[Marxism] "Ratzinger was a Nazi youth" issue is a red herring

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On the Cuba News list I wrote the following re the "Ratzinger was a
Hitler youth" story.

The Ratzinger as a Hitler youth thing is a red herring.  It was
apparently
compulsory for youth to join when he did, and even if it wasn't
formally, such a membership for a youth in a totalitarian society is
almost meaningless.

A similar brouhaha was raised
about a Reagan aide who had joined the Hitler youth combat groups as the
allied troops
were closing in on Berlin in 1945.  A lot of young people joined right
around then, fearing the occupation  and destruction of their country
and wanting to resist bravely, as youth like to do, and many of them
died.  They weren't Nazis but patriotic-minded and politically ignorant
youth, and no crimes against humanity were involved.  Going back 60
years to when someone is  a teenager to prove they are fascists is
actually a diversion from discussing the real record they accumulated as
mature people.

My own vibration is that Ratzinger will continue the church's detente
with Cuba, but may move closer to US policy on Iraq and Israel.

He will be a stone reactionary on all the questions about which the last
pope was reactionary.  As he is a non-ecumenical sectarian, he may get
worried that some US church officials are actually carrying out their
right-wing campaigning in a way that recruits for
protestant fundamentalism rather than Catholicism in the United States.

He may want to put some space between the church and the right-wing
Protestants, rather than move toward re-unification by way of Cardinal
Mel
Gibson.
Fred Feldman

And Lueko Willms commented on the same list:

 I think it is more significant that he deserted from Hitler's army i
1944, if that is correctly reported. Deserters could be shot, and the
convictions by military cours against deserters were upheld for
decades as valid in West Germany, thus creating a lot of problems for
those surviving it or their relatives because of the "criminal" status
they had gotten by deserting the war effort.

  I also don't think it makes much sense to contrast what Karol
Woytila as a Pole did in occupied Poland with Joseph Ratzinger's
conduct under the fascist dictatorship.

  Some people tend to forget fascism, which destroyed the working
class movement in 1933/34, atomizing all people and instilling fear to
talk openly to a colleague at work or to a neighbour; parents had to
be careful before their children who in their innocence might talk
about their parent's ideas in school.

  It takes time to recover from such a catastrophy, to regain self-
confidence and to reorganize.

  As to the Jews, Ratzinger had acknowledged, according to a TV report
today, that the church had played a negative role for their
prosecution under Nazism.







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