• ToxicWaste@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      You are painting an overly simplified picture. Look up Günter Grass if you don’t believe me.

      TLDR: He non forcefully signed up for the SS, although disagreeing with the Nazis. Later he became a nobel prize winning author and member of the famous Group 47. In his publications he tries to get people to think for themselves - not exactly nazi doctrine.

      • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Nazi apologia. It doesn’t matter how many books he wrote or how good they were.

        Here’s how I read it: His Nazi past wasn’t discovered until after receiving literary awards, which was embarrassing to the literati, so they tried to whitewash him.

        • ToxicWaste@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Go and actually read about him! He was never proud of being an SS member, but never made a secret about it (hard to do as a POW of the Americans).

      • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        That’s neither here nor there. The Canadian government’s complicity only implicates Canada and clears no one.

          • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Just as there are such things as political prisoners, there are such things as political pardons. Judicial my ass; it was political.

            And just as before, whatever the politicians & pundits are raving is neither here nor there. The guy voluntarily joined the Waffen-SS Galicia Division.

            • deadlyduplicate@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Yeah he volunteered to to be solider, so what? Being a solider is not the same thing as being a war criminal and the burden of proof still applies. War is messy and it is entirely possible that this division committed atrocities that haven’t been proven but the mere possibility is not sufficient reason to label him a war criminal. You are de-meaning the term by doing so.

              Either you have specific evidence to support your charge or realize you are participating in sensationalism.

              • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                He didn’t volunteer to join the regular army and be a regular soldier, he volunteered to be a Waffen-SS paramilitary Nazi soldier, which is quite another thing.