Missions Resources - Bibliography

Crabwalk
Authors: Günter Grass
ISBN: 0156029707
Publisher: Harvest Books
Number of pages: 252
Type of cover: Soft Cover

Summary: This short novel by the Nobel prize-winning German author has caused quite a stir in its homeland. The topic is the suffering of German citizens during World War II. Crabwalk is a fictionalized version of a true event: the sinking of a ship carrying thousands of refugees by a Russian submarine in January 1945. The disaster was not a war crime, because the Wilhelm Gustloff was no civilian ship. It was a warship, but it was on a mission to save East Prussian Germans from the Soviets' scorched-earth campaign on the Eastern front.

German suffering in WWII was just as real as Allied suffering. Right and wrong doesn't change that. The Nazis were wrong, but Grass argues that including Germans among the victims of the war is not the same as arguing the right and wrong of the war itself.