Reagan did the right thing at Bitburg....

Tho I disagree with Reagans politics, I do think he did the rigth thing at Bitburg.

This thing was grossly distorted in the media, and the Bitburg military ceremony was made out to seem like some sort of Nazi shrine because it had a handfull of waffen SS buried there.

As someone of German ancestry, most of whoes relatives fought on the German side in WWII, I found this whipping up of anti-German hysteria and the equating of all German solidiers who fell in the war as Nazis pretty appaling (and the waffen SS was an elite military formation, similar to our Marines, not the concentration camp gaurds...this distinction was very much fudged in that controversy).

Reagans visit was in honor of VE Day, in a sense commemorating the German defeat, but defeated soldiers who fell defending their country are patriotic too, even if the cause was wrong.

So I saw Reagans action as more as one of reconciliation, and I think it was intended as such. Similiar to inviting Gerhard Schroeder to D-Day this year.

If Reagan did some good and decent thing in his two terms. this was probably one of them.

I disagree.

How old are you? just curious.

I chose the paper in those days. And, I'm 45. That old enough?
He said that the SS men were victims just as those who died in camps.

You can defend that if you like. I personally think it is indefensible.

I guess all I can say is I disagree.

I agree with you. Elie Wiesel, a survivor, implored Reagan not to go.

There is only so much time to do things, and the fact that he singled out this horrible place, of all the other things he could have done with his "precious" time, says volumens about where his and all repukes sentiments lie.

Glorifying and paying respect to Nazi's while ignoring the AIDS epidemic.

raygun made racism and bigotry and hatred acceptable.

This was but one fine example.

That you are from Germany, and support this, says volumes, too.

Don't do us any more favors.

and it presents both sides of the issue pretty well.

I would have rather he stayed away. If a US President visited a Confederate cemetary and laid a wreath I think many Democratic constituencies would be outraged.

He should've paid tribute to Himmler while he was at it...

I think with this thread, DU Defense of Reagan has reached critical mass. What's next? Defending Iran/Contra?

My dad would know after fighting them in WWII.

Reagan could have honored the german resistance if he really had any decency.

Thom Hartman said on the radio today that he asked Mike Deaver(Reagan's Rove) why they didn't cancel. Deaver said Reagan refused. He thought it would offend the German people. So you are probably right.

Deaver said he did the advance work and should have known.

Well, I think Reagan would have recieved the same flak at any German military cemetary or war memorial. There was alot of grandstanding going on around this.

offense at this slight to The Third Reich

There was no good way out.

If they go, they outrage much of the world, if they cancel, they humiliate Kohl who was already under tremendous pressure for supporting Reagan's missile deployments against German public opinion.

Once they found out there were 50 Waffen SS graves among the 2,000 dead, they were in a lose-lose situation.

They lost.

he had laid the wreath. It was like... OOPS! And by golly that old rascal Reagan just shrugged it off as just a result of his good ol' ignorance... yet again.

included herding naked civilians into ditches and shooting them. THAT is why the Waffen SS accompanied German fighting forces. They WERE like concentration camp guards (except they did field work)
You are mistaken,they were nothing like the US Marines.

An elite and motivated combat unit used as shock troops. Like the Marines.

or is that just business as usual for shock troops?

Careful: one answer will brand you (rightly) as a Nazi apologist

You clearly know nothing about the SS. Those guys were the true believers. The ones willing and frankly eager to die for Hitler's goal of world domination. They worshiped him and did their damndest to see that he got what he wanted -- including exterminating six million Jews. He was their wet dream and vice versa.

That's like saying the Navy Seals often accompany the fighting men.

Now I'll grant you there were over 30 Waffen SS Divisions, many of the later ones far below the standard of the first three, six or 10, and also that there were other departments of the SS that covered things like prison guards and such, but the pure Waffen SS Divisions, for example SS Divisions I, II and III were the schwerpunkt of the German armed forces.

They would be found at the point of the most important offensives or sealing off the most dangerous breaches.

II SS Division Das Reich, for example was among the best equipped and best manned division in the German armed forces. They wouldn't be wasted guarding prisoners or patrolling the rear. You would find them desperately fighting off overwhelming Russian counterattacks in the Yelnya salient protecting the back of the surrounding German forces moving south to bag the Red Army in the Ukraine. At the close of 1941, Das Reich was found spearheading the again successful pincer movements associated with the Bryansk-Vyazma pockets of Operation Typhoon. That left the division just outside Moscow. The division spent the winter 1941-42 desperately trying to hold against the Russian winter counteroffensive in front of Moscow.

The winter fighting had worn the group down so badly that they were renamed a "battle group." In July, the division was sent to France for refitting and adding thousands to bring it back up to strength. The new men were integrated into the core 1/3 who were left from the Russian winter.

However, in January of 1943, there was another crisis. Stalingrad had been surrounded, the Red Army was marching through a gap in the line hundreds of miles wide. Das Reich division, along with I and III SS Divisions were sent back to Russia to counterattack. This they did brilliantly retaking Kharkov, and stopping the Russian wave in its tracks. By July 1943, all three "pure" SS divisions were still in the same area to lead the Kursk attack. The largest tank battle of all time again reduced the SS divisions horribly. The attack was a disaster and the Das Reich division fought itself out trying to hold the Russians up while the rest of the army escaped over the Dnieper.

By April 1944, the front looked a little more stable, and the 5,000 survivors of Das Reich (out of more than 12,000) again headed for France for refitting.

Long before they were near full strength, D-Day found the division in the south of France taking on replacement troops. In a 17 day march, the division reached Normandy where it fought the invasion in the hedgerows of France. When Patton finally broke out, Das Reich was used to try to cut Patton off in the Falaise counterattack. It turned into a disaster when Patton in turn cut them off, and for the third time in three years, the division was ripped to shreds.

The end of 1944 again found the division trying to rebuild, but again long before it was ready, it was called for the next attack, and attack it did, in the Battle of the Bulge. Again the division was mauled.

When the attack in Belgium failed, the division was pulled out again, but not for rest. It was sent to Hungary where the last German owned oil fields were being threatened by the Russians. The I, II, III SS Divisions were reunited for Hitler's last great offensive. Aimed at Budapest, the idea was to surround a group of Russian armies against the Danube and retake Budapest. That would keep Hungary in the war as a German ally and save the oilwells. There was no longer the power to succeed though.

The Russians brushed the attack aside and rolled on right into Austria. Division Das Reich defended Vienna, and when the war ended, was trying to stop the Russians while they evacuated Germans out of Prague.

Sorry this is so long, but I got a kick out of the term the "Waffen SS accompanied German fighting forces."

that ceremony at Bitburg was specifically chosen to help the German head of state "reach out" to the Nationalist movement, which was reemerging in considerable political strength at that time. Please correct me if I'm mistaken. I don't recall Reagan's waffle-speak at that time, but it would be pretty much meaningless.

I've seen Schindler's List twice a few years ago, but I just got the DVD yesterday. I spent the early hours of this morning watching it to the end, and am still recalling episodes. Although I'm Foreskino Intactus, I'd still have fallen under the provisions of the Nuerenberg Laws had I lived under it's jurisdiction. I therefore feel very strongly on the matter of holocausts and xenophobic racial stereotyping in general. That also includes stereotyping Germans with a broad brush, and I'm by your side on that. But I believe my recollection of the Bitburg affair is accurate.

pnorman

When Reagan's people scheduled him to go there they didn't know, or didn't notice or didn't care that there were SS men buried there.

By the time it became known, Reagan couldn't back out without hurting Kohl and Reagan needed Kohl very badly.

Think of a similar situation today with Tony Blair. What if Blair scheduled Bush to go somewhere that would embarrass Bush but would humiliate Blair if Bush pulled out. Don't you think Bush would take the heat to keep Blair in power?

Okay, now that isn't a good analogy, but pretend if Bush was like a real president. Then the analogy works better.

that's probably the best way to leave it; a plain screw-up by people who SHOULD have paid close attention. Remember those war-crime nazis who became part of the Republican apparatus around that time. It's quite possible that Kohl deliberately counted on the known "insensitivity" of Reagan and/or his staff. So Kohl "won", and the Teflon President lived up to his monicker, and SKATED.

pnorman

Reagan blamed everything Germany did from 1933-45 on "one man" (Hitler).

Nothing true or right about that.

I think what Chirac and Schroeder did last weekend showed a lot of class and was highly symbolic. It would have been right to let France make the gesture before the US. I can't figure out what the symbolism of Reagan's visit was...

The fact that SS troops were buried at Bitburg wasn't known until after the ceremony was scheduled. Elie Wiesel made a passionate plea to Reagan at the WH (it was carried live on TV...I saw it) and made the point to find a different cemetery that didn't contain SS (and, surely, there had to be at least ONE cemetery in Germany that didn't have SS troops buried there). Reagan outright refused, went to Bitburg and laid the wreath in honor of not only the non-Nazi Germans who perished under Hitler, but also in honor of the goons who were responsible for the most-reprehensible crimes that Himmler and the rest dreamed up.

The equivalent to Reagan's actions at Bitburg would be * going to lay a wreath at a Saudi memorial in honor of Saudis who died at the WTC, discovering that memorials to 10 of the hijackers who crashed the planes into the WTC already existed in that spot, and refusing to find another location to lay the memorial, simply because he doesn't want to be seen *backing down.*.

Truly, bush's continual refusal to "back down" from any position - no matter how insensitive or outright ghoulish the circumstances - for fear of looking *weak* found its basis in this singular, ghoulish act of the King of Hypocrisy, Ronald Reagan.

...considerably earlier than yours. As an amateur historian, you are correct about the origins and functions of the Waffen-SS:

<http://www.feldgrau.com/ss.html>

"The Waffen-SS, formed in 1940, was the true military formation of the larger SS, and as such, it is the main focus of this section. Formed from the SS-Verfungstruppe after the Campaign in France in 1940, the Waffen-SS would become an elite military formation of nearly 600,000 men by the time WWII was over. Its units would spearhead some of the most crucial battles of WWII while its men would shoulder some of the most difficult and daunting combat opertations of all the units in the German military. The Waffen-SS is sometimes thought of as the 4th branch of the German Wehrmacht (Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine) as in the field it came under the direct tactical control of the OKW, although this notion is technically incorrect as strategic control remained within the hands of the SS. To this day the actions of the Waffen-SS and its former members are vilified for ultimately being a part of the larger structure of the political Allgemeine-SS, regardless of the fact that the Waffen-SS was a front line combat organization."

But, I have to disagree with Reagan's actions at Bitburg. Although he may have meant well, the D-Day memorial activities have always been centered around the American/Allied troops who died during that campaign, NOT those who died as part of German military units.

The actions of the FratBoy Fuhrer in inviting Schroeder to attend the latest D-Day activities are purely political in nature. Junior has badly damaged relationships with just about all of our former allies, and this was just an attempt to try to patch up the gaping hole. I notice Chirac wasn't buying what the FratBoy was cookin' earlier in the week.

Additionally, FratBoy's grandfather was involved in loaning money to the government of Nazi Germany from 1934 until 1942...a year beyond the beginning of WWII. FratBoy's father worked with many of the former Nazi spies of the Gehlen Org of the CIA, and actually hired some of those folks for his presidential campaign against Clinton.

I also disagree with your characterization of the posts discussing Reagan and Bitburg as a "whipping up of anti-German hysteria and the equating of all German solidiers who fell in the war as Nazis pretty appaling". Most, if not all, Waffen SS soldiers were also Nazi Party members. This was not the case in the Wehrmacht, the regular German Army.

the Wermacht(on the matter of Nazi party membership) It is a critical difference.

In Iraq, many people joined the Baath party in an effort to "go along to get along;" they were essentially 'BINOs.' Was there a similar phenomenon in Nazi Germany, or was National Socialist Party membership essentially limited to true believers?

Nino's -- Nazis in name only - technocrats and civic officers.

Plenty of true believers too though.

No the NSADAP wanted money - in fact the Foreign Minister Robbentrop stands out as a non-nazi who wanted the benefit of a NSDAP membership.

Once the street fighters took power is a rapid switch in "party" tactics -

Street fighter socialists replaced with industrialist backers happned allmost overnight. With the street fighter being executed in the imfamous "Night of the Long Knives" - a year or so later the message sank in, get with us or you are finished in business.

Strong Arming at its best.

In the last 2 war years food and about everything else was rationed and only available on stamps. Who do you think was receiving those first ? Right, party members.

"and the waffen SS was an elite military formation, similar to our Marines, not the concentration camp gaurds"

Oh well that changes everything. They were the Good SS why didn't the
media say this it could have stopped all the controversy.

They were the Good SS

WOW

"had a handfull of waffen SS buried there"

Hey if it had just the Fucking uniforms of a handful of SS buried

there that's so far over the line I don't know where to start.

This was a complete Disgrace to the Millions who Died or were maimed

at the hands of the German Army.

Some of whom were my relatives.

Your post is disgusting.

I get un-hinged when I read stuff like this

Raygun su e brings 'em out of the woodwork.

Just like the torture threads about a couple years ago.

This is disgusting.

It is disgusting that anyone would even attempt to excuse such actions.

THE FUCKING SS PEOPLE!

You all who are making excuses disgust me.

Shame on you all!

but you don't hear me braggin' about it!

Seriously, reconciliation is sometimes a path to post hoc appeasement. Our American efforts between 1900-1950 to make nice with the former Confederate States by pretending it was all a big misunderstanding have been the root of half the horrible destructive political developments of the period 1950-2004.

I put the Bitburg visit about 5000th on Reagan's roll call of vulgarity, but it was still at best bad advance work. Nixon could go to China and Bill Clinton could have gone to Bitburg, but when you're Ronald Reagan and half the world suspects you might be kind of a Nazi sympathizer at heart it's a bone-head play.

I don't have much ill will toward any individual German soldiers and I'm sure there were many Germans who were better people than the worst Americans were, but that's no reason to honor their sacrifice.

in HELL :grr:

Most German regular army soldiers werent part of the mass genocide, many were ordinary men (and sometimes children), some American vets say, that, with regard to the average German soldier, given different circumstances they could have easily had a drink with each other.

Now with regard to the ShutzStaffel.... all of them were particulary vicious, the Waffen, deaths hand, camp guards, hitler body guards and gestapo were all particularly vicious and took their parts in the genocide. Sure the Waffen SS had their marine like duties, but they did their cold-blooded killing on the side.

:puke:

I would never mention these things if others didn't raise the issue to begin with, as I think it's better to forget the past. The German people are human beings and, like all humans, are capable of greatness and also of the darkest of acts. The "average German soldier" committed on a grand scale the most grotesque of acts imaginable. We are not speaking about concentration camps. Go to the French village of Tulle where every male in the entire village was taken onto the public square and hung by the neck, because resistant fighters had killed German soldiers in the area. Or go to Oradour-sur-Glanne where the entire village of 600 civilians was rounded up in a church and set on fire alive for the same reason. Those too were the acts of soldiers, not Gestapo. In the Ukraine, the rule for the German soldier was to rape, burn, and murder, in order to instill fear. Thousands upon thousands of civilians died. My father was a B-17 co-pilot shot down in Germany. His story was of one continued nightmare after another as he was repeatedly beaten and tortured, not just by German soldiers but by almost everyone with whom he came in contact. The Catholic Nunns in the German hospital insulted him and poked at his wounds. While on the transport train taking him to the POW camp, the train conductor had a big stick and was pounding on the wounds of the soldiers, including my father, who had broken both legs in his parachute drop and had unmended bones. He did mention some kindnesses, it's true. The German doctor who saved his life (my father had not only broken both legs by falling through the roof of a barn, but the German soldiers who found him shot his hip for good measure) had himself just lost his entire family in a U.S. bombing of Hamburg. But he said this was the exception. I'm sorry, but Nazism bred intense hatred and evil that permeated German society, for Slavs, for Jews, for any enemy. I don't think German people are innately evil and I admire the accomplishments of many Germans. But Germans were in the grip of something very dark and they went very, very wrong, including many of their "average" soldiers. Again, I wish I had not read this posting, as I think the past should be forgotten and I don't wish any ill upon you personally. But I can't let such a statement go unchallenged.

I myself have a red ribbon tied round the ol' oak tree in honor of the Waffen SS.

of prisoners in Iraq.

Your comments about the nuns even being participatory in the barbarism of the time is what makes me wonder if it's not too late for our country..if a critical mass of people have crossed that line...more than anything, it's why I am reviled by hatred...not because I think I am better but because I fear if I don't at least try.....I might be the "hundredth monkey" that sets it on its own perpetual course indefinitely.

That's probably the best way to leave this discussion. Think of the recent torture incidents in Iraq, which were not only repeated elsewhere in Iraq, but Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and even within our own post 9-11 federal prisons. And as we're gradually learning, it was deliberate policy ... a logical extension of Shock & Awe. But I know personally, more than a few, who buy those Limbag/Coulter "excuses".

It's sometimes a cop-out to say: "Nobody's perfect", but all nations are capable of ghastly cruelty. The occasional flashes of "humanity" are our only hope. Look for it and support it with all you have, and cut the undifferentiated hate to the absolute necessary minimum.


pnorman

You know, so this kind of insanely evil shit doesn't happen again?

Like it looks like it's happening here in America?

Remember the adage about those who don't learn from history...

Your statement, not the personal experience behind it. I cannot comment on this.

I just have to add that the SS was the worst of them all. Much worse than the concentration camp guards.

How could it even happen that those, who were tortured and killed by the SS, were buried at the SAME cemeteries as those, who killed them?

I'm still ashamed of D-Day - but what Reagan did, seduced by Helmut Kohl, was even worse.
Hello from Germany,
Dirk

What the hell is this moral equivalence between the allies and the axis powers?

Several years ago PM Kouzumi of Japan visited a shrine that honored war criminals. The Chinese and Koreans were justifiably outraged.

Was there any real purpose for Reagan doing this? No, it served no real purpose.

Once again Reagan showed himself to be the insensitive prick, he truly was. He wasn't the jolly old man eating jelly beans. He was a vile, nasty, jerk who inflicted misery upon thousands and thousands of people.

This board's praise for Reagan's policies are getting ridiculous. I heard one thread claiming Reagan was one of the greatest presidents of this century. It was fit more as a FR post.

Here's an excerpt from the below website:

>
WHO IS IN THE SHRINE?
When Yasukuni was originally created, all the men who died fighting the Shogunate from 1853 to 1869 were enshrined there. It is important to note that only those who died fighting for the Emperor are enshrined at Yasukuni; those who fought on the side of the Shogun were left out. The Shrine is also home to the souls of all the Japanese soldiers who died fighting in every major Japanese conflict since 1869. The Shrine also includes the souls of some non-military people. Among these people are Princes of the Imperial Family, and even some women. Most of the women that are enshrined at Yasukuni died in service to their nation during times of war. They may have been cooks, nurses, or even servants. Also among the women enshrined, are those that proved their loyalty to the State in times of hardship. One famous woman enshrined at Yasukuni is Nomura Moto, a loyalist poet.

There are also some civilians enshrined at Yasukuni. Besides the loyalists, the only other civilians at Yasukuni are the passenger and crew of the Awa maru, a hospital ship, and the schoolchildren that were killed when their ship, the Tsushima maru, was sunk. All together, Yasukuni is the home to more than 2.5 million souls of Japanese war dead whether they died in a civilian or a military capacity. The fourteen most famoust and most controversial souls in Yasukuni are those of the World War II convicted Class A war criminals. These men were secretly enshrined at Yasukuni on April 21, 1979. The public did not find out until the next day when the press broke the story after investigating allegations. The war criminals were given a special designation at Yasukuni as "Martyrs of the Show Era."
http://www.geocities.com/gatoesmuchogor/



No matter how it's "explained", it's a nuanced but deliberate signal to the Nationalism sentiment in Japan. Here's what another premier did 9 years earlier: "On Aug. 15, 1995, Murayama officially apologized for Japan's past acts of aggression and colonialism against its Asian neighbors, just 50 years after Japan surrendered in World War II.". (Murayama was the Socialist Premier of a coalition government).

pnorman

Yes there was a distinction between SS and "normal" German troops - German troops were much the same as troops from anywhere - the people who weren't rich enough or powerful enough to avoid the military.

BUT (and this is a big but) almost the entire population of Germany at the time bears responsibility for the Holocaust. However much one wants to claim "they didn't know about the camps" there is NO hiding the fact they did know about restrictions placed on Jews, the enforced labelling via the Star of David, the ghettos and Kristallnacht.

They did nothing.

Many US and Australian men (or boys) went to prison rather than fight in Vietnam as they beleived that war was wrong and that they beleived they were being lied to by their leaders.

http://www.quickchange.com/reagan/1985.html

"3/21/85
At his 29th press conference, President Reagan explains that he has no intention of visiting a concentration camp site during his upcoming visit to West Germany. To do so, he explains, would impose an unpleasant guilt trip on a nation where there are "very few alive that remember even the war, and certainly none of them who were adults and participating in any way." A soldier who was twenty in 1940 would only be 65 at the time this was said.

4/11/85
The White House announces that President Reagan will lay a wreath at the Bitburg, West Germany, military cemetery housing the graves of both American and Nazi soldiers. It is quickly noted that there are, in fact, no Americans buried there.

4/18/85
While Michael Deaver is in West Germany searching for an "appropriate" concentration camp for the President to visit, President Reagan defends his visit to Bitburg by claiming the German soldiers "were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps."

4/29/85
President Reagan defends the Bitburg visit as "morally right," adding, "I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform for four years myself." President Reagan spent his time during World War Two in Hollywood, making training films.

5/5/85
After having visited the Bergen-Belsen death camp, President Reagan makes an eight minute stop at Bitburg. During the ceremony, he cites a letter from 13-year-old Beth Flom who, he claims, "urged me to lay the wreath at Bitburg cemetery in honor of the future of Germany." In fact, she urged him not to go at all.

Is he responsible for the Holocaust?

Born in 1927, he was six when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. He lived near Schweinfurt.

At 15, he was asigned with a group of other teenagers to an anti-aircraft gun as his town had important factories and would often be bombed.

At 16, he joined the German navy and was assigned to a cruiser.

In 1945, his ship was evacuating civilians who had been cut off in East Prussia by the Russians when it was sunk by a Soviet submarine. They were in such shallow water that the ship just settled on the bottom. The crew was evacuaed except for the gunnersd of which he was one. They continued lobbing shells at passing Russian tanks for a week until they ran out of ammo, then took rowboats to safety.

He was 18 when the war ended.

I didn't realize he was a war criminal. In fact, I take him to lunch a couple times a year, and I took him and my dad to lunch together to share their pictures as my dad was on a US destroyer the whole war. It was a high point of my dad's retirement as he is big into reunions and such.

Anyway, I'll take my friend and client out to lunch again soon. He probably won't be around too much longer, nor will my dad.

I beleive I said ALMOST the entire population. Most reasonable people would figure out that that excludes opponents of Hitler and those to young/old/ill to vote.

I also did not say that ALL voting German citizens were war criminals just that they bear some responsibility for the Holocaust.

Your client was clearly underage, but I'd ask his parents (obviously if they were still alive) what they did when they were rounding up socialists? when they forced Jews to give up property?

Once Hitler was elected (appointed) Chancellor with 30 something percent of the vote, there were no more votes for Chancellor. How do you blame the voters when there are no elections?

they did when their neighbours were forbidden by law from:

*marrying or sleeping with non jews
*employing German housekeepers
*flying the German flag
*sending their kids to public schools
*holding jobs in newspapers
*holding German citizenship
*selling goods/services to Aryans

all these occured in 1935 which saw numerous and LARGE anti-jewish riots - do you really think any of this (and the horrors still to come) would have been possible without majority support.

I never said all Germans were war criminals just that they bear some resposibility for the atmosphere that allowed the Holocaust to happen

"Many US and Australian men (or boys) went to prison rather than fight in Vietnam as they beleived that war was wrong and that they beleived they were being lied to by their leaders."

I'd say there is a difference: those who would have dared to oppose the Nazis openly would simply have been killed.

But except for this, you're right.
I'm fourty now, and I had two grandpas (like many other human beings): one was a Nazi, the other wasn't one.
The one, who wasn't a Nazi and rejected to even become a soldier, was the opposite of a "hero". He would never ever have dared to openly offend the Nazis. He was a Social Democrat before the Nazis took over Germany and 39 years old, when WW2 started, and he simply rejected to become a soldier. All he did was drinking 20 coups of coffee the night before the examination. When I was a child, his wife told me stories about neighbours, who rejected to become concentration camp guards. Not being heroes or courageous people, they did just simply repeat over and over again that they cannot do such a thing. They didn't say the concentration camps were wrong, they didn't tell the Nazis they should f*ck off with their antisemitic idiotism...

And there were millions of Germans, who never became members of the NSDAP either. They did everything to survive, they didn't risk their lives to defend the victims of the Nazis, they just didn't become members of the NSDAP, escaped the Hitler-Youth, and many escaped the army. And they kept their jobs and their ordinary lives.
Dirk

although some did - but simply that they should have got out of war service - which was well and truly possible.

Soldiers bear some responsibility for the wars they fight in. Bonzo didn't go to a civilian cemetary it was a soldier's cemetary and there were SS buried there - nothing anyone can say will convince me that that was anything other than a tasteless and highly insensitive thing to do. Perhaps it's my own background clouding my view here but I just can't agree with Bonzo's equating the suffering of concentration camp victims with that of German soldiers.

I doubt 17 year old kids (who were 4 in 1933) can be blamed for dying trying to defend what they were brought up to believe was right. Of course they weren´t and many of those who survived had to go through the painful process of realizing that everything they were ever taught was a crime and an abomination. But can you truely blame these kids ? I think not.

And I don´t think there are any cemetaries of german WW II fighters without Waffen-SS soldiers mixed in because they were always considered an elite troup within the fighting forces and nobody would´ve buried them seperately back then.

Personally I blame Kohl more than Reagan for it; I can't stand Kohl's reading of WW2 history (ss officers "Victims"? - hardly), which was echoed by Reagan.

Schröder did not visit the major cemeteries in Normandy for exactly this reason. The conservatives immediately started to question his Patriotism, but I think he did the right thing by visiting a small cemetery where Allied and German Soldiers are buried.

because: every individual is responsible for their own actions. Following orders, or ignorance, is not a valid excuse for carrying out genocidal actions.

Patriotically killing for Hitler? Would you do that?

There is no way on god's green earth that I would.

It does not surprise me that Reagan would honor fallen Nazi's. He ascribed to the same basic RW philosophy.

Many people, when you bring up WW2, have rather strong feelings concerning the Nazis. I am one of them, both my grandfathers fought in the war, one landed on D-day the other was in the Pacific. At the same time, we had German relatives in that fucking Reich who were gassed. Their crime was hiding and smuggling Jews out of that damned country, they were true patriots, no Waffen fucking SS can claim that title!!!!

those valiant and brave fighting men
piss on those monsters

On the Eastern front of the German war effort, many of the murderers were in fact locals.

They were lead by one of four, later five operational groups that were SS-SD, that at every time in the war included members of the Waffen SS, but were not Waffen SS controlled.

I think the 1st SS panzer group was formed in 1943, and that was the first SS headquarters - before that they were regiments and divisions controlled by other Army groups.

SS men committed the Holocaust - but not every marine ripped gold fillings out of living Japanese POW
-----

The problem is not in the detail but the big picture.

If Reagan was somehow soluting SS murderers its a problem, if he was just laying a wreath on a collective grave of soldiers it shouldn't be.

I am too young to blame all Germans - when I was younger still, I did.

The enemy that we helped defeat. The enemy that was responsible for the murder of 15 million, and the war deaths of about 50 million.
Was it just a dumb mistake, or was it making a statement?

Reagan was a "dumb mistake".

problem at the time...those Nazi's children and grandchildren were footing the bill for the defense of western Europe against the Warsaw pact.

I'm not going to argue if that threat was significant, but it was real. The Bundesrepublic's Army was larger than our own for many years, they and the DDR were going to be the cannon fodder for a third world war

and if it was a "limited nukes" - their collective country would have been waxed over a war between Moscow and DC/London

I'm not going to get that caught up in detail - especially 20 years after the fact.

Focus on doing good

was to forgive the Nazis for the Holocaust (in spite of himself not being a victim, therefore having no right to do so), and the damn media has to make a big wop about it! Damn liberal media - one would question who controls it, nein?

as not just someone of German ancestry but as a German, who was about 20 then, I completely disagree with you.
You write:

"the waffen SS was an elite military formation, similar to our Marines, not the concentration camp..."
What kind of logic is this?
Just because the Waffen-SS was an elite military formation - Hitler's elite military formation indeed - they were not (like) the concentration camp guards?
They were much worse.

Don't ask me about your marines, please, but I'm still proud of every American soldier, who has killed as many SS-pigs as possible, if only more of them would have been killed. And there is no possible reason for me, to equal the most brutal and most sadistic defenders of Hitler and the most sadistic and brutal killers - just study what they commited against jews in the occupied territories of eastern Europe - and those, who did risk or lose their lives in the fight against fashism.
That's revisionism and nothing else. Although Kohl somehow managed to push Reagan to do this.

If Reagan or any other American President would have said the American Marines are not much different from the Waffen-SS, because of what they did in Vietnam, I would agree.

What Reagan did is just a dangerous general discourse, supposing that all human beings and all soldiers are just stupid mindless idiots, willing to die for their stupid fatherlands as a kind of natural instinct, no matter if "their" "leader" is Adolf Hitler or Kennedy or Reagan.

And the most stupid thing about this: Reagan didn't do this, 'cause he thought it was the right thing to do. Being the stupid idiot he was, it was just one of those things that happened by accident and then he acted within the script as in one of those idiotic B-films. It was just one more cheap idiotic B-film staring Reagan.

Hello from Germany anyway,
Dirk

They had it all wrong...

Bonzo goes to bitburg

You've got to pick up the pieces C'mon, sort your trash
You better pull yourself back together Maybe you've got too much cash
Better call, call the law When you gonna turn yourself in? Yeah
You're a politician Don't become one of Hitler's children

Bonzo goes to bitburg then goes out for a cup of tea
As I watched it on TV somehow it really bothered me
Drank in all the bars in town for an extended foreign policy
Pick up the pieces

My brain is hanging upside down I need something to slow me down
My brain is hanging upside down I need something to slow me down

Shouldn't wish you happiness, wish her the very best Fifty thousand dollar dress
Shaking hands with your highness See through you like cellophane
You watch the world complain, but you do it anyway Who am I, am I to say

Bonzo goes to bitburg then goes out for a cup of tea
As I watched it on TV somehow it really bothered me
Drank in all the bars in town for an extended foreign policy
Pick up the pieces

My brain is hanging upside down I need something to slow me down
My brain is hanging upside down I need something to slow me down

If there's one thing that makes me sick It's when someone tries to hide behind politics
I wish that time could go by fast Somehow they manage to make it last

My brain is hanging upside down I need something to slow me down
My brain is hanging upside down I need something to slow me down
My brain is hanging upside down I need something to slow me down
My brain is hanging upside down I need something to slow me down

Glad someone posted it, sorry I didn't get there first.

by reinstating the battleflag...

Oh yeah, and let's put one on every grave for memorial day... (tongue firmly in cheek)!


Give me a break!!!


Some of those NAZIS were part of the Einsatzgruppen... look it up if you don't know what it is...

No comparison to the Nazis.

Jeff Davis was no Hitler.

The only group that I'd compare to the Nazis in US history would be the Ku Klux Klan, on a much smaller scale. But then we've got a former f***ing Klansman in the senate and most DU'ers honor him. But that's my pet peeve.