Herbert W Armstrong

This was certainly the roughest test of Mr. Reagan's considerable and very persuasive oratory skills. The President's trip and the summit itself (which turned out to be quite inconclusive) — was overshadowed by the considerable opposition in the United States, especially from Jewish groups, to his planned visit to a German military cemetery on the outskirts of the town of Bitburg. Making matters worse for the President, the travelling U.S. press corps seemed eager to take full advantage of Mr. Reagan's dilemma.

The press definitely does not subscribe to the old fair-play adage of "don't hit a man when he's down." The President's number one nemesis is ABC's White House correspondent Sam Donaldson, who stands far and above his colleagues for being froward and abrasive. He's the one who booms out questions at the President on all public occasions. Mr. Donaldson does his level best to trip up the President, but Mr. Reagan usually knows how to defend himself, and can, in a dignified manner, "dish it out" too. On one occasion, as the summit opened, Donaldson asked Mr. Reagan if he was, despite opposition, still going ahead with the Bitburg cemetery visit. "I never had any intention of not going," replied the President. To Donaldson's follow-up query of whether Mr. Reagan was concerned whether the visit could cost him political favor at home, the President replied, "Not if it's reported properly." End of conversation. Incidentally, it was widely perceived in West Germany that the U.S. press was largely responsible for blowing the Bitburg affair out of proportion.

Mr. Kelly and I, before going to the cemetery itself (which is really very small; hardly, it seems, worth all the fuss), witnessed the anti-visit demonstrations in the heart of town. Actually, there were two separate demonstrations. The first comprised Jewish, mostly college-aged students, coming from France, Britain and the United States. Their overall theme could best be expressed in the last phrase of a chant we heard: "We will not forgive." The other group was composed of the standard anti-West anti-U.S. radical "herd." While expressing aversion to "fascism," their posters reflected more contemporary concerns — America hands off Nicaragua, liberate South Africa, "No" to cruise and Pershing missiles, stop the arms race in space — the standard things one hears every day on Radio Moscow. The two protest groups didn't mix at all — probably because "the herd" is also pro­ Palestinian, anti-Israeli.

In town, I overheard several local people arguing with Jewish protesters (some of whom were wearing symbolic yellow star-of-David markers). The invariable Bitburger position was that the 49 Waffen-SS personnel buried at the cemetery were nearly all end-of-the-war draftees. (Mr. Kelly did notice one SS grave marker which gave the age of the person interred at less than 18 years of age.) Except for the protesters, who were confined by police to one barricaded intersection, Mr. Reagan's motorcade route through the town was lined with Germans and Americans waving small American flags. The U.S. news media seemed to pay more attention to the one troubled intersection.

The general feeling is that, despite the Bitburg affair, President Reagan came through what was called "sober Sunday" pretty well intact. He did this in typical Reagan fashion, delivering what even the media described as two moving speeches, one at the Bitburg flugplatz (air base) and, earlier in the day, at the remains of the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. His overall theme on both occasions was to stress the positive and the present, all the while learning from the brutal lessons of the past. This was perhaps best expressed in his Bergen-Belsen address when he proclaimed:

We are here to commemorate that life triumphed over the tragedy and the death of the Holocaust.... Out of the ashes — hope, and from all the pain — promise.... Chancellor Kohl, you and your countrymen have made real the renewal that had to happen. Your nation and the German people have been strong and resolute in your willingness to confront and condemn the acts of a hated regime of the past. This reflects the courage of your people and their devotion to freedom and justice since the war.

Even TIME magazine reported that Mr. Reagan's "remarkable speech at Bergen­ Belsen would go down in the history books."

Appreciation — and Bewilderment

Among West Germans, President Reagan's personal standing rose considerably for "hanging tough" on Bitburg. Yet, at the same time, there was considerable disappointment and disillusionment that there should have been such an outcry in the United States against the trip in the first place. Mr. Reagan, for one, drew attention to this storm of protest and its unfortunate result when he said, at the Bitburg Air Base, that "some old wounds have been reopened and this I regret very much, because this should be a time of healing." A mood of disillusionment in West Germany, if it grows, could lead to a dangerous teutonic angst that no matter what contemporary Germany does, the past can never be put to rest.

West Germany's transformation into a liberalized 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, however, view it as an extraordinary achievement. Arthur Burns, retiring U.S. ambassador to the Federal Republic, recently said that "the transformation of Germany is one of the miracles of the modern age."

Looking back to the early post-war period, it was by no means certain that Germany's third attempt at democracy (the first in the 1840s, the second after World War I) would indeed "take." But Germany — and Japan as well-­ have changed their previous courses to an astonishing degree, so much so that their former enemies and now allies tend to take their altered states for granted. In fact, one of the most remarkable, yet unsung products of the eleven annual economic summits is that the seven nations involved — the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Japan, Italy and West Germany — comprise four allied and three axis powers of World War II.

"Have these past forty different years all been in vain?" is a generalized perception among Germans. Alfred Dregger, one of the most senior members of the Christian Democratic Party, said that "Bitburg raises the question of whether the American people really consider us to be allies, despite forty years." Professor Michael Stuermer, a leading West German historian and a close Kohl advisor, adds: "Americans are always keen on gaining the moral high ground. That leaves us on lesser ground. That cannot continue forever. [It is risky] to brand West Germany with the mark of Cain. In the long run you cannot have both good Germans in the alliance and bad Germans as a standard of depravity."

Of course the previous generation of Germans bequeathed a heavy moral load to their children. While there is, as President Reagan and Secretary of State Shultz expressed in Bonn, no such thing as "collective guilt," it is not quite correct to say either, as one U.S. newsman said, that "you can't visit the sins of the fathers on the sons." The Bible (Ex. 20:5) clearly shows that the penalties of sins can be experienced by up to the "third and fourth generations." Nevertheless, in a nation such as Germany — which as the late author Luigi Barzini described as being highly mutable or changeable — a mood of unrelieved guilt and lack of forgiveness can be very dangerous. In the LOS ANGELES TIMES of May 10, 1985, correspondent Tyler Marshall wrote:

Policy-makers and social scientists are increasingly concerned that the combination of foreign bitterness and German sensitivity to it is unhealthy and potentially dangerous. Alois Mertes, state secretary in the West German Foreign Ministry, recalls a 13-year-old boy, who, after watching a documentary film on Eichmann, turned to his mother and asked, "Why did I have to be born German?'' Mertes warns: "If this guilt is pressed on a new generation, it will backfire. Guilt feelings will lead to anti-West sentiments and anti-Semitism."...

The wave of protest about Reagan's visit to a German war cemetery was greeted with as much upset as disbelief by the West German man on the street. "Forty years have gone by, and suddenly it is as if nothing that has happened since then counts for anything," said Alfred Dresen, a resident of Bonn. "Is forgiveness beyond you all?"

One is reminded of the account in the book of Jonah. The prophet Jonah, apparently because of national sensitivities against the Ninevite Assyrians (interesting parallel), was unwilling to accept the fact that they could change as a people and that God would therefore "turn and relent" from punishing them. Jonah did his job with extreme reluctance. Nineveh changed; God relented from His punishment. But Jonah didn't want to change, to forgive. Instead he wanted to die.

There is a danger in unforgiveness. The Apostle Paul instructed the Corinthian Church to accept back into the fold the repentant (changed) sinner lest he be overcome with "too much sorrow" (II Cor. 2:7). Then he warned that unless forgiveness takes place, Satan might take advantage of the situation (verse 11). The same lesson, broadly speaking, applies to remarkably changed nations such as Germany and Japan. Their political and social fabric is still fragile; Satan might be able to stir up moods of resentment once again.

Although Germany has been called a "miracle of the modern age," it has weaknesses. It has had to shed patriotic feelings that would be normal in other countries simply because patriotism and nationalism had been so abused under national socialism. As a result, national pride and a sense of belonging to a "real nation" are absent. Here are excerpts from another article from the L.A. TIMES' Tyler Marshall, this time in the May 7 issue:

More than guilt, there is an inner confusion and disorientation born of Germany's past that...in the longer term, poses serious questions about its future.... What happened to Germany 40 years ago continues to be a matter of emotional public controversy. Were the Germans freed from tyranny by the Allies or were they conquered?...

British political commentator Timothy Garton Ash recently likened West Germany to one of its model businessmen: "A hearty, sun tanned 40-year-old, hair neatly parted, smartly dressed, with nice manners and a stock of sensible conversation — but forever dashing...to check his blood pressure, or glancing at his reflection in the shop windows to see if he hasn't got a nervous tic."...

Stated a 1983 commentary in the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit: "The Federal Republic is, all things considered, not a bad country, perhaps even the best ever to rise from German soil. But who likes to feel themselves as Federal Republican?" Novelist Dieter Wellershoff remarked that describing himself as a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany made him feel odd. "It contains about the same emotional resonance as a University German Automobile Club," he said. "It indicates the synthetic character of the political concept. It has little meaning and sense of its own."...

Since coming to power in 1982, Chancellor Helmut Kohl has cautiously tried to stimulate feelings of national pride and patri­otism. He is the first West German chancellor to have the national flag in his office, [and] has resuscitated previously tainted words such as vaterland.... Response to the chancellor's pride-building efforts has been lukewarm even within West Germany. One of the two national television channels began playing the national anthem for the first time at the close of programming April 15, but the other remains uncertain about the idea....

At present, Germans' feelings for their democracy remain much like their view of Bonn, their quaint, but small, capital, which they regard as boring, colorless, uninspiring.... Johannes Schule, who drives occasionally from his home in the Ruhr to check on property he owns here, summed up the feelings of many of his countrymen: "When I drive into Bonn, I ask myself how other nations can take us seriously."

In the May 10 WALL STREET JOURNAL, H. Joachim Maitre, formerly with West Germany's Springer Press empire, wrote:

Scratch most Germans — and you will find resentment. A resentment not over Germany's defeat in war or over loss of German territory, but over...the subdued role of today's West Germany in the world, in the United Nations, in the European Community and in the Atlantic Alliance. West Germany, Europe's remaining economic giant, is seen — deep down — by its citizens as a political and military dwarf.... Our Bundeswehr has been burdened psychologically: Our soldiers know well that — when measured against the great military tradition of our country — they perform an undignified auxiliary function.... [The Federal Republic is the only NATO member to have its entire military subject to NATO, thus ultimately American, command.]

At a conference hosted by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in 1981, Mr. Kristol [Irving Kristol, the dean of U.S. neoconservatives] proposed that "NATO must be made to be compatible with Germany's national interest and national aspirations. For too long the German people have been asked to repress their national feelings in the cause of the NATO alliance. This is an unhealthy situation which cannot endure. I do believe that Germany shares a mutuality of interests with its NATO partners, but this mutuality must be based on a healthy German patriotism. People do not fight and die for acronyms, whether it be NATO or the UN. They fight and die for their country."

In the May 10 INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, journalist William Pfaff called for, as the title read, "A More Realistic and More European Germany." He said, in part:

The geopolitical catastrophe that ensued, like the crime of the death camps, certainly is not the responsibility of Germans of the present generation. Germans, however, like the rest of us, have to live with the consequences, making the best of what was done by another generation....

So must we all. A ceremony in a cemetery is irrelevant to this. Very bad things will come of this affair if the West German sense of estrangement from the allies is fueled. The solid, essential accomplishment of the postwar years has been West Germany's moral as well as economic and political integration into Western Europe. The enlarged European Community, however, no longer provides its members a responsive or very rewarding political instrument. Because America is the superpower, and the guarantor of West Germany, Germans have given relations with Washington priority over those with Paris, The Hague, Brussels, Rome and London. When Americans disappoint them, as in the Bitburg case, the shock is the greater for the investment that has been made in the American tie.

Something constructive could result if Germans were influenced to take a more detached view of their strategic dependence on Washington, and were more seriously to consider the possibilities for improving security cooperation with the principal West European allies.... Indeed, Americans as well as Germans need better to understand that it is a basic interest of the United States as well as of Western Europe, that Europe steadily improve its ability to assure its own security — that the "European pillar" of the Western alliance be as solid as possible, capable of standing alone if necessary. That way lies a trans-Atlantic relationship of confidence and mutual respect, which would have no need for gratuitous displays of the kind seen, and suffered, at Bitburg.

It's amazing that nearly all analysts have traditionally believed that a "more independent Europe" would continue to be a lock-step ally of the United States. Why should this be? Already, the changed relationship between West Germany and its American "role model" is evident, though not always on the surface. Younger Germans, especially those politically left of center, reflect this change most. To continue with the TIMES' Tyler Marshall (May 9):

Increasingly it is integrated Europe rather than the United States that furnishes the model for West Germans: — And most important, Germans want to be seen and respected as equals in a relationship that has been dominated by the United States.

Karsten Voigt, 44, a Social Democratic member of Parliament and his party's spokesman on security matters, said not long ago: "We used to do what the U.S. wanted. There is now a whole list of differences, and the list is going to grow longer, not shorter.... The basic democratic values we borrowed from you are now part of our own identity. We now share common values but have differing interests."...

Another Social Democratic member of Parliament, Guenter Verheugen, commented: "We don't want to break our economic and cultural links, but we believe we need political emancipation from the U.S. "The role of the U.S. as our mentor is no longer accepted:"

In light of the attraction of the United Europe idea, it is interesting to note that President Reagan made stirring appeals for a United Europe — and a reunited Germany within the context of a United Europe — on two occasions during his trip. The first was when he addressed several thousand enthusiastic young Germans at Hambach Castle, considered to be one of the fountainheads of German democracy in the 1830s. The President's address was interrupted 40 times by applause. He told the cheering students:

In many ways, the challenges of 1832, when thousands of young Germans came here to protest repression, were similar to those you face today. By that year of 1832, Germany was changing rapidly, the Industrial Revolution was sweeping across Europe. But in dealing with these new problems, strong forces inside and outside Germany resisted democracy and national unity. The great hopes that arose in 1832 and again in 1848 were set back. But despite the difficulties of democratic movements, we know for sure that totalitarianism, by whatever name, will never fulfill German aspirations within a united Europe. The cause of German unity is bound up with the cause of democracy.

President Reagan struck a responsive chord with Germany's younger generation since many of them exhibit an emotional sense of common destiny with their "East German cousins." The other occasion on which President Reagan appealed to the goal of a united Europe was during his 44-minute speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on May 8. There he said:

It is my hope, our hope, that in the 21st century — which is only 15 years away — all Europeans, from Moscow to Lisbon, will be able to travel without a passport and the free flow of people and ideas will include the other half of Europe. It is my fervent wish that in the next century there will be one, free Europe.

In a sense, the President echoed remarks made earlier that morning by Pierre Pflimlin, president of the European Parliament, who told a special V-E Day sitting of the Parliament:

Let us not indulge in self-satisfaction. We must recognize our limitations. We represent only one part of Europe. There are peoples every bit as European as our own that are unable to take their place in our Community. Dresden and Warsaw, Prague and Budapest are cities as European as our own ten capitals. It might now seem a vain hope to dream of bringing together all the peoples of Europe, but no one can stop us dreaming of a complete Europe united in peace. After all, mankind's greatest steps forward have often only been dreams come true.

Significantly, one of the most energetic members of the European Parliament is Otto von Habsburg, who has been an outspoken proponent of an expanded Europe or Community to include countries in both Eastern and Western Europe. After Mr. Reagan's address, Mr. Kelly and I chanced meeting Dr. Habsburg coming out of the assembly hall (well, I did do my best to make such a chance materialize). Dr. Habsburg praised the President's remarks — the ones at Hambach Castle even more so than those at the EP that afternoon.

Thus, in a roundabout manner, German disillusionment with its American "big brother," plus its inability to recover a sense of purely national pride and patriotism, could rebound into a greater German zeal for a united Europe, which would also lead to the biggest dream of all: a reunited German nation, one Germans could feel proud of again.

— Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau