D-Day, 1985

Ten years ago, as the big 50th anniversary observations of D-Day were pending, I translated a few articles from the German news weekly Der Spiegel on the controversial 1985 Presidential visit by Ronald Reagan to the military cemetery at Bitburg, Germany. The controversy over the visit highlighted some historical issues about the war. But it was also a good example of how symbolic issues can turn out to have substantive repercussions.

I'm reproducing the text here, but not the three articles to which it refers:

The following three articles are translations from articles in Der Spiegel about President Ronald Reagan's 1985 visit to a German military cemetery in Bitburg, in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.  The event was intended by Reagan and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl as a symbolic reconciliation between the former World War II foes.  When it became known that 49 members of the notorious Waffen-SS were buried there, a firestorm of controversy erupted.  Reagan biographer Lou Cannon calls it "the seminal symbolic disaster of an administration that placed great store in symbolism."

The incident in itself was symbolic rather than substantive.  It was a significant even in Reagan's Presidency because symbolism was extraordinarily important to the actor-President's leadership style.  More generally, the controversy was important in setting a tone for how the heritage of World War II is interpreted in America and in Germany, and also for the Kohl Administration's attempts to assert a more prominent role for Germany in the world.

Many observers credit the Bitburg controversy as a major factor giving rise to the Historikerstreit, or historians' fight, in Germany, beginning in 1986.  In the Historikerstreit, conservative journals like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung opened their pages to historians attempting to make "mainstream" arguments for interpretations of the Third Reich previously identified only with the far right.  Most notorious was Ernst Nolte's argement that the Russians were to blame for the mass killings of Jews at Auschwitz.

Background of the Bitburg Visit

The meeting at Bitburg had been suggested by Kohl in 1984. It was inspired by a reconciliation ceremony he had held with French President Francois Mitterand at the World War I battlefield of Verdun, where both French and German soldiers were buried. Kohl and Mitterand had joined hands before the soldiers' graves.

Duplicating this ceremony with the Americans presented difficultires.  For one, there are no cemeteries where both German and American soldiers are buried, because American policy is generally to return soldiers' remains to the United States.

But the presence of the Waffen-SS dead sparked the greatest controversy. The SS (Schutzstaffel, or "protective detachment"), also known as the Blackshirts, were an elite Nazi group headed by Heinrich Himmler.  The SS operated the concentration camps, and its members were infamous for their sadism, fanaticism and murderous brutality.

The SS grew into a large, complex organization.  The Waffen-SS was attached to regular military units and, unlike most of the SS, included conscripts as well as volunteers.  Nevertheless, the Waffen-SS earned its own notoreity. It was the First SS Panzer Division who, on December 17, 1944, in the Battle of the Bulge, had murdered 71 unarmed American prisoners of war in the Belgian town of Malmedy.  Malmedy was the worst massacre of U.S. POWs during World War II.

Bitburg Becomes an Issue

The controversy broke in April, 1985, when Reagan's itinerary for his trip to Germany for the G-7 economic summit was announced. The conservative veterans' groups, the American Legion, publicly stated, "we are terribly disappointed" at the planned Bitburg visit. Author and Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel publicly expressed his surprise and dismay.

The White House staff's reaction to the public brouhaha is fascinating. As reported by Cannon:

Some of [the White House] officials complained that the press, and particularly Jewish reporters, were blowing up the story in an effort to discredit Reagan.  As [director of communications] Pat Buchanan saw it, the liberal media were always seeking an issue upon which they could seize to damage a popular president.  He urged resistance, to the Jews and to the media.  "Buchanan argued for a harder line, a bigger gesture, a clearer defense of the new Germany and virtually an amnesty for the Third Reich," said [public relations chief Michael] Deaver. ...Nancy Reagan ... wanted to end the controversy by cancelling the Bitburg stop.

Reagan stubbornly refused to cancel because of the commitment he had made to Kohl, a commitment the Chancellor reinforced with two phone calls that month.  When Reagan hesitated about his plans, writes British historian Michael Balfour, "Kohl ... obstinately refrained from providing him with a pretext" for cancelling the cemetery visit.

After Reagan ahd already decided to continue his Bitburg plans, Buchanan and White House aide Ed Rollins met with Elie Wiesel and five prominent Jewish Republicans, ostensibly to consider their objections. All six, says Cannon, argued that the visit "would be morally and ethically improper."

Buchanan, also impassioned..., told the Jews that they were "Americans first," as if there was something un-American about opposing the Bitburg ceremony.  But what enraged the Jews [in the meeting] was not so much what Buchanan said but what they observed he had written over and over again on his notebook: "Succumbing to the pressure of the Jews."

Senate Republican leader Bob Dole, himself a disabled World War II veteran, publicly called the visit a "mistake." Fifty-three Senators announced their opposition to the visit. Protestant evangelist Billy Graham asked the President to find an alternative site. Elie Wiesel, receiving an award at a ceremony scheduled before the Bitburg flap, made a dramatic appeal to Reagan:

May I, Mr. President, if it's possible at all, implore you to do something else, to find a way, to find another way, another site.  That place, Mr. President, is not your place.  Your place is with the victims of the SS.

Reagan increased the controversy by declaring that the Waffen-SS soldiers buried in Bitburg "were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps." To top it all off, White House public relations chief Michael Deaver, struggling with his own alcoholism, had to negotiate with Nancy Reagan's San Francisco astrologer Joan Quigley over the details of scheduling the trip.

The Trip to Bitburg

Reagan made his cemetery stop, reluctantly adding a visit to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp for balance.  Cannon notes, "Reagan's moving address at Bergen-Belsen would prove [to be] the last great commemorative speech of his presidency."

But, on the whole, it was a public-relations disaster, angering even veterans' organizations who normally were his enthusiastic supporters. The following translated articles give some idea of how the controversy resonated in Germany.

Sources:

Michael Balfour, Germany: The Tides of Power (Routledge; New York: 1992) p. 225

Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (Simon & Schuster; New York; 1991) pp. 486-492, 573-588

(Original text 05/27/94)

Tags: bitburg, helmut kohl, ronald reagan, second world war, waffen-ss