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