Pope reflects on life under Hitler

POPE Benedict XVI has made a rare mention of life in Germany during the Third Reich, calling it a “dark time.” It was a rare mention made by the pope, who was forced to join Hitler Youth while a child.

The 84-year-old German-born pontiff recalled how 70 years ago, a time “already marked by war” where Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “had already subjugated” one country after another, including Poland, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and France.

Benedict spoke during an audience this weekend at the Vatican with members of a German Catholic group in Regensburg, which he entered as a 14-year-old boy. Benedict noted “it looked like the continent was in the hands of this power, which put the future on Christianity in doubt.”

The pope’s remarks were reported by Vatican Radio.

Born Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI has remained reticent about his past.

During much of the Nazi era, he lived with his family in Traunstein, Germany, a small and staunchly Catholic town between Munich and Salzburg. During World War I there was a prisoner-of-war camp located where Adolf Hitler had worked between December 1918 and March 1919. Traunstein is located near the region of Austria where Hitler came from.

Resistance to the Nazis was dangerous and difficult, but not impossible. A few hundred yards away from his family home, a family hid Hans Braxenthaler, a local resistance fighter who shot himself rather than be captured again. The SS regularly searched local homes for resistance members, so the Ratzingers could not have been unaware about resistance efforts.

Report from Catholic Online