"As a youth, Joseph was drafted into national service in Germany during World War II.
In 1943, at the age of 16, he and many of his classmates were drafted into the Flak or anti-aircraft corps. They were posted first to Ludwigsfeld, north of Munich, as part of a detachment responsible for guarding a BMW aircraft engine plant. Next they were sent to Unterföhring, northwest of Munich, and briefly to Innsbruck. From Innsbruck their unit went to Gilching to protect the jet fighter base and to attack allied bombers as they massed to begin their runs towards Munich. At Gilching, Ratzinger served in telephone communications.
On September 10, 1944 his class was released from the Flak Corps. Returning home, Ratzinger had already received a new draft notice for the Reichsarbeitdienst. He was posted to the Hungarian border area of Austria which had been annexed by Germany in the Anschluss of 1938. Here he was trained in the “cult of the spade” and upon the surrender of Hungary to Russia was put to work digging setting up anti-tank defences in preparation for the expected Red Army offensive. November 20, 1944 his unit was released from service.
Ratzinger again returned home. After three weeks passed, he was drafted into the army at Munich and assigned to the infantry barracks in the center of Traunstein, the city near which his family lived. After basic infantry training, his unit was sent to various posts around the city. They were never sent to the front.
In late April or early May, days or weeks before the German surrender, Ratzinger deserted. He left the city of Traunstein and returned to his village on the outskirts. Desertion was widespread during the last weeks of the war, even though in principle punishable by death; executions, frequently extrajudicial, continued to the end. In his memoirs, Ratzinger reports being afraid of being caught and his relief at the arrival of American forces in his village.
He was briefly interned in an open-air prisoner of war camp near Ulm and was released on June 19, 1945.
Most information about Ratzinger’s wartime activities is based on his own memoirs and accounts from his brother, Georg."