The most emblematic of all deviants

Abstract

Within the context of the discriminatory practices and ideologies of the Third Reich, the prostitute is "the most emblematic of deviants."[1] The history of prostitutes under Nazi rule constitutes the intersection of a multitude of ethical, sexual, racial, political and historiographical issues. A look to regulation will reveal that, while the Third Reich's policy on prostitution did represent a radical break from Weimar policies of venal sexuality, one need not look far into Germany's pre-democratic past to discover the historical antecedents of the Nazis' "brothelization" of prostitution. What becomes apparent is that the ways in which prostitution was legally encoded in the Nazi state were in no way innovative; rather, it is the motivations behind regulation policy and sexual politics in general in the Third Reich that are horrifically revolutionary. The mobilization of prostitution for the sake of the Nazi war machine and racist and pronatalist policies is but one example of the ways in which sexuality was instrumentalized by Hitler to further the goals of the aggressively expansionist state.