Bitburg controversy

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
View of the memorial after the wreath-laying ceremony
The President's wreath laid at the memorial
Protester on the way to the memorial

The Bitburg controversy was described in the media as the discussion that took place after the wreath-laying ceremony on May 5, 1985 at the Bitburg-Kolmeshöhe war cemetery in Bitburg and the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp memorial near Celle by US President Ronald Reagan together with Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl relaxed. The visit and the laying of a wreath at the military cemetery in Bitburg led to the controversy, as not only soldiers of the German Wehrmacht but also members of the Waffen SS are buried there.

The dead

Of the named dead in the military cemetery in Bitburg, 43 soldiers can be clearly assigned to the Waffen SS, including one officer (a 23-year-old Untersturmführer ) and nine non-commissioned officers. The remaining 33 Waffen SS men are mostly conscripts aged 17 to 19.

Goals of the visit

The occasion for the visit was the 40th anniversary of the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht on May 8, 1945. The visit was intended by the German government as a gesture of reconciliation between the war opponents at the time.

The two heads of government were accompanied by two former World War II officers who, after the war, had held high positions as four-star generals in the US Army and the newly established German Bundeswehr and shook hands over the graves: Matthew Ridgway , who served as Chief of Staff of the Army from 1953 until his retirement in 1955 , and Johannes Steinhoff , who after the war served as inspector of the air force in the newly established Bundeswehr and from 1970 until his In 1974 he was retired as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee .

Critics of the visit described “Bitburg” as part of the Kohl government's policy of history , which should lead Germany to a new normal at eye level with the former enemies of the Second World War . The warfare of National Socialist Germany should appear as part of a common history through a joint commemoration of German and American soldiers, but no fallen US soldiers are buried in Bitburg.

criticism

The visit met with criticism both at home and abroad.

Criticism from the USA

The US news magazine Time quoted government spokesman Peter Boenisch as saying "It is impossible to denazify the cemeteries" and concluded under the article headline "The Bitburg Fiasco" that it was impossible for a US president to visit German war graves. Time also warned of the danger of playing into the hands of Soviet propaganda.

The House of Representatives of the United States had already decided on May 1, 1985 with a majority of 390 to 26 votes to ask Ronald Reagan to renounce the visit to Bitburg; however, this resolution was not binding under US constitutional law.

The American punk band Ramones criticized Ronald Reagan for visiting Bitburg with the song Bonzo Goes to Bitburg . Bonzo is the name of a chimpanzee in the US feature film Bedtime for Bonzo , in which Reagan played the male lead.

German critics

Günter Grass made his rejection of the visit to a Bitburg military cemetery by the then Federal Chancellor Kohl and the American President Reagan clear. He accused Helmut Kohl of “misrepresentation of history” and turned against the issuing of “certificates of innocence”. In his opinion, “ignorance ... does not speak freely. It is self-inflicted, especially since the said majority probably knew that there were concentration camps ... No complacent acquittal cancels this knowledge. Everyone knew, could know, should have known. "

This criticism fell back on Grass in 2006 when it became known that he was also a member of the Waffen SS . For example, Alfred Grosser wrote : “Instead of supporting those who accused Kohl of wanting to rehabilitate the SS, mainly because of Ronald Reagan's rejection, Grass should have stood up to say:“ If I had been killed, my grave would be between These were here. ”“ Grosser and Hellmuth Karasek claimed that soldiers other than German soldiers were also buried in the cemetery.

The left-liberal historian Heinrich August Winkler describes the "supposed normality" (Winkler, Schatten, p. 263) that Helmut Kohl made in 1985 with that controversial joint visit with US President Ronald Reagan to the military cemetery as the " ghost of Bitburg " Bitburg wanted to demonstrate, on which not only Wehrmacht soldiers but also members of the Waffen SS are buried. He wrote about the visit to Bitburg:

“When it was the 40th anniversary of the capitulation of the German Reich, the studied historian Kohl triggered international protests with a symbolic act. Together with the American President Ronald Reagan, he visited the military cemetery in Bitburg in the Eifel on May 5, 1985. What had been overlooked in Bonn at first, there were graves of Wehrmacht soldiers as well as those of members of the Waffen SS. The fact that Kohl insisted on the visit nevertheless had the effect of counterpoint to the internationally recognized and unforgettable gesture of humility of a Social Democratic Chancellor: Willy Brandt's kneeling in front of the memorial for the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising on December 7, 1970. If Reagan hadn't gone to Bitburg, the former too I paid a visit to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the event in the Eifel would have given the macabre impression that the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America had agreed to regard the Second World War as a normal European war from now on. "

“Bitburg” is described in research as part of Helmut Kohl's “history policy”. B. at Claus Leggewie :

“In this unswervingly pursued action, one can see an essential element of Kohl's foreign policy: the ... endeavor to regain political sovereignty through political, cultural and military ties to the West and thus gradually to deal with the allies 'on an equal footing'. The German past was the main obstacle. To deny it was pointless, and it was not the Chancellor's intention. So he had to invent symbolic-iconic gestures that, with the unquestioning recognition of this past, also resulted in its de-dramatization for the current political scene and no longer left Germany in the humility or penitent pose (like Brandt's kneeling in Warsaw ), but instead confirmed equality in reconciliation symmetry. "

In a detailed article in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit on May 17, 1985, Jürgen Habermas criticized what he called the Kohl government's dual intentions. In the article entitled “The Disposal of the Past” he writes: “ The Bitburg handshake should have merged both - the renunciation of a destabilizing coming to terms with the past and the testimony of a current brotherhood in arms. Kohl wanted a return to German continuities. "

approval

However, parts of the population and the press also gave their approval for the visit. The Bern newspaper Der Bund wrote on May 1, 1985, “The planned visit triggered a week-long storm of indignation that borders on the absurd,” and continues: “The often unobjective criticism of opinion makers [...] has old wounds from the The time of National Socialism and the war torn open again and the reconciliation gesture of Reagan distorted to the point of ridiculousness. "

The FAZ resulted in its editorial on May 2, 1985, the criticism of the Bitburg visit to the rejection by the Reagan critics back: "The president won the elections against the media. [...] Especially with those who see themselves defeated by an unwanted president, the temptation to long-term better knowledge is great. This effect has demonized the debate about the sense and nonsense of symbolic visits, almost turned it into an international catastrophe. "

Historical background

The controversy surrounding the visit to Bitburg has the following backgrounds:

Cold War

At the time of the controversy, the Cold War had re-intensified after the temporary relaxation in the 1970s. NATO retrofitting and, in response, the peace movement and the Soviet-Afghan war dominated the discussion. The theme of commemorating the war and the Nazi dictatorship was therefore also measured against its impact during the Cold War. The propaganda of the GDR saw itself as anti-fascist and portrayed the Federal Republic of Germany as post-fascist. The accusation that the Federal Republic honors SS members was therefore helpful for this propaganda.

Appropriateness of commemoration of war and Nazi dictatorship

Of central importance was the question of how an adequate commemoration of the war and the Nazi dictatorship by Germany was possible. The speech of Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker on May 8, 1985 met with great approval . Subsequently, in 1986/1987 , the extent to which the Nazi crimes were unique was discussed in the Historikerstreit .

Here, too, reference was made to the Bitburg visit and it was argued that the purpose of the visit was to let the uniqueness of the Nazi crimes recede into the background in memory of the common dead.

literature

  • City administration Bitburg: The visit. Documentation about the visit of the American President Ronald W. Reagan and the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on May 5, 1985 in Bitburg . Bitburg 1986.
  • Theo Hallet: Controversial Reconciliation - Reagan and Kohl in Bitburg 1985 . Sutton, Erfurt 2005. ISBN 3-89702-810-7 .
  • Heinrich August Winkler: Forever in Hitler's shadow - On the dispute about the German view of history , in: Frankfurter Rundschau of November 14, 1986.
  • Lou Cannon: President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 573-588.
  • Richard J. Jensen: Reagan at Bergen-Belsen and Bitburg (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007).
  • Charles S. Maier: The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, Mass., And London, England: Harvard University Press, 1997), 9-16.

Web links

Commons : Bitburg controversy  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Time Magazine, April 29, 1985 Online version
  2. ^ Hamburger Abendblatt : Bitburg 1985: How Günter Grass saw it , August 16, 2006
  3. ^ Alfred Grosser, guest commentary in the newspaper “Ouest France” (Rennes), August 18, 2006, quoted from FAZ, August 18, 2006 online version
  4. ↑ As a moral conscience "questionable"
  5. ↑ Günter Grass was with the Waffen SS
  6. ↑ Quoted from a lecture given on March 26, 2004 by Heinrich August Winkler at the symposium "On the benefits and disadvantages of history for politics - history and German politics after 1945" on the 85th birthday of Helmut Schmidt in Hamburg ZEIT.de, March 30, 2004
  7. ↑ Leggewie, Ort, p. 39.

Coordinates: 49 ° 57 ′ 48.1 "  N , 6 ° 30 ′ 45.7"  E