Word: bitburg
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Once the prospect of his visit to a German military cemetery at Bitburg stirred a violent storm, Reagan, clearly pained, insisted repeatedly that while "we will never forget" the Holocaust, the gesture was a matter not of forgiving and forgetting but of moving forward, of trying to achieve a genuine healing, a reconciliation, of celebrating the 40 years during which the U.S. and West Germany have been strong allies. In a thoroughly American way, Reagan wanted finally to clear the past off the highway, as if it were some sort of old wreck. He wished to proceed, as Lincoln said...
...symbolism of his visit to the Bitburg cemetery, where 49 SS men are buried, clouded Reagan's goal of bringing about a healing. Before the trip, Reagan made matters worse when he said that young German soldiers were just as much victims of the Third Reich as the Jews were--a grotesque equation even if inadvertent. That statement, coupled with the visit to Bitburg, left an impression that the President of the U.S. was conferring a sort of official forgiveness upon the German army that did Hitler's work...
...Reagan meant to set the past to rest, Bitburg brought it back to angry life. Yet there were many voices muttering, "Must we hear about the Holocaust again?" There have, after all, been other great tragedies in history--the Turkish slaughter of the Armenians, Stalin's liquidation of millions of kulaks and the enforced famine in the Ukraine in 1932-33, the destruction of perhaps 2 million Kampucheans by their own Khmer Rouge countrymen...
After the vexing economic summit in Bonn and the controversial visit to the Bitburg military cemetery, Reagan's second week in Europe was largely upbeat and colorful, with everything from a joyous German pep rally to unruly Spanish protests. The Strasbourg speech put the President back on the diplomatic high ground. The address underscored the theme of resurgent democracy that Reagan repeated throughout his ten-day stay in Europe. "History is on the side of the free," he said, "because freedom is right and because freedom works...
More impartial witnesses gave his trip mixed reviews. The Bonn economic summit ended in disappointment when French President Francois Mitterrand refused to join the other leaders in agreeing to a new round of trade talks. Reagan managed to defuse the Bitburg uproar, but the incident nevertheless left a sour taste. By and large, however, Reagan handled his diplomatic duties with sensitivity and skill. Whether they liked him or not, Europeans could no longer dismiss him as an unschooled cowboy, as they did a few short years...