Word: bitburg
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...been fairly routine. Instead, a series of staff miscues and a lack of sensitivity by the President not only cast a pall over his German trip, they managed to stir up all the old wartime passions that Reagan had hoped to put to rest. As the furor over the Bitburg cemetery visit escalated for more than a week, he seemed unable to understand the emotions that he had aroused and, instead of recovering, slid more deeply into controversy...
...Survivors, termed the President's insistence on going to the Nazi cemetery "so macabre and so awful that one can only wonder what possessed Reagan." If Reagan does not change his plans, Rosensaft warned, "I would want to organize survivors and American veterans to be at the gate of Bitburg, so that he should look into the faces of those he has terribly and permanently offended...
...Capitol Hill, 53 Senators from both parties signed a letter urging Reagan to cancel the Bitburg visit. The letter noted that SS troops had committed atrocities against American prisoners during the Battle of the Bulge, as well as against millions of Jews, and suggested dryly that "a more appropriate gesture of reconciliation be found." In the House, New York Democratic Congressman Stephen Solarz charged, "This is the most monumental error of judgment by the President since he assumed office." Asked another New York Democrat, Congressman Ted Weiss, "Mr. President, where is your sense of history? Where is your sense...
...York Times. Suggested the Boston Globe: "If Jimmy Carter or Walter Mon-dale had so ... befouled the dignity of the presidency . . . ridicule and sarcasm from right-wing sermonizers would still be echoing." But the press assault on the trip was not unanimous. "That some of the men buried at Bitburg were members of the SS . . . does not make the visit less proper," argued the Houston Post. "Those men are dead, killed fighting as regular troops . . . Death does not distinguish among them, any more than it distinguishes them from Nazi victims." The cemetery stop, contended the Atlanta Constitution, demonstrates "this President...
...join him in appearing at a German military cemetery. Kohl had clasped hands on Sept. 22 with France's President François Mitterrand at a World War I cemetery in Verdun, where German as well as French soldiers are buried, and had found it a gratifying experience. Kohl mentioned Bitburg as a likely site for a similar ceremony with Reagan. The President agreed with the idea in principle, while not committing himself to any particular cemetery...