None of it is new. Back in 1985, on the eve of a bishops' synod convened by John Paul to discuss the implementation of Vatican II, two naive American journalists visited me at my hotel in Rome to check out a story they'd been fed: that, years earlier, Joseph Ratzinger had been a Nazi. Locating his listing in a standard reference work, I pointed out that when World War II began, Ratzinger was all of twelve years old. The journalists went away sad, leaving me to marvel at the malice of whoever was peddling such hateful poppycock.
Crisis magazine explains that Ratzinger was just twelve years old when the war began. However, that means he would have been 17 when it ended, and UPI seems to think that he saw action. No, I do not think that Ratzinger was a Nazi. I think it is still troubling that a man who saw action as a soldier in the Army of the most evil enterprise in history should be elected Pope without more explanation. What has he said about the War?