Hitler Youth - Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI

In his 1996 autobiography Salt of the Earth, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) revealed that he was a member of Hitler Youth when he was 14 years old. However, in a May 2009 trip to Israel, Benedict's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi told reporters that Ratzinger was never in the Hitler Youth, actually being in the Luftwaffe as an air force assistant. According to the Pope's brother, Monsignor Gregor Ratzinger, Josef was automatically placed on the Hitler Youth membership rolls on turning 14, as was required by law, but "did not attend meetings." In 1943 Ratzinger was conscripted into the Flakhelfer, teenage boys who assisted the crews of Luftwaffe antiaircraft guns; he eventually deserted and made his way to the American lines. The Ratzinger family, according to those who knew them, were very religious and hated the Nazi regime.

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Organizations Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen (NSRL) National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) Sturmabteilung (SA) Schutzstaffel (SS) Hitler Youth (HJ) League of German Girls (BDM) National Socialist Women's League (NSF)
History Early timeline Hitler's rise to power Machtergreifung German re-armament Nazi Germany Religion in Nazi Germany Night of the Long Knives Nuremberg Rally Anti-Comintern Pact Kristallnacht World War II Tripartite Pact The Holocaust Nuremberg Trials Neo-Nazism
Ideology (non-racial) Fascism Gleichschaltung Hitler's political views Mein Kampf Militarism National Socialist Program New Order Propaganda Proletarian nation Religious aspects Syncretic Politics Women in the Third Reich
Racial ideology Aryan race Blood and soil Eugenics Greater Germanic Reich Heim ins Reich Lebensraum Master race Racial policy of Nazi Germany Völkisch equality
Final Solution Concentration camps Deportations Doctors' Trial Extermination camps Genocide Ghettos Labour camps Human experimentation Pogroms Racial segregation
People Adolf Hitler Heinrich Himmler Hermann Göring Joseph Goebbels
Beyond Germany American Nazi Party Arrow Cross Party (Hungary) German American Bund Greyshirts (South Africa) Hungarian National Socialist Party Nasjonal Samling (Norway) Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging (Netherlands) National Movement of Switzerland (NBS) National Socialist Bloc (Sweden) National Socialist League (UK) Movimiento Nacional Socialista de Chile National Socialist Movement (United States) National Socialist Workers' Party of Denmark National Unity Party (Canada) Nationalist Liberation Alliance (Argentina) Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (India) Ossewabrandwag (South Africa) Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement (Independent State of Croatia)
Literature National Socialist Program Mein Kampf The Legal Basis of the Total State The Myth of the Twentieth Century
Lists Books by or about Adolf Hitler Nazi ideologues Nazi Party leaders and officials Nazi Party members Former Nazi Party members Speeches given by Adolf Hitler SS personnel
Related topics Antisemitism Fascism Glossary of Nazi Germany The Holocaust Neo-Nazism Strasserism Völkisch movement Denazification
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