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Nazi’s also annihilated the burgeoning gay scene in Berlin, which until then had been known as one of the most sexually liberal cities on Earth.

Berlin’s famous Eldorado club had been an advertised interwar destination for transvestites and transsexuals, for example. Soon after Hitler was appointed German chancellor in 1933, it was turned over under pressure to the SA, the Nazi Party’s paramilitary arm, and was soon shrouded with swastikas.

A press release for Soldier Studies notes that the photos “most definitely contradicted National Socialist ideology.” Dammann also noted that many of the photos aren’t inherent expressions of transvestism, but of men who were simply desperate to see a woman, even a fake one.

One particularly striking photo shows a German forest encampment. Standing in front a tank, a man in a dress appears to be serenading the troops with a sensual cabaret number. “I think these actors were both homosexuals and heterosexual,” Dammann said in an interview with DW English.

Many of the photos are stripped of any identifying features; Dammann would have simply found them in German family photo albums without context. Names of most of the participants are not known, as well as whether they survived the war or what they may have done.

The light air of many of the photos stands in contrast to the fact that they still depict members of one of the most genocidal and destructive armies in modern history. Even the German units at the front lines of the Holocaust left behind similar photo albums filled with similar innocent-looking scenes of merry-making. A shocking 2007 photo exhibition by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for instance, showcased photos of SS officers dancing and decorating Christmas trees only steps away from the gas chambers of Auschwitz.