Uchtdorf was born to ethnic Germans Karl Albert Uchtdorf and Hildegard Else Opelt in Moravská Ostrava (), which at the time was in the Nazi-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now Ostrava, Czech Republic). When he was a child, his family traveled through areas being bombed to move to Zwickau in eastern Germany while his father was away in the army. As a result of his grandmother's encounter with an LDS Church member in a soup line, Uchtdorf's family joined the LDS Church when he was still young.