Great article by Berger. No one outside of Germany can quite come to terms with the notion that Germans were the first and last victims of National Socialism. There is only the Holocaust, blitzes and raving looney panto Nazis. The German people don't exist.
On that layer, it's easy to sell the idea that all Germans were complicit and thus, like Grass, still are. On holiday in France, this year, I noted that the German general who handed over Limoges to the French Resistance (via an English officer called Major Staunton) did so in order to avoid bloodletting and a long pointless battle. By doing this, he was disobeying Hitler's orders of never surrender, and so committed suicide. The French acknowledged that he too was a 'victim of National Socialism'.
Further: in 1933, the very first acts of oppression that the Nazis carried out were not against the Jews or against foreigners. They were against trade unionists, socialists and Communists. Having done this, they had a clear run at reorganising the German state along the lines they wanted. I met a man who, as a boy, used to see his father come by in what were in effect chain gangs. His father had been a Communist shop steward in the Ruhr.
It is very hard to get hold of this kind of history, which is also, of course, a context for Grass's youth. In fact, in their desperation towards the end of the war, the Nazis rushed round hoovering up young boys, offering them clothes and money and food (all desperately rare commodities at the time) in order to 'defend the fatherland' and commit heroic deeds facing up to barbaric hordes coming in from the east, in particular. Even some of the kids who had been involved in mildly subversive anti-Hitler Youth acts, as well as more serious sabotage (they were known as 'Edelweisspiraten' Edelweiss Pirates) were attracted to the glamour of the Waffen SS.
"No one outside of Germany can quite come to terms with the notion that Germans were the first and last victims of National Socialism"
I don't know about 'first and last' but yes, the doctrine that the German people and National Socialism were synonymous is itself a Nazi doctrine.
And there's a still prevalent belief that what the Nazis did is a reflection of something peculiarly German, not a revelation of what humanity is capable of.
First, because it was German lefties who were attacked on the streets in the twenties (running fights with Communists in the Ruhr etc). Last, because even as the war ended, Germans were ethnically cleansed from the eastern areas so that Yalta could be put into practice. Yes, the effects of WW2 reverberate today, and it's hard not to accept Afif Saffieh's prescription of the Palestinians as being the victims' victims.
I was referring more to the operations at the end of WW2 and those immediately following.
Of course I wasn't meaning to negate the millions of others between the first and the last. I meant, literally, first and last in terms of chronology.
The point about Gunter Grass is that for decades he has been the self appointed conscience of Germany, imploring the German people to face up to their past and criticising in the strongest terms, those that didn't. All of this whilst choosing to conceal very significant details of his own role, as a member of first the Hitler Youth (which he acknowledged), and then the Waffen SS.
As for the German's being victims of the Third Reich, yes, of course there were German political victims, however there were far more Germans supporting Hitler, cheering him on as the Nazi's went back into the Rhineland, annexed Austria, and then invaded the Sudetenland. Support for the Nazi's grew throughout the 30s despite the demonisation of Jews and other minority groups, despite political arrests, despite the German political system being destroyed and replaced with a dictatorship, despite the eugenics programs etc... etc... None of this is conjecture, it is documented to the last detail, and has been detailed by historians of every political persuasion. Political prisoners there may have been, but until they started to lose the war, tens of millions of Germans supported and helped the Nazi party.
Finally Nazi ideology itself is a particuarly German phenomenon. That is not to say that other peoples aren't capable of atrocities, but to deny the specific and explicit link between Nazism and German identity is incorrect. Nazism consciously drew on deeply rooted elements of German folklore, and notions of a German identity. Whereas facism is not essentially concerned with race, Nazism's first principles are related to the destiny of the Aryan peoples, with the German people, or Volk being above any other people.
1. Other countries are implicated in the destiny of Germany 1914-1945. Greatly so, in fact, at all stages whether through Versailles or the supplying and equipping of the nazi war machine.
2. 'Millions of germans' doesn't equal Germany.
3. 'Political' victims of Nazism are a) no less victims and b) their liquidation was part of the way terror was created and the invasion of the east and the final solution was enabled.
4. The mass killing of German civilians and then the ethnic cleansing that took place after the war should be seen as one of the ways in which people become victims of their own state.
"1. Other countries are implicated in the destiny of Germany 1914-1945. Greatly so, in fact, at all stages whether through Versailles or the supplying and equipping of the nazi war machine." - Yes, of course this is true. Very many things could have been done differently following the end of the (German initiated) First World War. Many factors played their part in the rise of the Nazi party, however this does not change the fact that they still recieved and relied upon massive support from almost every (non-Jewish, non-Gay, non-Romany etc...) strata of German society.
"2. 'Millions of germans' doesn't equal Germany". No, i didn't say that it did. However i also don't agree with your analysis of history as "There is only the Holocaust, blitzes and raving looney panto Nazis. The German people don't exist.", along with your claim that: "It is very hard to get hold of this kind of history". Where do you get your history from? The Sun? I've read a number of easily available, mainstream books about the rise of the Nazis and the second world war, all of them give a much more nuanced and inclusive account than the one that you imply to be the norm.
"3. 'Political' victims of Nazism are a) no less victims and b) their liquidation was part of the way terror was created and the invasion of the east and the final solution was enabled.": I didn't say political victims were any different. I merely emphasised 'Political' to make the same point that you made when you said, "in 1933, the very first acts of oppression that the Nazis carried out were not against the Jews or against foreigners. They were against trade unionists, socialists and Communists". Of course political victims are still victims.
"4. The mass killing of German civilians and then the ethnic cleansing that took place after the war should be seen as one of the ways in which people become victims of their own state.": Yes, but it should also be seen as one of the ways in which people become victims of their own choices and actions with regard to that state. Although, as i've said, i know that not some in Germany oppossed the Nazi's, i would say that the status of Germans (as a whole) as victims of their state, differs from the status of the Jews as victims of their state, and also from the status of Russians as victims from their state under, say Stalin. And this difference is down to the level of complicity within German society.
None of your points answer the question of why Grass should not be held to account for his hypocrisy. I agree completely that his very significant acheivements as an artist, should not be reassessed in light of his membership of the SS, however his position as a self-elected voice of German conscience is very much in question, given that he is guilty of the same sin that he has spent decades chastising the German people for.
1. 43.9% vote on an 88.8% turnout in March 33. I think that was their best result. It's huge, but it's not everyone. I think you'll find that some Jews did vote Nazi! I met one.
2. Watch the History Channel. I meant 'popular history'.
4. I'm not sure what 'choice' means when you live under state terror.
The only hypocrisy we can charge Grass with is why he didn't say he was conscripted into the WaffenSS. He always said he joined the Hitlerjugend, didn't he? In the tally of lies, suppression of the truth, covering up of real Nazis etc etc, it's pretty bloody low-level, isn't it? Some Nazis eg Globke became high officials.
The point about Gunter Grass is that for decades he has been the self appointed conscience of Germany, imploring the German people to face up to their past and criticising in the strongest terms, those that didn't
In what exact sense did Grass ‘appoint himself’? Your comment suggests something rather self-righteous about Grass. Wasn’t he simply speaking and writing as he saw fit about the issue of Germany’s past? Could you clarify why you chose this phrase.
Re his ‘hypocrisy’, my question is: what precisely did Grass ‘implore’ the German people to do? Did he ask them only to ‘face up to their past’ – collectively or individually – or did he demand that they make their past a matter of public record. The two things are clearly not the same. Did he demand that they ‘face up to their past’ immediately or in their own time? Grass’s own statement suggests that he has indeed ‘faced up’ to being conscripted into the SS, but that this ‘facing up’ is something that has to be thought through painfully and gradually.
In my blindness as a boy of 15, I applied to serve on submarines, but I was not accepted. But in September 1944, at the age of 17, I was conscripted into the Waffen SS, without having a say." … It's only now, with age, that I have found a suitable way of talking about it from a wider perspective."
He also intimates that he may have been mistaken in his decision. Do you think Grass is disingenuous about having taken so long in being able to ‘talk about’ this aspect of his past? Do you think that him ‘coming to terms with his past’ necessarily had to involve him going public?
"43.9% vote on an 88.8% turnout in March 33. I think that was their best result. It's huge, but it's not everyone. I think you'll find that some Jews did vote Nazi! I met one.": I used to work with an Asian guy who voted BNP, and i'm sure there's been a number of Jews holding "We are all Hezbollah Now" placards in recent months. There are perverse people everywhere. However if the BNP came to power and Britain's Asians were subjected to mass persecution, i think the responsibility would lie with the majority whites who voted them into power. My former colleague's vote would merely be a bizarre footnote.
"Watch the History Channel. I meant 'popular history'.": I think that most people outside Germany, who are aware of Grass, are probably also aware that WWII caused a great deal of suffering for Germans.
"I'm not sure what 'choice' means when you live under state terror.": It means choosing to turn a blind eye to the rabid anti-semitism that was the core of the philosophy of the party for which 43.9% of you were voting. It means choosing to rush to join the apparatus of a party that is imprisoning Communists, trade unionists, gays, Jews, killing the handicapped and mentally ill. It means exulting at military expansionism. It means choosing to enjoy the fruits of a terror-state when that terror is targeting someone else.
"In what exact sense did Grass ‘appoint himself’? Your comment suggests something rather self-righteous about Grass. Wasn’t he simply speaking and writing as he saw fit about the issue of Germany’s past? Could you clarify why you chose this phrase.": No, he wasn't "simply speaking and writing as he saw fit". Grass has chosen to occupy a certain position in German life. He is far more than simply a writer voicing an opinion. He has pushed himself to the forefront on political issues in Germany for 40 years, and has taken the role of conscience of Germany. Read any of the German commentaries on this incident. Süddeutsche Zeitung asks "Why was the talker silent", Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger describes him as "The moral preacher", Financial Times Deutschland speaks of "the political-moral authority that the author has always demanded for himself". Look at the way he (rightly in my opinion) made very public, very vocal criticisms of Reagan and Kohl visiting a cemetary containing war dead that included some members of the Waffen SS. This is not a man quietly sitting on the sidelines expressing himself for his own personal reasons. This is a man choosing time and again to challenge (again, rightly i believe) his country to face up, with complete honesty, to the crimes of their past.
"He also intimates that he may have been mistaken in his decision. Do you think Grass is disingenuous about having taken so long in being able to ‘talk about’ this aspect of his past? Do you think that him ‘coming to terms with his past’ necessarily had to involve him going public?": Yes, in his case, i think it does. This reminds me of the Conservative party talking about a return to family values whilst John Major was knocking off Edwina Currie on the sly.
I can't help thinking that there's a bit of slide going on here. Grass's conscription into the SS and his failure to report it have become synonymous with the crimes of the SS 1933-45 and then synonymous with the whole murky history of cover-ups of and by ex(?) Nazis in the post-war Germanies and beyond. Let's be plain, he's not as culpable as Himmler et al, and he's not as culpable as the 'Paperclip Conspiracy' nor the appointees of Globke et al.
But noone is accusing him of any of these things. The issue isn't really anything to do with what he may or may not have done whilst in the SS, it is to do with a very vocal moraliser and critic of others being found not to have practice what he preaches.
If your suggestion is that his role was so minor that he may not have felt it warranted mention, i'd argue that, in light of his candour regarding other aspects of his past, both before and after this one, his failure to mention this "detail" suggests he feels otherwise. As do his claims that it is something that has troubled him (and inspired him) for the whole of his adult life.
No one is accusing him of these things directly because that wouldn't be tenable. It's the 'he's as bad as...' formulae that are circulating.
His writing is born out of the tension created in part by this nine month episode in his late adolescence. In the end, he has told all. It's not as if he's died and we found this out afterwards. De Man never told the truth, neither did Hergé. Major only told all because Curry told all (for her own reasons). Jeez, the guy could have shut up and died without having to face this music. He chose not to shut up. That's 'authentic', isn't it?
reminds me of the Conservative party talking about a return to family values whilst John Major was knocking off Edwina Currie on the sly
Right. John Major was prattling about family values in public, while in private.. Whereas Gunter Grass was publically urging people to deal with their past and all along in private he was, erm, dealing with his past. Anyway, you can't honestly compare the inane prattle of a politician with the sustained and thoughtful work of Grass.
. There are, btw, many ways of 'dealing with the past' of Germany. Writing the Tin Drum was a particularly brilliant way, I'd have thought.
"Whereas Gunter Grass was publically urging people to deal with their past and all along in private he was, erm, dealing with his past. Anyway, you can't honestly compare the inane prattle of a politician with the sustained and thoughtful work of Grass.": I'm sorry, but this isn't a valid point in Grass' case. You, and some others on here do not seem to grasp the role Grass has played in post war Germany. The quote above betrays that on two counts. Firstly, he wasn't urging people to deal with their past on some personal, private level. He was publically urging people to admit to their past, and voice fully, their role in what happened in Germany under the Nazi's. There is a very significant difference. Secondly, you speak of the "inane prattle of a politician", and contrast it "with the sustained and thoughtful work of Grass". This is nonsense. Grass' contribution in Germany has been as much political as artistic - and not just in an implicit manner via his art. He has been actively involved in German politics, with his role alongside Willi Brandt. He does not occupy simply the role of artist in Germany. He occupies a role which has no parallel in Britain. His own biographer has said, "It is a disappointment, in a way he has betrayed the whole generation". Why do you think there is such uproar, and such a sense of betrayal in Germany, from all political angles? Do some reading, find out more about Grass, and about his role in German society - not just as the guy who wrote the Tin Drum.
So now he's admitted his past. He's done it. In so doing, he himself has become the instrument with which the moralizers can beat him. So they do. Like I said, he didn't need to do this. He could have died and wihout ever having to meet the baying hordes now gathering at his gate. And phew, what a relief for all relativists everywhere: oh, so the bastard who berated us for covering up Nazi crimes, is coverer-up himself!
But when Grass was talking about skeletons in the cupboard in years previously, he was talking about people with blood on their hands, people who helped construct Nazi Germany and implement its policies. Is his conscription into the SS at the age of 17 equivalent to this?
"But when Grass was talking about skeletons in the cupboard in years previously, he was talking about people with blood on their hands, people who helped construct Nazi Germany and implement its policies. Is his conscription into the SS at the age of 17 equivalent to this?"
No, his conscription into the SS (which came as a result of his volunteering for the Submarine Service), is not equivalent to the more murderous roles played by many. However he still, in my opinion falls into the category of "people who helped... implement its policies". I believe that the fact that he was only 17 is to some degree mitigating, but certainly not wholly mitigating. However, i don't think that this is the point unless one agrees with your further point, that Grass "was talking about skeletons in the cupboard... he was talking about people with blood on their hands, people who helped construct Nazi Germany and implement its policies": Is this really what you believe? You don't think he was also talking about the millions who did not actually have blood on their hands, but whose complicity made possible what happened?
I really don't believe that Grass has spent the last 40 years making such an obvious, unsubtle point, and i believe even the most cursory reading of his literature makes it clear that for him the rise of Nazism, and the crimes that followed - as you yourself have argued in a previous post - was a thing whose analysis should be far more nuanced than simply pointing the finger at those on the front lines.
There's something absolutist going on here. Surely we can agree that there are degrees of culpability re a) the rise and actions of nazism and b) related to it, the degree of covering up that culpable and not-so-culpable people go in for.
On a) GG isn't that culpable. On b) he's covered up for 50 years but now he hasn't. So he's not covering up now. He's been authentic.
But the point isn't just his been covering up, or his level of culpability, seen in isolation. It is the fact that he's made a career out of chastising a nation for just that which he has been doing himself.
It's not about the details of Nazism, or what he may or may not actually have done whilst in the SS (for which, incidentally, we have only his word). It's about him so spectacuarly failing to practice what he was preaching for 40 years. The fact that he has made his revelations now (putting aside any cynicism re. his autobiography), is admirable, however it does not wipe away decades of bluster which now seems, at least to me, to have been deeply hypocritical.
Right, so he was a hypocrite (not sure what level of crime this is). Now he isn't. Story: once there was a man who was a hypocrite. Then he stopped being a hypocrite by telling everyone what had happened. And all the people stood round saying, 'You were a hypocrite.' And the man wondered why he had bothered to tell everyone what had happened. So much easier to have died. Then he remembered why. It was because he didn't want to be a hypocrite. That night, he went to sleep hearing the sound of the crowd outside, shouting, 'Hypocrite, hypocrite.' Hmmm, he thought to himself, well, I may not have done much in my life, at least I've made some people feel superior.
Additionally anyone who has read Grass' work and didn't see this coming was not paying attention.
Furthermore, so what. It's more important now to really understand this history and not to caricature it, not to allow it to be used as this cartoonish model of political evil based improbably in mishigas against which the current rational political evil seems comforting. The way the condemnation of Grass is playing out is designed to do just that, and must be rejected. Few of his critics today in the imperial countries is any less guilty and complicit right now than Grass was in his youth, and few are as willing to confess it, or even to recognise that there is anything to be guilty of or complicit with. The very idea that complicity with crimes against humanity is solely a question of the past, of the youth of men in their old age today, is furthered by the way this reaction is developing and really has to be refused.
22 comments:
Great article by Berger. No one outside of Germany can quite come to terms with the notion that Germans were the first and last victims of National Socialism. There is only the Holocaust, blitzes and raving looney panto Nazis. The German people don't exist.
On that layer, it's easy to sell the idea that all Germans were complicit and thus, like Grass, still are. On holiday in France, this year, I noted that the German general who handed over Limoges to the French Resistance (via an English officer called Major Staunton) did so in order to avoid bloodletting and a long pointless battle. By doing this, he was disobeying Hitler's orders of never surrender, and so committed suicide. The French acknowledged that he too was a 'victim of National Socialism'.
Further: in 1933, the very first acts of oppression that the Nazis carried out were not against the Jews or against foreigners. They were against trade unionists, socialists and Communists. Having done this, they had a clear run at reorganising the German state along the lines they wanted. I met a man who, as a boy, used to see his father come by in what were in effect chain gangs. His father had been a Communist shop steward in the Ruhr.
It is very hard to get hold of this kind of history, which is also, of course, a context for Grass's youth. In fact, in their desperation towards the end of the war, the Nazis rushed round hoovering up young boys, offering them clothes and money and food (all desperately rare commodities at the time) in order to 'defend the fatherland' and commit heroic deeds facing up to barbaric hordes coming in from the east, in particular. Even some of the kids who had been involved in mildly subversive anti-Hitler Youth acts, as well as more serious sabotage (they were known as 'Edelweisspiraten' Edelweiss Pirates) were attracted to the glamour of the Waffen SS.
"No one outside of Germany can quite come to terms with the notion that Germans were the first and last victims of National Socialism"
I don't know about 'first and last' but yes, the doctrine that the German people and National Socialism were synonymous is itself a Nazi doctrine.
And there's a still prevalent belief that what the Nazis did is a reflection of something peculiarly German, not a revelation of what humanity is capable of.
First, because it was German lefties who were attacked on the streets in the twenties (running fights with Communists in the Ruhr etc). Last, because even as the war ended, Germans were ethnically cleansed from the eastern areas so that Yalta could be put into practice. Yes, the effects of WW2 reverberate today, and it's hard not to accept Afif Saffieh's prescription of the Palestinians as being the victims' victims.
I was referring more to the operations at the end of WW2 and those immediately following.
Of course I wasn't meaning to negate the millions of others between the first and the last. I meant, literally, first and last in terms of chronology.
The point about Gunter Grass is that for decades he has been the self appointed conscience of Germany, imploring the German people to face up to their past and criticising in the strongest terms, those that didn't. All of this whilst choosing to conceal very significant details of his own role, as a member of first the Hitler Youth (which he acknowledged), and then the Waffen SS.
As for the German's being victims of the Third Reich, yes, of course there were German political victims, however there were far more Germans supporting Hitler, cheering him on as the Nazi's went back into the Rhineland, annexed Austria, and then invaded the Sudetenland. Support for the Nazi's grew throughout the 30s despite the demonisation of Jews and other minority groups, despite political arrests, despite the German political system being destroyed and replaced with a dictatorship, despite the eugenics programs etc... etc... None of this is conjecture, it is documented to the last detail, and has been detailed by historians of every political persuasion. Political prisoners there may have been, but until they started to lose the war, tens of millions of Germans supported and helped the Nazi party.
Finally Nazi ideology itself is a particuarly German phenomenon. That is not to say that other peoples aren't capable of atrocities, but to deny the specific and explicit link between Nazism and German identity is incorrect. Nazism consciously drew on deeply rooted elements of German folklore, and notions of a German identity. Whereas facism is not essentially concerned with race, Nazism's first principles are related to the destiny of the Aryan peoples, with the German people, or Volk being above any other people.
1. Other countries are implicated in the destiny of Germany 1914-1945. Greatly so, in fact, at all stages whether through Versailles or the supplying and equipping of the nazi war machine.
2. 'Millions of germans' doesn't equal Germany.
3. 'Political' victims of Nazism are a) no less victims and b) their liquidation was part of the way terror was created and the invasion of the east and the final solution was enabled.
4. The mass killing of German civilians and then the ethnic cleansing that took place after the war should be seen as one of the ways in which people become victims of their own state.
"1. Other countries are implicated in the destiny of Germany 1914-1945. Greatly so, in fact, at all stages whether through Versailles or the supplying and equipping of the nazi war machine." - Yes, of course this is true. Very many things could have been done differently following the end of the (German initiated) First World War. Many factors played their part in the rise of the Nazi party, however this does not change the fact that they still recieved and relied upon massive support from almost every (non-Jewish, non-Gay, non-Romany etc...) strata of German society.
"2. 'Millions of germans' doesn't equal Germany". No, i didn't say that it did. However i also don't agree with your analysis of history as "There is only the Holocaust, blitzes and raving looney panto Nazis. The German people don't exist.", along with your claim that: "It is very hard to get hold of this kind of history". Where do you get your history from? The Sun? I've read a number of easily available, mainstream books about the rise of the Nazis and the second world war, all of them give a much more nuanced and inclusive account than the one that you imply to be the norm.
"3. 'Political' victims of Nazism are a) no less victims and b) their liquidation was part of the way terror was created and the invasion of the east and the final solution was enabled.": I didn't say political victims were any different. I merely emphasised 'Political' to make the same point that you made when you said, "in 1933, the very first acts of oppression that the Nazis carried out were not against the Jews or against foreigners. They were against trade unionists, socialists and Communists". Of course political victims are still victims.
"4. The mass killing of German civilians and then the ethnic cleansing that took place after the war should be seen as one of the ways in which people become victims of their own state.": Yes, but it should also be seen as one of the ways in which people become victims of their own choices and actions with regard to that state. Although, as i've said, i know that not some in Germany oppossed the Nazi's, i would say that the status of Germans (as a whole) as victims of their state, differs from the status of the Jews as victims of their state, and also from the status of Russians as victims from their state under, say Stalin. And this difference is down to the level of complicity within German society.
None of your points answer the question of why Grass should not be held to account for his hypocrisy. I agree completely that his very significant acheivements as an artist, should not be reassessed in light of his membership of the SS, however his position as a self-elected voice of German conscience is very much in question, given that he is guilty of the same sin that he has spent decades chastising the German people for.
1. 43.9% vote on an 88.8% turnout in March 33. I think that was their best result. It's huge, but it's not everyone. I think you'll find that some Jews did vote Nazi! I met one.
2. Watch the History Channel. I meant 'popular history'.
4. I'm not sure what 'choice' means when you live under state terror.
The only hypocrisy we can charge Grass with is why he didn't say he was conscripted into the WaffenSS. He always said he joined the Hitlerjugend, didn't he? In the tally of lies, suppression of the truth, covering up of real Nazis etc etc, it's pretty bloody low-level, isn't it? Some Nazis eg Globke became high officials.
The point about Gunter Grass is that for decades he has been the self appointed conscience of Germany, imploring the German people to face up to their past and criticising in the strongest terms, those that didn't
In what exact sense did Grass ‘appoint himself’? Your comment suggests something rather self-righteous about Grass. Wasn’t he simply speaking and writing as he saw fit about the issue of Germany’s past? Could you clarify why you chose this phrase.
Re his ‘hypocrisy’, my question is: what precisely did Grass ‘implore’ the German people to do? Did he ask them only to ‘face up to their past’ – collectively or individually – or did he demand that they make their past a matter of public record. The two things are clearly not the same. Did he demand that they ‘face up to their past’ immediately or in their own time? Grass’s own statement suggests that he has indeed ‘faced up’ to being conscripted into the SS, but that this ‘facing up’ is something that has to be thought through painfully and gradually.
In my blindness as a boy of 15, I applied to serve on submarines, but I was not accepted. But in September 1944, at the age of 17, I was conscripted into the Waffen SS, without having a say."
… It's only now, with age, that I have found a suitable way of talking about it from a wider perspective."
He also intimates that he may have been mistaken in his decision. Do you think Grass is disingenuous about having taken so long in being able to ‘talk about’ this aspect of his past? Do you think that him ‘coming to terms with his past’ necessarily had to involve him going public?
anonymous says, GG's 'membership of the SS'. Grass says 'conscripted into the SS'.
"43.9% vote on an 88.8% turnout in March 33. I think that was their best result. It's huge, but it's not everyone. I think you'll find that some Jews did vote Nazi! I met one.": I used to work with an Asian guy who voted BNP, and i'm sure there's been a number of Jews holding "We are all Hezbollah Now" placards in recent months. There are perverse people everywhere. However if the BNP came to power and Britain's Asians were subjected to mass persecution, i think the responsibility would lie with the majority whites who voted them into power. My former colleague's vote would merely be a bizarre footnote.
"Watch the History Channel. I meant 'popular history'.": I think that most people outside Germany, who are aware of Grass, are probably also aware that WWII caused a great deal of suffering for Germans.
"I'm not sure what 'choice' means when you live under state terror.": It means choosing to turn a blind eye to the rabid anti-semitism that was the core of the philosophy of the party for which 43.9% of you were voting. It means choosing to rush to join the apparatus of a party that is imprisoning Communists, trade unionists, gays, Jews, killing the handicapped and mentally ill. It means exulting at military expansionism. It means choosing to enjoy the fruits of a terror-state when that terror is targeting someone else.
"In what exact sense did Grass ‘appoint himself’? Your comment suggests something rather self-righteous about Grass. Wasn’t he simply speaking and writing as he saw fit about the issue of Germany’s past? Could you clarify why you chose this phrase.": No, he wasn't "simply speaking and writing as he saw fit". Grass has chosen to occupy a certain position in German life. He is far more than simply a writer voicing an opinion. He has pushed himself to the forefront on political issues in Germany for 40 years, and has taken the role of conscience of Germany. Read any of the German commentaries on this incident. Süddeutsche Zeitung asks "Why was the talker silent", Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger describes him as "The moral preacher", Financial Times Deutschland speaks of "the political-moral authority that the author has always demanded for himself". Look at the way he (rightly in my opinion) made very public, very vocal criticisms of Reagan and Kohl visiting a cemetary containing war dead that included some members of the Waffen SS. This is not a man quietly sitting on the sidelines expressing himself for his own personal reasons. This is a man choosing time and again to challenge (again, rightly i believe) his country to face up, with complete honesty, to the crimes of their past.
"He also intimates that he may have been mistaken in his decision. Do you think Grass is disingenuous about having taken so long in being able to ‘talk about’ this aspect of his past? Do you think that him ‘coming to terms with his past’ necessarily had to involve him going public?": Yes, in his case, i think it does. This reminds me of the Conservative party talking about a return to family values whilst John Major was knocking off Edwina Currie on the sly.
I can't help thinking that there's a bit of slide going on here. Grass's conscription into the SS and his failure to report it have become synonymous with the crimes of the SS 1933-45 and then synonymous with the whole murky history of cover-ups of and by ex(?) Nazis in the post-war Germanies and beyond. Let's be plain, he's not as culpable as Himmler et al, and he's not as culpable as the 'Paperclip Conspiracy' nor the appointees of Globke et al.
But noone is accusing him of any of these things. The issue isn't really anything to do with what he may or may not have done whilst in the SS, it is to do with a very vocal moraliser and critic of others being found not to have practice what he preaches.
If your suggestion is that his role was so minor that he may not have felt it warranted mention, i'd argue that, in light of his candour regarding other aspects of his past, both before and after this one, his failure to mention this "detail" suggests he feels otherwise. As do his claims that it is something that has troubled him (and inspired him) for the whole of his adult life.
No one is accusing him of these things directly because that wouldn't be tenable. It's the 'he's as bad as...' formulae that are circulating.
His writing is born out of the tension created in part by this nine month episode in his late adolescence. In the end, he has told all. It's not as if he's died and we found this out afterwards. De Man never told the truth, neither did Hergé. Major only told all because Curry told all (for her own reasons). Jeez, the guy could have shut up and died without having to face this music. He chose not to shut up. That's 'authentic', isn't it?
reminds me of the Conservative party talking about a return to family values whilst John Major was knocking off Edwina Currie on the sly
Right. John Major was prattling about family values in public, while in private.. Whereas Gunter Grass was publically urging people to deal with their past and all along in private he was, erm, dealing with his past. Anyway, you can't honestly compare the inane prattle of a politician with the sustained and thoughtful work of Grass.
. There are, btw, many ways of 'dealing with the past' of Germany. Writing the Tin Drum was a particularly brilliant way, I'd have thought.
"Whereas Gunter Grass was publically urging people to deal with their past and all along in private he was, erm, dealing with his past. Anyway, you can't honestly compare the inane prattle of a politician with the sustained and thoughtful work of Grass.":
I'm sorry, but this isn't a valid point in Grass' case. You, and some others on here do not seem to grasp the role Grass has played in post war Germany. The quote above betrays that on two counts.
Firstly, he wasn't urging people to deal with their past on some personal, private level. He was publically urging people to admit to their past, and voice fully, their role in what happened in Germany under the Nazi's. There is a very significant difference.
Secondly, you speak of the "inane prattle of a politician", and contrast it "with the sustained and thoughtful work of Grass". This is nonsense. Grass' contribution in Germany has been as much political as artistic - and not just in an implicit manner via his art. He has been actively involved in German politics, with his role alongside Willi Brandt. He does not occupy simply the role of artist in Germany. He occupies a role which has no parallel in Britain. His own biographer has said, "It is a disappointment, in a way he has betrayed the whole generation". Why do you think there is such uproar, and such a sense of betrayal in Germany, from all political angles?
Do some reading, find out more about Grass, and about his role in German society - not just as the guy who wrote the Tin Drum.
So now he's admitted his past. He's done it. In so doing, he himself has become the instrument with which the moralizers can beat him. So they do. Like I said, he didn't need to do this. He could have died and wihout ever having to meet the baying hordes now gathering at his gate. And phew, what a relief for all relativists everywhere: oh, so the bastard who berated us for covering up Nazi crimes, is coverer-up himself!
But when Grass was talking about skeletons in the cupboard in years previously, he was talking about people with blood on their hands, people who helped construct Nazi Germany and implement its policies. Is his conscription into the SS at the age of 17 equivalent to this?
"But when Grass was talking about skeletons in the cupboard in years previously, he was talking about people with blood on their hands, people who helped construct Nazi Germany and implement its policies. Is his conscription into the SS at the age of 17 equivalent to this?"
No, his conscription into the SS (which came as a result of his volunteering for the Submarine Service), is not equivalent to the more murderous roles played by many. However he still, in my opinion falls into the category of "people who helped... implement its policies". I believe that the fact that he was only 17 is to some degree mitigating, but certainly not wholly mitigating. However, i don't think that this is the point unless one agrees with your further point, that Grass "was talking about skeletons in the cupboard... he was talking about people with blood on their hands, people who helped construct Nazi Germany and implement its policies": Is this really what you believe? You don't think he was also talking about the millions who did not actually have blood on their hands, but whose complicity made possible what happened?
I really don't believe that Grass has spent the last 40 years making such an obvious, unsubtle point, and i believe even the most cursory reading of his literature makes it clear that for him the rise of Nazism, and the crimes that followed - as you yourself have argued in a previous post - was a thing whose analysis should be far more nuanced than simply pointing the finger at those on the front lines.
There's something absolutist going on here. Surely we can agree that there are degrees of culpability re a) the rise and actions of nazism and b) related to it, the degree of covering up that culpable and not-so-culpable people go in for.
On a) GG isn't that culpable. On b) he's covered up for 50 years but now he hasn't. So he's not covering up now. He's been authentic.
But the point isn't just his been covering up, or his level of culpability, seen in isolation. It is the fact that he's made a career out of chastising a nation for just that which he has been doing himself.
It's not about the details of Nazism, or what he may or may not actually have done whilst in the SS (for which, incidentally, we have only his word). It's about him so spectacuarly failing to practice what he was preaching for 40 years. The fact that he has made his revelations now (putting aside any cynicism re. his autobiography), is admirable, however it does not wipe away decades of bluster which now seems, at least to me, to have been deeply hypocritical.
Right, so he was a hypocrite (not sure what level of crime this is). Now he isn't. Story: once there was a man who was a hypocrite. Then he stopped being a hypocrite by telling everyone what had happened. And all the people stood round saying, 'You were a hypocrite.' And the man wondered why he had bothered to tell everyone what had happened. So much easier to have died. Then he remembered why. It was because he didn't want to be a hypocrite. That night, he went to sleep hearing the sound of the crowd outside, shouting, 'Hypocrite, hypocrite.' Hmmm, he thought to himself, well, I may not have done much in my life, at least I've made some people feel superior.
Isakofsky, I'm with you.
Additionally anyone who has read Grass' work and didn't see this coming was not paying attention.
Furthermore, so what. It's more important now to really understand this history and not to caricature it, not to allow it to be used as this cartoonish model of political evil based improbably in mishigas against which the current rational political evil seems comforting. The way the condemnation of Grass is playing out is designed to do just that, and must be rejected. Few of his critics today in the imperial countries is any less guilty and complicit right now than Grass was in his youth, and few are as willing to confess it, or even to recognise that there is anything to be guilty of or complicit with. The very idea that complicity with crimes against humanity is solely a question of the past, of the youth of men in their old age today, is furthered by the way this reaction is developing and really has to be refused.
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