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After
Bitburg
What
Is aWest Gerntan?
By Gene H. Hogberg
Despite their phenomenal success, West Germans suffer from an identity crisis.
The display of patriotism is still an acute problem. Sorne experts say
Germany can recover its soul only within the context of a larger, united Europe.
W
HAT
is a West Ger–
man?
A strange sounding
question, perhaps, to Ameri–
cans, Britons and Frenchmen–
all who know in their innermost
being what it means to be per–
sonally part of the march of his–
tory of their nations.
The same cannot be said of citi–
zens in the Federal Republic of
Germany.
The visit of U.S. President Ron–
ald Reagan to a war cemetery in
West Germany earlier this year
made West Germans painfully
aware that their nation still bears a
heavy burden of the recent past.
Among citizens of the Federal
Republic President Reagan's per–
sonal standing rose considerably for
"hanging tough" on the visit to Bit–
burg. (Among the 2,000 dead in
the cemetery are the remains of 49
Waffen-SS soldiers, mostly young,
end-of-the-war draftees.)
Yet, at the same time, there was
considerable disappointment and
disillusionment that ·tbere should
have been such an outcry in the
United States. After all, every U.S.
Memorial Day since 1959, the
commander of the nearby U.S. air
base, joined by the mayor of Bit–
burg, had laid down a wreath at the
very spot the President did.
So, for more than 25 years, no
one had complained about the pres-
September 1985
ence of the SS grave markers. Not
a few observers felt the incident
had been blown out of proportion
by the President's critics in arder to
cast a cloud over bis entire Euro–
pean trip.
The American President 's sin–
cere intention had been to
enact, along with his host,
Chancellor Helmut Kohl,
a ceremony of national
reconciliation, 40 years
after the conclusion of
World War Il.
Germany's
Transformation
ny-and Japan as well-have
changed their previous courses to
such an astonishing degree that their
former enemies and now allies tend
to take their altered states for
granted.
For the past 11 years, for exam-
•
West Germany's trans–
formation into a liberal–
ized democratic state, one
anchored in the West, has
not been fully appreciated
by the general public in
the United States. Those
in the position to know
view it as an extraordi–
nary achievement. Arthur
Burns, retiring U .S. am–
bassador to the Federal
Republic, said that "the
transformation of Germa–
U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Chancellor
Helmut Kohl, second from right, tour German
military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany.
ny is one of the miracles of the
modero age."
Looking back to the early postwar
period, it was by no means certain
that Germany's third attempt at
democracy (the first in the 1830s,
the second after World War
J)
would indeed "take." But Germa-
ple, economic summits have taken
place among the Free World's lead–
ing industrial powers. The seven
nations involved-the United
States, Britain, Canada, France,
J apan, IÚlly and West Germany–
comprise four Allied and tbree
Axis powers of World War
ll.
No
3