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PAGE 8
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MAY 3, 1985
The upshot of the whole affair is that, after a 40-year "honeymoon" of
sorts, U.S. relations with the German people, like those with Japan, are
marked for a change.
One of the most forboding articles appeared in the April 26, 1985 LOS
ANGELES TIMES. Written by the TIMES Bonn correspondent Tyler Marshall, the
article was entitled "Bonn Stunned by Cemetery Furor, Takes Another Look at
U.S. Relations."
The intensity of opposition to President Reagan's planned visit
to a German war cemetery next month has stunned West Germany's
political elite, causing many here to reassess the meaning of the
country's ties with the United States.
At present, the reassessment is taking place on a personal rather
than a policy level, and few here expect the controversy to yield
any immediate, visible change in the political relationship.
However, it is the policy-makers and opinion-formers--those most
familiar with the United States--who are engaged in the process.
Together, they appear to share� sense of disbelief at the level
of U.S. reaction, consternation about how to defuse it and worry
about"""'Its long-term impact.
Two basic issues appear to separate German and American percep
tions on the emotional issue. Many Americans see the 47 [actual
ly 49] graves of Hitler's infamous SS soldiers at the Bitburg
cemetery as a symbol of SS terror during the Holocaust. However,
Germans focus only on the cemetery itself, stressing that most
buried there were teenagers drafted for the Western Front in the
final months of World War II••••
Closely linked with the German perception of those buried at
Bitburg is a sense of disillusionment that, even though Germany
has accepted h1.storTcal respons1.bil1.tyfor the Holocaust and
spent long years as a U.s. ally, the American view of Germany ��
nation besmirched remains strong.
"We have said 'Never again war from German soil': we have said
'Never again a dictatorship': we have aligned with the West and
built our democracy," said Alois Mertes, state secretary in the
West German Foreign Ministry and conservative member of Parlia
ment for Bitburg. "What can we do? How can we make it good?
After 40 years, after � years � � � lly, that the Holocaust
stands square in the middle of everything, after so much•••• It
is� terrible human disappointment." Prof. Michael Stuermer of
Erlangen University, a personal advisor to Chancellor Helmut
Kohl, said, "What is happening in the (United States) puts into
question an unspoken assumption of our years in the Western al
liance--that Germany had achieved a degree of forgiveness."
The depth of reaction here to the U.S. protest is fueled by a com
bination of factors, all peculiar to West Germany. Few countries
are as proud of, yet so insecure about, their democracy as is
West Germany. No European country is more sensitive about criti
cism by outsiders. No relationship means more at virtually every
level of German society than that with thelfnited States. It is
•