'The Most Unkindest Cut of All': Castration, Homosexuality and Nazi Justice

@article{Giles1992TheMU,
  title={'The Most Unkindest Cut of All': Castration, Homosexuality and Nazi Justice},
  author={G. Giles},
  journal={Journal of Contemporary History},
  year={1992},
  volume={27},
  pages={41 - 61}
}
  • G. Giles
  • Published 1992
  • History
  • Journal of Contemporary History
During the course of the Third Reich some 400,000 people were deemed unworthy of having children and sterilized. Recent research has begun to uncover the extent of these appalling abuses committed not by nazi thugs, but by respectable physicians.2 In the University Clinic at Freiburg im Breisgau, over one thousand women were forcibly sterilized during this period.3 These 'crimes against humanity' are not such that can be blamed on a relatively small number of fanatics in the SS. Sterilization… Expand
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30 Citations

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Voluntary and therapeutic castration of sex offenders in The Netherlands (1938–1968).
Abstract Between 1938 and 1968 some 400 sex offenders in the Netherlands who by court orders had been put at ‘the discretion of the government’ and were incarcerated in asylums for the criminally… Expand
Medicine, Male Bonding and Homosezxuality in Nazi Germany
Homosexuals were among those persecuted in nazi Germany. Various researchers have explained this in terms of National Socialist racist ideology and eugenics, because the, nazis justified their… Expand
The Denial of Homosexuality: Same-Sex Incidents in Himmler's SS and Police
IN P U B L I C , Heinrich Himmler minimized the existence of same-sex sexuality within the elite Schutzstaffel (SS). “In the whole of the SS there occur about eight to ten cases per year,” Himmler… Expand
Eugenic and sexual folklores and the castration of sex offenders in the Netherlands (1938-1968).
  • T. van der Meer
  • Medicine
  • Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences
  • 2008
TLDR
This article shows that thinking about social and sexual problems and their solutions in the 1930s were permeated by eugenic folklore which in turn was informed by sexual folklore. Expand
Eugenic and sexual folklores and the castration of sex offenders in the Netherlands (1938-1968).
TLDR
This article shows that thinking about social and sexual problems and their solutions in the 1930s were permeated by eugenic folklore which in turn was informed by sexual folklore. Expand
Sex crimes and the new punitiveness.
  • J. Pratt
  • Psychology, Medicine
  • Behavioral sciences & the law
  • 2000
TLDR
The article argues that the reasons for these shifts lie in the profound economic and social changes that have taken place in Western societies over the course of the last two decades or so. Expand
Sexuality and Nazism: The Doubly Unspeakable?
TH E H I S T O R Y O F S E X U A L I T Y in Nazi Germany unites two subjects vulnerable to sensationalist coverage: sex and Nazism. Film scholars have observed a tendency to eroticize National… Expand
Castration of male sex offenders in the Nordic welfare state in the context of homosexuality and heteronormativity, 1930–1955
The eugenic legislation was a defining aspect in the development of the Nordic welfare state. While sterilization is a widely recognized method of restricting reproduction, another part of the… Expand
Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci.
article i nfo abstract This contribution questions the positive/negative eugenics dichotomy that typifies the historiography on the eugenic movement in the Netherlands and the claim that this… Expand
Study of deaths by suicide of homosexual prisoners in Nazi Sachsenhausen concentration camp
TLDR
It is concluded that committing suicides in Sachsenhausen was a common practice, although accurate data is impossible to obtain and not much data is available from other camps to compare. Expand
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