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[Morgan] The night has just begun.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
You are exactly where you want to be.
You feel confident, excited and seen.
Finally, you are with people who feel like you.
And for a moment, you forget that you are different.
Tonight, everything is possible.
[Zavier] Berlin is the place where everything is happening.
[Morgan] It's the capital of sin.
[Robert] There were 80 to 120 cafes, bars, clubs
that were almost exclusively targeting LGBTQ people.
[Morgan] There are queer and trans people all around.
[Robert] After the Nazis come to power,
we see the worst homophobic persecution in world history.
There are barely any other periods of history
where freedom and oppression
are as close to each other as they are in the 1920s and 1930s.
Even today, you can have these liberties and they can be taken away from you.
These people were living the type of life that I live now.
But it's only for a moment.
[Walter] It was a complete calamity for humankind.
And I was a member of that humankind.
[Morgan] You are coming up the street in Berlin
and you see a building on the corner
that has a fantastic sign out front.
And it says, "Here It Is Right!"
[cabaret music plays]
[she whoops]
[crowd cheer]
[Zavier] Of all the nightclubs that we have in the Golden Twenties,
the Eldorado is the most spectacular queer venue.
[Klaus] The Eldorado allows gay men, lesbian women,
trans men and trans women in Berlin
to feel free and experience self-determination for the first time.
[Morgan] One of the people you will meet here is Charlotte Charlaque,
a Jewish American-German intellectual.
She's traveled the world, she's lived in America, in Germany, in France
and is about to become
one of the first people
to undergo sex reassignment surgery in the world.
[crowd cheer and applaud]
[Klaus] In Berlin's nightlife, we see two new faces:
Lisa and Gottfried, a newly married couple in their early twenties,
like so many Eldorado guests, they are ready to just drift along,
to discover new things and experience new love.
[she laughs]
[Klaus] Lisa, full name Lisa von Dobeneck,
and Gottfried von Cramm have known each other since childhood.
They grew up on neighboring estates.
Lisa was born in to the Dobeneck family.
They lived 15 kilometers from one of our estates.
It was called the "Babylon of Sin"
because it's where we Cramms were free to do anything we wanted.
[Klaus] Lisa and Gottfried wanted to live the high life.
And of course, that's not going to happen in this rural environment.
So they're drawn instead to the magnet of wild Berlin.
[Zavier] There's also quite a lot of freedom that comes in.
Rights for women are coming through.
There's a lifting of censorship
and press has much more freedom to print what it likes.
And that creates a whole flourishing of queer print media.
THE GIRLFRIEND WOMEN LOVE
[Zavier] You had specific ones for gay men and for gay women.
And you even had ones that were specific to transvestites.
It's possible to talk now about sex more openly than it had been before.
It feels to people
like there's this complete revolution of the sexual order happening.
[Klaus] For the first time,
Lisa and Gottfried discover a world previously unknown to them.
And the Eldorado represents this awakening for them there.
[crowd cheer]
[indistinct chatter]
[tense music]
[Ben] So in the middle of this kind of fabulous glittering nightclub,
you'd probably be surprised
to meet someone who's on a first-name basis with Adolf Hitler.
This person is named Ernst Röhm,
has horrifying violent, anti-Semitic politics
and is one of the real key strategists and architects of the Nazi rise to power.
[Röhm] … with swastika flags blowing all across the Reich today…
[Ben] Röhm is a fanatical soldier devoted to and in love with war and killing.
And as a pure nationalist,
he never got over Germany's loss of the First World War.
[Röhm continues speech in German]
Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm
met around 1919 in the right-wing movement,
where they became fast friends
and they maintained a close friendship for years.
[Röhm] …to stand strong for all eternity.
[Ben] They bond over the dream
of making the Nazis into a movement capable of taking power.
Which is far away, for now.
So Ernst Röhm is gay,
is rather careless about being gay,
has many gay lovers and contacts.
His homosexuality is one open secret and something that's gossiped about.
Hitler is likely aware of the rumors about Röhm.
But he seems to prioritize Röhm's potential usefulness to him.
At one point Hitler seems to have been quoted as saying,
"His private life does not interest me
as long as he maintains the necessary discretion."
But as we'll see, the necessary discretion was not always maintained.
[cabaret music plays]
[Robert] This club attracted
an incredible spectrum of people
in terms of their politics or their world views.
ELDORADO HERE IT IS RIGHT!
What the Eldorado really represents
is Berlin's window of queer life to the world.
[crowd cheer]
[Zavier] Some of the queer performers at the Eldorado
become really mainstream stars in this period.
And one of them is Claire Waldoff.
[sings in German] Men out of the Reichstag!
And men out of the Landtag
And men out of the manor
We'll make it into a women's house
[Morgan] If you showed up to the Eldorado alone,
you needed to pay for a taxi dancer to escort you around the floor.
You can really check out this gender illusion
that's so famous about the Eldorado.
One night, Charlotte meets someone like her.
Not only is this person an intellectual like Charlotte,
she's also trans.
And her name is Toni Ebel.
Unlike Charlotte, she does not know what to do about this.
She's just escaped a terrible marriage.
She's about ten years older.
But the two become inseparable.
These kinds of relationships between trans women
are actually really common,
where regardless of what our sexual orientation may be,
we develop these deep sisterhoods
that sometimes cross the line over into being lovers
or life partners.
In part this is because
we live in a world where there aren't a lot of people like us.
And so when we meet someone like us,
we form deep family commitments to each other,
regardless of what shape that takes.
Toni has been trying for many years to live her life as a woman,
but she doesn't know where to go.
Charlotte Charlaque has the answer.
She introduces Toni to Magnus Hirschfeld.
[Klaus] Magnus Hirschfeld is also a regular at the Eldorado.
He loves observing queer life.
[Ben] He is, in his own right, a celebrity.
Everyone knows who he is.
[Morgan] He's a sexologist.
He's fascinated by studying human sexuality
and gender roles.
He fundamentally believes
that gay people and trans people
can achieve liberation and their rights
through the tools of science.
[Ben] He publishes, at a maddening rate,
books, pamphlets, his lectures.
He founded the world's first gay rights organization in 1897.
[Klaus] On the map of Berlin's queer city life,
there is one focal point for progressive thinking:
Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science.
[Morgan] There's a museum where you can see things like some frilly panties
that a German soldier wore in World War I.
You can find dildos, all kinds of things.
[Robert] It included space for a range of services for all people
who need counseling about their relationships,
any kind of STD, information on abortion and pregnancy,
the list goes on and on.
The Institute is also a social place for people.
It was a hub for queer people to go, a kind of a community setting.
[Robert] Just knowing that the Institute is there
is an important piece of information for many in the Berlin community.
One of the things that it specializes in
is trans identity and trans treatments available for those
who are struggling with their gender that was assigned at birth.
[indistinct conversation]
[Klaus] For Ernst Röhm, Magnus Hirschfeld embodies the enemy.
He is Jewish, a social democrat,
and he champions the rights of trans men and women.
Hirschfeld is the opposite of the masculine ideology
that Ernst Röhm publicly supports.
But both men have something in common, they are not openly homosexual.
Magnus Hirschfeld knows that being out
would jeopardize his reputation as a scientist.
And Ernst Röhm knows that it would expel him from the Nazi Party.
[Ben] Ernst Röhm seems to have had an enormous degree of confidence
that his personal friendship with Hitler
and his long personal history with Hitler would protect him.
Both in terms of the public at large and in terms of the Nazi movement.
And this allows him to be quite careless about his private life.
[Röhm] "Dear Dr. Heimsoth."
"Greetings, first of all."
"I can remember a number of same-sex feelings and acts
reaching back to my childhood,
but I have also associated with many women."
"Never, however, to my particular enjoyment."
[Ben] There's not much evidence of Röhm's interior life.
But we do have one real sort of treasure trove of that.
And it's a series of letters that he wrote to a friend
named Dr. Karl-Günther Heimsoth.
[Röhm] "All women are loathsome to me."
"I am not at all unhappy about my disposition,
even if it has caused me considerable difficulties at times."
"Deep down, I may even be proud of it."
"At least I believe so."
[Ben] And in these letters,
Röhm seems to become more and more confident
in identifying as homosexual.
This is a moment when the idea of sexuality itself,
heterosexuality, homosexuality, whatever,
the idea that a sexuality is a coherent thing that a person has,
is really quite fresh and being developed.
[Klaus] But there is also another reality.
After all, not all of Germany consists of big cities.
A large part of the country is rural.
For those in German towns and villages,
what is happening in Berlin and in other major cities is foreign.
They feel intimidated by these rapid changes.
[Ben] The pace of change
is a source of frustration for just about everybody.
If you're a radical, then change is happening much too slowly for you.
On the other side, if you're a conservative,
you're watching everything that gives your life depth and meaning washed away.
And it's that experience of being threatened by this change
that gives fascists fertile ground in which to spread their poisonous ideas.
[Hitler in German] We want to school the Germans
insofar as that there is no life without law
and that there is no law without power
and there is no power without strength
and that any strength has to be rooted in our own nation!
[Walter] To me, Hitler sounded like he always sounded when he gave a speech,
like a madman.
The yelling and the things he said.
And of course he talked about Jewish people, yes.
It was a horrible thing to listen to.
I didn't concern myself with it any further than that.
I was an innocent young man.
I had fallen in love, you see.
[plays piano]
[transitions into gentle piano music]
We had a villa in Sauerbrunn
where we used to spend all of our summers.
And there was someone else who also went there on holiday every year.
Lumpi.
That's how I met him.
He lived in Budapest and I lived in Vienna.
Lumpi and I became friends.
We did everything together.
I loved him. After all, why not?
[they laugh]
Sure, we were both Jewish.
But we didn't give it much thought.
We were pretty removed from it all, as one might say.
But there was tension in the air.
Not just in Berlin or in Germany, but everywhere in Europe.
[tense music]
[indistinct chatter]
So in 1931, Hitler appoints Röhm to be head of the SA.
The SA is the Nazis' paramilitary. They do the dirty work.
They destabilize democracy,
they fight other people on the street, they beat people up outside events.
Under Röhm, this force would grow to three million members.
That's an enormously important kind of backbone and insurance
for the Nazi movement.
The SA is a really huge part of the Nazis' plan to take control of Germany
and to establish a racially pure empire
free of Jews, free of communists, free of disabled people,
free of Roma and Sinti people and free of queers.
[tense music]
[Kathrin] The SA recruited its members
mostly among lower class and lower middle-class young men.
Because of its relatively low standards for admission,
the SA attracted not only radical nationalists,
but also outsiders, eccentrics and quite a number of criminals.
[Ben] Karl Ernst is a storm trooper
who Röhm probably meets and recruits
out of this Berlin nightlife world.
And Ernst ends up joining the SA
and becoming a right-hand man of Röhm in the organization.
[Kathrin] The storm trooper, Karl Ernst, worked in Berlin,
sometimes as a doorman at gay and lesbian nightclubs,
sometimes as a bellhop.
[Ben] After joining the SA, Ernst begins to develop his own political ambitions,
even as he's living a gay double life.
So if we think about Röhm's life
in the military, in these right-wing paramilitaries,
he's someone who creates around himself an entirely single-sex environment.
You're living together, you're showering together.
You're going out in the streets and beating up Jews and communists together.
And all of this can have
a kind of erotic or sexual charge.
There is this hyper-masculinity.
"We are so much men
that we are actually disgusted by women."
"We don't want to look at them."
"And that doesn't make us effeminate, that makes us even more like men."
[Röhm] To the movement!
[indistinct chatter and shouting]
[Kathrin] There is one man in the Nazi movement
whom Ernst Röhm underestimated for a long time.
That is the Reich Leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler.
As a young person, Heinrich Himmler was very interested
in this kind of fraternity-based comradery.
But at the same time he always feared the danger in these male friendships
of giving rise to erotic attraction.
At this point in time, Himmler was the leader of the SS, the Schutzstaffel.
[Ben] The smaller paramilitary SS is below Röhm's much larger SA.
So Röhm and Himmler are competing in some way.
[Kathrin] To distance himself from the SA, which is widely seen as homosexual,
Himmler plans to forge the SS into an elite organization.
For him, this means that its members should ideally be blond and blue-eyed.
Therefore, Himmler seems to consider physical appearance
as ostensible proof of having "good Aryan blood".
[crowd cheer]
[indistinct conversation]
[Klaus] Gottfried von Cramm becomes a star during this time.
[commentator] After two extremely close games,
the German champion tears a muscle,
and from then on cannot really beat Ferré.
[Klaus] Gottfried, who started playing at the age of ten,
decides at age 13 that he wants to become the best tennis player in the world.
The moment he gets to Berlin,
he immediately joins this very famous tennis club, "Rot-Weiß".
And one of its members is Hermann Göring,
the eventual Interior Minister of the Nazi government.
Gottfried is a handsome man, a tall man.
He has blue eyes and blond hair.
He embodies the Aryan prototype.
And so early on, he is encouraged to join the ranks of the Nazi Party.
We know that Gottfried refuses,
and of course over the years that becomes more and more of a problem.
[indistinct conversation]
[optimistic music]
Of course we don't know the details of how they initially met.
But what we do know is that Gottfried meets a young man around his own age.
This young man he meets is Manasse, Manasse Herbst.
Gottfried and Manasse certainly come from very different worlds.
Manasse comes from a Jewish family in Scheunenviertel.
A poor Berlin neighborhood.
He's an actor, but to make ends meet, he works as a bartender at the Jockey,
a small jazz bar a few blocks from the Eldorado.
Maybe there was a moment of recognition.
[indistinct chatter]
[tense music]
But there's also a legal issue that poses a genuine threat to homosexual men:
Paragraph 175.
FORNICATION BETWEEN PERSONS OF THE MALE SEX IS PUNISHED WITH IMPRISONMENT
This paragraph criminalizes homosexual relations between men.
But it is tricky in practice
since many courts demand proof of sexual acts
to actually be able to apply the law.
And gathering that proof isn't exactly easy for the police.
[Ben] Instead of actually busting up bars or conducting raids,
what they do is they maintain "pink lists."
And these are lists of people that they suspect or know to be homosexual.
[Klaus] In many cases, people didn't even know they were on these lists
because they never ended up getting charged.
Eventually, these pink lists ended up including thousands of names.
FIRST NAME: JOSEF CRIMINAL CATEGORY: § 175
But Gottfried is this kind of person who, when he falls in love,
he pursues that love.
[gentle jazz music]
Gottfried and Manasse start seeing each other regularly.
Lisa, of course, knows all about it.
There is no secrecy, instead everything is out in the open.
[in German] What are you doing?
[they laugh]
Come here! Come on!
[Klaus] And now, the three of them start a new type of relationship,
which apparently works well for them.
[indistinct chatter]
For Lisa, the move to Berlin is also liberating.
She wants to live independently.
She wants to experience herself and life in a new way.
And she very quickly forms friendships
with the modern women of progressive Berlin.
She socialises with female authors, female athletes and female photographers.
It's important to note that Lisa is also a photographer herself.
She's an avid jazz dancer, she's an avid equestrian.
She plays hockey and even becomes the German champion.
And this stems from a broader movement that began even before the 1920s
where women were freeing themselves from being confined to the home.
Freeing themselves from the corset.
So she also has a tough demeanor and is very independent.
Relatively quickly, she starts having affairs with her lesbian friends.
She's curious and has a sexual appetite for adventure that she pursues freely.
["You Do Something to Me" plays]
♪ You do something to me ♪
♪ Something that simply mystifies me ♪
♪ Tell me, why should it be ♪
♪ You have the power to hypnotize me ♪
[song continues]
[Klaus] The relationship between Gottfried and Lisa
by this almost endless trust in each other.
That whatever they do, nothing is taboo.
♪.. so well, oh you…♪
ELECTION CAMPAIGN IN GERMANY
[Ben] So it's the spring of 1932.
Hitler's running in the presidential election.
The Nazis are running in the Parliamentary election.
[Kathrin] Shortly before they seize power,
the Nazis once again significantly increase their tactic of street violence.
There are massive street fights with fatalities.
The purpose behind all of this
is to demonstrate the instability of democracy.
And they present themselves as the party of law and order
that will restore the nation to security, order and peace,
if they win the election.
TAKE TO THE STREETS! ADOLF HITLER
[Klaus] It isn't really fear
that the German people associate with the Nazis
but hope.
Hope for a reinvigorated Germany
and the promise of a golden future.
Hello, good evening. Can I take your jacket?
[Zavier] So Charlotte, Toni and another woman,
Dorchen Richter, they have their surgeries now.
And they are only three examples that we know
had gender reassignment surgery at the Institute
and survived those surgeries initially.
These surgeries and these different procedures
were incredibly risky, they were very experimental.
These were some of the first times
when multiple surgeries were being performed on humans in history.
People would want to come to this place
precisely because there was no other alternative.
So its renown was global.
[Morgan] Charlotte and Toni must feel a huge amount of relief
that they were able to access surgeries while those surgeries were possible.
Now, having had the surgeries,
they feel much more content in their gender
and more solidified in their femininity.
Charlotte frequently proclaims
that the surgery has made her the happiest she's ever been.
[gentle piano and string music]
[Morgan] I can't think of another piece of film from this time
where you see not just one trans person,
but multiple trans people together,
really quite happy and joyful.
[indistinct chatter]
[Morgan] In Germany at this time,
if one of the drag acts at the Eldorado
walks out the door still in drag,
they can be arrested for causing a public disturbance.
[indistinct chatter]
This means that most trans people aren't able to live as themselves
without facing police repression.
Magnus Hirschfeld and the Institute
come up with a negotiated solution with the police,
which is to provide these people
walking papers or the "trans pass."
WORKER, EVA KATTER, IS KNOWN TO WEAR MEN'S CLOTHING
Basically an ID card that indicates to police:
You shouldn't arrest this person because they're under the care of a doctor.
And they are legally entitled to move through the public
dressed as the gender they identify with.
This is the first time in the world
that there's legal recognition for trans people's genders.
And now people like Charlotte and Toni,
they can walk freely, carrying this pass,
without worrying that a policeman is going to stop them
and say, "you're doing something illegal."
[Morgan] Queer and trans people can live in the light, in public.
And it happens right here in Berlin.
[peaceful piano music]
[train whistles]
[Walter] A few years later I went to Budapest
for my Easter holiday break.
I stayed with Lumpi, who lived on Andrássy Street.
I don't remember the exact address, it was near the opera.
During that first visit, we were up to so many shenanigans.
They didn't have a real bathroom.
They had what we in Vienna would call a "lavor".
His mom would fill it with water
and put us both, naked, into this makeshift bathtub.
And when Lumpi saw me, he got aroused.
When he saw me naked. I did notice it.
But we didn't touch each other or do anything sexual.
But I was always very flustered.
[he laughs]
[peaceful piano and string music]
[Kathrin] In the early 30s,
Hitler tries to come to power through legal means
by using as much propaganda as possible to get people's votes.
His goal is to take over parliament to then destroy it from within.
[Ben] The Nazis' biggest enemies
in some sense are the social democrats and the communists.
And the social democrats need to come up with a campaign,
something to do to try to stop the Nazis from coming to power.
[Röhm laughs]
CUPID IN THE BROWN HOUSE
RÖHM APPROVES THE SA PARADE
[Ben] Social democratic journalists get their hands on copies
of Röhm's letters to Dr. Heimsoth
and publish what they call "the love letters of Ernst Röhm."
"Revelations about Hitler's chief mercenary."
"The Welt am Sonntag paper is publishing a letter by Lieutenant Colonel Röhm…"
[Ben] An enormous scandal is made of this.
The social democrats really think that they have their silver bullet here
that's going to help them win back some elements of this base.
In March of 1932, as the scandal is breaking,
Hitler gets 30 percent of the vote in the presidential election,
which is a whole lot.
In July of 1932, after the scandal has been raging for a few months,
he gets 37 percent of the vote.
And so you can see, the scandal didn't work.
It's kind of a failed political tactic.
[he laughs]
Same sex!
I think if you're Röhm,
when this breaks in the newspapers, you're probably terrified.
When it doesn't have an effect
and the Party still cruises to this victory in the elections, its first ever,
you feel vindicated.
And even more importantly, you feel really unstoppable.
[upbeat jazz music]
[crowd cheer and whoop]
[in German] Germans,
fellow members of the German Nation.
On January 30th,
the die has been cast in Germany.
And I do not believe
that the enemies who were laughing back then are still laughing today.
[Hitler] Sieg!
Heil!
- [Hitler] Sieg! -Heil!
[Kathrin] On January 30th, 1933, Hitler is appointed chancellor.
[brass band plays march]
REICH CHANCELLOR HITLER!
[Klaus] Hitler becomes the Führer of his totalitarian regime.
[brass band plays march]
[crowd cheers]
[ominous music]
[Kathrin] There is no place in Nazi ideology
for self-determination or individuality.
Instead everything and everyone is in service of the bigger picture.
Every individual within this national community
has to defer to a higher purpose.
[Ben] The Nazis are enormously invested
in ideas of racial and social and sexual health and hygiene.
And that, of course, means producing racially pure and healthy babies.
Anything that gets in the way of growing the population
is bad and a threat to the nation.
[Klaus] Shortly before the Nazis seize power,
the Eldorado shuts down.
No farewells, no send-off.
And the queer community loses one of its most important hubs.
[Zavier] A lot of the people that were employed by the Eldorado
had a lot of their protections taken away from them
as well as job opportunities.
[Klaus] And then, the situation goes from bad to worse.
The Nazis start using the Eldorado as an advertising space.
ELDORADO HERE IT IS RIGHT!
VOTE FOR HITLER - LIST 1
[Morgan] It must have caused people's blood to run cold
to think that you could go so far in the extreme opposite direction
in the same building.
The Eldorado is closed
and all of the social spaces that had flourished for ten years before,
disappear almost overnight.
People are still queer but they haven't got the same kind of venues
where they can meet with each other.
They have to do this in a much more secretive way.
[somber music]
[Klaus] In 1933,
the life that Gottfried and Manasse had been leading changes drastically.
Manasse very quickly loses all his theater bookings.
Because he is Jewish, he's no longer allowed to work in the theater.
He realizes right away that he is no longer safe in Germany.
Everyone is aware of how quickly the situation is escalating.
Now, a question looms over the relationship:
how they can get Manasse out of Germany safely?
But Gottfried still wants to play tennis.
And if that means he has to play tennis for Nazi Germany,
then so be it.
The pressure is mounting.
He is in a romantic relationship with a gay Jewish man,
but at the same time his popularity is growing both at home,
and abroad.
And maybe he's thinking that as long as he can keep on winning,
the Nazi regime can't touch him.
So Gottfried plays for Germany because there really is no other option.
[tense music]
[Zavier] Despite the Nazis having already come into power in '33,
Charlotte and Toni felt comfortable going outside,
presenting themselves on the street,
having photographs taken
and even talking to a journalist really openly about themselves.
[Morgan] Everything seems to be okay.
You could still go to the Institute…
Charlotte is deeply enmeshed within Hirschfeld and his circle.
She provides advice to new trans people
who don't even know how to pick out dresses.
She helps people get access to housing.
Charlotte and Toni are finally living lives
and not just completing a medical process.
[Klaus] Magnus Hirschfeld meanwhile is touring the world.
Although he can't make public appearances in Germany anymore,
he's still being celebrated abroad.
[Morgan] He's already notorious
for being the Jew who's effeminizing Germany
and seducing the youth into homosexuality.
So he's really Nazi enemy number one.
Charlotte and Toni are starting to feel the heat.
The two of them make a decision to leave the Institute.
They move into a squalid one-room flat elsewhere in Berlin.
These two women
develop such strong feelings to each other
that Toni converts to Judaism.
I find it hard to believe
that anyone would be converting to Judaism at this time
if they didn't really love the person they were with.
After they've left, this is when the Institute is attacked.
[Robert] On the morning of May 6th, 1933,
a group of Nazi students ransack the Institute.
Nazi youths pull down all the shelves, they throw ink all over the research.
[Zavier] They destroy the library, they destroy the rooms.
This includes some 20,000 books.
[Morgan] They take pictures of themselves
gleefully destroying everything Magnus Hirschfeld has built.
[Robert] This must be one of the most devastating experiences
in Hirschfeld's life.
Hirschfeld is not at the Institute when it's attacked.
He is in Paris.
There are still employees at the Institute when the attack happens,
like Dorchen Richter.
The Institute was her home and place of work and it was destroyed.
And from what we know, she might have been destroyed along with it.
[Nazi] I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann,
Ernst Glaeser, Erich Kästner.
I consign to the flames the writings of the School of Sigmund Freud…
[Robert] Four days later, at the infamous book burning,
books from the Institute are burned on the Opernplatz.
[Nazis sing in German]
[Robert] There's even a photograph
of one of Hirschfeld's busts being carried to the flames.
[Morgan] These photos…
are deeply terrifying to look at to me.
Because they are actively trying
to destroy all evidence
that queer and trans people exist.
Once the Nazis are in power,
this also dismantles a lot of the opportunities
that were within Germany at the time for gender expression,
for playing with gender.
Women are meant to be in the domestic sphere at home.
They're meant to bear children for the country.
And men are meant to kind of embody masculine virility
and be able to go to war.
So this experimental,
expressionist, tolerant period is now over.
And it's been replaced with very, very rigid gender roles.
[Ben] In September of 1933, Karl Ernst,
who's one of Röhm's top deputies
and who he met in gay nightclubs,
very suddenly marries a woman.
[military march plays]
[Ben] The two best men at this wedding are Röhm and Hermann Göring,
who's Hitler's Minister of the Interior.
They walk down the aisle behind the bride and groom,
flanked by rows and rows of SA officers.
You can imagine why it might be very strategically useful for Röhm
to put on a big public show
and have a major SA officer like Karl Ernst marrying a woman,
as if to say, "No, no. These are all just rumors,
these paramilitaries have nothing to do with dirty or impure homosexuality."
In January of 1934,
Röhm receives a very warm personal letter from Hitler.
"I feel compelled to thank you, my dear Ernst Röhm,
for the imperishable services
and to assure you how very grateful I am to fate
that I am able to call such men as you my friends and fellow combatants."
"In true friendship and grateful regard. Your Adolf Hitler."
[tense music]
After getting this letter, Röhm is confident enough to demand, openly,
that he be made Minister of Defense.
And he be made minister in such a way
that would take the 100,000 strong German Army
and fold it into the SA and put all of that under his command.
[Kathrin] By the beginning of 1934, the SA has reached its highest count
with approximately 4.5 million members.
Now it has become a source of increasing problems for Hitler.
[Ben] And the idea of Röhm running the German military
horrifies conservatives in the German Army
who had enabled and gone along with the Nazis' rise to power,
but did not want to go along with losing their titles,
with losing their roles in this hierarchy.
And so this had to be stopped.
[Kathrin] For Heinrich Himmler, this seems to be the perfect moment
to lead his SS out of the shadow of Ernst Röhm and his SA
in order to expand his own position of power.
[Ben] Röhm's opponents in the Nazi movement,
like Himmler,
begin to propagate the idea that Röhm is planning to actually take over,
depose Hitler and pursue his own further revolution.
They end up succeeding in convincing Hitler
that this threat is imminent and he really has to act.
And Röhm's sexuality became a tool that they could try to use to stop him.
So it's the summer of 1934.
Hitler invites Röhm and the other top SA lieutenants
to take a well-deserved break on the Tegernsee in Bavaria.
And these guys are having a great time during these summer days.
[whimsical music]
[Ben] And so you can see, Röhm is not off in this lake
planning a takeover.
He thinks he's on vacation.
It's early in the morning on June 30th, 1934.
Ernst Röhm is asleep in his hotel room.
But Hitler and Goebbels are on their way to Bavaria.
So Hitler immediately goes to this hotel on Lake Tegernsee.
And together with this SS troop
personally bursts through the door of Röhm's bedroom.
When he gets into the room, he accuses Röhm of treason.
[Nazi in German] Get dressed!
[Ben] At this point, Röhm is maybe confused,
thinking this is all some kind of misunderstanding.
A lot of the other top SA men and Röhm are arrested
and brought to the Stadelheim prison in Munich.
Six of these men are shot immediately on the spot.
[Kathrin] Two days later ,
Hitler decides to make Röhm the offer to shoot himself.
[Ben] Röhm's response was,
"If I'm going to be killed, then let Adolf do it himself."
[Kathrin] It's only after Röhm refuses to kill himself
that is he shot by two SS captains.
On June 30th and over the course of the following two days,
approximately 90 people are shot and around 1,000 people are arrested.
Among them are not only Ernst Röhm and some of his SA men,
but also political opponents and members of parliament.
It is the first state-sanctioned mass murder of the regime.
The public had been told
that all of these people were planning a coup against Hitler,
but that wasn't necessarily a story that people were going to believe.
Hitler welcomed the SA murders,
saying that the sexual debauchery within the SA had recently gotten so out of hand
that it was supposedly damaging the reputation of National Socialism.
THE BROWN HOUSE OF HOMOSEXUALS
[Ben] Hitler gives a speech which reads, and I quote,
"I would especially like every mother to be able to offer her son to the SA,
the Party or the Hitler Youth
without the fear that he might become morally or sexually depraved."
"I want to see men as SA officers and not disgusting apes."
[crowd applaud]
[Walter] It was an enormous scandal.
It was on the front page of every newspaper.
[Hitler in German] I gave the order to shoot
the chief culprits of this treason,
and I gave the order to burn out these ulcers of our internal well poisoning
and the poisoning from foreign countries.
[Walter] I must have heard some kind of announcement on the radio
because I have a very clear memory of the moment I found out what had happened.
It was frightening for everyone.
No matter if you were gay or straight.
As human beings, persecution could happen to anyone.
And it showed us who Hitler truly was.
[Kathrin] With the SS having committed the murders of the SA members,
Himmler has once again clearly proven his loyalty to Hitler.
As a thank you,
Hitler grants Himmler's wish of separating the SS from the SA.
It is now directly under Hitler's command.
Which is exactly what Heinrich Himmler has wanted all along.
This ultimately lays the foundation
for Heinrich Himmler's career and rise to power.
After the Röhm and SA murders,
he takes over the leadership of the political police
in all German states little by little
until he eventually becomes chief of the entire German police force
as well as Reich leader of the SS and Gestapo.
[Klaus] Heinrich Himmler becomes the leader of the fight against homosexuality.
His goal is to eradicate homosexuality.
[Kathrin] "Homosexuality tears down any accomplishment
and destroys the state in its very foundation."
"For only the nation that has a great many children
has an entitlement to world power and world domination."
"Homosexuality has to be combated at all costs,
otherwise it will be the end of Germany, the end of the Germanic world."
[Himmler] It is the sword of the revolution
that the only enemy no longer causing damage
is the one who is dead and who is annihilated.
[Klaus] The previously compiled pink lists
are not only in the hands of the German police,
but also in the hands of the Gestapo.
There is then a wave of persecution and sentencing like never before.
[Zavier] Gay men are persecuted directly through paragraph 175.
But trans people and lesbians are also persecuted under the Nazi regime,
but through more indirect and complicated ways.
They could be targeted by being called "asozial"
or for not fitting into the Volksgemeinschaft.
Many of the people being persecuted
are also surprised by how quickly the police step in,
how quickly they end up in court.
They don't know yet how to protect themselves.
They have address books at home that suddenly turn up as evidence in court.
Snitching is particularly encouraged.
And the German people deliver.
Neighbors monitor whether you get a visitor
and pull the bedroom curtains closed.
Neighbors report women who wear pants and look butch.
So these individuals
who are no longer tolerated within Nazi Germany
are dealt with by the police.
And so we see that between 1933 and 1936,
Manasse tries again and again to find a safe place to live outside of Germany.
He and Gottfried try to meet up,
whether it be in Berlin or in cities where Gottfried plays tennis,
in order to continue their relationship.
It must have been very, very exhausting and also very oppressive.
They are young lovers after all.
And that ease suddenly shifts to these intense questions of:
"How can I get out of here? How can I get to safety?"
[tense music]
They meet up again.
But this will be the last night they can spend with each other for many years.
Gottfried transfers the prize money he won from various tournaments to Manasse,
so that in early 1936 Manasse is able to safely emigrate to Palestine.
[melancholic music]
He also loses Lisa that same year when she files for divorce.
We know from her later letters that she often regretted taking this step,
but also that she was convinced the she couldn't compete
with the huge love that Gottfried had for tennis.
She says that if she were to continue to live this life with him,
she would have to give up everything important to her.
Because there was barely room for her anymore.
One of the biggest tennis matches in Gottfried von Cramm's career
is the 1937 Davis Cup at Wimbledon
against his American opponent, Donald Budge.
Gottfried is one of the most popular athletes in the world at this time.
And the Nazi regime, of course, expects him to win for Germany.
There are 15,000 spectators in the crowd, including Queen Mary herself,
and people are watching from all over the globe.
There had never been anything quite like it.
And to this day,
this match is remembered as one of the greatest tennis matches of all time.
According to an anecdote from Donald Budge,
Gottfried got a phone call shortly before the match,
supposedly from Hitler,
threatening him that if he didn't win this game,
they could no longer protect him.
[announcer] Wimbledon finals,
where the big men's championship match
sees Baron von Cramm, German Davis Cup ace,
serve to California's Donald Budge,
Wimbledon Champion and this year's unbeatable Yankee.
Budge in the near court.
Deuce.
[crowd applauds]
[Klaus] As the match unfolds,
it seems likely that Gottfried will be the winner.
[announcer] Advantage von Cramm.
[crowd cheer]
Quiet, please.
Budge now in the far court.
[crowd cheer]
[Klaus] At the very end, in the fifth set,
he ends up losing eight to six
but he does what he also has also become famous for,
he honors the victor.
My dear Don, I want to congratulate you on your splendid playing.
I think you deserve to win every championship in the world now.
But I'll do what I can to prevent that.
You're such a grand sportsman.
That is very kind of you, my dear Donald. Thanks very much indeed.
[Klaus] That delighted the audience
because everyone understood
that while this tennis player might compete for Nazi Germany
he does not identify with Nazi Germany.
[crowds cheer and shout]
Which then poses the question:
does that still serve the regime?
After the defeat, Gottfried goes on a world tour,
where he rushes from one tennis tournament to the next.
At a press conference,
he is asked what he thinks about
the persecution of the Jewish people in Germany.
And he clearly states that he does not agree with it.
So he makes no effort to hide his distaste for National Socialism,
which means he is putting himself in more and more danger.
FREE GERMAN AUSTRIA GREETS YOU!
ONE PEOPLE, ONE REICH, ONE FÜHRER
[Walter] The Austrians became Nazis overnight.
[crowds cheer]
He had a crowd of 400,000 people cheering for him in the Vienna public square.
[Hitler in German] As Führer and Chancellor
of the German Nations of the Reich,
I now declare before German history,
the accession of my homeland to the German Reich!
[crowds cheer]
[crowd] Heil! Heil!
[oppressive music]
JEWRY IS GANGSTERISM
[Walter] When you went out in the streets,
the whole city was full of these posters that said "Jews banned."
There were posters everywhere you looked.
NON-ARYAN SHOP
HERZMANSKYARYAN AGAIN
But I still went out anyway.
I really was just wandering through the city.
Suddenly I see a crowd of people.
And there's my Aunt Gretel on her knees,
being forced to clean the pavement with a toothbrush.
JEW
[gentle piano music]
The day after Hitler came here to Vienna, this letter in a blue envelope arrives.
[Lumpi] "Dear Walter,
Since you visited, everything has become so dreadful in Budapest."
"You wouldn't recognize it anymore."
"'I'm also hearing dreadful things about Vienna."
"How are you? Are you safe?"
"My parents had to give up their business, even though we converted."
"They're trying to make us leave the country."
"But we have no family or close friends to go to."
"Except you."
"I'm very scared. The Nazis are everywhere here."
"And I'm terrified."
"Can you help us somehow?"
"What are you gonna do?"
"If you leave, please take me with you and write back to me quickly."
"Your Lumpi."
[Walter] It was a desperate letter.
I didn't answer it because I…
Well, at the time the letter arrived,
we were already in a very, very precarious situation in Vienna.
And then, that night,
they came into our apartment at two in the morning
and took my father.
They sent him to Dachau.
It was terrible. How could I have helped?
That was the end of Lumpi for me.
[melancholic piano music]
[in Hebrew] Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe.
who has sanctified us with His good deeds,
and commanded us to light a candle for the Sabbath.
[Kathrin] On the nights of the 9th and 10th of November, 1938,
there's a Pogrom throughout the entire Reich.
It was long called Kristallnacht, or Long Night of Broken Glass,
to downplay its severity.
During these nights, synagogues burn all over Germany.
Jewish stores as well as homes are looted, robbed and destroyed.
Many, many Jewish people are arrested, and sent to concentration camps.
[Morgan] It must be an incredibly anxious time for Charlotte and Toni.
They make the decision to flee to Czechoslovakia
where they think it might be safer.
For now.
[Klaus] When Gottfried got back from his six-month world tour,
it's March and it's cold.
And on his first evening back,
he sits down for dinner with his mother and his brothers.
There was a dinner in Brüggen. The whole family was there.
And then suddenly, it's like knock, knock, knock on heaven's door.
My Grandma answered the door and came back looking all pale, saying,
"Gottfried, they're asking for you."
It was two Gestapo officers.
They immediately took him with them.
Next thing you know, he's in prison.
The arrest was really theatrically staged.
They could just as easily have written a letter
telling him to report to the police station.
But I think the Nazi regime pretty deliberately chose
to do this very publicly.
On May 14th, 1938,
Gottfried is sentenced to one year in prison for violation of Paragraph 175.
The cause is his five-year relationship with Manasse Herbst.
"We had to consider the aggravating fact
that the accused engaged in homosexual behavior
quickly after his wedding."
"But most egregious was that the accused,
with his standing in German sports
his world-renowned name and his overall position in society,
did not shy away from getting involved in homosexual activity with a Jew."
It's lucky that Manasse had already left Germany at this point.
Otherwise, he would have never survived this.
[Robert] During the period of the Third Reich,
it's estimated that 100,000 men
were charged under the German anti-gay law.
Some 50,000, it's estimated,
were successfully prosecuted.
Somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000
perished in concentration camps.
[Klaus] From the start,
the concentration camps were a deliberate instrument of Nazi terror.
[Kathrin] Prisoners marked as homosexual
faced particular cruelty
and rarely experienced solidarity from other prisoner groups.
BADGES FOR PRISONERS IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS
[Klaus] Homosexuals have to wear a pink triangle.
EMIGRANTS, BIBLE SCHOLARS, HOMOSEXUALS
[Kathrin] They are forced into hard labor
under the harshest, most terrible conditions.
They're given barely any rations and, as a result,
˙many of the gay prisoners die from these unspeakable conditions of imprisonment.
[Klaus] Some of them are abused in medical trials,
which not all of them survive.
They are also given the option of castration.
They are told if they get castrated,
they will be allowed to leave the concentration camp afterwards.
However, we know from various sources
that a lot of those who chose this option were not in fact released.
[somber music]
Many prisoners who were accused of homosexuality,
often based on reportings from their neighbors
do not survive imprisonment in the camps.
These prosecutions reach their peak between 1937 and 1939,
which is right before Hitler's war against Europe begins.
It's not like the genocide of Jews.
The Nazis don't think that they need to kill all homosexuals.
What they want to do is eliminate homosexuality.
[Kathrin] In 1941, Hitler puts Heinrich Himmler in charge
of the so-called "final solution to the Jewish question."
That means that Heinrich Himmler is tasked
with carrying out the order to exterminate German and European Jewish people.
In Czechoslovakia, the Aliens Police come for Charlotte.
[Morgan] She gets arrested
while Charlotte and Toni are celebrating their 10-year anniversary.
And she is about to be interned in a concentration camp.
[Morgan] Toni panics. And she runs to the Swiss Consul.
And alerts the authorities to the fact that Charlotte is actually American.
[Morgan] Eventually Charlotte is put on a boat and sent to New York City.
Toni thought on her feet about how to get her out of the situation.
Otherwise she would have been sent to an extermination camp.
It separates them for the rest of their life.
They never see each other again.
[melancholic music]
[somber music]
[Walter] I searched for Lumpi for the rest of my life.
I wanted to know where he was, what had happened to him.
Only now have I seen these pictures.
Only now have they been released.
He was in a labor camp and starved to death.
It's heartbreaking to me that he died like that.
The only thing I can say is that he didn't deserve that.
[gentle piano music]
MARTYRS OF WAR
Terrible. And what do I see?
Just this large stone.
A photograph of this large stone that says,
"Fülöp Loránt", 24 years old or maybe 25.
FÜLÖP LÓRÁNT 25 YEARS
[sighs]
In Vienna we say that there's a lot to come to terms with.
You can never accept something until you face it and come to terms with it.
Yeah.
As long as Lumpi isn't lost to history,
then I'm glad I did my very small part in preserving his memory.
[Klaus] Not knowing what happened to a loved one
is unfortunately very common for many Jewish victims.
For many of them we only learn where and how they were murdered
much later on,
or sometimes never at all.
After the war, gay survivors want to share their stories,
but they can't, it's too dangerous.
In 1945, the state-sponsored persecution of homosexuals
is not recognized as an injustice.
West Germany adopts Nazi Paragraph 175.
Society still considers homosexuals to be criminals and perverts.
Families remain silent, historians don't ask questions.
The persecution continues.
CRIMINAL CASE AGAINST GOTTFRIED VON CRAMM
In 1951, Gottfried like many other persecuted gay victims,
tries to get the paragraph 175 conviction removed from his record.
Without an expungement,
he can't secure visas to participate in tournaments
in the US, Great Britain or France.
There is a resulting trial
which Manasse Herbst returns to Germany for in 1951.
It's the first time since escaping
that he returns to the country that wanted to kill him.
And it's also the first reunion between Gottfried and Manasse.
[tense music]
Lisa is also questioned by the German court.
She confirms the relationship between Manasse and Gottfried.
For a fleeting moment, the trio fearlessly relieves the freedom of the 1920s,
during the extremely conservative 1950s.
…DECLINED AN EARLY EXPUNGEMENT
Like most other convicted homosexuals,
his expungement is denied.
He can't get his visa to compete
in the most important international tennis tournaments.
He does win other tournaments in countries where he's able to travel,
but he can't play in the really important ones,
expressly because he has a previous criminal conviction
under Nazi paragraph 175.
[Walter] I emigrated to the US in 1939
and have been living here happily ever since.
I became a composer
and have spent my whole life composing music.
[crowd applaud]
[Walter] I met someone in 1959, I believe it was.
His name is Howard Myers.
Thank you.
I have no idea why you buy such a huge cup of coffee.
[Howard] The truth was, we were shameless.
We didn't feel any shame.
We went to dinners with six married couples and us.
I wasn't shameless because I never doubted
that I'm able to do what I'm setting out to do.
[Howard] Walter did live for me.
He did everything for me in our first decades,
when we were younger.
And now he's 100 years old,
and only in the last 15 years
has he needed me to do anything for him.
Okay, it says, "The city of West Hollywood marriage certificate."
"This certifies that Walter Arlen and Howard Myers
were lawfully wedded on the second day of July 2013."
It didn't change anything.
It was just a quiet satisfaction.
He wouldn't have anybody to quarrel with without me.
[laughs]
[Morgan] Charlotte spends the rest of her life in Brooklyn.
She ends up becoming an actress.
But even though she's separated from Toni,
she creates new friendships among the artistic community.
And a lot of them don't know that she ever was trans.
[Zavier] She even managed to get her US documents
to certify that she was a woman with a feminine name.
And this was really important to her
as it cemented her kind of legitimate female identity.
[Morgan] I think about what I would do in that situation.
Do I need to flee? You know, where would I go?
[somber music]
After the war, Toni is able to return to Berlin
where she lives out the rest of her life as a painter and an artist.
[Zavier] We can see this period in the 20s, a hundred years ago,
as really exemplifying how fragile some of these liberties are.
Even today with the kind of progress
that has happened for queer rights and even trans rights,
that you can have these liberties and they can be taken away from you.
ELDORADO HERE IT IS RIGHT!
PANTRY AT THE ELDORADO
[Ben] The Eldorado's final venue is now a very fancy organic supermarket.
You can go to the place where people used to watch drag shows
and buy expensive avocados.
[Klaus] I think queer life in Berlin
had to completely reinvent itself.
And it's worked out pretty well
when you look at how the queer community in Berlin is really thriving
and how multifaceted and diverse it has become.
But were we able to draw on our past tradition?
I don't think so.
For a long time,
we didn't even know anything about the persecution of homosexuals.
And in that sense, today's queer Berlin…
certainly isn't a continuation in any way, shape or form
of the queer community of the 1920s.
That really was lost.
No names. No memories. Nothing.
[peaceful piano music]