BBC: “In a BBC radio interview Rushdie said that he was ‘extremely shocked’ to hear the news that Grass had served with the Waffen-SS at the end of the second world war, but argued that the revelation made little difference to his literary reputation. It was ‘wrong’ to accuse Grass of ‘a huge act of hypocrisy’, he said, calling it ‘a partial concealment’.”
Surely Grass long ago acknowledged that, having been a Nazi, he was “an accomplice to genocide”? Like him, I’m inclined to characterize all of Hitler’s German supporters that way, not just those who served in a military elite.
Josh – I am FAR from a Nazi sympathizer, historical revisionist, or “holocaust myth debunker”, but here it is: more Muslims than you can count consider ANY Westerner an infidel by proxy. I’m Christian but not for Bush’s Iraq war or policies — hell, I’m vietnamese, not even WHITE — and yet I’d be guilty by association. Is that right?
When under a regime like Hitler’s, to say you WEREN’T a supporter was paramount to suicide, albeit a noble one.