How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"I know Esser is a scoundrel," Hitler retorted in public, "but I shall hold onto him as long as he can be of use to me." This was to be his attitude toward almost all of his close collaborators, no matter how murky their past—or indeed their present. Murderers, pimps, homosexual perverts, drug addicts, or just plain rowdies were all the same to him if they served his purposes. (1.2.84)
It seems clear that "murderers," "pimps," and gay men were "all the same" to Shirer too, albeit in a different way than they were "all the same" to Hitler.
Quote #5
But the brown-shirted S.A. never became much more than a motley mob of brawlers. Many of its top leaders, beginning with its chief, Roehm, were notorious homosexual perverts. Lieutenant Edmund Heines, who led the Munich S.A., was not only a homosexual but a convicted murderer. These two and dozens of others quarreled and feuded as only men of unnatural sexual inclinations, with their peculiar jealousies, can. (2.5.15)
Wow. Just... wow. Even though some might argue that Shirer's views were not unusual in his time, the association that he makes here between homosexuality and the criminal act of murder is really over the top. Once again, Shirer seems to be implying that men like Roehm were not simply gay in addition to being Nazis, but rather that their homosexuality and Nazi allegiances were somehow part of the same spectrum of "perversion."
Quote #6
No other party in Germany came near to attracting so many shady characters. As we have seen, a conglomeration of pimps, murderers, homosexuals, alcoholics and blackmailers flocked to the party as if to a natural haven. (2.5.19)
Shirer is starting to sound like a broken record at this point. Is it weird to want to talk out loud to him in passages like this? Like, we get it, dude: you think gay men are perverts. But how's about you get back to that other thing you're supposed to be telling us about—you know? What the members of the Nazi Party actually did?