Posted on 04/13/2015 1:19:48 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
It is rare for me to celebrate the death of an author. Even the worst of them seldom merit sufficient indignation or contempt or, let’s face it, bad manners.
But when I heard the news that German writer Gunter Grass has died, I celebrated. He was 87-years-old. I am only sorry he didn’t die seventy-five-years ago. Before he became an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth organization. Before he volunteered to serve in the murderous Waffen SS during World War II. Before he claimed the mantle of post-war Germany’s conscience. Before he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1999.
The Swedish Academy gave him the prize, for literature, because they saw in Grass a modern German hero, an anti-Nazi who took on, “the enormous task of reviewing contemporary history,” by exposing “...the lies people wanted to forget because they had once believed in them.”
This was quite an accolade for one of the great liars of the Twentieth Century. And Grass appealed to Europeans precisely because he was a monumentally bold liar. His moral authority stemmed from his innocence. As a sensitive teenager he had been forced by the Nazis to belong to the Hitler Youth. As a young man he had been an unwilling conscript who had contrived to be just a harmless “flakhelfer,” a slacker who remained in the rear and hurt no one.
This, of course, was precisely the alibi of Grass’s generation—the Nazi supermen who claimed, after the war, to have been nowhere and done nothing, as well as the Nazi collaborators in a dozen occupied countries who, when the fighting ended, reinvented themselves as heroic members of the resistance. Like Grass they were innocent, victims in fact, of the Nazis.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
‘Twould appear that the “Nobel” appendage to anything other than STEM awards is pretty much an accusation of incompetence or immorality for the recipient.
Remember, of Dorkbama got an award, it’s pretty much worth what one sees floating within the hole of your local Whitehouse outhouse.
Stupid writers and the damned dashes. You just from kin say “he was 87 years old”. A hyphen is when the number is a noun, like “he was an 87-year-old”. Pisses me off. I won’t read any further.
First off, every child in Germany was forced to join the Hitler Youth. That Grass was thoroughly indoctrinated in their ideas says more about their effective use of propaganda on children than it says about Grass. Then, when Grass was 17, in early 1945, he was drafted and was assigned to an SS Panzer division. He didn't volunteer. At that point in the war, they were sending draftees where they needed them. Grass joined the unit in February of 1945 and was wounded two months later.
I would assume there is some truth to that. If he hadn't been a slacker, it's likely his body would be rotting in the ground somewhere between the Volga and the Oder.
Yes, the Nazis were bad, and the Germans were vicariously "bad" for letting it happen. But give the post-war Germans credit for being able to face up to it. Having a degree in Germanic Languages, I can tell you that German culture since about 1955 (theater, poetry, music, books and movies) pretty much consists of lots of hand-wringing over "how could we have let that happen?" You wouldn't see what Grass wrote published in Japan or Russia.
Grass spent his life as a holier than thou leftist who conveniently forgot to mention he was a member of the Waffen SS.
Point.
As I understand it, toward the end of the war, the Nazis were running out of soldiers, so they were conscripting very young teens and old men.
Don’t bother reading his stuff, it sucks.
I have read that the ones who refused were hanged from streetlights. It doesn’t seem like there was a lot of choice for the kids that were drafted.
Yes, this was covered in the movie "Downfall."
One doesn’t go into the SS without being a pretty hung go Nazi.
I’ve known several German soldiers from that era. Even they were creeped out by the SS.
Having read The Tin Drum I have to agree with you.
I believe Gunter Grass was involved in getting Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn out of the USSR in 1974.
That allowed Solzhenitsyn to come to this country and blast the RINO foreign policy of the 1970’s. The Rockefeller Republicans (forefathers of the Neocons) led by Dr. Henry Kissinger were appeasing the Communists all over the place including the Helsinki Accord of 1975 reaffirming Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.
“...He deplored “Western hypocrisy” in not singling out the Jewish State as a nuclear danger to the innocent Ayatollahs of Iran,..” (barf_
He was a typical antisemite.
Terrifying visual -- but nothing Captain America couldn't handle.
I’m actually currently reading his book “The Tin Drum” by sheer coincidence. It’s alright, but very meandering. As I near the end, it’s one of those books that will leave me wondering “why was this even written?” For the effort, I’d like there to be a point.
But would he want to?
Gung ho?
Well, I've SEEN it: back in the day it used to be lying around here and there, but somehow I never felt sufficient inspiration to pick it up and read it. I'm thinking though, that on one or several occasions I did PICK IT UP. That's pretty close, isn't it?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.