Posted on 08/11/2006 1:25:11 PM PDT by lizol
Nobel prize winner Grass admits serving in Nazi SS
Fri Aug 11, 2006 8:37 PM BST
BERLIN (Reuters) - Nobel prize-winning German author Guenter Grass has admitted for the first time that he served in the Waffen-SS, Adolf Hitler's elite Nazi troops.
In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Grass, 78, said he volunteered for submarine service towards the end of World War Two. He was called up instead to serve in the Waffen-SS in the eastern city of Dresden.
The author, best known for his first novel "The Tin Drum" and an active supporter of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), said his wartime secret had been weighing on his mind and was one of the reasons he wrote a book of recollections which details his war service. The book is out in September.
"My silence through all these years is one of the reasons why I wrote this book," the paper quoted Grass as saying in a preview of its Saturday edition. "It had to come out finally."
One of the most powerful organisations in Nazi Germany, the SS played a key role in the Holocaust, establishing and operating the death camps in which millions died.
The Waffen-SS grew into a force of 38 combat divisions with almost one million men and it was condemned as part of a criminal organisation at the post-war Nuremberg trials.
Grass was wounded in 1945 and sent to an American prisoner of war camp and later became a prominent peace activist. He said he had volunteered for army service as a way of breaking away from home and family.
"For me it was primarily about getting out of there. Out of that corner, away from my family," he told the paper.
"I wanted to put an end to that and that's why I volunteered for the army.
"It was like that for many of my generation," he added. "We were doing army service and then suddenly, one year later, the draft order was on the table. And then I realised, probably not until I was in Dresden, that it was the Waffen-SS."
Grass won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. He is viewed as part of the artistic movement known in German as "Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung" or "coming to terms with the past".
Grass opposed the reunification of Germany in 1990, arguing that the country would be in danger of reverting to its role as a war-mongerer.
I find it pretty unfair to call him a Nazi and "Waffen-SS fanatic". Have you read the article? He was 15 when we wanted to go to the submarine service, but instead he was sent to the Waffen-SS. He grew up brainwashed under the regime. Especially the young teenagers - who knew nothing else but Nazism - were the dumbest: still fighting for da Fuhrer while others got a grasp and dropped arms.
You couldn't get "drafted" into the Waffen-SS. You joined the order of the Order of the Deaths Head, there were no conscripts.
Actually... no. There is, however, a BIG difference between the Waffen-SS and the SS. Although both are criminal organisations, there is a small chance for a member of the Waffen-SS for having ended the war without having committed a war crime. The SS on the other hand guarded the KZ, took control of the polices in occupied territories and killed almost exclusively civilians. On the other hand, there were Waffen-SS units such like the one Mr. Grass was in which were not involved in war crimes (so it was said in the TV news yesterday). Maybe Mr. Grass is one of the few. Oh, and I can´t blame Mr. Grass for having joined the armed forces, he was a brainwashed teenager and volunteering for war was quite popular among the young (brainwashed) people in Nazi Germany.
Sources please? We have the quote of Mr. Grass who said he volunteered - but to the sub service, not to the Waffen-SS. I don´t know if that´s the decisive difference. I can imagine that a soldier was not free to decide which branch of arms to go to.
Hello-o? Mr. Grass wasn´t a KZ guard!
Yes, I know the difference between the Allgemeine-SS and the Waffen-SS.
"Nothing to see here, move along, don't look at the Nazi SS storm trooper, he loves peace now."
It seems about a year ago when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope the MSM thought it was BIG NEWS that as a teen he was forced to serve a small amount of time in the Hitler youth movement.
AND - that is something that Ratzinger was not "silent" about. It was a well known fact in his personal history.
How many people remember the "Nazi pope" comments from the press back then?
Yeah, I recall reading that scene in the book from your description. It was all that weird stuff and more that caused me to take 4 years to read the book. Wasn't worth it, IMO.
So now we have had Nazis becore Secretary General of the UN, and Nobel Prize winners. Doesn't say much for those two institutions.
LOL, and what´s the difference to the Pope, who has been in the Hitler Youth? Nevermind! ;-)
If you don't know the difference, I can only suggest reading again what I wrote, or perhaps learn a bit more about Mr. GraSS's statements, attitudes and behavior in the last 50 years.
Oh, maybe it says, that SS had only brilliant people within its ranks?
Just kidding, of course.
Check the pope's bio. He was FORCED to joing the Hitler youth.
Much different than volunteering.
And still the MSM treats the 2 cases differently...Ratzinger received the "Nazi Pope" title from the press. Is the MSM giving this guy the "Nazi" treatment?
Doesn't look like it.
It was a joke, because I very well know that Grass is a socialist. But he isn´t a Nazi.
Germans seized on the book as an artistic representation of what they'd lived through, and there was a tendency to see it as more politically engaged as it in fact was. Volker Schlöndorff's film of the book certainly did have a more pronounced anti-Nazi political spin. He emphasized those elements that put Nazism in a bad light.
At the same time, I don't think this makes Grass a Nazi or a Jew-hater. People latch on to such things about people that they disagree with while they're more understanding of those whose opinions they share. It would be better to judge by one standard, and recognize that Grass was in the same position as millions of Germans, and no worse than others who've also moved beyond the attitudes they had in the 1940s.
Over a million men served in the Waffen-SS, and thousands of them weren't even German or even of German ancestry. I don't care about Grass or his history, but I do wonder how this "revelation" will affect his standing with the left.
He must have been born about 1928, a year before my grandmother who was a teenager during the war. by 1945 he was about 17 maybe 18, so he joined at 15 - 17. at that age it is not only likely but i doubt he was much of a war criminal.
The SS. started recieving Drafted replacements in early 1944, as losses mounted in the East...
Many New and Replacement SS Units were completely conscript, with regular ss cadres by late-44/early 45, which reduced thier effectiveness...
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