Posted on 08/13/2006 8:36:33 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Nobel Prize-winning German writer Guenter Grass, author of the great anti-Nazi novel The Tin Drum, has admitted serving in the Waffen-SS.
He told a German newspaper he had been recruited at the age of 17 into an SS tank division and served in Dresden.
Previously it was only known he had served as a soldier and was wounded and taken prisoner by US forces.
Speaking before the publication of his war memoirs, he said his silence over the years had "weighed" upon him.
"My silence over all these years is one of the reasons I wrote this book [Peeling Onions]," he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview.
"It had to come out, finally."
Grass, who was born in 1927, is widely admired as a novelist whose books frequently revisit the war years and is also known as an outspoken peace activist.
Call-up notice
Few details of the author's service were given other than that he had served in the Waffen SS Frundsberg Panzer Division after failing to get a posting in the submarine service.
The SS, which began as a private bodyguard for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, grew into a force nearly one million strong and both acted as an elite fighting force and ran death camps in which millions of people were murdered.
The Waffen-SS was the combat section of the organization and extended to 38 divisions. It was declared part of a criminal organisation at the Nuremberg Nazi trials after the war.
"At the time" he had not felt ashamed to be a member, he said but he added: "Later this feeling of shame burdened me."
"For me... the Waffen-SS was nothing frightful but rather an elite unit that they sent where things were hot and which, as people said about it, had the heaviest losses," he said.
"It happened as it did to many of my age. We were in the labour service and all at once, a year later, the call-up notice lay on the table. And only when I got to Dresden did I learn it was the Waffen-SS."
Grass' memoir of his wartime youth is due to be released in September.
Has he said what will be done with all payments received for this book?
Interesting.
From Wikipedia
As Grass has for many decades been an outspoken left-leaning critic of Germany's treatment of its Nazi past, his statement caused a great stir in the press. Grass's biographer Michael Jürgs spoke of "the end of a moral institution" [3]. Lech Walesa has severly criticized Grass [4] for keeping silent about his membership for 60 years. Also, Joachim Fest, a German journalist and biographer of Adolf Hitler, told Der Spiegel:
After 60 years, this confession comes a bit too late. I can't understand how someone who for decades set himself up as a moral authority, a rather smug one, could pull this off.[2] — Joachim Fest, 'Der Spiegel'
Rolf Hochhuth said it was "disgusting" that this same Grass, "politically correctly", had publicly criticized Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan's visit to a military cemetery at Bitburg in 1985, because it also contained graves of Waffen-SS soldiers.
I read the book in 1968. Story about a midget that played a drum. Pretty weird book.
It's time to put this crap away. Unless some old-timer can be proven to be an incontrovertible monster, it is not enough condemn a man for having served in the armed services of one's country.
Read number 4 (Wikipedia already has some quotes in response to the Aug 11 announcement).
He was a smug outspoken critic. His ivory tower is tainted.
The movie wasn't one you'd want..., well, actually it sucked.
I popped off without reading all the comments;I shouldn't have done so. I'll stand by my point generically but a hypocritical windbag deserves his just desserts.
Well, there's a difference between the Waffen SS and the "armed forces." The SS was "the elite," and required extra dedication. The Waffen SS was the battle group of the SS, and they were especially nasty to civilians they conquored, and didn't bother with POWs. The Waffen SS regularly executed any soldiers who surrendered. IIRC, I don't believe that people were "assigned" to the Waffen SS. They had to request it.
Mark
I have to admit that I was thinking of the Waffen as being Goering's air force but being in the SS does not make Grass anything more than a bigger hypocrite. No one has called him a war criminal.
I had forgotten about this one, thanks for posting it. I do remember though, that at the time, Grass really ticked me off, not because I was a Reaganite, or anything of the sort, but more out of his contempt for fallen soldiers. Was it a German soldier's fault that Hitler was what he was? A great many of them were caught up, swept in in the maelstrom, whom would have much preferred to do anything else other than fight, kill, or die. Could they have refused their orders, in the then, Nazi Germany??? I don't think so. Should they be blamed? If so, for what? The mistakes of others? No, they should not be blamed (generally) for many of them, millions of them, were forced to pay for the great errors, with their lives... Isn't that enough?
Now we find out he was a soldier too? He should have never opened his mouth against Kohl and Reagan...he didn't understand what they were doing, or why, or he would have kept his mouth shut. I guess making part of one's living out of peddling 'tweaked' versions of guilt trips, makes one oblivious to the deeper things (sounds like I'm talking about the current American Left wing, here, I know)...
Can't say as I've ever read The Tin Drum , but I did begin, and get part way through The Flounder before hucking it out of the wheelhouse door, into the sea. Of the thousands of books devoured in past years, that one of his was one of only three or four to get that treatment. Many lesser books survived, most of them unread, since they were not up to standards of holding interest, or having value as literary work, yet they didn't pretend to, so I'd let them be, for someone else to perhaps someday read...
Grass's work is pretentious, at least the Flounder was, so that one copy of it, got the 'ol "float test".
Most other flounders sink when thrown overboard. For a paperback, it takes a little while...
And hey, I paid good money for it, too! I think I paid a buck fifty, in a used book store for it! hehheh...
And spent a lot of time under some lady's skirts--very weird!!!
I went to Wikipedia because I thought he made headlines in the past year for some criticism of the WOT or Iraq War or Bush or some new "outrage".
I supposed I could search through old FR threads...
LOL!!! I guess his thinking was: "The tsunami wave of the victors is sweeping all before it. I cannot escape it, so I must [i]ride[/i] it!!!
I suck at HTML...
--- I don't believe that people were "assigned" to the Waffen SS. They had to request it.---
Many of the Waffen SS were draftees, and a lot of them were not even Germans, as the war went on.
We can understand why Grass didn't want to be associated with the dreaded SS. Just look at the comments on this thread...
More towards the truth, but diffucult to explain (it would have been even more difficult for Grass, after he started writing, no?) was this; Not all who were drafted into SS units were bloodthrirsty murderering fascists, bent on world domination. There were plenty who just happened to be Germans of fighting age --- at a bad time to be so!
As losses mounted (at or near Stalingrad alone some 270,000 Germans died) replacements had to come from somewhere.
I rarely think of those from other countries whom ended up in German armies...that too, did happen. Thanks to claudistg for mentioning this. Truth can always help. Without it, all hope of understanding is lost.
Those Nazis running things, however, really knew how to "make an offer, that could not be refused", didn't they?
Whew! I'm glad they lost! (if you fellows are krauts, no offense, eh?)
I'm sure you mean Florian GeyEr. Florian Geyr happens to be a distinguished attorney in Germany. Florian Geyer was a 16th-century or so knight who died in a hopeless cause, the kind of guy the Nazis named cavalry divisions for. Sort of a Bavarian Braveheart, if you will, although his end was more ignominious than the character's (and perhaps less ignominious than the actor's career).
Geyer's unit, the "Schwarzer Haufen," is usually translated as "the Black Company," and of course the SS called themselves the "Black Companies."
Interestingly enough, both Florians covered about the same stomping ground -- the areas of Bavaria, Franconia and Swabia that formed the homeland of National Socialism. But their battles take place in somewhat different milieus.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
bump for later
It´s difficult to explain my feelings about this "outing". I´m a German, born 1981, and I´ve read some books of Grass. He is a good author, and his books are worth to think about it, from my view he most probably deserved the Nobel Prize of Literature. Politically, he was and is my enemy. I never liked when he opened his mouth.
However, I have some respect for him telling the truth at last, even though it may be to boost sellings of his autobiography. I don´t think that Grass was a Nazi, it´s just that so many young Germans blindly followed the Nazis - I mean, they were infiltrated with it from kindergarten. The most desperate "fighters" in the last months of the war were the teenagers, they weren´t relieved that the Nazi chapter was about to be closed in the history of Germany. They didn´t know that changes of government (in particular in this case) are good. So, I don´t blame him for having been in the Waffen SS (knowing that his unit has not been involved in war crimes, I should add). And I can´t blame him for having been silent on that for so long - now that so many people want to take away his prices and honorary citizenships. I think Grass has proven that he´s not a Nazi.
But his opinion on other issues has lost its value, how could he dare to protest the visit of Kohl and Reagan on a German war cemetery in Bitburg, where HIS fellows were buried (also drafted Waffen-SS´ler)! So, I feel confirmed when I say "shut up Grass!".
No, not really. Follow the money, my friend, follow the money. Nobody does something for no reason, not even Mr. Grass.
Around 12 million Germans died in the war, most of them civilian victims of Allied bombing... or the Nazi regime. As you said, a bad time for them.
I rarely think of those from other countries whom ended up in German armies...that too, did happen.
Most of the foreigners in the SS were at least nominally volunteers. To get a handle on what might have motivated them, there's an excellent book by a Frenchman who volunteered for the SS... oddly enough, after trying and failing to join the Resistance (!) I guess he just wanted to fight, and wasn't particular about which side he fought on. I'm blanking on the guy's, and the book's name... something with "Honor" or "Loyalty" in it, though.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Don't forget the Hanzar Division, 25,000 strong made up of Muslims, most from the Balkans, and whose spiritual leader was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
Despicable publicity stunt. There are now people in Germany who insist he gives his Nobel Prize for Literature back. I think that's Quatsch. He got it for writing, not for his political position and clean past(one hopes). The book should not be bought and Grass should be considered a hypocrite, and that's it.
The name of the German Air Force was [and is] LUFTWAFFE, literally "air arm"
Maybe a variation of the SS motto: "MEINE EHRE HEISST TREUE" - "My Honor is Loyalty."?
Which SS unit, then, was involved in the Malmedy Massacre?
Kampfgruppe Peiper,LEIBSTANDARTE SS ADOLF HITLER. The unit that initiated the massacre of ther prisoners was the 9th SS Pioneers [combat engineers]. A track driver named George Phleps fired first [the 9th was guarding the prisoners, who had been 'handed off' by successive units in the march column].
"To get a handle on what might have motivated them, there's an excellent book by a Frenchman who volunteered for the SS.."
"The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer?
I still ask if he is going to personally profit from this "confessional" disclosure.
Also there are those who did (and continue) to blindly follow communists when there are other alternatives available.
The antiwar protests in this country have been sponsored and coordinated by Communists, some of those marking are merely "useful idiots" but they still aid evil.
The mind isn't what it used to be...(sigh)
Definitely NOT "The Forgotten Soldier." That book has a bit of a fish smell to it. This one was indeed a play on the SS oath, as PzLdr suggested... and DANG I just remembered it.
"Ashes of Honor," and the author is Christian de la Maziere.
In the light of Grass's cowardice and hypocrisy it's a particularly good read, a brutally honest book by someone who knows he fought with honor but for the wrong side.
Young people today, I think, have a hard time imagining what it was like to be a young man in Germany (or France, or England, or Russia) in 1942. Lots of decisions that we make on our own today were made for you then. But England has not had the draft since 1963 or so, the US since 1972, and many other countries, including Germany, not since the war.
When you were drafted you had a new social set, new bosses, new peers. You fit in. If you didn't, you probably kept your objections to yourself.
In one of the Yad Vashem books I have I recall the story of an SS sergeant -- a camp guard -- who sympathized with the Jews in his camp and tried to help him. He was tried, stripped of his rank, and thrown into the camp with them, where he soon died. I am sure that many of the SS felt uneasy about what they did, but the moral courage of that sergeant is extremely rare. I think Yad Vashem keeps a list of "Righteous Gentiles," people who risked all to help the pariahs of National Socialist Europe, and that list is depressingly short for those of us who like to hold a positive view of ourselves and our human peers.
What would you have done, if you were that SS sergeant? What would I have done? I can't answer that question, even for myself.
One reason for the Nuremburg trials was to try to give an injection of moral clarity to people in that position: if your government compels you to criminality, you will hang anyway, so you might as well let them hang you with your conscience clear. The level of cruelty and brutality in modern conflict tells us how much of a success that was. Still, I'm aware of one Iraqi officer who went to gaol rather than kill people, and who told Saddam loyalists that he had no intention of being hung by the Americans or UN some day. Of course, the people he refused to murder were just murdered by an officer of lower morals. There's always one, somewhere.
So, I can't condemn Gunter Grass for serving in the SS. I can get rather irate at him for dissembling about it these sixty-some years. Not to mention, for getting on his high horse about something where he lacked the moral standing... that dead SS sergeant in the concentration camp with his doomed Jews was twice the man Grass ever was, Nobel Prize be damned.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I'm with you on your assessment of "The Forgotten Soldier." I've been scammed before with so-called "authentic" battle memoirs, and TFS just has too many things wrong with it, too many inaccuracies, too many neat little coincidences. Perhaps the author did actually see some combat with the German Army, but I doubt that everything in the book is true.
My 12 million number came from Prof. Em. R.J. Rummel at the University of Hawaii, who is probably the foremost scholar on the subject of freedom and peace in the world... but who is certainly not infallible.
To complicate matters, he has since reorganised his chaotic website and I can't find the link. Here are some of his comments on strategic bombing.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COMM.10.5.03.HTM
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP13.HTM
Wikipedia, on the other hand, is edited by 10,000 geeks with an axe to grind and is not especially credible.
I particularly take issue with:
> 360,000 to 370,000 killed by Allied strategic bombing
That's 3/5 of Rummel's LOWEST estimate. I consider 800,000 a sensible median of the estimates. So does this site:
http://www.holocaust-history.org/~rjg/deaths.shtml
which also adds up:
3.6 million civilians kiled by Russia
0.8 by the Allies by bombing...
so then throw in the postwar relocation famine deaths, and you're right up there.
The Germans were not angels. Along with the millions of Jews everyone knows about, they murdered about 2.5 to 3 million gentile Poles, 7 million Russian civilians, 3.3 million Soviet POWs and even 9k US and UK POWs. Nobody knows how many mentally retarded or other disabled people they killed. Death has its own culture, and it was in the saddle in Nazi Germany.
I have overstated my case to say that they were predominantly civilians, and it's also possible that I've confused some of the stuff I learned from the German War Graves Commission (Deutsche Kriegsgraberversorgung e.v.) last year with some of the stuff I learned from Rummel.
The governmental, but donation-supported, agency maintains 4.2 million German war graves in 100 countries, almost all military, of whom 1.9 million are WWI fallen and the remainder wartime. The number expands all the time -- for instance, last month they interred a Luftwaffe pilot, Horst Seemann, who was found in the remains of his Me109 by searchers looking (ironically enough) for a fallen Frenchman. The work that struck me as most interesting is their ongoing effort to identify the millions of unknowns.
Throwing around statistics on the war is a bit dodgy (he says, after having devoted a post to it) because statistics are always a fuzzy item and they're also always in motion. It may be better to look at individual cases, like that of Gunter Grass and, say, Horst Seemann -- who died before his 25th birthday and never got to show us what kind of book he might have written.
I join the many who find Grass's novels difficult, and unrewarding in the struggle. This is not uncommon in 20th Century German literature (think Hermann Hesse).
Finally, I'll close with a positive book series recommendation, to put the focus back on the individual German soldier. The series of Gunner Asch books by the late Hans Hellmut Kirst are good reading, and they tell the tale of a particular individual -- a rebellious individual, always a hard row to hoe in orderly German society, but particularly hard in the Third Reich -- and his interactions with the military machine, the Nazis, and the dreaded Russian front. Most of the German war veterans I knew did not like these books, because they did not like the character Asch. This is not great literature and no one is offering Kirst a Nobel Prize, but it's not unthinking Boys' Own teen adventures either.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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