May 30 2006
Jeff Nails It
Jeff, who’s not a Catholic apologist by any stretch of the imagination, writes about Pope Benedict, and makes a lot of sense…
[E]very little boy in Nazi Germany was in the Hitler Youth. It would have been amazing had Benedict stood up and said no. If he had he would have been a martyr though. I’m no hardcore Catholic. I have no problem listening to a honest critique of the Pope or Catholicism. It just seems a little much to ask a boy to stand up to the facism of Nazi Germany at the age of 14.
‘Nuff said.
Technorati Tags: pope, catholicism, benedict
May 31st, 2006 at 8:04 am
My sense is that the Hitler Youth, from the perspective of its membership, was simply the equivalent of the Boy Scouts. I suppose parents might have been dimly aware of its political dimension, but what would a kid know?
May 31st, 2006 at 8:32 am
I’d go a step further and say the parents were probably astutely aware of what was going on, but were not interested in risking the life of their son in the end.
May 31st, 2006 at 8:54 am
It was essentially like the Boy Scouts, but it was compulsory and tried to instill the cult of the Reich in its members. A good analogy would be the Young Pioneers in the Soviet Union (though membership in the Young Pioneers wasn’t mandatory.)
I am no Catholic either, but the Hitler Youth charge against the Pope just doesn’t stick. He was forced to join, asked to de-enlist several times, and was eventually allowed to leave. He also deserted from his forced-labor job (risking execution) and went back to seminary. I’m no fan of Benedict, but by all accounts, he’s certainly not a Nazi.
June 1st, 2006 at 1:11 pm
My grandfather was in the Hitler Youth as a young man, and later served as a technician in the German army in WWII (and a POW in France for six years). He never makes excuses for being on the wrong side of history, but has echoed this same idea. Membership in H.Y. was not optional. Bad things happened to families that opposed The Reich.