The Pink Swastika

The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party

Cover of the first edition
Author	Scott Lively Kevin Abrams
Language	English
Subject	Nazi Germany
Published	1995
Media type	Print (paperback)
ISBN
LC Class	DD256.5 .L55

The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party is a book first published in 1995 by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams, and currently in its 5th edition. The book has drawn criticism from historians.

According to the authors, homosexuality found in the Nazi Party contributed to the extreme militarism of Nazi Germany. The title of the book, as well as the book itself, is a reference to The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals, a book in which Richard Plant details homophobia in the Nazi Party and the homosexual victims of Nazism. Lively and Abrams also take up the subject of Nazism in America and discuss the Boy Scouts. They state that many leaders in the German Nazi regime, including Adolf Hitler himself, were homosexual and says that eight of the top ten serial killers in the US were homosexuals. They claim that persecution of homosexuals was only directed towards feminine homosexuals. One significant source for The Pink Swastika was Samuel Igra's Germany's National Vice, which Lively refers to as "the 1945 version of The Pink Swastika."

Erik N. Jensen regards the authors' linkage of homosexuality and Nazism as the recurrence of a "pernicious myth", originating in 1930s attacks on Nazism by Socialists and Communists and "long since dispelled" by "serious scholarship". Jensen sees the book as coming about in "the aftermath of an Oregon measure to repeal gay rights". Dorthe Seifert cites it as a response to increasing awareness of Nazi persecution of homosexuals. Christine L. Mueller argues that the historical record does not support Abrams' assertions. Bob Moser, writing for the Southern Poverty Law Center, says the book was promoted by anti-gay groups and that historians agree its premise is "utterly false".