thoughts on the new papa: Pope Benedict XVI, a.k.a. God's Rottweiler; Nazi Youth and multi-talented Nazi soldier

So, let's review:

• He was a Nazi.
  
• BUT BUT BUT! he deserted.
  
• Well, yeah: in late April or early May 1945. For the historically deficient among us, the Germans surrendered on May 8, 1945. Hitler killed himself on April 30, 1945.
  
• Ratzinger was in Hitler's Youth, but got the benefits thereof (not being jailed, persecuted, or killed for refusal to pariticpate) without most of the obligations (attending regular meetings) when the first of many patrons, a Nazi mathematics professor, arranged for him to receive tutition scholarship payments without having to attend meetings and gatherings.
  
• Then Ratzinger served in the flak, or German anti-aircraft corps, guarding a BMW engine aircraft plant.
  
• Then they went a couple of other places: Unterföhring, northwest of Munich, and briefly to Innsbruck.
  
• From Innsbruck, his unit went to Gilching to protect a jet fighter base and to attack allied bombers as they massed to begin their runs towards Munich. At Gilching, Ratzinger served in telephone communications.
  
• After his unit was released from the flak, he was drafted and entered the Reichsarbeitdienst (RAD). Apparently Ratzinger's main duties were setting up setting up anti-tank defenses (read: landmines and minefields) to prepare for the expected Russian/Allied invasion; however, the RAD has such varied duties as supplying frontline troops with food and ammunition, repairing damaged roads, constructing and repairing airstrips, constructing coastal fortifications (including the Atlantic Wall), manned fortifications, and helping to guard vital locations and prisoners.
  
• Non-combat roles included training as anti-aircraft units and deploy,emt as RAD Flak batteries. (Sound familiar?)
  
• Several RAD units also saw ground combat on the eastern front as infantry. As the German defenses crumbled toward the end fo the war, more and more RAD were committed to direct combat. In the final months of the war the RAD formed 6 major frontline units, which saw heavy fighting.
  
• Ratzinger was released from the RAD, and promptly was drafted into, and entered, an infantry unit. He was in the infantry until his desertion.
  

BUT BUT BUT no sweat: even potential critics are falling over themselves to apologize for his Nazi past: "Membership in the Hitler Youth doesn't disqualify someone from being Pope," Efraim Zuroff (a 'Nazi hunter' and director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.)

Well, okay: but how about Hitler's Youth, then a Nazi anti-aircraft unit, then a Nazi laying minefields against an Allied invasion, then being in the Nazi infantry?

Planned next installment: from Nazi youth, to hypocritical elitist intelligentsia. (Fun fact: Ratzinger speaks ten languages, including German, Italian, fluent French, English, and ecclesiastical Latin. Fun sidenote: Ratzinger, in the heady days of Vatican II, when he was considered a liberal, once denounced the use of Latin at Mass as archaic, but now he digs it, and reportedly plans to give his first homily in Latin.)