Achtung! Useful facts for der Panzer Papa
[I]t was on March 25, 1939 — not in 1941 — that membership became obligatory for Germans between 10 and 18. Ratzinger’s 10th birthday was in April 1937, so he was obliged to join from the day the Nazi decree was passed.
Rohmel said he believed that Ratzinger did not have to join the Hitler Youth because he was at a Catholic boarding school, but he did not know for sure. Ratzinger’s use of the passive to describe being “registered” in the movement implies he did not personally sign up to join the group.
On Wednesday, the director of Ratzinger’s former school, St. Michael’s Seminary, said an archdiocese official had just spoken with Ratzinger’s brother, Georg, to seek clarification: “We’re getting the information from Georg Ratzinger himself that back then a youth group of the boarding school was just transferred to the Hitler Youth,” said Thomas Frauenlob, the director. “It was an order by law.” But according to Volker Dahm, head of research into National Socialism (Nazism) at Munich’s Institute for Contemporary History, every individual had to sign his name on a form to join the organization.”No other could do it for you,” Dahm said yesterday. “You had to sign it. But you could be forced.”
Dahm read from the original 1936 laws — updated with a decree in March 1939 — and said a violation would mean the child’s parents would have to pay a fine of at least 150 German marks — more than a month’s salary for a government worker — or could be imprisoned. Other common punishments for not joining would be social ostracism, bullying and the loss of a parent’s job, he said. He said the pressures on most young Germans to join were unbearable, even if they — like Ratzinger’s family — were anti-Nazi in political orientation.
It seems likely to us that this Nazi business is a piece of slander that has staying power, so we off this March 25, 1939 date and the citation for your contacts with lesser mortals.