Günter Grass and the Waffen SS

[IndianaGreen]

Günter Grass and the Waffen SS

By Peter Schwarz
19 August 2006

Once again, the philistines vituperate.

The confession by Germany’s most celebrated author, Günter Grass, that he served in a division of the Waffen SS as a 17-year-old at the end of war, and not, as previously claimed, in an anti-aircraft unit, has unleashed a torrent of grotesque accusations. They range from the assertion that the writer has lost any claim to moral credibility to the demand that he return his Nobel Prize for literature.

The 79-year-old Grass spoke for the first time publicly about his membership in the Waffen SS in an interview last week in the Frankfurter Allgemeinene Zeitung. In his new autobiography Peeling the Onion he deals with the episode in detail, and discusses the pain of recalling it and the shame he feels when dealing with his remembrance.

Grass’s critics did not wait to read the book. The words “Waffen SS” were sufficient to propel them into action.

<snip>

The attacks on Grass are both demagogic and malicious. They bear no relation to the facts and are clearly politically and ideologically motivated.

In his early novels, Grass confronted the complacent and conservative society of postwar Germany, which employed high-ranking Nazis in leading state posts, with a frank picture of the Third Reich. His novels do not depict the Germans indiscriminately as perpetrators. Instead, he probes and very skillfully portrays the petty-bourgeois milieu in which fascism could ferment and develop.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/grss-a19.shtml

[mntleo2]

1. Why Is Not The Same Visited On The Pope?

Wasn't he as well complicit in such things? Yet it seems to me it is waved aside as if he were just a youth forced to do it because he would lose his life if he did not cooperate.

I am not saying that participation in such things should be overlooked, yet we could learn from forgiveness. One of Mandala's closest friends was his torturer in the prison where Mandela languished for so many years ~ and this man later ran as and won a place in the government. Forgiveness is important because it leads to true healing and I believe we could learn a lot from forgiveness.

Let the tears fall from the eyes of the victims, let them tell their stories of the agony they suffered, let them rage at their torturers. Let those stories be honored and let the people responsible then ask forgiveness and express their shame. This is far more healing than maligning someone who has already learned their lessons by demanding more revenge be re-visited.

My 2 cents

Cat In Seattle

[Igel]

7. It's my impression that the groups are split.

Too many subcategories.

Some give the Pope and Grass a pass. Some don't.

Some give one a pass and not the other. Some don't.

Sometimes the pass/no-pass is based upon what they did after they were no longer teenagers;for others, it doesn't matter--once a Nazi-affiliate, always a Nazi.

I did foolish things as a teenager; I give both a pass. People can change; although they seldom do, when there's nothing to be lost from giving them the benefit of the doubt, I give it. You're right: if somebody can be forgiven, they should be.

Then again, I'm not Catholic, didn't live through WWII or its near aftermath, and have read just about nothing of G. Grass's works (apart from a page or two in some 20th century German reader). I keep meaning to get my German in shape for such things, and never have. Probably never will.

[Akim]

2. The Pope, Gunther Grass, Kurt Walheim — religion, arts and politics...

still dominated at this late date by former Nazis. Or is there really such a thing as a "former Nazi?"

[C-37-X]

5. The Pope, Gunther Grass, Kurt Walheim — religion, arts and politics...

The Pope was only member of the hitlerjugend. that was normal and it was almost impossible to stay away from any nazi organizations. why do you thing that he was/is a nazi? and why do you thing that grass was/is a nazi? he was member of the waffen-SS (involuntary) and now he is THE ANTI-NAZI.

[Withywindle]

3. I have sympathy for him, and here's why...

I know history will judge me as an American citizen of the early 21st century very harshly. (Should I ever become a worthy subject of "history," I mean, this is theoretical)

Grass at least DID make huge contributions to human understanding. I think his work probing the mindset of authoritarian societies and how it can make "normal" people do awful things is valuable. I do not believe he ever actually believed in Nazi ideology; I think he was coerced.

I think the Iraq war is morally vile and repugnant. I think the death of every single Iraqi civilian is just as much murder as any shooting on the streets of Chicago. Yet I'm not willing to condemn the soldiers (all of whom were far less coerced than Grass was) wholesale without considering their circumstances--didn't we learn from Vietnam that they're victims too?

[Akim]

4. If Grass had only been candid from the beginning, he would have spared...

himself the obloquy that has encountered in his last days. And, most tragic of all for him, the sternest condemnation has come from the ranks of his old friends, who, naturally, feel the most disillusioned. It mirrors Kurt Walheim's experience, who also wilfully concealed the darker aspects of his past, except that in his case there was actual documentation of his participation in wartime atrocities. Never, the former U.N. chief was elected president of Austria. In the 1980s.

I think that since then a greater consciousness has grown about the immorality of the Nazi era. At this late date, however, sixty years removed from the defeat of Hitler, this wrath is now directed at those who were mere adolescents at the time, since their (guiltier) elders are all in the grave.

The real architects of Naziism, except for the few that were tried after the war, really got away with genocide. They resumed their lives in Germany after the war without the least ostracism and with the greatest success.

If Grass had told the truth then, when he was the smallest fish in the pond, no one would have noticed or cared. But he chose to conceal his past, or, to be less kind, he lied. Perhaps he was more ashamed of his small part in those years than those who were its major protagonists. But still, Grass lied. And this lie must have been for all those years the central fact of life.

And now, in his last years, he must at last come to terms with his past. And so must we.

[bloom]

6. I have felt the attacks on him to be disturbing.

I think the idea that he "lost any claim to moral credibility" is ridiculous.


I have noticed with others - like Howard Zinn - that it seems that it was their participation in war/imperialism that makes them all the more against it. And was probably an impetus in their life to want to counteract that - do something to convince others how awful it is.


And if people are going to dismiss Grass because of his war experiences - then it just validates his reasons for not talking about it sooner.