Nobel Laureate Gunther Grass Served in Waffen SS

Gunther Grass is one of the great literary figures of the 20th century. The Nobel folks don’t hand out prizes to hacks. And his works, even in translation, capture the war years and their aftermath as few others have. He admitted late last week that he was a member of the Waffen SS during the Second World War. This has put the political cat amongst the literary pigeons.

In speaking to the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung about his autobiography (Peeling Onions due out in September), he said, being in the organization “weighed on me. My silence over all these years is one of the reasons I wrote this book. It had to come out, finally.” At 17, he was placed in the Waffen SS Frundsberg Panzer Division, after not getting into the U-boat service.

According to the BBC, “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’.”

One must remember that the Waffen SS, although part of the Schutzstaffl, was not in charge of the death camps – although it is true that members of the murderous einsatzgruppen later became members of the Waffen SS. Nonetheless, some of its members did commit war crimes, for example, at Oradour-sur-Glane, Marzabotto, against Canadian soldiers in the Battle of Normandy and Americans in the Malmedy massacre. By the same token, various units with the Red Army were little better (the Katyn Forest murders), but winners don’t hang for war crimes.

Herr Grass has a Nobel prize, and has been made an honorary citizen of Gdansk (Danzing, where he was born). Fellow Nobel winner and honorary citizen of Gdansk (where Solidarity was also born, and where the death of Polish communism started), Lech Walesa, said, “I do not feel comfortable in that company. I do not know whether one should consider revoking the title. If it had been known he was in the SS, he would never have received the honor.”

The question is what moral responsibility does a 17-year-old draftee bear for crimes committed by other members of the Waffen SS? Truly, very little. However, there is the matter of keeping quiet about this for 61 years. Maybe there was no “good time” to admit it publicly. And there are some associations that permanently tarnish one’s life. One only hopes Herr Grass is creative enough to achieve some moral good out of the current mess.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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