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Doing some math. If he is 78 now, he was born in 1928. Hitler came to power before he started school...so he was indoctrinated from an early age. He would have been 11 when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. The article said he volunteered near the end of the war and was injured in 1945...he would have been 17 then. So he probably volunteered at age 16. I am inclined to think he was not a big-time Nazi decision maker so I am cannot be too upset with him.

My uncle followed Patton across Europe in a tank. He said he knew they were winning because the Germans they captured kept getting younger and younger. It sounds like Grass was part of that trend.