Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen HouglandRatzinger; 'reluctant' fighter for the Third Reich
John Heathcote and Seán Mac Mathúna
editors@fantompowa.info
We are informed by the Cardinal's
autobiography that Ratzinger's father, a Bavarian police officer,
was always opposed to the Nazi Brownshirt terror. He retired in
1937 and moved his family to Traunstein, a Catholic town in Bavaria. It is so close to the Fuhrer's
mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden, that one wonders whether this
was an ideal retirement area for such a committed anti-Nazi? A report in a recent Sunday
Times (April 17th 2005) records that; 'Ratzinger admits that he joined
the Hitler Youth aged 14, shortly after membership was made compulsory
in 1941. 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.' The future pope was posted first
to Ludwigsfeld, north of Munich; then they were sent to Unterfohring,
northwest of Munich, and then briefly to Innsbruck. From Innsbruck
their unit went to Gilching to protect the jet fighter base and
to attack allied bombers as they massed to begin their runs towards
Munich. It is surprising the man who later
. . . '... 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... (Times) was kept so busy doing so little!
The Times report continues with
a brief summary of the Cardinal - Pope's autobiography; He was sent to Hungary,
where he set up tank traps and saw Jews being herded to death
camps. An item in the Wikipedia
which draws on thw Cardinal's own version of his Wartime service
for the Reich, informs us that on the Austrian - Hungarian border,
Ratzinger was ' . . . trained in the "cult of the
spade" and upon the surrender of Hungary to Russia was put
to work digging setting up anti-tank defences in preparation for
the expected Red Army offensive.' In November 20, 1944 Ratzinger's
unit was released from service and he returned home, but three
weeks later was back in uniform to defend the Fatherland; being
posted around Munich and his local city of Traunstein. In late April or early May 1945,
days or weeks (one assumes it would be etched in the memory)
before the German surrender, Ratzinger deserted and awaited the
Allied forces in his local village, near the Fuhrer's mountain
retreat in Berchtesgaden. He was briefly interned in an open-air
prisoner of war camp near Ulm by the Americans, and was released
on June 19, 1945. The
Sunday Times report ends on the question which has remained
unspoken, but deserves to be asked of a man now in a supreme spiritual
position over 1 million Roman Catholics. Why did a man -
who will no doubt one day be hailed as a saint - find it so hard
to stay out of uniform in WWII ? '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." The Guardian (April 21st 2005)
quoted Mr. Thomas Frauenlob, a local Catholic as saying; '. . .records relating to
the Pope's war service were locked in the seminary's archive and
wouldn't be released for another 35 years. "We haven't had
a chance to go through them. I haven't given it any thought"
he said . . . One thing that is hotly disputed is whether
German teenagers were forced to join the Hitler Youth. Luke Harding says that Joseph Ratzinger
claimed in his memoirs that he joined the Hitler Youth only because
membership was compulsory (Report, April 21). This is simply not
true. There were many pressures on German boys to join the Hitler
Youth. But there was no compulsion. It is worth remembering that
at the time of Ratzinger's membership, Pope Pius XII was known
as Hitler's pope because of his fascist views. Henry Metelman
was one ex-member of the Hitler Youth who wrote a letter to The
Guardian (25/04/05) about this. In it, he said: "I was a member of the Hitler
Youth for five years. A number of my friends had not joined up.
Some found it difficult to enrol in the civil service and other
state-run institutions. But I know of none of them having been
punished in any way". (Guardian,
Letters Mon. April 25th 2005) The implication in the above letter is that
Ratzinger was a willing recruit for the Hitler Youth. As for his
war record, to us it sounds implausible even with the meagre amounts
of information released so far. How could he have NOT fired a "shot
in anger" when he served from 1943 onwards until he was captured
by US forces in Germany in April 1945 ?