Nobel Prize Winner Guenter Grass Admits Serving In Nazi SS

Nobel Prize Winner Guenter Grass Admits Serving In Nazi SS

Nobel prize-winning German author Guenter Grass has admitted for the first time that he served in the Waffen-SS, Adolf Hitler's elite Nazi troops.

In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Grass, 78, said he volunteered for submarine service toward the end of World War Two. He was called up instead to serve in the Waffen-SS in the eastern city of Dresden.

The author, best known for his first novel "The Tin Drum" and an active supporter of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), said his wartime secret had been weighing on his mind and was one of the reasons he wrote a book of recollections which details his war service. The book is out in September.

"My silence through all these years is one of the reasons why I wrote this book," the paper quoted Grass as saying in a preview of its Saturday edition. "It had to come out finally."