At the forefront of the first LGBT rights liberation movement before the Nazis and World War 2 came was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee of Germany.

Reports of gays in Chechnya being rounded up in concentration camps brought to mind similar gay concentration camps set up by the Nazis.

Before and during World War 2, the Nazi regime went after gays using Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code. The persecution continued after the war.

Struggling for recognition, lesbians celebrated who they were in the cabarets of Europe and the United States before the start of the Second World War.