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The allies weren't "fine with it". Homosexuals made up a small percentage of the total people in death camps, and the vast majority of the allies weren't even a
by learc83 10y ago
The allies weren't "fine with it". Homosexuals made up a small percentage of the total people in death camps, and the vast majority of the allies weren't even aware of them until the liberation.
Homosexual survivors were treated horribly because homosexuality was still a crime in Germany and most of the Allied countries after WWII. But the western allies weren't "fine" with systematically exterminating homosexuals or any other group--as evidenced by the fact that they ended the practice.
- avar 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragraph_175#Historical_overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragraph_175#Historical_overv... The allies discovered a bunch of gays locked up in concentration camps under a 1935 Nazi-enacted law, didn't repel that article similarly to e.g. laws against Jews when WWII ended and supported their re-imprisonment, nor did they make their times in the concentration camps count against their "crimes". Granted saying they were "fine with it" might be a bit of an exaggeration. But I don't think it's unreasonable in the face of historical evidence to think that the concentration camps would have been treated vastly differently by the allies if the only prisoners were homosexuals, given how the allies treated those prisoners upon their release. Which I think goes to show that the allied forces didn't have an intrinsic objection to what went on in the concentration camps, they just minded the target audience the Nazis picked.
- learc83 10y agoNot legalizing homosexuality isn't the same having no intrinsic objection to exterminating homosexuals. >they just minded the target audience the Nazis picked This makes no sense. Most of the allied countries had a long history of antisemitism. If anything, targeting the Jews should have made it less objectionable. No, I think they objected to killing millions of men, women, and children, using a horrific modern factory style process. No normal human (who wasn't slowly conditioned to accept it) who saw the result of those concentration camp could possibly have no intrinsic objection. The visceral reaction to seeing the bodies and the emaciated survivors would be the same whether the victims were Jewish or homosexual.