Nazi Pope

He didn't join the Nazi party? What kind of fake Nazi pope are you trying to push on us?

As an intelligent woman I understood exactly what Hiro meant with his post. It wasn't misogynistic in any way, and Ulrika knows that. She is just grand standing with pseudo-intellectualism to try and divert attention from what Hiro was actually saying, and thus avoid admitting that he is correct.

How telling is that?

I guess he's a quasinazi!

~Ulrika~

the name Ulrika sounds nazi'ish!!!

Herzlichst,
Christoph Ackermann


(yes, this is humor, no I'm not really calling Ulrika a Nazi, No I'm not a Nazi, yes I like Ulrika and not least for her persistant jabs at religion, yes that's the germanized version of my real name, yes even my avatar name is sort of germanic, I'm proud of my german heritage)

You know the rule. Call Ulrika a Nazi and put a quarter in the Nazi jar.

~Ulrika~

How can anyone pick a favorite nazi pope? They're all special in their own ways.

Im so sorry that I missed all the fun in thread

But still i'd like to ask, if the two dudes WERE related to Nazis, what's so wrong with someone asking who was/is more Nazi?? If the christians feel that relations to Nazism offend their spiritual leaders, I believe they should be upset with the leaders themselves for being related to the Nazis?

And another thing I've noticed, as soon as there's a serious thread concerning things other than cloth and flexi (aint flexi kicks ass?!?!) hair, peeps scream that the forums are being trolled, whats up with that? Would you get your heads out of your asses? Please?

Rastafarianism is an ass.

Name-calling of religions? Seriously?

Calling in question the character of two former religious leaders is not an attack on the entire institution.

I voted for Pius because he has a superior name.

You could argue the same for Pius, but I'd agree in giving the moral high ground to Chamberlain. Chamberlain was an appeaser, it could be argued that Pius not only tolerated nazism but willfully ignored the crimes against humanity. Like many others.

Ulrika clearly doesn't have any idea what a nazi is. It's like saying every American is a neo-con cowboy, every citizen of the Soviet Union was a card carrying communist, and every German citizen between 1939-1945 was a nazi party member. BTW we both quoted the exact same wikipedia article. Being in the German army during WWII doesn't mean you're a nazi, it meant you didn't want to rot in jail or be executed.

Anyone who equates Benedict, an unwilling wehrmacht conscript, with a nazi is clearly anti-catholic, anti-German and really has no understanding of WWII history. It's pretty damned ignorant and insulting. What's next? The Dalai Lama, at the age of 3, consulted with Tojo resulting in the rape of Nanking?

Who's your favorite Nazi Buddhist? Who's you favorite Genocidal Yoga Practitioner? What member of the Peace Corps most closely resembles Josef Stalin? Which Gay Pride marcher would you vote leader of a banana republic? Which of the above polls do you find stupidest?

Ooh. You were doing so well until you went on with the personal attacks, inconsistent similes, and gross generalizations. It would be interesting to see what you could do without having to lean on the standard forum rhetorical crutches.

~Ulrika~

If you say that Ratzinger, as an unwilling conscript whose father hated the nazis and whose cousin was killed by the nazis, is a nazi, then you are essentially painting every member of the armed forces of Germany 1933-1945 as nazis. That's the stupid generalization I'm trying to dispel. I'm trying to do this by using only slightly more ridiculous generalizations as exemplars. I made no personal attacks. I stated that labeling either pope a nazi is anti-catholic, anti-German, ignorant and stupid. I stand by my statement that at the time of your post, you did not know what a nazi is. You know better now (see below).

Here's the history lesson: If you served in the German military during WWII you were not necessarily a nazi. In fact, very few were nazi party members. Most german generals despised the nazis before, during and after the war. This is well documented. Benedict was forced into the army and had plenty of opportunity to join the nazi party and apply to the SS. He wanted nothing to do with either. By labelling him a nazi and quoting his military record as a teenager as evidence he was a nazi, you make it sound like he had a choice in the matter.

Please show me any kind of evidence that either pope was a member of the nazi party. Please show me evidence of either pope supporting nazism. You have shown none so far. I have shown Pius signing the concordat in 1933.

Still, it's a great punk band name. "Ulrika and Nazi Popes" play Harvey's, 500 Castro (at 18th St.), San Francisco.

I would say that putting those two sentences together is amusing, if not ignorant and stupid in itself, if you'll permit me to indulge in some childish name calling too.

Regardless of party membership, the current pope hasn't been honest with others -- and probably hasn't been honest with himself -- about what he did and what he could have done during the war. Below are several points with a link to a well balanced and informative article. It's a good summary, compiled by someone without Catholic blinders on.

1. Hitler Jugend: Joseph Ratzinger’s claims about the Hitler Youth are not true. Compulsory membership was first defined in 1936 and reinforced in 1939, not in 1941 as he says. Ratzinger also says that he was “still too young” at the time, but he was 14 in 1941 and not too young at all: between the ages of 10 and 14, membership in the Deutsche Jungvolk (a group for younger children) was mandatory. Yet there is no mention of Raztinger belonging. If he had managed to avoid the required membership in the Deutsche Jungvolk, why did he suddenly join the Hitler Youth in 1941?
   .
   
2. Resistance: Both Joseph Ratzinger and his brother, Georg, have said that “resistance was impossible” at the time and, therefore, it’s not surprising or morally culpable that they also “went along.” This is also not true. First, it’s insulting to the many who risked their lives to resist the Nazi regime, both in organized cells and on an individual basis. Second, there are many examples of those who refused service in the Hitler Youth for a variety of reasons.
   
   Whatever the Ratzinger family did and whatever Joseph Ratzinger’s father did, it wasn’t enough to be arrested or sent to a concentration camp. It doesn’t even appear to have been enough to warrant being detained and questioned by the Gestapo.
   .
   
3. Military: Although it is true that Ratzinger deserted the military rather than continue fighting, he didn’t do so until April 1945, when the end of the war was quite close.

It's an unimpressive showing for someone who would one day be the pope. No walking on water. No saint-like acts. Just conformity in the face of fascism.

~Ulrika~

I guess then we should condemn all 70 year old men for, as a 14 year old boy, choosing to be in the German version of the Boy Scouts, rather than be looked upon as a traitor by the Gestapo in their country.

Is it so wrong that a child at 14 makes a decision out of weakness? We should arrest 99.999% of our youth for succumbing to peer pressure at some point in their teenage years! Expose them for the nazis they are!

WWJD?

Vonnegut isn't a politician, he's a writer. He's also a WWII veteran. And I guess I'd better make this really clear, Kurt Vonnegut is an American, he fought in WWII on our side. He has never been a politician. Waldheim wasn't kicked out of the US. Waldheim was president of Austria and before that Secretary General of the UN. He lied about his WWII record. It came out. He was disgraced.

Hitlerjugend = Boy Scouts? Um, yeah, sure... Well, their approach to homosexuals and atheists is similar, but other than that the two organizations really shouldn't be compared.

And it's an incredible over simplification to take four years of a person's life and sum it up as "succumbing to peer pressure at some point in their teenage years." Which point? Joining the Hitlerjugend? Joining the Wehrmacht? Turning a blind eye to the concentration camp that was located only a few miles from his home town? Or maybe ignoring the slave labor that was forced to work in the factory he defended?

Thousands of other Germans did the same. I'm not saying that Ratzinger is guilty of war crimes. I am saying that anybody who lived in Nazi ruled Germany and didn't actively oppose the Nazi regime isn't qualified to be pope. Or Secretary General of the UN. Or President or Chancellor of Germany. Or head of the Red Cross. Every day people have to live with the decisions they made in their youth, why should Ratzinger be an exception?

I haven't found any genuine historical evidence that suggest either Pope subscribed to the ideology, so couldn't vote in your poll without the, "This poll is biased" option.

I'm really not a fan (to say the least) of either Pope or the religion either. In fact, as someone who was born in England, still lives in England and is as English as they come, I subscribe to the scientific view on creationism and just about on everything else. I say this as in some way it validates my next statement as not a biased statement towards religion or race.

Judging German people as a whole for their mistakes in WW2 is a terrible mistake in itself. With such limited information and many other social factors, many of the German people were naive yes, but also they were hidden from the truth. The public face of Nazism in this era was, "Everyone’s against us but don't worry we are superior, we won't falter as we are the superior people". It's a pretty easy thing to buy into when you consider American and Britain went to "war" in Iraq over a well orchestrated lie, with political and public support.

Ok, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but the historical information is there if you want to read up on it. I won't do your research for you!

Should this mean we British and American citizens should be ladled Muslim hating, warmongering tyrants because we didn't somehow turn against our own countries during this time? Well apparently only history will tell, and that will be written by the winners, whoever they may be in this big lose, lose situation.

Out of interest, seeing as you appear to be an infamous person on these forums and information has been dug up about what you said previously: I understand your possible distaste towards Catholicism, but as a fellow outspoken girlie I would have assumed that a significantly larger religion with its terrible view on Women’s Rights would inspire your writings in these forums more? I could have understood more a topic title more that said, "Should this religion be banned as it teachs girls from birth they are inferior to men?" I may not agree, but it would make far more sense than which Pope is more of a Nazi?

All of this nazi stuff is sooo exaggerated. Pope Pius XII? He wasn't Nazi by any stretch of the imagination.



The only one making oversimplifications is you, Michael. You judge an era by the glasses imposed by decades of anti-Nazi preaching and you condemn it in retrospect. Germans of the time simply did not believe they lived in a system of EVIL. The Wehrmacht? You didn't join the Wehrmacht, you were drafted. And even then, the Germans, right or wrong, thought they were defending their country. Maybe you think that people should not defend their country or do their duty.

Ratzinger turned no blind eye to the concentration camps. Everyone knew about them, but people were not allowed inside. They had largelly no way of knowing what they looked like at the end of the war, and if anyone was actually ever gassed in them they didn't know this either. Either that or, judging by the fantastic stories in circulation among the underground, shrugged it off as so much hoaxed propaganda. (The spread of false horror stories by the allies also happened during WWI.)

The Germans were not alone in using forced labour. Same thing had been systemized in the Soviet Union since the early days of the Bolshevik revolution, and on a much larger scale. There were a lot of concentration camps in the Soviet Union. Do you think the Russians should be forbidden to become Russian presidents, Popes, UN Secretaries or head of the Red Cross too, because they happened to live during Stalinism and didn't "actively oppose the regime"? I believe you don't. You're just a victim of skewed perspectives.

And these are excellents points, and you didn't have to start a thread called "Nazi Pope", nor call Ratzinger "a nazi" to make them. The topic is not what you're saying - whether or not he is qualified - but the topic is whether or not these popes are nazis. And I think it's a grevious mistake to label them, when there are far more heinous real-actual-nazis that were around. It reduces the word's meaning, and it takes away from the power that word has when it is used on people who really are nazis.

My objection is to the obvious Christian-bashing that's been going on through a series of threads by Ulrika, not the discussion of this issue. A more serious approach to this topic would have taken a less overtly-offensive, less-whimsical approach. But this thread is trolling by definition - posting something overtly offensive and inflamatory to evoke negative responses from people. Anyone who's read posts by me on more serious topics will find me debating points on both sides, and while I can be critical of various Christian churches, relating ones to nazis is just trolling.

Well, if you actually read the article you're quoting, here's the summary at the bottom:



As a teenager, he and his family did what they had to to survive, and very little more. I just saw the movie, "Sophie Scholl". She was a 21 year old anti-nazi activist in Munich. She was a university educated adult and privileged, going to school subsidized by the nazi regime. Her crime? Distributing leaflets, her sentence, she, her brother and friend were all guillotined *SIX DAYS* after arrest. Off the top of my head I can't think of any anti-nazi activist inside of Germany who survived the war. Here's a list, notice none were teenagers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_condemned_by_Nazi_courts. Please read some of these. If only these Germans are qualified to be pope and you cross reference this to cardinals, then we can't have a german pope. Oh, wait, they're all dead anyway. Read those entries and tell me with a straight face that someone 10-17 years old could have done much more than Benedict.

We're not arguing if he's qualified to be Pope. I'm an agnostic and find him too conservative. That's not our call anyway. We're discussing whether he or Pius was a nazi. Neither one was, and so your flame bait poll is stupid and ignorant.

Imagine if I said you were a Republican supporter of the war in Iraq. You've paid taxes, right? So it must be. You could have resisted and fled the country. You've done nothing to be arrested for treason by the FBI. Living in a democracy, you have much more freedom to choose than Ratzinger did. Heck there's no draft and you can leave the country at will. Calling either pope a nazi is ridiculous. Learn some WWII history.

Does this mean that people who joined the army during the Clinton adminstration are Democrats?

Not only that, according to Ulrika's logic they're card carrying Democrats and support the policies. All the more heinous because in a democracy they could have voted Clinton out and actually protested him without being guillotined. The shame.

They definitely shouldn't be Il Popa.

The Nazis were opposed by many people. Sophie Scholl and the White Rose group in Munich are an excellent example of such resistance. The Nazis were resisted by people all over occupied Europe, from the King of Denmark wearing the yellow star of David every day when riding through Copenhagen to those who hid Jews in Poland, Germany, Holland, France and other places. Amazing acts of heroism were undertaken every day by the most ordinary people.

But Pope Pius XII wasn't one of those people. He was informed on a regular basis of Nazi atrocities, and he chose to remain silent. Even the Bishop of Berlin asked him to speak out and Pius said nothing. It wasn't until the end of the war that the Vatican began to express its opposition to Nazi policies. But Pius never spoke out himself. He wanted to remain "neutral."

Oddly enough though, after the war he shucked his neutrality and went on an anti-Communist crusade. He threatened to excommunicate any Italian who voted Communist. He repeatedly spoke out against Soviet atrocities.

I think it's fair to ask why he didn't take such a stand against Naziism. People have claimed that he didn't want to provoke Nazi and Fascist attacks on Catholics, but that didn't stop him from putting Catholics under Soviet rule in jeopardy. Why didn't he threaten to excommunicate Italians who supported Fascism?

Pope Benedict's behavior during the Nazi regime was just as unremarkable. He kept his head down and went along. Does that make him a monster? No. But it's disappointing that the Church has chosen some one with such a past to be Pope. Yes, most Germans didn't actively oppose Hitler and the National Socialists. But most Germans (like most Americans or Chinese or any other nationality) weren't on the short list to be Pope either.

I agree that neither Pope was the best choice at the time. I think you also agree with me that neither pope was a nazi.