it, those responsible, and those who suffered. The book uses German-language sources alongside survivor testimony to illuminate this aspect of twentieth-century history.