The suggestion that membership of the Hitler Youth was not compulsory (Letters, 3 January) is simply not true: it was mandatory for all non-Jewish German boys aged between 10 and 18 after the Hitler Youth law was passed in December 1936. Admittedly, compliance was not initially universal, but the stakes were raised by a new law in March 1939 that included punishment for those who did not obey. That Barbara Schurenberg’s grandfather managed to avoid conscription into the organisation is worthy of note and is obviously impressive, but it does not follow that Joseph Ratzinger, or any other German child at the time, had any meaningful “choice”.
Ratzinger joined the Hitler Youth in 1941 at the age of 14, so he had already apparently held out longer than was legally mandated. There are many reasons to scrutinise Ratzinger’s reputation, but his failure as a child not to break the law of the nation he lived in by refusing to join an organisation that he was legally required to, by a state that was quite ready to murder its own citizens for dissent, does not seem overly problematic. By contrast, his adult views on homosexuality and his actions regarding the allegations of sexual abuse in the Catholic church seem, to me, rather more important with regard to assessing his posthumous reputation than what he did as a child.
Edward Ward
Tempe, New South Wales, Australia
• My uncle by marriage, Rudi Halama, lived in Vienna all his life. He told me in 2000 how, after the Anschluss, he was in a queue waiting to be signed up for the Hitler Youth. He refused, was brushed aside and allowed to leave. But later, there was no choice – he had to join. Perhaps Joseph Ratzinger went through something similar?
Sally Juniper
Woodbridge, Suffolk
