Gunter Grass, Nobel Prize winner, admits he was in the Waffen SS

Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass, 78, admitted in his new autobiography, Peeling Onions [actual name: Peeling the Onion], that at 17 he had joined the Waffen SS. Joachim Fest, a historian, told the magazine Der Spiegel, "After 60 years, this confession comes a bit too late.I can't understand how someone who for decades set himself up as a moral authority, a rather smug one, could pull this off."

    --from the Authors Guild Bulletin, Fall 2006