Home > New Pope had brief stint in the Hitler Youth Movement

New Pope had brief stint in the Hitler Youth Movement

by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 19 April 2005
40 comments

Edito Religions-Beliefs Extreme right

Ratzinger was just elected Pope, this was written a few days before his victory.

Justin Sparks, Munich, John Follain and Christopher Morgan, Rome

THE wartime past of a leading German contender to succeed John Paul II may return to haunt him as cardinals begin voting in the Sistine Chapel tomorrow to choose a new leader for 1 billion Catholics.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whose strong defence of Catholic orthodoxy has earned him a variety of sobriquets - including “the enforcer”, “the panzer cardinal” and “God’s rottweiler” - is expected to poll around 40 votes in the first ballot as conservatives rally behind him.

Although far short of the requisite two-thirds majority of the 115 votes, this would almost certainly give Ratzinger, 78 yesterday, an early lead in the voting. Liberals have yet to settle on a rival candidate who could come close to his tally.

Unknown to many members of the church, however, Ratzinger’s past includes brief membership of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service with a German army anti- aircraft unit.

Although there is no suggestion that he was involved in any atrocities, his service may be contrasted by opponents with the attitude of John Paul II, who took part in anti-Nazi theatre performances in his native Poland and in 1986 became the first pope to visit Rome’s synagogue.

“John Paul was hugely appreciated for what he did for and with the Jewish people,” said Lord Janner, head of the Holocaust Education Trust, who is due to attend ceremonies today to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

“If they were to appoint someone who was on the other side in the war, he would start at a disadvantage, although it wouldn’t mean in the long run he wouldn’t be equally understanding of the concerns of the Jewish world.”

The son of a rural Bavarian police officer, Ratzinger was six when Hitler came to power in 1933. His father, also called Joseph, was an anti-Nazi whose attempts to rein in Hitler’s Brown Shirts forced the family to move home several times.

In 1937 Ratzinger’s father retired and the family moved to Traunstein, a staunchly Catholic town in Bavaria close to the Führer’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. He joined the Hitler Youth aged 14, shortly after membership was made compulsory in 1941.

He quickly won a dispensation on account of his training at a seminary. “Ratzinger was only briefly a member of the Hitler Youth and not an enthusiastic one,” concluded John Allen, his biographer.

Two years later Ratzinger was enrolled in an anti-aircraft unit that protected a BMW factory making aircraft engines. The workforce included slaves from Dachau concentration camp.

Ratzinger has insisted he never took part in combat or fired a shot - adding that his gun was not even loaded - because of a badly infected finger. He was sent to Hungary, where he set up tank traps and saw Jews being herded to death camps. He deserted in April 1944 and spent a few weeks in a prisoner of war camp.

He has since said that although he was opposed to the Nazi regime, any open resistance would have been futile - comments echoed this weekend by his elder brother Georg, a retired priest ordained along with the cardinal in 1951.

“Resistance was truly impossible,” Georg Ratzinger said. “Before we were conscripted, one of our teachers said we should fight and become heroic Nazis and another told us not to worry as only one soldier in a thousand was killed. But neither of us ever used a rifle against the enemy.”

Some locals in Traunstein, like Elizabeth Lohner, 84, whose brother-in-law was sent to Dachau as a conscientious objector, dismiss such suggestions. “It was possible to resist, and those people set an example for others,” she said. “The Ratzingers were young and had made a different choice.”

In 1937 another family a few hundred yards away in Traunstein hid Hans Braxenthaler, a local resistance fighter. SS troops repeatedly searched homes in the area looking for the fugitive and his fellow conspirators.

“When he was betrayed and the Nazis came for him, Braxenthaler shot himself because he knew he couldn’t escape,” said Frieda Meyer, 82, Ratzinger’s neighbour and childhood friend. “Even though they had tortured him in Dachau concentration camp he refused to give up his resistance efforts.”

Despite question marks over Ratzinger’s wartime conduct, the main obstacle to his prospects in the conclave - the assembly of cardinals to elect the new pope - is the conservative stance he has adopted as guardian of Catholic orthodoxy since John Paul named him to head the congregation for the doctrine of the faith in 1981.

His condemnations are legion - of women priests, married priests, dissident theologians and homosexuals, whom he has declared to be suffering from an “objective disorder”.

He upset many Jews with a statement in 1987 that Jewish history and scripture reach fulfilment only in Christ - a position denounced by critics as “theological anti-semitism”. He made more enemies among other religions in 2000, when he signed a document, Dominus Jesus, in which he argued: “Only in the Catholic church is there eternal salvation”.

Some of his staunchest critics are in Germany. A recent poll in Der Spiegel, the news magazine, showed opponents of a Ratzinger papacy outnumbered supporters by 36% to 29%.

As one western cardinal who was in two minds about him put it: “He would probably be a great pope, but I have no idea how I would explain his election back home.”

One liberal theologian,when asked what he thought of a Ratzinger papacy, was more direct: “It fills me with horror.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/articl...

Forum posts

  • He doesn’t sound like a visionary. He was "forced" to join the Hitler youth. He was forced to man a anti air craft gun. He doesn’t sound like a brave man, a man concerned wiith what is right. He sound like someone who just plays along. Plays the game. Tries to get along with the fascists instead of resisting.

    He also told the priests in the US not to give Kerry communion.

    This is the man GOD chose to be the new Pope. Is Hitler in Heaven?

    Fuck the Catholic Church. THis is just what they deserve. They have been phony since they began.

  • The new Hitler Pope looks horrible and sneaky.

  • Turns out he was head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith formerly the Inquistion.
    Former Hitler Youth.
    Former Nazi
    Former head of the inquistion.

    I wonder what else there may be in his backgound. What if he had sex with.....What if he killed people in the war. What if he was involved in the Bank of Ambrosia scandal in the 1980’s....What if he told lies about other Cardinals to become Pope...What if he is ruthless...What if he is criminal...What if he is guitly of an awful crime....

  • He is also in favour of Opus Dei. A catholic group which still exorcise human beings. He is old and may be that’s why the Conclave took chances.
    But his Nazi past should get him ousted. Not a nice guy!

    • I’m sure hes a lovely warm christian human being, empathetic to all sexual persuasions, not interested in power or pomp, and devoid of all the high church trappings that would have horrified our Lord.

      (tongue firmly in cheek)

    • The guy’s a total freak. No wonder the conclave is secret. They probably had to bribe some Cardinals with sex to get this guy into the papacy. He’s a total joke and so is the whole church. Kind of a sign of the times. Bet yer ass that Bush loves him. A "conservative", in otherwords, more orthodoxy, less chance of any changes in the Church. Good thing he doesn’t have an army, despite that "onwards, Christian soldier" rhetoric.

      Pope Benedict Nazi. Hopefully he won’t live much longer.

    • HOW LONG DO YOU EXPECT TO LIVE?

  • This filthy little punk is a war criminal who should be put on trial.

    • This whole organization is a cesspool and unfortunately there are too many stupid people still willing to pretend otherwise.

      In 1984 the C.I.A. released classified documents about the escape of thousands of Nazi war criminals and the Catholic church was the NUMBER ONE organization via the Vatican for arranging passage and helping these murders to find safe haven. Considering that Hitler was a Catholic and had the support of the church during his murderious rule in Germany this is no surprise.

      How any self respecting woman could belong to this disgraceful organization is amazing, they treat women like the Taliban while making a pretense of protecting them. Women who belong to this religion are just like black people who belong to the KKK.

    • "SIGH"....................SO MANY IDIOTS, SO LITTLE TIME.

    • Agreed! Right after we deal with Fidel Castro, Kofi Annan, Kojo Annan, Jacques Chirac, Vincente Fox, Kim Jong Il, and all those annoying lefty dagoes that infest this website.

  • He is also known as Rat Slinger.

  • He appears in need of an exorcist himself.

  • I am living in Bavaria, in the middle of the homeland of the new Pope. I am lutheran protestant and would have wished a more liberal and progressive man in this position. But the statements in this article an even more some of the comments are characterized by a degree of stupidity and ignorance, which makes one believing, that you are living on another star. Joseph Ratzinger is intellectually certainly much superior to such comment writers. I think you cannot even imagine, what it means, to live as a christian in a state like Hitlers Germany, where especially in the time after 1941, which you mostly refer to. How it is, to live under the threat of death penalty and torture for each and everything and where you hardly know, whom you can trust. I hope, you never will have this experience. I wonder, which kind of heroe you would have become in the age of 16 in such a situation!

    • Eloquence and sanity of a type that is usually alien to this website.

      Danke, Mein Herr

    • The point is he didn’t distinguish himself in anyway. I cannot argue about how frigtening it was to live under Hitler. But this Pope did nothing brave, visionary. He didn’t take risks. He looked out for himself. There is nothing wrong with that. That is what I would do because I am not particularly brave. But he has been elected the Pope-aperson who is or should from their very beginning as a human being be extraordiary.

      Look at Marla Ruzicka. She would have made a better Pope. But of course she could never be a pope becasue 1). She is dead 2} She is a woman.

      The Catholic Church and Christianinty have a horrible history of promoting war, assassination, intrigue, financial scanda, murder, slavery of millions of people throughout the years. The organization is bad, malevolent it is the opposite of what is say it is. It s a force for bad not good. It seeks to subjugate human awareness for the purpose of it’s own promulgation.

      C’mon.

    • 1. who is to be the judge of what is "brave and visionary"?? You?? what a joke.
      2. Marla Ruzicka is dead because she was stupid. Full of hubris and "ideals" she went to work in a culture she did not understand in the least, and the culture killed her. Darwin’s law: The morons die young. We can bury her next to Rachel Corrie and Daniel Pearl.
      3. You end your post with many unsupported and unsupportable slanders against the Catholic church. In your next post offer some reference points and checkable footnotes so the research can be checked for facts.
      You will not do this because you have no facts; only rumor, hatred, envy, and slander.

    • There so much scandal in the Church. But here’s a few big one’s that come to mind"

      1). Most recently the Bank of Ambrosia Scandal of the 1980’s. Where Arch Bishop Marcinkus who was considered a chief advisor to the Pope ran out of Italy where he is wanted on charges of embezzlement and lives in Cicero, Illinois, suburb of Chicago. You can look this up on the internet. The Church is involved as are many secular and priestly members. There’s murder, bribery etc.

      2). The Conquest of Mexico, Central and South America and the enslavement of the Indians by the Church who worked with the Conquistadors very closely. There is only one priest who made any protest at the time, Barolome De las Casas and he didn’t say a whole lot.

      3). The inquistion. (Which Ratzinger was head of).

      4). You have to look up yourself the Pope of Avignon and the politics that went on there I think in the 13th century.

      There is a book by A.N. Wilson called "Paul" or "Paul a life" which chronicles Paul life from a historical perspective and offers a different interpretation. Anything by that author is informative

      There a lot more but that’s for starters. Let me know what you think.

      Sounds like you pro Iraq pro Bush. Iraq is a disaster and I predict the Americans will soon be supporting the insurgents in the South of Iraq that they are now fighting against the Fundamentalist. This will happen especially if they elect a democrat in the next election.

    • The ignorant and the stupid should not dabble in history, they invariably get it wrong.
      1. The Banco Ambrosio scandal was an entirely Masonic scheme.
      2. The reconquista of Spain from the Islamic Butchers took place in 1492. The invasion of the new world began in 1492. The Spanish conquistadores came from a land that had known only war and horror for over 700 years. They were nominally Catholic, But they had the killer instincts of Rottweilers having been decended from almost 20 generations of warriors. They went to the New World, they saw the human sacrifices [eyewitness accounts written by monks are still extant], and began to do what they did best: Warfare........................
      But, enough of this. You don’t want the truth, you want confirmation of your own particular religion:Atheistic Marxism, hot and rotten with hatred of the culture that spawned you. Pitiable fool.

    • Archbishop Marcinkus who was from Cicero Illinois, a mob controlled or influenced city at times and was I think head of the Vatican Bank-he is wanted by Italian authorties for embezzlement. How is this explained soley as a Masonic scheme? Roberto Calvi (he may have been a mason) was hung from Blackfriars bridge in London...there’s a lot of intriigue and murders (suicides) involved in this. Perhaps many clergy are part of the Masons...I don’t remember.

      20 generations of warriors? Well, lots of them were criminals, not warriors. They did everything in the name of GOD (admittedly they may have not been sincere but that’s who they got their funding-by invoking God) . You should read their letters to the King. What do you think the Holy Roman Empire was? It was a military religous state. The Pope had a lot of power and money at the time of the conquest. Everything that went on there was reported to the Church as well as the King...as I recall in my readings.

      But there is controversy over how much human sacrafice the Aztecs were involved in. Don’t forget the idea of human sacrafice was similar to screaming terrorist today. I would bet that it was exaggerated.

      History is nothing but lies. One built upon the other and what we recieve is Myth. And that is what Jesus was... a Myth. He certainly seems to have existed, but he was a myth as a person and as a God. Christianity is kids stuff. It’s is utterly stupid and goes against human nature and sensibility. To think we are central to the Universe make us very vulnerable.

      Did you know that Sadaam Hussein most likey did not gas his own people?
      Sadaam Hussein did not kill 400,000 people and bury them in mass graves?
      Sadaam Hussein was not found in a hole hiding. Visit this site and read the second entry.

      http://bushplanet.blogspot.com/

      He is another mythical figure for example.

    • Who would take the word of a Bush Troll? Like the previous poster said you can do a Google search and find the facts not some Bush misinformation peddler for pay.

      The Bushco propaganda branch is now paying trolls to go to "liberal" sites and troll their lies and disinformation, I would bet the above poster gets paid to come here and spread Bush’s creamed-corn lies. What a way to make a living, a professional liar for Bush.

    • Oh sure, for your information....Hitler was a "Christian", and he is NO different than the other "Christians" like Bush and this old fag. Lady, you of all people should be able to get the facts on Hitler and the Catholic "Christian" church. Don’t tell us you didn’t know Hitler was a Catholic and a "Christian", the Catholics had it just fine under Hitler (remember them cheering him). It was the JEWS that Hitler went after (hello), living there in Germany and all (?) why isn’t it you don’t even know the history???

    • Oh well, the catholic flock has a new shepherd, a german shepherd.

    • My people die through ignorance-Jesus

      Propaganda makes everyone think that the deaths were only due to Christain dogma, lots of false Jew financing involved in WWI, WWII, etc and false Jew teaching in the Catholic and Evangal churches from the beginning of the church(idolatry that goes back to Talmud teaching from Babylon).

      Get out of her my people-Jesus

    • one man’s criminal is another man’s freedom fighter.
      todays jihadi is tomorrows corpse.

    • Hitler was not a christian, Hitler was a follower of the "Pan Germanic Mysticism" movement you historical illiterate.

    • "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works." 2 Corinthians 11:12-15

      "...therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers. And above all things have fervent love for one another, for ’love will cover a multitude of sins.’" 1 Peter 4:7-8

  • Men in red dresses all met at the Vatican.
    Giddy with pleasure “We get to be bad again!”
    Wining and dining with others in frocks
    Hoping to rub against each others’…socks.

    Then the smoke rose!
    Who will it be?
    Who is the next pope?
    A fellow named Ben, a former Nazi!
    Another old pudgy dope!

    • In the end, I doubt there is any more organized a suppression of Truth than that embodied in this organization.

      Much talk of Truth and support one way or the other here, but in the end I believe this to be true.

      “The Inquisition of the Church of Rome was, in its days, one of the most terrible engines of tyranny ever created by man. It may be said to date from about the year 1200, when Pope Innocent III sent his inquisitors among the Waldenses and other sects differing from the [Roman Catholic] Church, and continued until 1808. In its course, it totally crushed any Protestants living in Spain: its final count numbered 31,912 people burned alive and 291,450 imprisoned. In the eighteen years that the Dominican monk Thomas of Torquemada led the Inquisition, 10,220 people were burned and 97,000 punished with the loss of property or imprisonment” (Foxe’s Christian Martyrs of the World, Foxe, 27-2.

      I believe this church to be extremely prejudice, highly organized, very powerful and openly anit-democratic. I think this continues today. Means of control are systematic and reach down into the corporations that control some 80% of commerce. I do not think this can be overstated. 80% is lot, the rest is like table scraps that the rest fight over and is used to "prove" that "all is fair." The system of control first lies in the hiring process, if you control this you "put in place" those yu want. Maybe someone can do a statistical analysis of Human Resource managers across the large corporations?

      I do believe this is wise:
      "to live as a christian in a state like Hitlers Germany, where especially in the time after 1941, ..."

      "He looked out for himself."

      I believe this to be true:
      "The Catholic Church and Christianity have a horrible history of promoting war, assassination, intrigue, financial scandal, murder, slavery of millions of people throughout the years."
      and this also:
      "Unsupported and unsupportable slanders against the Catholic church."

    • You conveniently left out the suppression, enslavement and mass murder of Irish and Scottish and English catholics by protestant zealots. Half told history is a lie. You, sir, are a liar.

    • I do NOT say that there is NOT a problem on both sides, but I do say there is truth is what has been said so far. What I speak of here is a superior and systamatic organization, which reaches back prior to the Schism and continues TODAY. TODAY is the operative word here.

      I believe a case can be made that much of the US was formed in fleeing the suppression of this organization. That it remains suppressive TODAY depends on whether you feel suppressed or not by its policies. It still remains as an openly Non-democratic organization. In essense taxing with out representaion by proclaiming policy under threat of eternal damnation.

      What happened most recently is an example. This organization allowed one of its members, who had protected child molestors to remain in the organization. It not only allowed this, but this same person is one of some 100+ most honored members. Theoretically this same person could have become the head of this same organization himself. Bernard Law, if he had gone to jail, which is where he belongs, would have been at the bottom of the human chain.

      Maybe he should have been elected to this most hallowed post himself. That would have about summed things up. In your face, clean your house!

    • The northeast of continental America was settled by English Puritans, Scottish Calvinists, Scottish Roman Catholics and Irish Roman Catholics fleeing the institutional persecution of the Anglican Church of England. The middle states [Maryland, Delaware etc.] received many displaced French Catholics hounded out of France by the ever violent Protestant Hueguenots. The list goes on and on. You know nothing about suppression, and will continue to know nothing until you have spent several years studying the history of world socialism and the history of Islam; two of the most murderous, most energetically deadly suppressors of humanity ever to have taken form.......

    • Bernard Law, if he had gone to jail, which is where he belongs, would have been at the bottom of the human chain.

      This is today.

      I will not defend bullshit from any of the denominations. There is plenty of wrong to be shared. Maybe the problem lies in the Christian foundation to begin with?

      The original post is about "Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger", who is now the pope, which means this is about the catholic church. My original posting about that organization still stands.

      In the end, I doubt there is any more organized a suppression of Truth than that embodied in this organization.
      I believe this church to be extremely prejudice, highly organized, very powerful and openly anit-democratic. I think this continues today. Means of control are systematic and reach down into the corporations that control some 80% of commerce. I do not think this can be overstated. 80% is lot, the rest is like table scraps that the rest fight over and is used to "prove" that "all is fair." The system of control first lies in the hiring process, if you control this you "put in place" those yu want. Maybe someone can do a statistical analysis of Human Resource managers across the large corporations?

      I believe this to be true:
      "The Catholic Church and Christianity have a horrible history of promoting war, assassination, intrigue, financial scandal, murder, slavery of millions of people throughout the years."

      and this also:
      "Unsupported and unsupportable slanders against the Catholic church."

    • you would prefer, perhaps, Stalinism? Leninism? Maoism? Trotskyism? You take potshots at the church from concealment. What political philosophy is your preference? Do you have the courage to tell us? I think not.

    • I prefer anarchy. Let everyoe have a gun and let the best man win, but get Bernard Law first.