To what extent was Pope Benedict involved in WWII?
458972
forced conscription in the Hitler youth. Basically the equivalent of a armed boy scout patrol. From what I remember he did not even fire a shot and ran a way to the safety of a Church the first chance he got.
410874
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II
1085925
the Holocaust and Christianity.
1007709
Yes, this is all just the beginning.\n\nSee if you look at the world today you will notice chain reactions happening all over the world that started on that day.  Example: the worlds distrust of the US.\n\nYes, a lot of things lead up to it, but it was the calmination of everything prior.\n\nBut don't worry just yet.  WWII started off a little skirmish it was a couple years before it became a blown out war.  The time you should worry is when another superpower enters this little skirmish or when it truelly becomes a religious war.\n\nYes, I know it seems that this is a religious war, but it's really just a political war right now.  If you noticed even on this forum it's becoming more religious every day. It still a man(Bin Lauden) using religion to do something political.  Eventually this will turn into a religious war or another World War; either way it will be the war to end all wars.
151772
The act that started WWII was Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1938, you can look there. But of course it could be argued that WWII started before that as Naziism took hold of the German country.
566199
The position of Pope of the holy Roman empire.
12175
He only has actual power within the limits of the Vatican.  However, being the absolute authority of the Catholic Church, he exerts great influence throughout the world.
782900
No countries have done such things, groups within countries have done though.  For example, Islamic fundimentalists have waged war on western civilisation (not just Christianity I might add) but that doesn't mean all of the Middle East suddenly becomes an enemy.  Much in the same way, the Nazis were German but that doesn't mean all of Germany was an enemy during WW2, just the state that took presidence.
333591
I don't know but you might try and find the book: The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII: The Roman Catholic Church and the Division of Europe, 1943-1950
303654
It is only right to place the Jews first on the list of the Nazis' victims.\n\nHowever millions of Catholics and other Christians were also killed. No one knows exactly how many. I've seen claims of up to 42,000,000 but I could not find documentation for this number.\n\nAlso remember most the the allied military dead were Christians.
602308
There was a time in European history where the Church held absolute sway in the appointment and endorsement of political rulers, as well as their own "police force" of inquisitors where free-thinkers and political opponents were burned, tortured, and murdered.  Wars were repeatedely fought against the Muslim in Muslim lands to distract and divide the folks at home and to keep the people militarized and the money flowing into the coffers of the tyrannical kings.  This period was affectionately known as "The Dark Ages" and "Medievel Age" appropriately.  Woe betide the man who willfully repeats disastrous history.
1024687
Who knows what some individual people of any faith may occasionally do?\n\nIt is only right to place the Jews first on the list of the Nazis' victims.\n\nHowever millions of Catholics and other Christians were also killed. No one knows exactly how many. I've seen claims of up to 42,000,000 but I could not find documentation for this number.\n\nOne example, over 6 million Poles (mostly Catholic) perished during WWII. That was 22% of the population of the country.\n\nAlso remember most the the allied military dead were Christians.\n\nWith love in Christ.
1005209
Please visit :\nhttp://www.americancatholic.org/Features/Francis/\nYou'll get the whole picture !
312064
History is currently being distorted by the millions of Christians who lie to have us believe that the Holocaust was not a Christian deed.  Through subterfuge and concealment, many of today’s Church leaders and faithful Christians have camouflaged the Christianity of Adolf Hitler and have attempted to mark him an atheist, a pagan cult worshipper, or a false Christian in order to place his misdeeds on those with out Jesus.  However, from the earliest formation of the Nazi party and throughout the period of conquest and growth, Hitler expressed his Christian support to the German citizenry and soldiers. Those who would make Hitler an atheist should turn their eyes to history books before they address their pews and chat rooms.\n\n    Considering that Christianity has thus far been incapable of producing an unbiased, educated follower which speaks the truth, (I haven’t encountered any), I have been forced to dispel the myth by writing this essay.  It is not until I bring up his speeches, my personal info on the Nazi regime and their tactics that a Christian will begin to question what their clergy told them. (I am the offspring of a German soldier.  My Opa served under Hitler in WW2 and my father was raised during the time of the Nazi regime.  This is important information to take into consideration for I am privy to some info that most Americans do not know.  It is common for American media and education institutions to lie to their citizens concerning Nazi Germany.)  So, in presenting this information I must break it into four parts: 1) Facts about Hitler and his involvement with the Church.  2) How the Church was the catalyst for anti- Semitism.  3) Facts concerning how the Nazi regime drilled these beliefs into Germanic society.  4) Quotes Hitler made which prove he had a disdain for atheism/occultism, upheld his Christian faith, and hated Jews due to his Christianity.\n\nHitler’s involvement with the Church:\n\na) Hitler was baptized as Roman Catholic during infancy in Austria.\n\nb) As Hitler approached boyhood he attended a monastery school.  (On his way to school young Adolf daily observed a stone arch which was carved with the monastery’s coat of arms bearing a swastika.)\n\nc) Hitler was a communicant and an altar boy in the Catholic Church.\n\nd) As a young man he was confirmed as a “soldier of Christ.”  His most ardent goal at the time was to become a priest.  Hitler writes of his love for the church and clergy: “I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals.  As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal.”  -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)\n\ne) Hitler was NEVER excommunicated nor condemned by his church.  Matter of fact the Church felt he was JUST and “avenging for God” in attacking the Jews for they deemed the Semites the killers of Jesus.\n\nf) Hitler, Franco and Mussolini were given VETO power over whom the pope could appoint as a bishop in Germany, Spain and Italy.  In turn they surtaxed the Catholics and gave the money to the Vatican.  Hitler wrote a speech in which he talks about this alliance, this is an excerpt: “The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgement of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church.  This treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National Socialism [Nazism] is hostile to religion is a lie.”  Adolf Hitler, 22 July 1933, writing to the Nazi Party\n\ng) Hitler worked CLOSELY with Pope Pius in converting Germanic society and supporting the church.  The Church absorbed Nazi ideals and preached them as part of their sermons in turn Hitler placed Catholic teachings in public education.  This photo depicts Hitler with Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, the papal nuncio in Berlin.  It was taken On April 20, 1939, when Orsenigo celebrated Hitle
345926
Adolf Hitler was raised as a Roman Catholic by his parents, as was customary where he grew up. His father, though nominally a Catholic, was a freethinker, his mother a practising Catholic. Young Adolf was baptized, served as an altar boy, and received the sacraments. Influenced by pan-german nationalism and social darwinism, he began to reject the Church and Catholicism as an adolescent, according to his own accounts. After he had left home, he stopped attending mass and receiving sacraments altogether, thereby ceasing to be a practising Catholic.[5]\n\nHitler's religious beliefs changed over the years and as they have to be gathered from his numerous public and private statements, which present a discrepant picture, they will remain ambiguous. In public statements, Hitler frequently spoke positively about the Christian heritage of German culture and his own Christianity, which appealed to deeply-rooted sentiments within the electorate[6]. Moreover, Hitler never formally or publicly left the church[7]. However, Hitler’s private statements were more mixed. There are numerous alleged negative statements about Christianity and the Church reported by Hitler’s intimates, e.g. Goebbels or Speer.[8].\n\nThough Hitler rejected traditional Christianity in general, he was far from irreligious. Joseph Goebbels, for example, notes in a diary entry in 1939: “The Führer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay.” \n\n...\n\nIn contrast to other Nazi leaders, Hitler did not adhere to esoteric ideas, occultism or neo-paganism and even ridiculed such beliefs in private. Drawing on Higher Criticism and some branches of theologically liberal Protestantism, Hitler advocated what he termed Positive Christianity, purged of everything that Hitler found objectionable. Hitler never demoted Jesus himself, but viewed traditional Christianity as a corruption of the original ideas of Jesus[10], who was reinvented as an Aryan opponent of the Jews. In 1927 he said: "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter."[11] Hitler did not believe in a "remote, rationalist divinity" but "in one providential, active, deity."[12]. In Hitler's belief this god had created the world, in which different races fought each other for survival along social darwinist lines. He often referred to "providence" guarding and guiding the "Aryan race", supposedly the bearer of civilisation, in its fight against the Jews, supposedly the enemies of all civilisation. Ultimately, he considered himself a Messiah-like saviour of the German people.\n\nAs the Protestant Church was more open to such reinterpretations, Hitler demonstrated a preference for Protestantism over Catholicism.[13] His views were supported by the German Christians movement, but rejected by the Confessing Church. According to Steigmann-Gall, Hitler felt "remorse that the churches had failed to back him and his movement as he had hoped."[14], stating according to Albert Speer: "Through me the Protestant Church could become the established church, as in England”\n\nDespite his rejection of the Catholic Church, Hitler admired the pomp of Catholic ritual and the hierarchical organisation of the clergy. Later, he drew on these elements, organizing his party along hierarchical lines and including liturgical forms into events or using phraseology taken from hymns. Because of these liturgical elements, Hitler's Messiah-like status and the ideology's all-encompassing nature, the Nazi movement is sometimes termed a "political religion".
666751
there are a lot of events in WWII. \n1.) Pearl Harbor\n2.) Battle of Britain\n3.) D-day\n4.) Atomic bombs\n5.) Battle of the Bulge\n6.) V-E day\n7.) V-J day\n\nJust to name a few!
148052
Some Catholics may be--but not GERMANY! Germany will soon rise to lead Europe into a "holy crusade"--starting with confronting Iran and it's taunting Germany's past concerning the slaughter of 16 million jews. Sound too unbelievable??? Listen to German response to Iran's comments...they are NOT going to take it lying down. And the pope is quietly waiting to unite Europe under a Catholic "umbrella" of influence. The 1940's will soon repeat itself again--don't believe ME--watch Europe and the Middle East!!! And pray to God that we wake up to reality! Why does noone have the GUTS to tell the TRUTH???!!!