Here are some facts
In May 1945, thousands of German prisoners of war trudged down the highway toward the Bavarian town of Bad Aibling. Among them — tired but grateful to be alive — was 18-year-old Joseph Ratzinger, who just days before had risked death by deserting the German army.
"In three days of marching, we hiked down the empty highway, in a column that gradually became endless," the future pope recalled years later in his memoirs.
"The American soldiers photographed us, the young ones, most of all, in order to take home souvenirs of the defeated army and its desolate personnel."
(snip)
(Pope John Paul II) was forced to work in a quarry and narrowly escaped arrest in a mass roundup of young men by the Germans in Krakow; Ratzinger's experiences also were harrowing.
In particular, his decision — in late April or early May, just after he turned military age — to leave his army unit could have cost Ratzinger his life.
At the time, he knew that the dreaded SS units would shoot a deserter on the spot — or hang him from a lamppost as a warning to others. He recorded his terror when he was stopped by other soldiers.
"Thank God they were ones who had had enough of war and did not want to become murderers," he wrote in his book, "Aus meinem Leben," published in English as "Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977."
"They had to find a reason to let me go. I had my arm in a sling because of an injury."
"Comrade, you are wounded," they told him. "Go on." Soon he was home with his father, Josef, and his mother, Maria.
For years, he and his family had watched the Nazis strengthen their grip on Germany. His father, a policeman and a convinced anti-Nazi, moved the family at least once after clashing with local followers of the party. A local teacher, he remembered, became an ardent follower of the new movement, and tried to institute a pagan May pole ritual as more fitting of Germanic ways than the traditional, conservative Catholicism.
In 1941, Ratzinger, 14, and his brother, Georg, were enrolled in the Hitler Youth when it became mandatory for all boys. Soon after, he records in his book, "The Salt of the Earth," he was let out because of his intention to study for the priesthood.
In 1943, like many teenage boys, he was drafted as a helper for an anti-aircraft brigade, which defended a BMW plant outside Munich. Later, he dug anti-tank trenches. When he turned 18, on April 16, 1945, he was put through basic training, alongside men in their 30s and 40s, drafted as the Third Reich went through its death agony. He was stationed near his hometown — he doesn't say where — but did not see combat with the approaching U.S. troops.
(snip) They identified him as a German soldier, made him put on his uniform, put up his hands, and marched him off to join other prisoners kept in a nearby meadow. Taken to a camp near Ulm, he wound up living under the open air for several weeks, surrounded by barbed wire.
He finally was released on June 19 and hitched a ride on a milk truck back to his hometown, Traunstein.
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From the start, a life of service
Born on Holy Saturday to parents Mary and Joseph, Joseph Ratzinger seemed destined to have special ties to the Catholic Church. An army deserter during the Third Reich, he became archbishop of Munich, then was called to the Vatican.
BY RITA CIOLLI
Newsday
Joseph Ratzinger was baptized hours after he was born on an icy Holy Saturday morning in a Bavarian village at the base of the Alps. The holy water had been blessed just hours before, at a vigil on the eve of Easter Sunday in 1927.
''To be the first person baptized with the new water was seen as a significant act of Providence,'' Ratzinger would write years later in Milestones, his 1998 autobiography.
(snip)
But the happiness of those early years faded in the Nazi era. Ratzinger was 6 when Adolf Hitler came to power, and says he was enrolled against his will in the Hitler Youth, as required of all German adolescents. He said he never attended meetings. His father, who once wrote that ''a victory of Hitler's would not be a victory for Germany but rather a victory for the anti-Christ,'' moved the family from Tittmoning after a dispute with local Nazis.
In 1939, at age 12, Ratzinger entered the seminarian school in Traunstein, where he said classes in Greek and Latin awoke his intellect. But four years later, the class was drafted into the Flak, an antiaircraft corps, into a unit that was to defend a BMW auto plant. There he saw slave laborers from the Dachau concentration camp.
Ratzinger was soon dismissed to continue his studies. Then, in fall 1944, he was drafted to dig ditches. Six months later, he deserted but was captured by the advancing U.S. Army. Two months later, he was released.
When the war was over, he re-entered the seminary with his brother. The two were ordained in 1951. He was just 35 when he attracted attention in Rome during the Second Vatican Council, in 1962. He was appointed a chief advisor to Cardinal Joseph Frings.
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What Kind of Man is Pope Benedict XVI?
After the rise of the Nazi's, the senior Joseph Ratzinger, a police commissioner, risked much as a public opponent of Nazi ideology which was wholly opposed to his traditional Catholicism.
As a child, Joseph Ratzinger developed a desire to teach at an early age, though he was also once impressed with the work of a local housepainter. He loved to write including poetry, "about things of everyday life, Christmas poems, nature poetry…whenever I learned something I wanted to pass it on too."
While attending the seminary, young Joseph avoided the Hitler Youth as long as possible. But later he was obliged when he reached an age at which membership became compulsory. Pope Benedict told Seewald that a sympathetic professor, himself a member of the party, arranged to have him exempted. It was difficult for him since his family was not wealthy and the government offered tuition assistance to members of the Hitler youth.
From 1943 all the seminarians were conscripted. Ratzinger did various jobs for the military until he came of age to be drafted at 18. He was stationed at first near the Austro-Hungarian border but an officer, whom he describes as "obviously anti-Nazi" arranged to send him to serve near his home. It was to Traunstein that the 18 year-old Joseph Ratzinger returned to his family in May 1945 risking death by deserting from the German army. He wrote in his memoirs that he was terrified of being caught by the SS who shot or hanged deserters on the spot.
When the war was over he spent a short time in a US POW camp after which he returned home, hitchhiking on the back of a milk truck. After the war he resumed his studies for the priesthood.
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Events in the life of Pope Benedict XVI
April 16, 1927: Born in Marktl am Inn in Germany's southern region of Bavaria near the Austrian border on the day before Easter. Baptised the same day.
1929: Family moves to town of Tittmoning.
December, 1932: Family moves to Traunstein after father came into conflict with local Nazi Party supporters in Tittmoning.
1941: Enrolled against will in Hitler Youth. Let go shortly after because of his intention to study for the priesthood.
1943: Drafted as helper for anti-aircraft unit, serves in battery defending BMW plant.
September 10, 1944: Let go from flak service. Returns home to find draft notice for forced labor.
September 20, 1944: Leaves home to dig anti-tank trenches.
November, 20, 1944: Released from labor force, returns home. Gets army draft notice three weks later.
April-May, 1945: Deserts army, returns home. Captured by Americans as war ends.
June 19, 1945: Released from U.S. POW camp, catches ride home on milk truck.
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How perfectly were you prepared for life's challanges -- and would you have been .. for Nazism and war -- when you were 14?
Long Live Pope Benedict XVI -- God Bless Him With Courage and Good Health, and May Our Dear Lord and The Blessed Mother protect him from evil and evil people, as they protected Our Dear Great Pope John Paul II !
