Gunter Grass, semi-readable Nobel prize winning novelist [Why do people still consider that to be an honor rather than a blot on a person's record?], lefty critic of post-war German and Western culture [of course], and irritatingly pretentious anti-American scold, has finally admitted, after sixty years of silence, that as a young man he was a member of the Waffen SS.
Oh my! Another lefty hero bites the dust.
Why break the silence? Well, it could be that he has a memoir coming out and this will surely boost sales.
Read about it here.
UPDATE:
From Amygdala:
He has a lot more. Read it here.
His whole life as a writer has been a lie.
About being in the Waffen SS.
Not a small thing.
Not something to be redeemed by finally coming forward. Now. In 2006. At the age of 78.
He feels guilty?
Good. But not good enough.
Hat tip, Instapundit
On the general problem of "philotyrannic intellectuals" see Mark Lilla's important essay "The Lure of Syracuse" in the New York Review of Books, here.
The entire German literary world is in a tizzy over this. Sign and Sight has an excellent roundup of reactions from German literary and journalistic figures. Here.
Jonah Goldberg notes that, compared to other icons of the left with creepy secrets, Grass isn't all that bad. [here]
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