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 agree, and I'm inclined toward the "disagreeable episode he'd just as soon have behind him" theory. At that stage of the war one went along or one was shot.
I could actually read it but could most of us? He remembers seeing American white soldiers calling American black soldiers by the N word. And he remarks how this was the first time he'd encountered racism. AS AN SS TROOPER THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME HE HAD ENCOUNTERED RACISM. Rich.
He probably did. I can see a rebellious teenager with wanderlust running off to join the army. He would have been 16 or 17 when the war ended. The Germans were scraping the bottom of the barrel at that time and putting kids in battle.
I doubt that he's a mass murderer. He was only about 16 or 17 when the war ended.
Very nice!
aslo given that almost every male in my family is a veteran, including at least three who fought the nazi, i don't care for your comment.
I know that definity quite a lot of people were drafted into the Waffen-SS during the late war.
There is nothing wrong with having served ones nation in war. The cause for which he was fighting was wrong, but a 17 year old, in a society marked by propaganda news reels, and probably unaware of this regimes actions in regards to the Holocaust can not be faulted.
There is nothing to be ashamed of if one served in the Waffen-SS. They fought well. In fact I know some myself who had served in these units. As long as there is no glorification of the evil deeds in respect of the Third Reich, as long as the Holocaust is not denied, the bad policy of oppression and aggression are not glorified or excused, these men have "nothing" to be ashamed of.
Those who worked at the camps, the Einsatzgruppen and others who were involved with crimes against civilians for no reason at all other than the people they were after did not meet their eugenic profile, those deserve to be persecuted until the end of their days globaly, but the 17 and sometimes younger soldier who fought fierce and often futile battles against an enemy outnumbering them, out equipped, and with near bottomless supplies in oil, ammunition etc; those men can only be respected. They bled just like our guys, and they were nothing moe than dedicated, well trained soldiers trying to do what they percieved was right.
His other novels are no better. But Tin Drum is very bad typical of the nonsense they award prizes for.
Yep.
He grew up brainwashed under the regime.
Sorry, his story sounds way too much like Kurt Waldheim's and countless others. He knew what the SS was all about, and I'm not buying his convenient excuses. Lot's of Germans made a pretty seamless transition from Nazism to Marxism - and there's a reason for that.
Oh, yeah, you sound like someone reading various newspapers daily. I´ll allow you a judgment on Grass when you´ve grown up in a totalitarian regime without access to free news. I would never dare to blame a N Korean or a Iranian teenager for supporting his leadership. They are manipulated, mislead. It´s not that they were free in their decisions like many grown-ups who knew the difference between Nazism and democracy.
There was a reason why the separated the Einsatzgruppen from the Waffen-SS. The Waffen-SS was an elite combat force. The Eisatzgruppen are a different story:
http://www.einsatzgruppenarchives.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen
The Einsatzgruppen and some other elements were the "bad guys", the Waffen-SS as a whole was a volunteer, highly selective, well trained and the best equipped force the Germans had. Starting in 1944 they began to accept pretty much any trash among their ranks as well, but for most of the war they could be regarded as an elite force.
There is a reason why I delineate between the various branches within these organizations. You can’t lump them all together and label them all as bad. Truth is, even the Waffen-SS committed some war crimes, but then again, so did all. Even in Vietnam or Iraq things are done wrong, but it’s no “policy” to commit these atrocities.
For the most part the Germans did take prisoners and they did follow the laws of land warfare. Understand that by wars end Germans themselves had rationed food and were starving. Much of the poor treatment of prisoners had more to do with a lack of capabilities than with willful intent.
However, as the war raged on, the Wehrmacht/SS etc. did erode and by 1944 it was a depleted force. Units that are broke tend to be the ones committing such war crimes. Even those units in Vietnam or the one involved in Abu Gharib; those were commands marked by leadership failures, poorly trained troops and often low morale. Abu Gharib can be a case study in such a failure. A command that was clueless, soldiers that had been drafted into military occupational specialties they didn’t want and were not really skilled in, were poorly trained (A few week crash course in how to be a prison guard given to truck drivers and office clerks!), over burdened and under massive stress this weekend warrior unit (These were no career soldiers as well) embarrassed the US Army and damaged our whole cause in Iraq. Why do I mention all this? Because discussion like this always end up going down the road of listing atrocities. Fact is, the Waffen-SS did do some things that were wrong and towards the end things got worse, a lot worse. Nonetheless, the things that were done wrong were a result of a force that was desperate and breaking and it was not a “systemic doctrinal” event.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmedy_massacre (This was not the norm)
However, the senior leadership of the SS is definitely a legitimate target since they did know what was going on and did have to coordinate with other braches within the SS. My point is that the soldier in the trenches and even his company or battalion commander can not be categorically labeled as a war criminal because he was in the SS. He simply belonged to a very good unit that fought very well.
Grass was drafted, and was a soldier. The Waffen SS was just an elite military unit, it was not the same as the other SS which ran death camps. A human being could have joined the Waffen SS -- a human being could not have joined the regular SS. Now many Waffen-SS units committed war crimes, but Grass' didn't, and Grass has been an outspoken supporter of denazification for sixty years.
Assume your theory that Grass was "brainwashed" is correct. How do you explain his consistent post-war support for socialist totalitarians, right down to this day?
You seem to be bringing some baggage to this discussion.
I see that Grass spouted his mouth off again today.
In my opinion he is a bigoted, hypocrite.
Being able to write coherent sentences does not make him an authority on anything.
Just my opinion, I could be wrong :)
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