http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103AP_Poland_Guenter_Grass.html
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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I "wuz" drafted is his story. He says he first was in a labor unit, then he tried to join the navy (submarines) and then "found himself" in the Waffen SS. That may well be. This division was mainly formed from conscripts. For a long time the Heer (German Army" succesfully resisted allowig the SS to draft Germans, but late in the war that broke down. Pat Lang
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"During the war the organization was presented as a multinational force protecting Europe from the evils of Communism. In addition, training emphasised unit cohesion and mutual respect between officers and men, rather than strict discipline. In the Waffen-SS, it was not a requirement to salute officers and a more casual salute was adopted (the right arm raised vertically from the elbow – a relaxed version of the Heil salute. This salute is portrayed in many war films). Added to this, the practice of addressing a superior as Herr ("Sir") was also forbidden, with everyone up to Himmler being addressed simply by their rank. Wiki – Waffen SS
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Actually the Waffen SS was not part of the Wehrmacht at all but rather was a party militia which received greater and greater government support as WW2 turnd into a maelstrom from the German point of view. The ethos of the Waffen SS was formed in its earliest days when Freikorps front line veterans of WW1 made up the cadre. Such men have little patience with things like saluting and "sirring" all the time. The more formalistic trappings of military life are more appealing when "motivating" troops is the first priority.
The Waffen SS more resembled the Pasdaran or the Syrian saraya difaa' (protection companies) than Napoleon's Guard or Saddam's Republican Guard which were army formations rather than formalised militias. Pat Lang
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Division_Frundsberg
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This was Grass's outfit, one of the higher quality "late" Waffen SS divisions. Along with its "twin" SS Panzer Division "Hohenstaufen" it held the bridge at Arnhem in "Operation Market Garden." You remember. Maximilian Schell played the corps commander (2nd SS Panzer Corps?). He looked like maybe he had transferred from the Heer (army) in search of promotion. Some did.
Some of you folks will sort me out on this but I have doubts about Grass's "legend." Kurt Waldheim has been hounded unmercifully for having been a staff lieutenant in an Army Group headquarters in the Balkans.
Is Gunter Grass going to be given a "pass" for his politics? 
Pat Lang
IMO it’s dramatised. The right in Germany, and Poland, is jubilant they finally got him. Many of them have have axes to grind, and now gleefully go for the hatchet job. So rest assured, thanks to their zeal, he will be thoroughly savaged.
In the Zeit I read the leading historian for Wehrmacht history at the German Army University explaining that and why it could well be he had been drafted, and didn’t need to volunteer. The army and SS were beating up each other searching for recruits at the end of the war. In the end even the all-volunteer SS needed to re-fill their loss-depleted ranks, and quietly ended up drafting.
That however, is beside the point, as he volunteered for serving on a U-Boat two years before, and was turned down due to age. He must have been a nazi at that age, but what does that say. A child’s a child, and when exposed to teachers, Wochenschau, NS radio and Hitlerjugend leaders selling national socialism as the only true glory, what can one expect.
Btw, I dislike Grass. Don’t like his books too.
Grass was seventeen when this happened.
I did smoke quite a bit of Lebanese red and once a while some Afghan black when I was at that age. Add our personal sins here …
Grass has been and is a great voice against and mirror for the German and other societies on the path of authoritarian rule.
His mistakes or whatever do not deminish that role.
Restarting German culture after its plunge into the moral sewer of Naziism was profoundly difficult. Grass made an important contribution to that.
That said, he is clearly guilty of rank opportunism: He would never have been awarded the Nobel Prize if this SS connection were known.
Possibly also hypocrisy: Grass led the charge against Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg cemetery where remains of Waffen-SS soldiers are interred.
Interview with Grass in Speigel On-line:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,432594,00.html
I share your doubts.
The Waffen-SS was indeed restricted by Hitler from accessing prime conscripted German manpower for most of the war ( I believe these restrictions were relaxed somewhat after the 1944 bomb plot -I’m shaky on the specifics). On the other hand, Hiimmler had a free hand with ethnic German minorities in Eastern Europe, Alsace-Lorraine and with other non-German “teutonic” nationalities like the Dutch.
It is not completely inconceivable that Grass could have been “conscripted” into the Waffen-SS in 1945 but I find the idea that he might have been eligible for conscription but joined the elite Waffen-SS more likely.
Well he has “confessed”, and he claims he was drafted.
I would imagine, Germans being so thorough about records) that documentary proof will be available.
Seventeen year olds do dumb things. There is a guy a few streets from me called Jack Thomas (Jihad Jack) that has just been released from prison on appeal for allegedly training with Al Qaeeda. According to a friend who knows him, he was a wild child as well.
My view is to give Grass the slack to explain in more detail.
I think he gets a pass, or at least forgiveness. What opportunity did he have to have conscious politics, a choice of political belief? He was 17, and had grown up in Nazi Germany since he was 6 (1933, when Hitler took power). He’s a teenager, judgment not developed and shaped by years of Nazi propaganda in schools and everywhere else, it’s November 1944 and the enemy is on the borders.
This is different from Waldheim, who was old enough to know better, and who actually might have participated in bad things.
This online exerpt from the “Waffen SS Encyclopedia,” says there was Waffen SS conscription: http://www.aberjonapress.com/catalog/wss/excerpt.html
All
Actually, I salute him for “coming clean.”
Interesting contrast between the Heer and these guys.
I understand that in standing up the Bundeswehr, the Heer crowd managed to exclude Waffen SS people above a certain rank. So instead the SS made their own army in the Bundesgrenzshutz? Spelling? True? pl
All
Oh, yes, I don’t “buy” the “elite” part.
Legends in their own minds. pl
Regarding your post on Gunter Grass:
Better start checking up on the Pope then, and while you’re at it, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Elisabeth Schwartzkopf too. No German who lived through that era can be free of its terrible taint.
When I was a student at Manchester (UK) University in the early 1970s, the warden of our residential accommodation was a former member of the Hitler Youth (like the Pope). When I hung out with a rock band in Spain a couple of years later, our lead guitarist’s father was a former member of the SS Blue Division (Spanish supporters of General Franco who, as you correctly note, were recruited to the Nazi cause by virtue of its being at war with the Soviet Union).
My background is Irish. Several of my uncles were in the IRA during the Irish war of independence and its subsequent civil war.
Scratch us Europeans just a little bit and you’ll find out all manner of skeletons in our family closets.
Finally – and it’s a point many people have been making recently – it’s not what Gunter Grass did when he was a teenager that makes him the giant man he is today -it’s what he learned from that experience and became as a result of it.
John O’Dwyer
John O’Dwyer
Ah, if you thought I was judging him, I was not. pl
News about the Pope’s stint with the Hitler Youth and Luftwaffenhelfer didn’t seem to be met with much discussion – which surprised me.. so who knows what will happen with Grass.
Michael
Somehow I don’t think that Benedict’s service in a Luftwaffe flak unit and membership in an organization condemned as criminal are equivalent. pl
There is still something odd here. Grass may well have been subjected to much peer and formal recruiting pressure, as any able-bodied 17 year old must have been in 1944 Danzig. But a draft? Danzig was a “free city,” its residents predominantly ethnic Germans, so technically it was a foreign country yet it enjoyed status as German-speaking. So it should’ve been hard for the SS to hold drafts there or otherwise press-gang children.
As for coming clean, it would’ve been a hard thing to do anytime soon after the war. I knew a man in Germany, Ivan Snowa, originally from the Ukraine who had volunteered into the SS. At the end of the war he couldn’t go back to his country yet couldn’t stay in Germany as a war criminal, so he went into the French Foreign Legion and fought for ten more years in Indo-China.
Maybe I’ll go over to the axis history forum and ask about drafting in Danzig…
There is still something odd here. Grass may well have been subjected to much peer and formal recruiting pressure, as any able-bodied 17 year old must have been in 1944 Danzig. But a draft? Danzig was a “free city,” its residents predominantly ethnic Germans, so technically it was a foreign country yet it enjoyed status as German-speaking. So it should’ve been hard for the SS to hold drafts there or otherwise press-gang children.
As for coming clean, it would’ve been a hard thing to do anytime soon after the war. I knew a man in Germany, Ivan Snowa, originally from the Ukraine who had volunteered into the SS. At the end of the war he couldn’t go back to his country yet couldn’t stay in Germany as a war criminal, so he went into the French Foreign Legion and fought for ten more years in Indo-China.
Maybe I’ll go over to the axis history forum and ask about drafting in Danzig…
PL,
as for Benedict, a good point well made.
It is correct that the Bundeswehr didn’t allow former SS officers in. The Bundesgrenzschutz, the federal border guard, was originally a paramilitary formation in it’s own right, set up 5 years before the Bundeswehr was conceived. They were securing the borders to communist Europe.
At its foundation the Bundeswehr took over about 9.500 of the 17.000 border guards. Guess they left the SS veterans there.
Interesting bit about ‘coming clean’. I think it’s the puzzling thing about him – that he helped work up nazi past, and was a part of it, and kept quiet for so long. But then, he did what he did and he had some good effect after the war. That’s what counts. He’s still annoying, but you can’t have it all.
Attn. Mr. O’Dwyer
Dear Sir,
The Blue Division was a part of the Heer, although several thousand Spaniards did end up in the Waffen SS.
Best regards,
James McKenzie-Smith
Apparently, according to the German U.S. Embassy, most SS recruits were conscripted by that stage of the war:
“Grass’s case was also not so unusual. While the Waffen SS was founded as an elite organization whose members were selected for their “racial purity” and loyalty to Hitler, by 1944 SS leader Heinrich Himmler had ordered all volunteers to be drafted, regardless of their suitability for service. Historian Bernd Wagner notes that forced conscription into the SS became normal by 1942. Ninety-five thousand, or 17.3 percent of all the military recruits born in 1928 (many of whom, like Grass, would not have reached their 18th year by the war’s end) were drafted into the SS this way.”
http://www.germany.info/relaunch/info/publications/week/2006/060818/headlines1.html
Not too astonishing as Himmler had planned to do away with the Heer post war. Can’t really fault Grass–I’d be ashamed too. The whole country had PTSD for years postwar.
Pat Lang,
Yes, but the Pope is granted official moral authority in his office AND had been in charge of the official “guardians of doctrine” (or whatever) segment of the church.
That of course is the descendent organization of the Inquisition, and it highlights a very authoritarian aspect of a man who was a part of the Hitler youth. Odd combo for a Pope, esp. when the Pope during the war years is now known to have been somewhat a collaborator.
Grass, on the other hand, has no official moral authority, and furthermore has demonstrrated a clear commitment and effectiveness regarding pluralism and liberal society.
Regardless, I would expect the typical double standard to apply: The pope, being conservative, needs to have his dignity respected, while Grass, on the left, is exposed of having questionable integrity.
Sorry so long, etc.
swift
Re: Benedict’s Flak and Grass’s Walffles.
Don’t quite see sainthood for either of them.
Very Strange Thread.
Grass claims he was drafted
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,432189,00.html
Given the situation at the time if he refused it would have been a short walk to the nearest lampost.
Danzig was no longer a “free city” under the Nazis. The main excuse given for invading Poland was to reagin these territories.
Also, near the wars end, Hitler did allow conscritopn into the SS, so I think Mr Grass confession sounds fine to me.
Let’s not forget, he was 17. I was an within an inch of joining the Nation of Islam at 17. We all do and think some stupid things when we are that young.
Pat,
Coming to this post late but I’ll add my two pfennigs anyway. Grass’s Birthyear (1927) was called up in 1943, and the Waffen SS did start taking conscripts that same year (February 1943 if I remember correctly). So his story is certainly possible and I’ve seen nothing in the German press up til now to refute it. A lot of hand-wringing but no real questioning of the facts.
BTW, The Tin Drum is an incredibly powerful read in its original German – even more so than in English. Stopped me in my tracks for quite a while in the 60’s. And it had a huge and very positive effect on a whole generation of German and European youth. So though I too am troubled by this news am still a huge fan of his writing….
The moral arrogance of some posters here really angers me. Do you really expect us to believe that if you had been a German teenager in 1944, bombarded by Nazi propaganda since 1933 (or probably more like 1939 in the case of Günther Grass), with your country involved in a total war (look at pictures of Europe during WWII for what total war means), you wouldn’t have volunteered to help defend the fatherland ? You would either have to be mature way beyond your age, or the type of self-absorbed coward any society is better off without.
As for me, I know I would have volunteered for, and been thrilled to be accepted into the Waffen SS if a had been 17 in 1944. The fact that I wouldn’t dream of “being muscle for the 3rd Reich” today is not because I am somehow morally superior to previous generations, but because I had the good fortune of growing up in post WWII, democratic (West) Germany.
b,
“I did smoke quite a bit of Lebanese red and once a while some Afghan black when I was at that age”
Notice a pattern? Perhaps, after all, it isn’t oil Bush and Cheney are after? How good is Iraqi Gold anyway?
I was born in Germany and lived there for some years. The original Waffen SS were an elite force, and I think their history in the war, at least the first few years, bears this out.
It is interesting to note that I do not believe that Himmler, himself, would have qualified for service in the Waffen SS.
As to the border guards, these guys still have a reputation. I was in Berlin for New Years 1999-2000, many of them were drafted in to help with crowd control. I saw several instances of them pulling out unruly or rude members of the crowd for some summery punishment.
Towards the end of the war, young men were indeed drafted into the SS. I have the personal testimony of one who was, at the age of 17. It haunted him for the rest of his life.
Maybe all of Grass’ books are indicative of the same. Except that he had an outlet in writing, unlike the above-mentioned, who mostly led a messed-up existence and died comparatively young.
Eric,
I think is, at least for me, anyway, less what he did when he was 17. For all the reasons you note and then some. I think the issue is the adult refusing to address the issue all these years, as he has been addressing issues of war and peace, and the individual’s place, and duty, in a world in conflict. Indeed, one could argue that the theme is central to his life, if not his novels. I am not ready to blast him for his silence. I don’t know how i feel about it. I would have to know more. But I do think that, passive deception, is the issue. Now, as to the Pope….I think it a perfect metaphor for the times. The irony is almost sublime. To this observer, anyway.
All,
This horse twitches yet, so I’ll point out why. Many valid points from you all. As PL notes, however, the SS as a rule didn’t draft or press-gang recruits, particularly not in foreign countries. (Danzig was full of ethnic Germans, but its status was of a foreign free city.) Even late in the war, the SS was still able to rely on its “brand image” and the zeal of ever-younger boys to fill its ranks.
Unless supporting evidence is found, it is unlikely that Grass has fully come clean, and his admission is a bit like Spike Lee admitting he was once with the Klan, but was forced into marching with them. On the other hand it’s quite understandable that Grass hid this for so long, because he otherwise could never have gone home, so I don’t morally condemn him nor do I believe he’s intentionally lying. At the situational time, he probably faced the moral equivalent of a draft.
I am an American but I agree with everything that Eric said. If you grew up in that environmen and your country was in a fight to the death how could you not want to join.
As far as what unit, I would have gone for the Waffen SS. Even though it was part of the SS structure it really was a combat and not a political unit. The Waffen SS did not have anything to do with running any of the concentration camps which was a seperate part of the SS. The Waffen SS were used as shock troops and were given the best equipment. I one time read an account of them in combat that indicated there was never a conflict that the Waffen SS units were thrown into that they did not have a positive impact for the Germans side.
As far as the drafting, have you ever seen pictures of the people defedning Berlin while the Germans invaded. The soldiers were like 13 and 70. The Germans saw this as a fight to the death and they through every male resource into the conflict and even some of their female resources.
@MarcLord
“(Danzig was full of ethnic Germans, but its status was of a foreign free city.)”
Could you please stop this bull shitting?
Danzig did belong to Prussia from 1793 to 1920. Then it was a declared a “free city” under a WW1 follow up by the League of Nations.
An official survey in 1923 found 96% of Danzig inhabitants to be German. It never left the German realm. In 1939 Danzig was officialy, though against League of Nations ruling (who cared?), an official German city again.
Danzig at Grass’ time was as much a German city as was Cologne, Hamburg, Munich or Berlin.
There are some arguments on could follow against Grass, but your argument is as hollow as any argument can be.
All
I have been looking at the record concerning 2 SS Panzer Corps and its commander Wilhelm Bittrich. It is striking that he was not prosecuted for anything after the war and seems to have run the sort of “tight ship” that prevented the excesses perpetrated by the Waffen SS under other commanders. Arguably, many of their misdeeds were the result of a lack of determined discipline in the ranks. Here, I am not speaking of the political SS.
My point?
What was Grass so ashamed of? Fighting? pl
Pat,
>>What was Grass so ashamed of? Fighting? pl<< Having been a member of the SS -- "Waffen" or other -- still carries a tremendous stigma in Germany.
Even putting the worst possible spin on his service,I’m willing to give a pass to a 17 year old who was subjected to Nazi propaganda virtually his entire life.I’m somewhat less forgiving to adult Rush and Sean embracing yahoos in this country.And there does seem to be some merit to the argument that he was drafted
b,
Rather than exuding hostility arising from whatever personal issues you may have, do something constructive and prove that the SS drafted soldiers in Gdansk or anyplace else. Better yet, go prove Grass was drafted. That’s my “hollow argument.” Volksdeutsche SS volunteers, particularly untrained young men, were often used on anti-partisan operations in their countries of origin and were thus often in the post-WWII legal environment guilty of war crimes. I have personally known several men who fell into this category, two of whom had little choice but to enlist in the French Foreign Legion after the war and who fought in Indochine for roughly 10 years. They couldn’t return to their countries, Poland and the Ukraine respectively, and they never did.
Yes, Danzig was re-unified into Germany as a step up from Volksdeutsch, but the connecting Korridor was not. Thus Danzig was no longer a contiguous part of Germany and had a much longer history as a semi-autonomous or “free” city, even when under Prussian rule. I’m not sure if the German army ever made induction drafts in Danzig, or not (rather than drafts for temporary laborers). I doubt it did. And it’s very unlikely the SS did.
L95
So, from fear of the stigma of his service he lied about it all those years?
I hope he was a better tank crewman in ’44 and ’45 than he was as a Diogenes clone thereafter.
What kind of tanks did he serve in? M5 Panthers? pl
Ok, a German historian says SS conscription existed in 1942:
“…by 1944 SS leader Heinrich Himmler had ordered all volunteers to be drafted, regardless of their suitability for service. Historian Bernd Wagner notes that forced conscription into the SS became normal by 1942. Ninety-five thousand, or 17.3 percent of all the military recruits born in 1928 (many of whom, like Grass, would not have reached their 18th year by the war’s end) were drafted into the SS this way.”
http://www.germany.info/relaunch/info/publications/week/2006/060818/headlines1.html
In the same article, historian Joachim Fest has this observation on hypocrisy:
“I don’t understand how someone can elevate himself constantly for 60 years to the nation’s bad conscience, precisely in Nazi questions, and only then admit that he himself was deeply involved […]. He is seriously damaged. To use a common saying, ‘I wouldn’t buy a used car from this person.’”
Note, I don’t have a strong opinion on an issue and a man loaded with gray areas. Just looking for the truth.
MarcLord, I answered you on this one yesterday at 7:53 PM, up above. They drafted 17% of Grass’s class into the SS. Danzig, the Corridor and about 1/3 of Poland were formally part of the Reich by early 1940, just like Alsace was after the Frnch Armistice. They even drafted Poles from the area. The Germans considered any German to be part of the Reich and the Volksdeutsche from Rumania, Hungary and Yugoslavia were drafted into the SS from the get go.
Col., Grass probably had a block from combat. He turned out to be a novelist that my critic friends in Europe take very seriously. People who do that sort of thing at that level start out that way. My uncle was in the Combat Engineers from D-Day through the Bulge to the end and he wouldn’t say a word about it to anyone. I mention him because he was artistic, though no artist. There are a long, long list of post-war German writers, composers and the like who committed suicide from various combat-related causes. For folks like that, gunfire combined with the post-hoc realization of guilt makes for unpredictable screwiness. I’d guess Grass was a rifleman. By the time he’d have seen first combat–March of ’45–, the Reich had run out of fuel, and in any event even the SS Panzer Divisions were infantry-heavy.
After the Normandy landings, from the pics I saw of equipment the SS units used, it was a mix of older Mk IVs, Mk V Panthers, Mk VI Tigers. The unit probaly also had some King Tigers later on, since the SS got the first dibs on new equipment. Probably also had quite a few SP assult guns and tank destroyers.
Marclord
“by 1944 SS leader Heinrich Himmler had ordered all volunteers to be drafted,”
How are “volunteers” “drafted.”
pl
John
“Grass probably had a block from combat”????????
I don’t believe that for a minute. pl
Eric, rs,
I agree that we have a lot of ‘moral arrogance’ in many of these comments in this blog.
How pitiful to see the political naivite of american youngsters – who do not protest the carnage and war crimes in Lebanon and in Iraq? Who will in 50 years from now sit in jugment over these folks? WHy did they not say a word? Why ?
Because of propaganda fed into them, and because some of them are afraid to say something which is not politically correct, and may be bad for their careers.
But the amount of comments says something else – this debate hits a raw nerve in all of us…
Astonmartin
I can well understand your position.
pl
“After the Normandy landings, from the pics I saw of equipment the SS units used, it was a mix of older Mk IVs, Mk V Panthers, Mk VI Tigers. The unit probaly also had some King Tigers later on, since the SS got the first dibs on new equipment.”
Tiger and King Tiger were not generally issued to armored divisions, army or SS.They were used to raise ten or so independent heavy tank battalions which were constantly shifted around and used to support certain operations.
There were few exceptions to this pattern of deployment.The Das Reich
and the Grossdeutschland got some organic Tiger units but the number of divisions which was afforded such luxury was very,very small.To my recollection the Frundsberg
was not one of them.
IIRC the SS tried and failed to secure the Panthers only for themselves.
Panzer Division at that point the war were ideally, under 1944 TOE reorganization, supposed to be equipped with a Panther battalion and a
Mk IV battalion.What they actually got in practice was an entirely different story.
I would like to hear more about what he actually did.
Using tank crews as infantry was pretty common.
Marcello
Good comment. Of course, the Grossdeutschland was a Heer outfit. Arguably, it was the best of the best. I presume you have read “The
Forgotten Soldier,” Guy Sajer. A great book even if a little more of a memoir than a history.
Grass may well have been pressed service into the infantry if there were no tanks available. in any event, as someone here commented his earliest literary work seems hollow to me. If you walk the walk, you should be honest about it. If your anti-war feelings are prompted by real experience, then they are more credible for that. If you can’t take the heat that would be caused by honesty about your service, then shut up. pl
After some research the thing has not cleared up.
Some report “tank gunner” but others “antitank gunner”.
He only mentions hiding under a tank, not manning one.Whatever.
Supposedly he spent fall and winter of 1944 in training and fought towards the end of the war in 1945.
Not a whole lot of tanks left by then.
“After some research the thing has not cleared up.
Some report “tank gunner” but others “antitank gunner”.”
Could have been part of a panzerjager unit – Hetzers and so on, though they might have been part of the artillery.
As to why he hid his SS status for so long, maybe it was a decision he made at the start of his career as a writer, back when it was a very sensitive issue. Then he evolved into a professional conscience and found it too embarrassing to admit. Now he’s pretty much at the end of his career so out it comes.
I don’t think it validates or invalidates anything, though not being a fan of fulltime finger waggers I can understand the schadenfreude. If that’s the word…
9 and 10 SS Panzer Division were unique among SS formations as raised early in 1943 from 18-year old conscripts.
http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=1967
Regardless of the record of individual combat units within the Waffen-SS, the entire organisation was declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal during the Nuremberg Trials, except conscripts, who were exempted from that judgement due to being forcibly mobilised.
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/08/tenth_ss_panzer.html
Well remember the victor writes their own history. In the movie “The Battle of the Bulge” we seen the Waffen Panzer unit killing prisoners. My father went in as glider pilot at Normandy (as well as Operation Market Garden and the Crossing of the Rhine). He told me they took no prisoners the three days they were behind enemy lines. I took that to mean, even if you surrendered you were history.
If I belonged to the Waffen SS and the whole organization was declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal I would have kept my mouth shut also.
Blood was still running hot then and admitting you were with the SS (even if it was a Waffen unit) would probably have gotten you into jail or hung.
“Could have been part of a panzerjager unit – Hetzers and so on, though they might have been part of the artillery.”
Ideally Hetzers were supposed to be issued to infantry divisions.Stug were generally in separate units under artillery control.I am less sure about the Jagdpanzer (Jagdpanther, Jagdpanzer IV etc. ), it seems that they were sometimes used in independent units but some were organic to panzer divisions in some cases.
All of the above is pure theory of course.Hetzers were issued as tank replacements when things got dire and those units could consider themselves lucky to have any armor at all.
After having done some digging it would seem that the division got its two nominal strenght Mk IV and Panther tank battalions in january 1945.After that however it was involved in several battles.Panther production (not sure about the Mk IV) went in a nosedive after January, so replacements were not exactly abundant.Apparently a Jagdpanther company may have been attached to them at some point, but it was from an independent unit.
To be honest antitank gunner sounds like he was manning a PAK 40 or such.
Here’s the thing that I wonder about: After the Bitberg Follies why wasn’t he “outted” by a disgruntled kamerad? This suggests that good ol’ Gunther either has veterans group ties he hasn’t advertised or he was pretty much the only survivor of his platoon/battery/whatever to get back to the Western zone.
For awhile now I’ve found GG’s ostentatiously moralistic pronouncements irritating and don’t mind him getting taken down a notch, and I’m pretty liberal in my politics.
My confession is that I voted for Nixon in 1960, my last vote favoring that party persuasion.
After the Bitberg Follies why wasn’t he “outted” by a disgruntled kamerad?
Said Kamerad would be an SS
too.I doubt that many would be anxious to expose themselves as such just to point their fingers at somebody else.
German combat units and especially SS Waffen units were known for strong Esprit de corps.
I guess someone might have outted him due to betrayal of a cause but did that many Germans really still believe in the cause by the time Grass became well known?
Just read about GG and his belated confession. I’d give him a pass on what he did when he was 17, heaven knows I need one. More difficult to give him a pass for what he did at 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70. He made a career out of flogging fellow Germans, Reagan, and former Nazis, accepting the Nobel Prize and etc. He would have been more believable if he had come clean early in his career, now he’s just a clown, even if he can turn a phrase. Tragic, really, but fun to watch the Left contort to make excuses for him.
A fine book on the subject of being a Hiter Youth fanatic is the autobiography
“When Hitler was God” – memoirs of a Hitler Youth leader
and of course:
LTI (Linga Terci Imperium – aka Language of the Third Reich ) by Victor Klemperer
Actually, about 1/3 of the 900,000 of so members of the Waffen-SS were drafted or involuntarily transferred to that body. Another 1/3 were ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe or Other nationalities who were either drafted or joined the Waffen-SS as national “Legions.” So in truth only about 1/3 of the 900,000 men of the Waffen-SS were native German volunteers. In you don’t believe me, refer to George H. Stein’s “The Waffen SS” to get the facts. Over 50,000 “excess” German Navy and Air Force personnel were involuntarily transferred to the Waffen-SS beginning in August 1944. So it is very plausible that Guenther Grass was forced to join that body of troops. Regardless of the legal status of the Waffen-SS, the “Frundsberg” Division fought well and honorably, in Galicia, in Normandy, Arnheim and in Pommerania. No serious war crimes charges have yet been levied against it and in fact it was cited by the British Army as behaving correctly at Arnheim. This can be traced perhaps to the fact that its first commander had been a former officer in the German Army and had instilled those standards of professionalism and standards of conduct into the officer and NCO cadre. While Grass may be a scoundrel, and the Waffen-SS was lumped into the rest of the SS in regards to being part of a criminal enterprise, the young men who served in that division, whether voluntarily or otherwise, acquited themselves as honorably and as bravely as one could under the circumstances.
Erich
10SS Panzer Division fought Company A 142 infantry at Oberhoffen, France, in Feb. 1945. An Alsatian authoress and expert on the 10ss who knows the leaders says they are all right guys. I do belive Bittrich was fair in Market Garden from the American histories I’ve read. I do know the armor was mixed in this division. A 36th division doughboy knocked out a Hetzer there and King Tigers were being hit with bazookas and sliding sideways in the streets and ambling off unhurt. The 10SS killed 10 men from company A in what they call their worse combat of WWII. But the small shot up infantry company actually stopped the Panzer division.
Jagdpanther
The German museums in Munster and (WTS- Wehrtechnische Studie
Wehrmacht means “armed forces” in German. I think you meant to say that Waffen SS troops were not part of the Heer. Also, to say that the SS received greater and greater government support is untrue. The equipent issued in the SS was inferior and in much less quality than that which was issued to the Heer.
If a benefit/cost analysis was applied, by waiting until the end of his years, Grass did allow the benefit side of the equation to build up. My guess is threatened exposure rather than “free-will” determined the timing of the outing. Throwing the first stone is always easy, but sometimes has to be done.
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Pat Lang,
The great Second World War still fascinates us. On the subject of motivation for the soldiers of 1944 and ’45, I’m with those who can’t figure out why the notion of joining up is seen as something a bit shameful. I can second your short review of “The Forgotten Soldier”, having read it years ago.
There’s lots of good information on the Waffen SS in the comments. One criticism I recall reading some time ago was that, though the soldiers were motivated and well equipped, the SS formations took excessive casualties because of a shortage of tactical, administrative and staff experience.
WPFIII
1. Danzih was no more a “free city” after 1939
2. Of course after Stalingrad the main,even,German Waffen SS was made up by conscripts. Quality conscripts but conscripts. (the only streets protest of the Third Reich happened due to some mothers of boys drafted in the Waffen SS, result for them: after training, who wants to go to the Army, can. Only 2, if I can remember, did.
European Greetings from South Tyrol + Lombardy Padania