Hmmm, that Boucher article is a little misleading. Being a hardcore tree hugging, agnostic liberal, I am no fan of Joseph Ratzinger but the whole Nazi thing is really being left out of perspective.
Joseph Ratzinger was 16 yrs old when he was compulsarily drafted into the Hitler Youth in 1943. How he managed to dodge it before then, who knows, but apparently his father was very anti-Hitler. He went awol as soon as the US forces were getting close and ended up a German POW in an allied camp by 1945. According to Ratzinger, he never shot a gun. Now, we've had the draft here in the US but the punishment if we choose to skip the draft is simply jail time. For the young German boys drafted into the Hitler Youth, it meant imprisonment as well but also potential execution. Towards the end of the war, I recall hearing that youth that refused to join the HJ not only were putting their own lives at risk but also their families as well.
