Back in March, when Slobodan Milosevic assumed room tempature, Austin Bay described the progression of his ideological beliefs moving "from red to brown" as the Cold War ended:

Milosevic orchestrated the Serb-Croat war and crafted the Serb strategy of “creeping aggression.” He was also the bully behind “ethnic cleansing” in eastern Bosnia. He epitomized the move from “red to brown” in eastern Europe– moving from Communist to ultra-nationalist fascist as the Cold War ended.

Earlier, as World War II transitioned into the Cold War, the career path of Nobel Literature Prize-winning German author Gunter Grass jagged in the opposite direction, as Mona Charen writes:

How disgusting. We now learn that Soviet-appeasing, Western-despising, America-detesting Nobel Literature Prize-winning German author Gunter Grass was a member of the Waffen SS in his youth. Grass earned his lofty reputation by indulging every fashionable far-left cliché of his time. Europe’s elite opinion shapers rewarded this with the Nobel Prize and he received kow tows throughout his long and verbose career.Victor Davis Hanson has the details.

He now reveals that he did not just serve the German Wehrmacht in World War II (obviously millions did so both voluntarily and involuntarily) but in the SS, the unit hand-picked for atrocity work; Holocaust a specialty.

Did he believe that his anti-Americanism somehow expiated the sin of Nazism? That’s certainly the way Europe’s elites would see it. For those not sunk in total moral obtuseness however, Grass career betrays his consistency. He went from being a participant in one tyranny to being an apologist for another – all the while heaping scorn on the humane power that opposed them both.

Austin added this in his post about Milosevic:

The Nazis and Communists both knew they were cut from the same hideous human mold. They both share a disdain for liberalism and a disregard for human life. They are also permanently anti-American. Hitler called the US cowboys– remember that next time you hear the US “cowboy” disparaged. You can see these traits displayed by the Stalinists still among us.

And as I wrote at the time, it's almost like the two ideologies are intertwined...

Update: Tim Blair spots Grass being dubbed "the country’s moral guide for decades" by the press and responds thusly:

Germany’s “moral guide”, was he? Tough gig.

Heh! Indeed. ^TM