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New Pope served in Hitler Youth but was no Nazi
19 Apr 2005 23:04:31 GMT
Source: Reuters
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(Adds more from autobiography, changes dateline, previous VATICAN CITY) By Philip Blenkinsop BERLIN, April 19 (Reuters) - Joseph Ratzinger, elected Roman Catholic Pope on Tuesday, served in the Hitler Youth during World War Two when membership was compulsory, according to his autobiography. In "Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977", Ratzinger recounts the onset of the war and his detention as a prisoner of war by U.S. soldiers in 1945. Ratzinger's wartime experiences have been a source of controversy in some newspapers which probed the German Pope's past after Pope John Paul died and he quickly became a frontrunner to succeed the deceased pontiff. His biographers say he was never a member of the Nazi party and his family opposed Adolf Hitler's regime. Jewish human rights group, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, have also recognised Ratzinger's anti-Nazi roots. "The new Pope, like his predecessor, was deeply influenced by the events of World War Two. As a child, Pope Benedict XVI grew up in an anti-Nazi family. Nonetheless, he was forced to join the Hitler Youth movement," the group said on Tuesday. Founded in 1922 and based in Ratzinger's native region of Bavaria, the Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organisation of the Nazi Party. It was disbanded in 1923 but re-established in 1926, a year after the Nazi Party was recognised. In his autobiography, Ratzinger said he and his brother Georg were both enrolled in the Hitler Youth when membership was obligatory. John Allen, who wrote a biography of Ratzinger entitled "Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican's Enforcer of the Faith", quoted his subject as saying that his father's criticism of the Nazis forced the family to move home four times. U.S. POW Ratzinger, who turned 16 in 1943, served in an anti-aircraft defence unit with other students at the seminary where he was studying. A year later, he was summoned to the military, yet avoided being enrolled into the SS, the Nazi's elite troops, he says, by declaring his intention of becoming a priest. Biographer Allen said Ratzinger was sent to Austria's border with Hungary to erect tank traps before he returned to Bavaria and deserted. "Hitler's death finally strengthened our hope that things would soon end. The unhurried manner of the American advance, however, deferred more and more the day of liberation. At the end of April or the beginning of May -- I do not remember precisely -- I decided to go home," Ratzinger wrote. He arrived to find the Americans had stationed themselves in the Ratzinger home. He spent the next six weeks in a U.S. prisoner of war camp before his release in June 1945. He and his brother began studying for the priesthood in Munich in 1946. (Additional reporting by Nelson Graves in Rome)
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