Involuntary Membership in the Hitler Youth

Boston.com / News / World / Europe / Cardinals' detractors hang 'dirty laundry'

A Sunday Times of London profile on Ratzinger, saying his doctrinal watchdog role has earned him uncomplimentary nicknames like "God's rottweiler," reported on the cardinal's "brief membership" in the Hitler Youth movement and service, in the final stretch of World War II, in a German anti-aircraft unit.

In his memoirs, Ratzinger speaks openly of being enrolled in the Nazi youth movement against his will when he was 14 in 1941, when membership was compulsory. He says he was soon let out because of his studies for the priesthood.

Two years later he was drafted into a Nazi anti-aircraft unit as a helper, a common fate for teenage boys too young to be soldiers. Enrolled as a soldier at 18, in the last months of the war, he barely finished basic training.

Ratzinger's wartime past "may return to haunt him," the British paper wrote on the eve of the conclave's start.