[lizol]

Ping

[TommyDale]

Does this make Grass's ass grass?

[Karliner]

Dresden huh...firebombed to oblivion. I wonder if he ran?

[King Moonracer]

The irony of it all. He was an oppressor of the Jews in WWII, and now's he's a peacenik, which again, oppresses the Jews.

[Sonny M]

Since he is such a peace activist, I guess his war crimes are okay now.

Nothing to see here, move along, don't look at the Nazi SS storm trooper, he loves peace now.

[xpertskir]

"Nobel prize winner Grass admits serving in Nazi SS"
I though that was a qualification?

[DustyMoment]

I read Gunter Grass' Tin Drum a bazillion years ago. It took me 4 years to wade through it and, at the end, I wound up wondering why I had expended the effort. I didn't see the point of the novel and wrote it off as a pretty good waste of time and energy on my part.

That doesn't have anything to do with him being a former nazi, but he isn't much of a writer (IMO), either!!

[DustyMoment]

I read Gunter Grass' Tin Drum a bazillion years ago. It took me 4 years to wade through it and, at the end, I wound up wondering why I had expended the effort. I didn't see the point of the novel and wrote it off as a pretty good waste of time and energy on my part.

That doesn't have anything to do with him being a former nazi, but he isn't much of a writer (IMO), either!!

[Moral Hazard]

"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."

I guess it kind of follows that he didn't end up in the submarine service. If he had he wouldn't have lived long enough to write anything.

[cyborg]

ping

[Grzegorz 246]

Well, the supply at the Western front was better so he obviously couldn't commit any crimes. /s

[Billthedrill]

I thought The Tin Drum was extremely interesting, actually, and this makes it even more so. Oskar's "voluntary" dwarfism kept him out of the war and it was supposedly his own volition that kept him from growing up. And so the little guy unfit for military service spent the war misbehaving and beating his tin drum. I always thought that was a not-so-subtle allusion to the author himself; Grass certainly does act like that frequently.

Now it appears not quite to be the case, and that's even more interesting. Was it a cover-up, wishful thinking, or merely Grass's means of excusing himself? Or was it simply a distasteful situation he'd just as soon forget? In any case it certainly colors a generation of literary analysis. IMHO, of course.

[colorado tanker]

Guenter Grass is pro-Socialist (SPD), pro-Saddam and pro-Pali and is a critic of Israel, the Afghan invasion and the Iraq War. Now it turns out he wasn't just a Nazi, but was a Waffen-SS fanatic.

Looks like a pattern to me.

[A CA Guy]

Is he Murtha's current campaign manager?

[SunkenCiv]

Ping.

[TexanToTheCore]

I found "Tin Drum" boring.

[Ruddles]

Needed some PR because his career is beginning (!) to Flounder.

[IYAAYAS]

We should snatch this guy up and give him to the Israelis, let them decide if he's a war criminal.

[ladyinred]

All the more reason he got the Nobel if you ask me. The anti Jewish world is getting bigger and bigger and no one seems to care.

[dfwgator]

So now we have had Nazis becore Secretary General of the UN, and Nobel Prize winners. Doesn't say much for those two institutions.