Günter Grass admits SS Past and more

[Lancer44]

Originally Posted by Klaus

Seems to me like only Germany has a problem with that. Again. But using it for politics is weak. Are they so desperate for electonal topics in poland?

Hi Klaus,

I'm glad you're back!

Yes, weak and stupid. Right wing idiots from PiS are trying to proof that liberals from PO - their main opposition, are pro-German.
They used successfully the same tactic when before last presidential elections they "disclosed" that Donald Tusk's grandfather was in Wehrmacht...
Tusk is from Gdansk.

Hopeless crap...
As in any electorate, there is part of society which is uneducated, doesn't know anything about history and, add insult to injury - is fanatically catholic.
Ask any intelligent person from Poland and you'll have the picture.

Lancer44

[Klaus]

Thanks for the welcome lancer.

It is a song we all have heard too many times. It's always the same with politicans.

[Jim O]

Originally Posted by Lancer44

Gunther Grass is holding title of "Honourable Citizen of Gdansk - Danzig".
Yesterday in a poll ordered by Mer of Gdansk 72% of respondents were against taking this honour from him.
Internet polls all over Poland are currently 77% against suggested by Polish politicians move towards Gunther Grass.

Polish intelectuals reminded public, that Grass was always a great Poland's friend and Eurioean Unity mentor.

Polish politicians from governing party PiS are using Grass affair in electoral campaign... Sickening and short sighted moves!

Gdañszczanie za obywatelstwem dla Grassa

This is typical politics, sadly. And short sighted as you say. As I said above, my opinion may have been a bit dampened at first, but in the long run it probably not much if at all. The disclosure is just another piece of the puzzle of "who is Günter Grass?".

There were two Op-Ed pieces in the Sunday New York Times. In http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/op...ss&oref=slogin, Daniel Kehlmann, an Austrian writer, says the following:

Ambitious like most good writers, Mr. Grass must have had his eye on the Nobel Prize from early on. He knew he deserved it. The question of why he remained silent for so long about his past is in fact easy to answer: one visit with the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was sufficient for [Jorge Luís] Borges never to receive the prize. Would someone who had served in the SS stand a chance?

And then came the prize in actuality. His achievement attained, Mr. Grass was faced with the problem of his posthumous reputation. It must have been clear to him that after his death, journalists, some with the most malign intent, would set themselves to work, and that sooner or later one of them would find out. And what would his life’s work look like in hindsight then?

An author, world-famous, yet in possession of a secret that he knows will come to light one day and cast a shadow over everything he has accomplished — what material for a novel! Were he a literary character, Mr. Grass would only now really become interesting; but no longer as the protagonist of the Brechtian fable that he would have gladly seen as the story of his life. This new story sounds more like Fyodor Dostoyevsky or Graham Greene — above all, like Henrik Ibsen, the dramatist of living a lie.

Mr. Grass did the only thing he could to pre-empt the loss of his reputation. He went public, choosing not to leave the destruction of his moral authority to the professional revealers, but rather to assume the task himself.

Naturally, Mr. Grass will no longer be who he was. His participation in Hitler’s elite corps could have been seen as youthful foolishness, but his silence over so many years is another matter. And naturally, there are consequences for Germany’s image in the world. When even the most outspoken German moralist wore the uniform of murderers, one might ask whether there is a single guiltless German in this generation.

And the answer to this question is that involvement in the Nazi system, even among the youngest Germans of the time, was more widespread than we have previously wanted to perceive, and many aspects of the era’s crimes even now lie buried in silence. They are crimes that few books chronicle so well as “The Tin Drum,” “Cat and Mouse” and “Dog Years.”

OK, so he had ambition. Is that a bad thing necessarily? Once a lie is told it is hard to untell. And it becomes progressively harder to untell over time. What surprises me is that nobody ever discovered this before. After all, this was a regime that kept meticulous records of everything. And if his having been drafted into the SS would have disqualified him from Nobel Prize consideration, then what is that prize worth really? We're not talking about a committed Nazi, we're talking about a boy who was six years old when Hitler came to power and was 17 when he was drafted. What was he to believe at the time but the propaganda which he had been fed for virtually all of his life? And what was he to do when he was drafted and told to report to a Waffen SS unit?


In the other Op-Ed piece, at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/op...rssnyt&emc=rss, Peter Gay, a professor emeritus of history at Yale, expounds on that:

As far as we know — and the autobiography, we hope, reveals all — Mr. Grass did not volunteer to join these future mass murderers but was drafted. And we do know that he was only 17 at the time. These were the months, in the spring of 1945, that the Nazis knew that the war was lost, and when they, as one says, scraped the bottom of the barrel for more troops. Yet the storm over his long silence about his youthful sin has secured Mr. Grass, as he predicted, an international storm of disapproval.

He has been asked to relinquish his Nobel Prize in Literature and his honorary citizenship of his birth city, Poland’s Gdansk, once Danzig. And Charlotte Knobloch, who presides over the sadly shrunken Jewish population in Germany that was once, before Hitler, half-a-million strong, commented that this revelation has devalued his frequent political interventions into “absurdities.”

As a Jew who grew up in Nazi Germany in the years leading up to World War II, I can understand her rage. But I think that whatever Mr. Grass has said in election campaigns (usually as a loyal Social Democratic speaker) or in his powerful novels, all essentially on the present or the recent past, retains its value.

Fortunately, some commentators have been less hysterical. Most notably Ralph Giordano, a German writer and, by the way, a Jew, has noted that Mr. Grass was only 6 when Adolf Hitler was invited to become Germany’s chancellor. (The overused phrase “seizure of power” badly distorts what happened around Jan. 30, 1933, the date of the Führer’s accession. A coup d’ état would have been bad enough; that Hitler’s appointment was perfectly legal only makes it worse for German history.) And Mr. Giordano has asked, reasonably enough, “What else could he have done during that time in the face of the Nazis’ all-powerful propaganda apparatus?” And answers his own question: “Nothing.”

This is not all that needs to be said about this affair. With his 1959 novel, “The Tin Drum,” and its two successors (together known as the “Danzig Trilogy”), Mr. Grass established a body of work unequaled in his country for half a century. It is not that a public personality should get a free ride simply for being famous, let alone popular. Herbert von Karajan may have been an outstanding conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, but this would not erase the fact that he joined the Nazi party twice — these were the acts of an adult, after all.

The uncomfortable question that remains for Mr. Grass is this: Why did he keep this interlude as a servant of the regime so tight a secret? If, as we are told, his wife was the only other person whom he informed, then the Grasses made a huge mistake. If he had come out of the Nazi closet earlier, say, in 1959 with his triumphant novel just published, people would have understood, and his own life would have been easier.

I am not Mr. Grass’s analyst, nor have I ever met him. But it seems to me that he failed to come forward all these years simply because he was too ashamed. And if I am right, the affair will have a useful consequence: it will be a reminder, more than 60 years later, that his country had a great deal to be ashamed of.

Some more rational "talking heads" perhaps.

[Klaus]

I think the main problem is that if someone hears "SS" (if it does ring a bell at all) everyone thinks: "Jew murderer". In the opinion of most people all the SS did was killing the sons of Abraham. Of course a lot of them were murderous bastards, but not everyone participated in the Holocoust. But I don't have to tell you guys.

[Lancer44]

Originally Posted by Klaus

I think the main problem is that if someone hears "SS" (if it does ring a bell at all) everyone thinks: "Jew murderer". In the opinion of most people all the SS did was killing the sons of Abraham. Of course a lot of them were murderous bastards, but not everyone participated in the Holocoust. But I don't have to tell you guys.

It is a paranoia which goes back to the WWII years.
Examples:
1. Most Waffen-SS troops on the eastern front were shot on the spot.
2. Tankers which had "skull" badges were shot as well - taken as Waffen-SS.

There was no recognition nor any education that "skull" badge was very prominent before and during WWI, German Freicorps, Polish Uhlans, Russian Dragons and generally "shock troops", used it frequently.

The same story with swastika - before 1939 mountain troops in Poland had swastike in their regimental badges, I know that even American division had the same badge.

After the war, all units having swastika badges were branded by soviet and communist secret police as "nazi".
Complete absurd!

Gunther Grass is as much nazi as Polish mountain brigades soldiers which died under caterpillars of German tanks trying to stop tank divisions crushing their defences.

The same thing is with what Klaus mentioned; "SS = Jew murderer".
Nonsense!

In Poland similar label, some semi-educated "historians" are currently trying to put onto Polish Police. For these fellows it's doesn't matter - 99% of them is already dead. For their families it makes a difference.
No doubt that some policemans were blackmailing Jews - extracted profits and when no more money could be paid - turning Jews to German police.
But most of them were just honest, ordinary cops. They could not say "No" to Germans - they had to serve - "No" meant galleys for this cop and conzentration camp for his family.

Gunther Grass blown up "affair" is in my opinion his own gimmick to make his last book popular and tio some extent farewell...

I would do the same. If I have to go... at least I would slam the door hard behind me!

Lancer44

[Klaus]

Perfectly right.

You think it is a PR gag? It's possible but seems very unlikely in my opinion. I too think that he was concerned about his posthumus reputation. A by-product, so to speak, would be of course good PR for his last book. But thats in the nature of things.

[Lancer44]

Originally Posted by Klaus

Perfectly right.

You think it is a PR gag? It's possible but seems very unlikely in my opinion. I too think that he was concerned about his posthumus reputation. A by-product, so to speak, would be of course good PR for his last book. But thats in the nature of things.

In one of numerous articles about this story, someone in Germany mentioned that GUnther Grass admitted that he served in Waffen SS in a couple of last month of the war. He did it in close circle of friends in about 1990.
Anyone of these poeple could just give information to Bild or Spiegel.
Do you think Gunther forgot about this "confession" in inner circle?

Perhaps he did.

PR and ... I agree ... worry about posthumous reputation.
I like him and his writing anyway, no matter what.

Cheers,

Lancer44

[Klaus]

Right you are. But I'd rather tell the story myself, than have other people tell it. So they can at least ask Günther himself.

[Jim O]

There is no question in my mind that he had his posthumous reputation in his mind. Getting it out before he died was important. Controlling bad news, and getting it out oneself (as opposed to waiting for an opponent to get it out) is a key of public relations and politics.

As for publicity, well it's had that effect whether or not it was his intent. It has been suggested that this whole "event" will ensure that the book is quickly translated into English and published, and that was part of the motivation. After all, that represents a huge market in the US alone.

[Lancer44]

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25.08.2006

"The Polish writer Stefan Chwin does not hold it against Günter Grass for speaking out so late about his time in the SS. He doesn't even seem all that surprised. "For all his vitality, Grass is a secretive and introspective person, and I've never attempted to understand him. I preferred him to remain like his books: nebulous, unclear, ambivalent. Oskar Materath is certainly not a positive hero and 'The Tin Drum' is not a 'clean' book. I've always sensed something strange about that book, which is precisely what I love about it. Real literature plays with truth and morals as one plays with fire."

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 25.08.2006

"It was known that Günter Grass penned a letter to the mayor of Gdansk, Pawel Adamowicz, but not that his letter was a reply to an email from Adamowicz. On the political pages, Adamowicz writes: "I asked him to tell the people of Gdansk how he came to be a member of the SS and why he had kept silent about it for so long. I sent off the mail with these questions last Saturday evening. I have to admit that I hardly slept a wink that night. Would he answer or not? And if he did, would he be content with just a few short paragraphs? In the night I sought answers to these questions which were worrying us in the favourite book of my youth, 'The Tin Drum'."

In Today's Feuilletons - signandsight

Die Tageszeitung, 16.08.2006
Political scientist Claus Leggewie sees Günter Grass' late confession as a dilemma of West German intellectuals: they have overcompensated for the National Socialist past, while at the same time avoiding admitting personal guilt. "That's how transformation processes after dictatorships work. And those born between 1900 and 1930 reacted contraphobically. That's the only way to explain the verve with which prominent individuals fought against a possible relapse and the 'Adenauer fug.' In 1990, Grass turned against German reunification, because he feared in all seriousness the return of the great German Reich. He knew how 'seductive' National Socialism was, which is why, incidentally, he was so opposed to the totalitarian mood of the 68ers. Grass' sharp judicial strictness is a form of overcompensation: I exercise this role and thereby exonerate myself in retrospect."

In Today's Feuilletons - signandsight

And finally interesting quote from Wiki:

"In the Nuremberg Trials, the Waffen-SS was condemned as part of a criminal organisation due to their involvement with the National Socialist Party (NSDAP), and Waffen-SS veterans were denied many of the rights afforded other German combat veterans who had served in the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe or Kriegsmarine.

Conscripts, however, were exempted from that judgment, as many of them were forced to join the organisation by German authorities."

Waffen-SS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quite interesting reading here:

Annual 5 Chapter 5 - Simon Wiesenthal Center Multimedia Learning Center

And here:

"....after having been wounded in Lusacia amidst chaotic fighting in the retreat, with a wound which healed quickly in the right thigh and a piece of shrapnel in the left shoulder, I was in Marienbad, hospital town which only a few days before had been occupied by US soldiers the same as its neighbour Karlsbad had been occupied by Soviet units. I lived that 8th of May in Marienbad, feeling like an eejit of 17 years old who until the last moment had believed in the final victory. That's to say, for me there came no moment of liberation, rather I felt an invasive feeling of being conquered after the total collapse....
thus when comes again the 8th of May, with well delivered speeches, celebrated as the day of Liberation, it can only be treated as an interpretation "a posteriori" for the germans did little or nothing for our liberation....
In the immediate post war years the hunger and the cold, the misery of the refugees, the displaced by the bombardments determined the quotidien life. In the four zones of occupation, the growing affluence at the end of it all, of more than 12 million germans who had been expelled from both eastern and western Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia and the Sudetans could only organise themselves in their forced settlements in a limited space."

And somewhat the most interesting information:

http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=ht...CdQ24Q24Q25lZ1,

"The Simon Wiesenthal Center has initiated an investigation of the Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass and urged him to clarify his World War II service ..."

What's next?

Lancer44