According to the official rationale, Paragraph 175 was amended in the interest of the moral health of the Volkthe German peoplebecause "according to experience" homosexuality "inclines toward plague-like propagation" and exerts "a ruinous influence" on the "circles concerned" [REF].
In contradistinction to normal police, the Gestapo were authorized to take gay men into preventive detention (Schutzhaft) of arbitrary duration without an accusation (or even after an acquittal).