Netflix Exposes the Secret Gay History of Nazi Germany

 

Netflix doc Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate examines the swinging LGBTQ haven in Berlin that was ultimately destroyed by the Nazis

THE ELDORADO, THE swinging, anything-goes nightspot that gives the new Netflix documentary Eldorado its name, was an LGBTQ haven during Germany’s Weimar Republic, popular among Berlin’s trans population and anyone else who liked to let their hair down in public. It was also, as the film’s subtitle puts it, Everything the Nazis Hate. Which didn’t stop burly Hitler confidante and head of the Nazi SA paramilitary wing Ernst Röhm, a not-terribly-closeted gay man, from frequenting the establishment. As the film explains, the SA had a strong homoerotic element, a disgust with women and femininity they somehow used to justify homosexuality – for a time, anyway. At a certain point, Röhm’s friendship with Hitler could only take him so far in a Nazi regime increasingly set on eradicating homosexuality.

Röhm is but one player in this concise, deftly told doc that uses the Eldorado as a launching pad into a broader story about being gay in Nazi Germany. It’s a tale of wild nights, forbidden relationships, and, eventually, horrible consequences, a decadent scene leading to a nightmare conclusion. The film never comes out and yells it, but it is also a reminder of the Final Solution tenor that still accompanies much anti-gay and anti-trans rhetoric and, increasingly, policy.

Some of this material has been covered in the 2000 documentary Paragraph 175, named for the provision of the German Penal Code that made sexual relations between males a crime (it wasn’t repealed until 1994). And of course, there’s always Cabaret. But directors Benjamin Cantu and Matt Lambert still find plenty of ways to make Eldorado feel fresh.  (more...)

Netflix Exposes the Secret Gay History of Nazi Germany