Years before he joined the U. When Welzel was 2 years old, his father got a job that took the family from Ohio back to Germany, where they had emigrated from before the war. Young Hank Welzel became young Heinrich. He grew up under the Nazi regime, complete with a requisite membership in the Hitler Youth.

The History Place - Hitler Youth: Hitler's Boy Soldiers

Welzel was trained as a medic and sent to the Italian front to face the U. Though his grandfather always told him to be proud he was an American, he never dared tell any of his fellow German soldiers where he was born. Growing up under the Nazi regime, Welzel was required to join the Hitler Youth.

An American citizen by birth, he moved to Germany with his family when he was 2. Courtesy of Hank Welzel hide caption. You had to play the game," Welzel says. Soon afterward, an American officer who spoke perfect German began to interrogate him. That was my secret. It was my highest secret, so I didn't dare tell him. Welzel spent the rest of the war at a prisoner of war camp in Alabama, keeping that secret.

It was not until after the war -- when he was in France helping rebuild that country's economy and visited the U. Embassy in Paris -- that he told his story. He was 23 in , when he arrived in the United States with nothing but his German accent and a suitcase of dirty laundry.

Growing up under Hitler, you had no mind of your own.

Trautmann's Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend by Catrine Clay

This plea of "knowing no better" is a comparatively rare direct quote. The dilemma for any biographer who, like Clay, has had extensive access to their subject is how much to quote. Too much, and it becomes a first-person stream of consciousness. Clay's sober, detailed, well-told account perhaps errs a little the other way.

It is expressed mostly in the third person, with most of the quotes coming from people recorded as having spoken to Trautmann. There are times when one would like to hear a little more directly from him about his feelings and reactions, such as when he and a comrade on the Russian front see a massacre of Jews, or when he is buried for three days in a bombed building. His powers of detailed recall are evidently still formidable well into his 80s, but here again there is a hint of a lack of reflectiveness.

Perhaps, though, this is an attribute one is better off without when serving Nazism or in an era when goalkeepers dived headlong in crowded goalmouths. Huw Richards is the author of The Red and the White: Order by newest oldest recommendations. Show 25 25 50 All.

From Hitler Youth to the Vatican

In what was seen by Vatican insiders as a blatant campaign speech, he warned the church to withstand the "tides of trends and latest novelties". But when looking at his life so far, it is hard to know which is more memorable: He was referring to the document Dominus Jesus issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, which, in highly unecumenical language, described other Christian faiths and world religions as "deficient or not quite real churches".

Another liberal Catholic and former priest, the late Peter Hebblethwaite, called him "the big, bad wolf of the new Inquisition For some, the thought [of his becoming pope] is just too terrible to contemplate. To have him as pope would be inconceivably divisive, runs the common wisdom. It is not just people who do not believe in Roman Catholicism who attract the new pope's ire.


  • Memoirs of a White Man?
  • A Veteran's Journey From Hitler Youth To U.S. Army : NPR.
  • A Search for a Name (American Brahman Book 1).

Four years ago, he wrote that rock music was "the expression of elemental passions which, in the big musical festivals, have taken on a cultural character, that is to say, [the character] of a counter-cult, opposed to Christian worship". Only this week, he declared that "having a clear faith based on the creed of the church is often labelled today as fundamentalism.

Relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards. Small wonder that the year-old German has won nicknames such as God's Rottweiler and the Panzer Cardinal. Even Corriere della Sera, the voice of the Italian moderate right, which is normally deeply respectful of the church hierarchy, recently labelled him "Cardinal No".

The Impact of War

For the past 24 years, he has headed the Vatican "ministry" responsible for defending and enforcing Catholic orthodoxy, particularly in the world's theological faculties. However, under his guidance, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued a stream of hardline instructions and rebukes. The hand of the new pope has been seen in most of the more reactionary proclamations made by the Vatican in the final years of John Paul II's papacy, as his health waned.