After the purge, homosexual men in Nazi Germany were systematically persecuted. According to Werner Best, Himmler believed that the capture of the state by homosexuals had been narrowly averted. Himmler became determined to hunt down and eradicate homosexual cliques in the Nazi security apparatus. By 1945, Nazi leaders were praising Röhm's ideas about reforming the army and ultimately blaming his homosexuality (rather than their murder of him) for the failure to put these ideas into practice, which they held responsible for the loss of World War II. Goebbels claimed that if Röhm had not been "a homosexual and an anarchist... in all probability some hundred generals rather than some hundred SA leaders would have been shot on 30 June".
