"Andreas Zielcke sets the Habermas story straight, quoting historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler: "Habermas was no Hitler Youth leader. For reasons of his harelip alone, he could never have had a leadership function under the Nazis. In actual fact, at 14 he did give first-aid classes in the Hitler Youth, for which he'd been trained as an orderly. His tasks included reminding participants who missed classes to attend punctually with so-called 'call letters.' These were preprinted forms in which the instructor simply had to fill in with the participant's information and then sign his name." Wehler had received one such reminder from Habermas, Zielcke writes, but stories that Habermas literally swallowed the form when he was confronted with it years later are false."
Verleumdung wider besseres Wissen