Guenter Grass served in the Waffen-SS

BBC: Guenter Grass was in Waffen-SS

He felt guilty, so he wrote a book... okay, what to blame him for... 17 is like teenage, you do what you are being told to do, at that age - whatever he wrote or did, don't blame him... at least he had the courage to tell us something about the truth... ohhhh, dark age, that of WWII..

However, tell me one thing: is it better or safer now?

Maybe next week my flight goes up into the air and all that's left of me is my emails to my friends and a few posts on TT...

What a coincidence he confesses this just before his memoirs are due out.

To be fair to Grass, it is worth reading the whole story. He was 17. He was in the Labour Service. He got his call up papers and reported to Dresden... to discover he had been called up to the Waffen-SS. He didn't volunteer. It kind of helps to put Tin Drum into better perspective knowing this.

My point being that he picked the year that his war memoirs are coming out to reveal this, so it's bigger news than if he had admitted it 15 years ago and only now released his memoirs.

I second Showem. It's a publicity stunt.

Otherwise, Guenther Grass' memoirs come out. Yawn.

Now it's, Guenther Grass' memoirs come out. Did you know he was a Nazi?!?

Yep. Fully agree that he's milking publicity.

Isn't publicity a legitimate way of promoting a book ? You can be cynical but that's just the way it works isn't it ?

i agree with my fellow ENFP
what else is he meant to do?
if he writes a book and gets it published, then obv he's gonna want to boost his sales
it's the way the world works, innit

Sure. I'm not criticising him for doing it. Just agree that he is doing it.

Well, this is obviously not something he felt comfortable talking about for most of his life. Now he's old, writes his memoirs, and decides to leave nothing out.
Of course he would want to make a statement regarding his revelation BEFORE the book is out (and people discuss it). You know how the media and most people in general love to discuss books they've never read.
IMO he just wanted to avoid as much as possible that the public gets only some warped account of what he did or didn't do in the war.
And yes, it's good publicity, too. But I don't think that's the only motivation here.

He should just include a paragraph in his memoirs (which he probably has) that mentions his recruitment not being his idea, and leave the rest alone. No statements, no publicity crap. Just be honest and inclusive of your past and don't act like it was a big deal.

If you act like things in life are a big deal, they become big deals. If you put up a press 'area' outside your home and demand that the press NOT cross the line while you collect your morning paper, people will line up and wonder what the big deal is- even if there is no reason for press to be there in the first place.

Me thinks he is making a mountain of a molehill, but such is the German Angst Way when it comes to Nationalism. Oh well.

See your point there, profundo.

But have you never seen what the media or the public can do to books WITHOUT READING THEM? There have been any number of scandals where all could have been solved and calmed down if only you could have locked all these people up for a few days with a copy of the book each.

Mind you: I think it's kind of nice that people still argue about books. Shows that somebody out there might still be reading them

What was the name of the oh-so-anti-semitic novel again (supposedly featuring M. Reich-Ranicki)? Talked to plenty of outraged people then - none of them had read the book

Dimmer, I think I am naive (see my innocent post up there), but then... hihi, you are naive, too!

Publicity might actually be the ONLY motivation for him. So far, he didn't feel like boasting around with these facts, did he?
Hm, anyway, from the outsider's point of view, it will always remain just a publicity trick.
Maybe he wants to finance the studies of his grandchildren, or buy a new holiday ship for his retirement... or something, let him be happy with that...

@julia, Read Tin Drum. I highly recommend you understand Grass, because it is an important book.

Julia, he is not BOASTING, he is admitting.
He has plenty publicity already because he is one of the most eminent German authors.
If he wants to finance the studies of his grandchildren, he can most definitely do so already (don't think he has any, actually)

As Sin already said: Read some of his books, then judge.

P.S.: Are you really as clueless as you come across?

Christ, every guy his age was recruited into some military organization or other, even Our Holy Propagandist Sepp Ratzinger. So frigging what?
Grass' attitude towards the Nazis is apparent in The Tin Drum, a book I highly enjoyed except for the eel-catching incident. He's writing it off his soul to obtain peace of mind and would much rather announce it himself than have the vultures swoop down on him after reading advance copies of the book.
And if Robbie Williams is entitled to publicity and self-advertisement, so is Grass.

Again, I say the timing. I don't think it's "brave" to come forward with it when you are about to release a book about it.

I wonder when Bush will admit to his alcohol and drugs problem and what will he be promoting or diverting attention from?

I don't think it's a publicity stunt...the guy is getting old & feels guilty.

At the end of WWII almost every man was drafted into the German military...and the SS was part of it. The people that survived picked up their lives after the war and there are loads of celebs that have a military past

i.e. Joachim Fuchsberger was a TV presenter & actor...and in the elite of the german army, the paratroopers!

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Fuchsberger

er, then was it brave for him to write the book about it then? Surely it is his memoirs that bare his soul and his experience with the Waffen SS. That would have been the story arising from his memoirs whether he had made a public statement or not. However, by making a public statement Grass will know that this means *he* controls the story. *He* can get the tone he wants on the revelation rather than leaving it up to some agenda-ridden reviewer to break the story.

He controls the story. He also gets the press excited about it, writing about it beforehand, getting the public to get their Amazon pre-orders in.

I think good for him if he tells an honest and interesting tale of the time. But I don't think releasing the info before is anything of particular greatness, and it's more a publicity move than "let me get this off my conscience" move.

they're giving him a bit of a hard time for it in the German press
bunch of sanctimonious self-righteous spiesers that they are
e.g. Spiegel:

F*cking hypocrits! Loads of former nazis were used by the occupation forces to administer the country...you don't hear anything about them!

Try Globke, Adenauer's aide. He wrote the commentary to the Nuremberg Laws.

besides that:

"He helped to formulate the emergency legislation that gave Hitler unlimited dictorial powers"

don't forget: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Waldheim

Wehrmacht generals were represented in both the Bundeswehr and Nato because of their experience in fighting the Soviets.

Yeah, but Waldheim was Austrian.
Back on topic: At least no one had to tell on Grass. After all, the archives are public, anyone could have slammed him with it e.g. when he got the Nobel Prize. I think it seriously doesn't matter, just a tempest in the intellectual teapot.

G.G. brave? He`s 80. He`s got nothing more to lose. What though is the motivational relationship between his (and other Germans) high moral, good mensch, good german, antiamerican attitude and his/there inability to come to terms with that special past ?

That G.G. was in the SS was known for years by everyone who cared to know. It is more likely that others are only now USING this fact to steer attention away from other more important events in the world. More specifically, that German soldiers might end up facing israeli soldiers and that israelis generals are war criminals. It is all about using guilt.

Pure PR paranoia bull shit.

Who would have thought that he would self-actualize the German spelling reform that way.

It's not publicity but only cheap manipulation of the masses. A few sources estimated he earns about 1,3 -2m more by his confession...

If it's not down to money, he's nothing but a lying cheapskate... he stated always that he was nothing more than a "Luftwaffenhelfer" (AA-personal). He was slacking of and ruining peoples lives for decades who were only normal soldiers back that time... now he reveals he enlisted himself with the SS (no draft).

why is everyone being so smallminded?

I remember a few years back when Chris Smith, the UK's first gay MP, was about to be exposed as having had HIV for years. This was something he had chosen, quite rightly, to keep as a private matter between himself his partner, family, close friends and medical staff. When he was diagnosed in the mid-80s there was a huge amount of AIDS-phobia in the press and it would be difficult to see what public interest there would have been in hounding this deeply honourable man out of parliament.

When he made his public statement though, a chorus of bitter denunciations came from the press saying he had deceived his constituents and that he was a fraud and only doing it now for publicity.

The truth was, that there is a very big difference between being open and honest in one's personal relationships and baring your soul in the press where it can be unpicked by deeply unpleasant biggots for their own end. Making the step to go public was a huge risk on his part and one that I know he found to be terrifically difficult to do.

It strikes me that there are parallels with Grass here. It does not take much imagination to work out why a German in 1950 was unlikely to bare their soul about wartime exploits. And given that he was 17 at the time and was only doing what a huge number of his peer group unthinkingly did, it is hardly something that he should be punished for.

I daresay, like Smith, his secret weighed on him with time and when the Bundestag announced that wartime SS records were to be made public (which they were this year) it was only a matter of time before Bild or some other rag ran an expose. In that light his decision to publish his memoirs and state this publicly is perfectly understandable.

And if the books sell to then good. He is after all, Germany's greatest living writer. His memoirs would have sold well even without this revelation.

Think about it: Do you have secrets? Are there things you are ashamed or embarassed about? Maybe you have overcome your fear and told a loved one? Imagine you then became famous: could you bare your soul to a journalist and see your deepest secret, the thing you are most ashamed off, written about across the press by journalists who often do not have your best interests and heart.

Who would blame you for hesitating. From deciding to keep it as a private matter.

How would you then react to a threat of exposure? You realise your only option is to go public?

And all these little pinheads who don't know you or understand your reasons start saying you deceived them and were a fraud and are only doing it for the publicity etc etc

Bell, you are forgetting the fact he wrote a book about it. So it's hardly like he's trying to do damage control here. This isn't a little thing he's just announcing on his own so that it doesn't get blown out of proportion, it's a book he's written and wants talked about all over the media.

Grass was transferred into the Waffen SS from the Kriegsmarine, into which he had been drafted. Hardly qualifies as volunteering blind with loyalty to the regime.

What bothers me about Gunter Grass is why I cannot read past page 60 or so in The Tin Drum, in either the original of the English translation. Is this book really a classic ?

I read that Grass volunteered for the Kriegsmarine but did not get in so signed up for the Waffen SS.

@Canaryman

It's not clear, in the current offical interview with Grass he states that he signed up (he appears to mean stating an option for his callup papers) for the U-Boot arm of the Kriegsmarine or a tank unit. When his callup papers arrived they were for the Waffen-SS.

its not small minded, i think its more the shock that he hadnt told us earlier. i personaly love his work, apart from his support of the "rechtschreibenreform"which i find buggery difficult to accept. he should have come out with it along time ago. this i personaly feal is just good pr for his booka t the mo.

tsk, he published his 'memoires' that were supposedly his private diaries for many years. Many writers do issue edited versions of their diaries in later life and he could just as easily have edited out the Waffen SS references. He chose not to and to make this statement.

Note that publishing memoires is not the same thing as writing an autobiography or a novel which might be a work of years to create.

I think so. If the book is a problem then watch the film because as an adaptation of the book it is a blinder too.

memoirs
plural noun (US ALSO memoir)
a written record of a usually famous person's own life and experiences

autobiography
noun [C or U]
a book about a person's life, written by that person

Bell, maybe you see a huge difference, I don't. More to the point, he didn't have to publish it at all, or to say anything about it. But he has. Again, not damage control.

@BTC

I've seen the film a few times and it is excellent, but the book is as dragging as the heavy clay in the fields he describes in the early stages.

I'll read anything but that book was just not worth continuing, in my opinion. Maybe I'm getting old.

You are. But you are right about the book. Very cloggy.

the difference is that an autobiography is usually a book that one sits and writes from scratch as an account of one's life.

In contrast memoirs are usually merely edited or rewritten sections from preexisting diaries

You don't think diaries could be used as sources for an autobiography ?

Before he enlisted himself into the SS he was on duty with the "Reicharbeitsdienst". He wanted to serve on a sub, because those men were THE glorified heroes of the third Reich, but since at that time not that many submariners where needed anymore and after a visit to a SS drafter who promised him he'll be transfered to the new to be drafted tank-corps "Frundsberg", he enlisted himself with the SS because he thought (back at the time) they were the heroic elite fighting unit.

Again, he was giving people, who didn't enlist themselves like he did, a hard time and always did put himself into the position of being the morale high ground in Germany.

He wants to sell his book big time. If it's not about the book,but him just forgetting where he was a couple of years ago, he shouldn't have condemned that many people who did just the same (or worse... or less, or whatever) as he did.

GG tried to enter the kriegsmarine earlier in the war. Later he was drafted in the SS.

Jezus, is it so hard to read German articles?!?!?!

possibly but edited diaries where little new has been added would never be an autobiography but would be memoirs

who did he condemn? And when?