German novelist Günter Grass reveals he served with Nazis

BERLIN — German novelist Günter Grass admitted in an interview that he served in the Waffen SS, the combat arm of Adolf Hitler's dreaded paramilitary forces, during World War II, a German newspaper reported Friday.

Grass was asked why he was making the disclosure after so many years during an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in which he discusses his new memoir about the war years to be published next month.

"It weighed on me," he said. "My silence over all these years is one of the reasons I wrote this book. It had to come out, finally."

Grass said he only felt shame after the war ended at having been in the Waffen SS. "At the time, no," he said. "Later this feeling of shame burdened me."

The Frankfurter Allgemeine ran excerpts of the interview with the Nobel Prize winner on its Web Site, ahead of a fuller version in today's newspaper.

Grass, 78, is regarded as the literary spokesman for the generation of Germans that grew up in the Nazi era and survived the war. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999 for works including his 1959 novel, "The Tin Drum," made into a Oscar-winning film in 1979. He has long been active in left-wing politics as a sometimes-critical supporter of the Social Democratic Party and is regarded by many as an important moral voice who has opposed xenophobia and war.

He was quoted as saying he had originally volunteered for the submarine service at age 15, but was not accepted, only to be called up at 17 to the Waffen SS 10th Armored Division "Frundberg," in Dresden, the article said.

Grass said he volunteered for military service to get out of the confinement he felt as a teenager in his parents' house. He had been in the Arbeitsdienst, a force of laborers helping the military.

The SS, Schutzstaffel or "Protective Echelon" in German, started as a small personal bodyguard for Hitler headed by top Nazi Heinrich Himmler. It later became a huge organization that ran concentration camps and carried out mass executions of political opponents, Jews, Gypsies, Polish leaders, Communists, anti-Nazi guerrillas, and Soviet POWs.

It included the Waffen SS, a combat force that took part in fighting alongside units of the regular army and gained a reputation as fanatical fighters.

Grass gave few details of his service in the version of the interview on the Web site. He said he managed to give himself jaundice to get out of training for several weeks.

Grass said it was difficult to explain to people today the pull of Nazi indoctrination on teenagers.

Previous biographical material on Grass says he served as a helper on anti-aircraft crews, a common duty assigned to teenagers during the war.