Study confirms Ratzinger forced to enrol in Hitler Youth By Kathrin Zeilmann

Deutsche Presse Agentur
Published: Thursday August 31, 2006

By Kathrin Zeilmann, Munich­ In his memoirs, written well before his election last year as pope, Benedict XVI described how he was unwillingly enrolled in the Hitler Youth and then conscripted into the forces of Nazi Germany. The fact that the pope's early life was spent in a dictatorship has brought repeated questions about whether it influenced him.

In 1943, when Joseph Ratzinger was 16, the authorities forced his school class to move to a barracks, wear uniform and operate an anti-aircraft defence battery. In September 1944, the young German was conscripted into the Reich Labour Service for two months.

The memoirs, published in English as Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, say his unit and forced labourers from around Europe dug tank traps in eastern Austria. In December 1944, he was called up to join a home guard for a last-ditch defence, but it never fought.

Recent historical research has confirmed Ratzinger's account of how schoolboys at his junior seminary were automatically put in the Hitler Youth, a nationwide Nazi organization in imitation of scouts.

Ratzinger was a pupil of the St Michael Juniorate in the town of Traunstein, a school that prepared boys for the priesthood.

"It was high time to do some historical research into it," said Peter Pfister, head of archives for the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, who appointed a staffer, Volker Laube, to comb through the school's records.

The pope consented to publication of the archival report, which backs up the accounts in his various books of the anti-Nazi climate at the Bavarian Catholic school.

Ratzinger said his own family never adopted Nazi views.

"My father saw very clearly that a Hitler victory would not be a German victory, but a victory of the anti-Christians," he wrote. The ideological debate at the school hardened Ratzinger's resolve to become a priest and not join in the war.

The research shows that the Nazis wanted to get rid of the St Michael Juniorate.

Hostile graffiti was scrawled on the building's exterior at one point and the Nazis altered the name of the street outside, which had previously honoured Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, the outspoken archbishop of Munich.

In the Traunstein "gymnasium," a nearby public school where the boys attended many classes, teachers were sacked if they were not pro-Nazi.

Papers touching on the Hitler Jugend show none of the boys joined it before 1939, when the Nazi authorities demanded in March that all boys be enrolled. The principal dragged his feet till October, then began complying.

In the memoirs, Ratzinger said he was enrolled in the Hitler Youth at age 14, but resisted taking part in its activities.

Records show the boys were not accepted as committed Nazis, with an education ministry official writing, "Compulsory service in the Hitler Youth does not provide proof that the pupils of the juniorate are truly integrated into the Nazi volk."

An anti-Catholic figure, Adolf Wagner, took over the Bavarian education ministry and ordered the school's closure in 1941, but Faulhaber objected and got the order reversed. In 1943, the Ratzinger class was put into uniform.

The memoirs describe an episode in 1944 when the Waffen SS, the Nazi Party's private army, vainly tried to recruit the teenage Labour Service members. Ratzinger said he was proud to get a string of abuse for refusing to do so.

Ratzinger said he deserted the home guard "at the end of April or start of May (1945), I don't know exactly any more." When US forces occupied southern Germany, the 18-year-old was identified as a soldier and interned for six weeks.

In the latest footnote to that part of his story, German Nobel Laureate for literature Guenter Grass, 78, recalled this autumn being interned with 100,000 men by the Americans at Bad Aibling and having long talks with "my chum Joseph," a Bavarian youth his own age.

Grass said he recalled the youth being "fanatically Catholic" and determined to become a priest, but cannot prove that he was Ratzinger. "I can only assume it was him," Grass said. The Vatican has declined comment.

© 2006 DPA - Deutsche Presse-Agenteur