Josepf Ratzinger, Sr. retired in 1937 at the age of 60, five years before the Orpo mandatory retirement age and within 6 months of the Orpo being transferred from the interior ministry to the SS.
His early retirement came as a consequence of the absorption of the Orpo into the national police force. As a member of the Bavarian State Police Joseph Ratzinger had been active in restraining the excesses of the Nazi party and was forced to move and forfeit promotion opportunities because of that.
Not that any of this has anything to do with the Pope, but this is illustrative of the depths some will stoop to to deride, belittle, and mock Catholics given the slightest opportunity.
Ratzinger, Sr. continued to serve in the police even after the Night of the Long Knives and the passing of the Nuremburg Laws so he wasn’t all that uncomfortable with his Nazi superiors. He retired on time and suffered no reprisals from the Nazis, moving his family to rural Bavaria where they continued to live in harmony with the Nazi establishment. How many Germans who were “unsympathetic” to the Nazi cause retired to Bavaria, I wonder?
Probably zero.
Traunstein, the town Ratzinger retired to, is a stone’s throw from Berchtesgaden where Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest provided him with lots of R and R.
RCs just make things up. At this point the internet is littered with frantic rewrites. But even this revisionist history cannot obscure the facts.