German fury at 'insults' to Pope

[emad]

Luke Harding in Berlin
Friday April 22, 2005
The Guardian

German newspapers reacted with fury yesterday to British media reports focusing on Pope Benedict's teenage membership of the Hitler Youth.

Bild, Germany's bestselling newspaper, led a chorus of outrage with the headline "Hitler Youth - the English insult German Pope."

The paper complained about coverage in the Sun ("From Hitler Youth to Pope"), Daily Telegraph ("God's Rottweiler") and Daily Mirror ("Panzerkardinal"). It added: "The world celebrates the new Pope and the British make a stink."

Several German newspapers reminded readers that the future Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had deserted from the German army at the end of the second world war - an action that could have cost him his life. They also pointed out that from March 1939, all German boys between the ages of 10 and 11 were obliged to serve in the Hitler Youth.
Die Welt said the Pope's appointment was a "gesture of forgiveness towards Germany".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,1466226,00.html

WACKY Brit humor never too popular in Germany since days of Monty Python...

[bunkerbuster1]

1. "Sree peanuts crossed zee road. One of zem vass assaulted...

peanut."

(old Python bit that came to mind...)

[SweetLeftFoot]

2. Fritz

let's be honest - Fritz is overdue for a go isn't he?

If another 25 years can pass without them feeling the need to go on a bit of a European adventure, then they can start to clamber up onto the moral ground.

[LeftCoast]

3. 'Bild' is not Germany

Bild may be outraged, but I doubt a lot of other Germans give a crap. :shrug:

Then again, Bild is just trying to sell more papers and it's usual modus operandi is to do so with salacious headlines so this fits right in...

[UCLA Dem]

7. seriously. i saw polls saying most Germans don't even like him.

[emad]

4. Pope's home town witnessed Nazi atrocities against Jews

By Tony Paterson in Traunstein
22 April 2005


Pope Benedict XVI grew up in a German town in which Polish and Hungarian Jews were once massacred on a death march through its streets by SS guards. It also had a Nazi concentration camp on its doorstep.

The disturbing account of Nazi rule in Bavarian Traunstein, where the Pope went to school and spent the years of his youth, is in a brief history of the town by a local author, Friedbert Mühldorfer, available in the town library. The book, seen by The Independent yesterday, reveals atrocities, expulsion of Jews, widespread use of slave labourers, persecution of anti-Nazis and details of the camp on the town's outskirts. Somewhat remarkably, none of the events described appear to have been mentioned in the Pope's autobiography, Milestones, which was published in 1997.

The most shocking revelations concern 3 May 1945 when the new Pope may have been in the town. Thousands of starving, mainly Jewish, prisoners were marched from the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Flossenberg in advance of the invading Red Army.

Mühldorfer says the people of Traunstein were ordered to close streets to traffic as a column of emaciated prisoners was herded through by SS guards. "They marched past people who showed sympathy and even gave them food, as happened at one Traunstein bakery," the author writes.
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=631896

[Mondon]

5. Yes, and Ratzinger's family had to leave

at least one town due to his father's unpopularity with the local Nazi Brownshirts.

[leesa]

6. Unfortunately, his current behavior is what smacks of Nazism.

[Bridget Burke]

9. Please be more specific.

I certainly don't agree with much of what he's said & done. But where's the specific link to Nazism?

[Boomer]

11. Nazi as shorthand for controlling, authoritarian, hard-liner

Although Ratzinger has repudiated the substance of the Nazi regime, he seems to have internalized their management style.

And given his ties to the Bush Family, one really does have to question his sense of values. The BFEE is all about control and money, hardly a ringing endorsement of Christ's philosophy.

[Bridget Burke]

14. Controlling, authoritarian, hard-liner....

Could apply to lots of people who aren't Nazis.

[Boomer]

15. Oh, I definitely agree

I just think that was what the previous poster was alluding to when s/he used that term.

For better or worse, I think the term "Nazi" has diffused into "really nasty person" in common usage, which muddies the water in a discussion about that era.

[ikri]

8. Not sure he understood

None of the articles that I have read have accused him of actually being a Nazi now and most of them point out that he deserted his unit.

Is every newspaper in the world supposed to simply gloss over the fact that he was in the Hitler youth? Last time I checked WWII was a pretty huge historical event and any part that he played in the war was always going to be examined.

This has nothing to do with England vs Germany, it is about Liberal Europe vs Conservative church.

[bluedonkey]

10. Die Bild Zeitung

Give me a break!
It's a tabloid,not a real paper.

Neither my father nor his brothers were ever in the Hitler Youth.It's just an easy excuse for people who were part of this culture.

[SOS]

12. Any cover stories on.....

15 million dead Africans?
The Trans-Atlantic slave trade?
Opium Wars in China?
Caribbean slavery death camps?
Iraq in the 1920s?
South Africa?
Rhodesia?
One million dead in India/Pakistan?
Three Afghan wars of imperial aggression?
The Mau Mau uprising?
The 1903 slaughter in Tibet?
one million dead Irish?

Just curious.

[Kellanved]

13. Oh please

There were glaring mistakes in almost all articles written within a few days of the papal election. I doubt that the British media was better or worse than any other country's. (Although the Guardian is IMHO somewhat lacking, lately).

Despite the involvement of other formats, this is basically just one thing: a food fight between the Sun and the Bild, or Murdoch and Springer -take your pick.

Certainly not LBN.

[Dirk39]

16. Thank you,

I can hardly remember to have ever read such an insult against Monty Python. To equate the "Sun's Brit humour" - hähhhhh????? - with Monty Phyton???

EMAD: "FROM MONTY TO MURDOCH!"

If at least those Brits, who start these campaigns, would be interested in fascism or in any kind of enlightment or critical discourse, but they aren't.
For many reasons, I could have thought of a better pope or better no pope at all, but this is simply stupid tabloid-nonsense...

God's sausage dog in Germany,
Dirk

[Rich Hunt]

17. I must say

Monty Python is a helluva lot funnier than the British press.

That's an ironic comparison.