But for the grace of God go I. The idea behind this expression is very simple and very humbling. It points to the reality that so often in life our good fortune and upright character is not so much a result of our own will and unfailing determination, but owes much to circumstances over which we had absolutely no control. It is as true as anything could possibly be about human beings that had each of us been born at a different time and era, we would have quite different sentiments regarding a host of things. Had any of us lived 200 years ago, say, any number of us would have thought that “Women are meant to be subordinate to men”; or “Jews are morally inferior”; or “Blacks are intellectually inferior”.
Had any of us been born in Germany and lived through the Nazi era, there can be no doubt that a great many of us would have held some horrendous thoughts about individuals who were not Aryan. Not everyone did. Raoul Walllenberg is a most remarkable exception in this regard: a non-Jew who saved a great many Jews. And, of course, we all know about Oscar Schindler. He was far from being an upright man. In fact, he had a keen eye for swindling people. Nonetheless, Schindler was moved to save many Jews. Some say as many as 1200. Alas, these folks are the exceptions that prove the rule. After all, there could not have been a Nazi era had most denizens of that era been like these two individuals.
So notwithstanding the fact that we rightly regard Nazis as despicable human beings, the question of moral blame is not settled just like that. Most of us hold a view that it is always possible for a person to find the wherewithal to prevent himself or herself from becoming a despicable human being. Unfortunately, the truth of this view is far from obvious. Indeed, we cannot have it both ways. If decent upbringing makes all the difference in the world for the better, then it surely follows that the systematic absence of decent upbringing is apt to render a person morally repugnant. But who is to be blamed for the fact that a child does not receive decent upbringing? Surely not the child.
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This, alas, brings me to the case of Günter Grass —a 1999 Nobel Prize winner for literature. It turns out the he has recently acknowledged that he had served in the Waffen SS during World War II. This is significant because the Waffen SS had a reputation for committing war crimes.
For some, this truth is all that it takes to excoriate Grass’s moral character and to consign him to Dante’s last level of hell. But this line of thought is, I think, too quick; and I arrive at this conclusion by way of the considerations that I advanced in the first few paragraphs of this entry. There can be moral evolution; and we must allow for that. I am vehemently opposed to what I shall call the knee-jerk blame syndrome. This is when the words “nazi” and “racist” and “sexist
” do all the work. Neither one of these modes of being is an all-or-nothing matter.
In his book Nazi Doctors, Robert J. Lifton tells the story of Ernst B., a Nazi who worked in the concentration camps whose attitude towards Jews was decent enough that they testified on his behalf, winning an acquittal for him. Yet, Lifton reports that Ernst B. was a committed Nazi and remained so even as he was being interviewed years later by Lifton himself.
There are Nazis and there are Nazis. And one question we have to ask is: (1) What did Grass do as a Nazi—as a member of the Waffen SS? As the case of Ernst B. shows: (a) the answer to that question is of the utmost importance and (b) being a Nazi does not settle what the answer to that question is. Then there is another question we have to ask: (2) What did Grass do after having served as a member of the Waffen SS?
If the answer to (1) turns out to be that he was not
oriously vicious, then it is apt not to matter what the answer to (2) turns out to be. Ernst B. was not notoriously vicious as a Nazi; and that is why Jews, being grateful for what little humanity anyone showed them, testified on his behalf at the Nuremberg trials.
Now, suppose that as a member of the Waffen SS, Grass was rather like Ernst B. Then the answer to (2) becomes very interesting, indeed.
As it happens, we know that Grass often served as a moral voice in Germany—a voice that would not let Germany forget its hideous past. One can hardly quibble with that. What is at issue, then, is whether we have a case of despicable hypocrisy here.
In order to criticize others morally or even to serve as a moral voice, it is hardly necessary to have a flawless moral past. Quite the contrary, the fact that one has some first-hand familiarity of the evil about which one speaks can be to one’s advantage, when it is known that one found the wherewithal to distance oneself from that evil.
If Grass had joined the Waffen SS and had found a way to distance himself from the atrocities that it committed, we would find that admirable. The problem, alas, is that his silence for more than 4 decades invites the suspicion that perhaps the very opposite is true. A lot depends on how the story goes.
There can be extraordinary social pressure to “volunteer”. One has a choice not to, but one pays dearly for choosing not to do so. Aristotle reminds us that there can be voluntary behaviors of this sort, as when one chooses to throw cargo overboard in order to keep the ship afloat. Grass could have volunteered under circumstances such as this; and then found a way to distance himself from the ac
tivities of the Waffen SS. This would have made him more like Ernst B. than not.
This would have no doubt tainted Grass somewhat, but I doubt if it would have truly diminished his moral standing; for it will be remembered that we are talking about someone who was still in his teens.
Suppose that at 17 I had joined the KKK because my parents would otherwise have disowned me, but I was brilliant at keeping my distance from the horrendous things they did. I doubt very seriously if you would think that my moral character was particularly sullied, though it will be true that I had a choice. The point, obviously, is that we in fact do understand that people—especially young people—accede to some pressures to join this or that group. But we also know that this does not settle matters, precisely because we also know that what one does afterwards makes all the difference in the world as to the kind of assessment we make.
Grass is obviously a v
ery intelligent man; and we already know that he was a flakhelfer. These were youth forced to work on anti-aircraft batteries in 1944. Such individuals often regarded themselves as unwilling participants in Hitler’s war efforts. It is difficult to imagine that Grass did not consider the sort of scenario for joining the Woffen SS that I have described above. And there is the rub.
I do not know what he did as a member of the Woffen SS. Nor has anyone spoken to that. No doubt his soon to be published memoirs will give us some idea. Unfortunately, the cloud of suspicion will not go away; and one reason for that is that the kind of critical examination of his behavior that we could have done some 40 or even 20 years ago is no longer possible owing to the fact that so many of the individuals who could have spoken to his behavior have now passed on.
Being a flakhelfer was not an impediment to Grass having a moral voice; and I have argued that it is also the case that joining the Woffen SS need not have been an impediment to his having a moral voice, depending on what he did as a Woffen SS person. The problem, unfortunately, is that it now looks as if there was a cover up. And Günter Grass has no one to blame but himself for that reality. For you see, insofar as Mr. Grass has a claim to being a righteous man, notwithstanding his having joined the Woffen SS, he has deprived us of those who could testify to it.
Ernst B. did not testify on his own behalf. Jews from the camps did. A fundamental moral principle is that no one gets the moral standing of being a righteous person simply by virtue of his own testimony. One is rightly outraged if we must now wonder if Günter Grass has attempted to do just that.
