sweetlad86 Wrote:Dude I cant read the stuff under the blue Frank :confused:...
Sorry..:redface:
sorry babe... I found a trick which was to highlight a text color when unable to read something... or when youre quoting it should come up regular text so that is another trick... to pick the text to quote and hit reply and youll see the text in black...
but here ya go with the text outta blue:
German children born in the 1920s and 30s became adults during the Cold War years. Since membership was compulsory after 1936, it was neither surprising nor uncommon that many senior leaders of both West and East Germany had been in the HJ. Little effort was made to blacklist political figures who had been youth members of the HJ, since many had had little choice in the matter.
Despite this, several notable figures have been "exposed" by the media as former HJ Youth members. These include Stuttgart mayor Manfred Rommel (son of the famous general Erwin Rommel); former foreign minister of Germany Hans-Dietrich Genscher; philosopher Jurgen Habermas; and the late Prince Consort of the Netherlands Claus von Amsberg.
In April 2005 the media reported that Pope Benedict XVI had, as 14-year old Joseph Ratzinger, been a HJ member. The German government's response was that compulsory membership of the HJ had little bearing on the pope's religious convictions or on his ability to lead the Roman Catholic Church.[citation needed]
Furthermore, membership in the organization did not mean support for Nazi ideologies was unanimous among the membership. For instance, Hans Scholl, the brother of Sophie Scholl and one of the leading figures of the anti-Nazi resistance movement White Rose (Weiße Rose), was also a member of the Hitler Youth. This fact is emphasised in the film The White Rose which speaks of how Scholl was able to resist Nazi Germany ideals while still serving in a Nazi organization. The Thomas Carter film Swing Kids also focuses on this topic.