Musings on Nazism, God, and the Pope

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I don’t want to derail the other pope thread, so I thought maybe I’d take this discussion here. And I’m not sure where I want to go with this, other than there is part that hits me personally having German ancestry and the odd set of circumstances of the guilt or shame inherited from that ancestry.

I find this fascinating because the Pope at 78 is one year older than my mother, and one year younger than my father would have been. Like him, they grew up in Nazi Germany and parts of his story resonate with the stories told by my parents.

My mother was also a member of the Hitler Youth, not because of any deep held political or racial convictions, but rather it was the thing to do at the time – the girl scouts of its day. Though she did receive the eugenic messages that it was okay for her to have a child with a blond haired blue eyed guy because the state would take care of her baby; she wasn’t really of the age to put that into practice. Most of her stories of that time are more about the horrors of war, friends being evicted, napalmed, shot, raped, and maimed. By the time the war ended, she had witnessed enough atrocities by all parties to realize there were few evils not committed under the blessings of religion, patriotism, or nationalism.

My Father’s story also follows the Pope – a bit. I believe at 16 my father was sent abroad to Poland where he dug trenches – where he accidentally exhumed mass graves from previous pogroms. Ultimately, he “joined” the Navy – but he was outspoken in his disdain for the Nazi party and found himself, after his second (or third) desertion, an enemy of the fatherland. Ironically, it was his father (my Grandfather) who took him in at gunpoint. Fortunately, this happened near enough to the war’s end that the execution of Russian POWs (then in abundance) took priority, over the execution or traitors.

So from my father’s story I know resistance was possible, but certainly had its consequences. I’m not sure I’d blame anyone for not willing to risk their lives in the foolhardy manner that my father did. Interestingly enough, I think it was this wartime experience that galvanized my parents’ atheism, for all the evil done in the name of god, and horror God presumably allowed. Yet in this same set of circumstances, the Pope may have found his faith, and trust in God.