Oskar drumming into the night

A huge literary scandal is sweeping Germany. Gunter Grass, Germany's leading author according to many, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, and longstanding voice exhorting the Germans to confront their Nazi past has revealed this week that he never told the truth about his own Nazi past. Rather than fighting at the age of 17 in an anti-aircraft battalion from October 1944 until April 1945, he served in the Waffen SS. The Waffen SS was the SS branch devoted to combat unlike the SS proper which carried out the Holocaust. Grass is the author of The Tin Drum, an incredible funny and bitingly critical book of Germany during the Nazi years.

This revelation has come out in his biography which is being released this week. And his admission has caused a storm of discussion and consternation in Germany. Some have even called for Grass to give back his Nobel Prize for Literature. Conservatives especially have come out in force saying that Grass is proving himself to be the biggest hypocrite. Some are saying he did this now in order to generate publicity and better sell the biography.

Grass is considered the moral voice in Germany. He has always forcefully called on the country and its citizens to deal honestly with their history. Why did he come out with this story now? What motivated him exactly? Did he think that the World Cup party and feel good atmosphere of the summer had lasted too long and that the country needed to get back to reflecting on the guilt from the Nazi time?