The purge didn't happen because suddenly the party wanted to get rid of gay members. Gays were persecuted from day one and if Röhm had come out, he would have been gone before the purge. The reason SA was disbanded was because they lost the internal struggle for power in the NSDAP against the SS, which was much more elitist and not rooted in disenfranchised proletariat like SA.
As in "open secret" not openly gay. Nazis have never not been homophobic
that's... why they were a thing until the big internal purge, which happened when they were strong enough to literally cut out the openly gay bits.
ernst rohm was pretty fucking open about it.
The purge didn't happen because suddenly the party wanted to get rid of gay members. Gays were persecuted from day one and if Röhm had come out, he would have been gone before the purge. The reason SA was disbanded was because they lost the internal struggle for power in the NSDAP against the SS, which was much more elitist and not rooted in disenfranchised proletariat like SA.