‘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.
Don’t bother reading his stuff, it sucks.
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.
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.
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.