Helmuth Klotz

Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) Social Democrats Germany Germany 1894–1943 ✕ Executed

Early Nazi and Beer Hall Putsch participant who became a Social Democrat, exposed Röhm’s letters and was executed by the Nazis

Publishing Röhm’s letters as Der Fall Röhm just before the March 1932 presidential election, he spearheaded the SPD’s anti-Nazi campaign that turned homosexuality into a weapon against a political enemy.

Born in Freiburg im Breisgau, he served as a naval air observer in the First World War. After the war he joined the German Völkisch Freedom Party, became a Nazi Party speaker in 1923 and was imprisoned for his part in the Beer Hall Putsch. Breaking with the Hitler–Ludendorff camp in 1924, he joined the Reichsbanner and the SPD in 1929 and wrote a series of anti-Nazi pamphlets. Just before the March 1932 presidential election he published Röhm’s letters to Heimsoth as Der Fall Röhm, and that May Nazi deputies led by Edmund Heines beat him in the Reichstag. Exiled to Paris in 1933, he exposed German rearmament, was arrested after the fall of Paris in 1940, sentenced to death by Roland Freisler’s People’s Court and executed at Plötzensee in Berlin in 1943.

Also known as: Helmut Klotz

Activities and affiliations