Date: August 19, 2006 10:40:59 AM PDT
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [IPCUSA] Günter Grass and the Waffen SS
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.
The conservative historian Michael Wolffsohn claimed that Grass's
membership in the Waffen SS had "completely damaged" his life's work. On
the television program "Aspekte," Wolffsohn said, "What remains are fine
words without value. The marvelous words of this great poet are a mere
charade. Nothing more."
The literary critic Hellmuth Karasek accused Grass of "duplicity" and
"dreadful hypocrisy," declaring that "this is like someone who preaches
one thing and then does completely the opposite."
The /Financial Times Deutschland /stated that the "political-moral
authority" of the writer had been ruined "by his belated recollection."
The newspaper declared that at the very least Grass should have spoken
out on the occasion of the controversial May 1985 visit by Chancellor
Helmut Kohl and US President Ronald Reagan to the military cemetery in
Bitburg, where members of the SS are buried---a complaint that has been
echoed by some conservative politicians.
The /taz /newspaper, which has close links to the Green Party, published
an interview with the political scientist Claus Leggewie, who even
compared the case of Grass to that of SS Captain Hans Schneider.
Schneider had hushed up his identity after the war and made a career as
a Germanist under the name Hans Schwerte before his real identity was
revealed in the 1990s. Leggewie accused Grass of "profound moral depravity."
In Poland, where the national conservative PiS government led by the
Kaczynski twins has reveled in anti-German rhetoric in order to obscure
its own bankruptcy, the demand has been raised that Grass relinquish his
honorary citizenship of Gdansk (the city of his birth) as well as his
Nobel Prize. Grass has long been active in encouraging better
German-Polish relations.
At the same time, there are many intellectuals, cultural figures and
politicians who have refused to be intimidated by the campaign against
Grass and have defended him---including the historian Hans Mommsen, the
literature expert Walter Jens, the actor Mario Adorf, the Social
Democratic politician Egon Bahr, and the television moderator Ulrich
Wickert.
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.
He describes the character weaknesses and petty meanness which led
people without convictions to end up collaborating with the Nazis. He
reports on the way people sought to look the other way and deceive
themselves about what was really going on. He depicts the hardened
political criminals, as well as those who suffered and put up resistance.
His central theme, however, is his own generation, which grew up and was
educated under the Third Reich. He describes the contradictions and
moral dilemmas of this generation, and its difficulties in coming to
grips with the past.
There were those who never forgave Grass for what he wrote, and he made
life-long enemies. It is no coincidence that the most virulent attacks
on Grass now come from right-wing and conservative circles. All those
whose complacency and self-righteousness was shaken by Grass are now
howling triumphantly.
Finally, the chorus brays, the world-famous writer has been toppled from
his pedestal. He had no right to criticize us and depict our deficiencies.
Amongst these right-wing voices are many former lefts, who have lost
their political bearings following the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the seven years of the previous Social Democratic-Green Party coalition
government.
It was certainly a mistake for Grass to remain silent for so long about
this episode of his biography, but it is a mistake that should be viewed
in its proper proportions, and one that is psychologically and
historically understandable.
When he received his call-up for military service as a 17-year-old in a
work camp, he was still practically a child, lacking the knowledge and
capacity to grasp the criminal character of the organization he was
joining. Hitler had assumed power in Germany when Grass was seven years
old, and shortly afterwards the Nazis took power in the free city of
Danzig, as Gdansk as called at the time.
Grass grew up under the influence of the pervasive and virtually
unopposed Nazi propaganda. It was difficult to develop a critical
attitude under such circumstances. Like many young people of his age, he
believed in the "final victory" up until the end of the war. He has
never sought to conceal this.
Grass was neither directly or indirectly involved in any of the crimes
of the Waffen SS, and none of his current critics accuse him of such.
After training, he was active in the war for just a few weeks. He was
wounded and ended up a prisoner of the American army before he could
fire a shot. At the time he was still less than 18.
In his autobiography, Grass writes about his comprehension of the Waffen
SS at the time: "Was I shocked by what was unmistakable in the
recruitment office, that which still shocks me now, after 60 years, the
double S, at the moment of writing it down?" In his recollections, he
replies that there is nothing "which could be interpreted as a sign of
shock or even disgust. Rather, I would have seen the Waffen SS as an
elite unit, which was deployed when the breach of a front had to be
secured, when encirclement, such as the one at Demjansk, had to be
broken, or Charkow had to be re-conquered. I was not repulsed by the
double rune on the uniform collar."
The renowned historian Hans Mommsen vouches for the plausibility of this
explanation. The principle of voluntary admission to the Waffen SS had
been waived in 1943, and a large proportion of those eligible for
military service had been called up for the Waffen SS without any
formality. Writing in the /Frankfurter Rundschau/,/ /Mommsen states:
"Therefore, the public agitation over the membership of Günter Grass in
the elite troop of the Nazi regime, which was in the process of
dissolution, is inappropriate."
Nor could one demand of Grass, Mommsen continues, that "he could have
arrived at an understanding of the criminal character of the SS and the
Nazi regime in 1944. In the few weeks of his military deployment, which
ended with his injury, he did not witness the crimes committed by units
of the Waffen SS against the civilian population, prisoners of war and
foreign forced laborers."
Grass's membership in the Waffen SS remains an episode in his youth, for
which he can hardly be reproached. It bears no comparison, for example,
with the case of the conductor Herbert von Karajan, who in 1933, at the
age of 25, joined the National Socialists twice (he joined both the
German and the Austrian parties)---a move which was extremely profitable
for his career. Not to speak of someone like the filmmaker Leni
Riefenstahl, who made propaganda films for the Nazi regime. She denied
any responsibility up until her death three years ago, and is still
celebrated as a major artist.
Amongst those who claim that Grass's moral authority has been "severely
damaged" is the historian and journalist Joachim Fest. In the
"historians' controversy" in the middle of the 1980s, Fest supported
Ernst Nolte's efforts to legitimize the Nazi regime as an appropriate
reaction to Bolshevism.
Grass, in contrast, has devoted the major part of his literary work and
political life to settling accounts with the Nazi regime. The dilemma of
the generation which grew up and was implicated in the Nazi regime
without being able to recognize or understand its criminal character,
and the difficulties they had in tackling the issue, the shame they felt
about talking about what went on---these are the themes which reoccur
throughout his work.
There is a certain tragic irony in the fact that Grass himself felt this
shame so strongly that he was not able to admit his membership in the
Waffen SS for 60 years. (Grass's involvement in the Waffen SS was not as
secret as it is presented now. His discharge papers from American
imprisonment, which clearly note his membership in the Waffen SS, have
been accessible to the public for decades, but nobody bothered to check
them. According to a German television report, the French newspaper
/Figaro /reported on his membership in the Waffen SS some years ago, but
at that time there was no response in Germany to the revelation.)
Grass openly addresses the question in /Peeling the Onion/. "Enough
excuses," he writes about his membership in the Waffen SS. "And
nevertheless, for decades I have refused to admit to myself the word and
the double letter. That which I had accepted on the basis of the stupid
pride of my young years I sought to conceal after the war due to my
growing shame. But the burden remained, and nobody could lift it.
"During my training as tank gunner, which I endured the autumn and
winter-long, there was no word of the war crimes which later came to
light, but claims of ignorance cannot conceal my insight of being
involved in a system which had planned, organized and carried out the
destruction of millions of people. Even if I am absolved of active
responsibility, there are still up to today the threadbare remnants of
what is all too easily called shared responsibility. And it is certain
that this must be lived with for my remaining years."
Does this confession destroy Grass's moral authority or his life's work?
Can the writer be denounced because he is personally affected by the
contradictions with which he has dealt in his work? The answer is
obviously no.
Many opponents of Grass try to use his biographical confession to
rehabilitate the Adenauer era, German society under its first,
conservative, postwar chancellor. With the argument "even Grass has a
shady past" they seek to sanitize the smooth transition of high-ranking
representatives of the Nazi regime and its entire legal apparatus into
the Federal Republic.
As if the involvement of the immature Grass in the military apparatus of
National Socialism could be compared to the successful postwar careers
of figures like Hans Globke, who helped draw up the Nuremberg race laws,
the Nazi navy judge Hans Filbinger, the secret service boss Reinhard
Gehlen, and many more!
The political intent of Grass's critics is even clearer in the case of
those who combine their attacks on Grass with a defense of US-Israeli
aggression in the Middle East. This utterly vulgar line of argument is
employed by Henryk M. Broder, writing in /Spiegel/. He declares that
Grass is "finished" and prophesies that people "from now on will regard
him as a caricature of his former self and assign him a place in the
hall of shame." Broder is especially angry about the fact that Grass
supported and defended the Nobel Prize speech by the British dramatist
Harold Pinter, who severely criticized US policy.
With much noise the political right wing brandishes the club of abstract
morality against Grass---in order to suppress the lessons of the past
and to justify new wars and abominations.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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