BERLIN, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass faces ridicule after admitting he was part of Nazi Germany's notorious Waffen SS during World War II.
Grass, 78, told the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that his confession would feature in his memoir "Peeling Onions," which is due out in September, Deutsche Welle reported Monday.
He also recounts his attempt to join the Third Reich's submarine forces when he was 15, but was rejected because he was too young.
He said he was drafted into the Waffen SS the next year but denied that he joined willingly.
"I wanted to make clear once again what happened then and above all things concerning me," Grass told the publication. "My silence for all these years is one of the reasons why I wrote this book. It had to come out."
Grass won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.
