The Bitburg Fiasco

By Charles Krauthammer

When President Reagan and Chancellor Kohl of West Germany first discussed the idea, it seemed like a good one: a V-E day visit by the President to a cemetery in Germany where American and German soldiers lie side by side. It would be a ceremony of friendship and reconciliation.

It has, of course, become a disaster. It turned out that no American dead from World War II are buried in Germany. It would have to be a purely German cemetery. And it turned out that Bitburg, the one suggested by Chancellor Kohl, contained the graves of 47 members of the SS.

But even before the unraveling, and the storm that followed, was there anything wrong with the original scenario? Just a few months ago, after all, did not Kohl and President Mitterrand of France hold a moving reconciliation at the World War I battlefield at Verdun? When Kohl raised with Reagan the idea of a cemetery visit, he cited the Verdun ceremony as the model.

The analogy does not hold, and that Kohl and Reagan could miss the point is at the heart of the Bitburg fiasco. World War II was unlike World War I, or any other war. It was unique because Nazism was unique. Nazi Germany was not just another belligerent; it was a criminal state. Even that term is inadequate.

This does not make the 18-year-old who died defending the Nazi regime a criminal. Nor does it lessen the grief of his mother. But it does lessen the honor due him from the President of the United States. Even among the dead, we are required to make distinctions. It is not just grotesquely wrong to say, as the President said last week, that German soldiers are as much victims as those whom the Germans tortured and murdered. There is also a distinction to be drawn between Hitler's soldiers and the Kaiser's. Mitterrand's choice of Verdun, the awful symbol of World War I, shows a grasp of that distinction. The choice of Bitburg does not.

If the distinction seems subtle, after the discovery of Waffen SS graves the need for subtlety vanishes. Even if one claims that the ordinary German soldier fought for Germany and not for Hitler, that cannot be said of the Waffen SS. Hitler's 1938 edict declared them to be "a standing armed unit exclusively at my disposal." A further directive in 1940 elaborated their future role. After the war the Third Reich would be expected to contain many non-Germanic nationalities. The Waffen SS would be the special state police force to keep order among these unruly elements. They proved themselves during the war: 40 miles from Bitburg, the Waffen SS murdered 71 American POWs.

Of all the cemeteries of World War II, one containing such men is the most unworthy of a visit by an American President. The most worthy--the graves of Allied liberators or of the Nazis' victims--were originally excluded from President Reagan's agenda. After the furor, the Administration hastily scheduled a trip to a concentration camp. It believes it has balanced things.

For the Jews, a camp; for Kohl, Bitburg; and for American vets, perhaps a sonorous speech. The picture now contains all the right elements. But the elements do not sit well on the canvas. They mock one another. What can it mean to honor the murdered if one also honors the murderers and their Praetorian Guard? This is photo opportunity morality, and so transparent that it will convince no one, offend everyone.

Peter Boenisch, a Bonn government spokesman, complaining about the uproar in the U.S. over the Bitburg visit, said, "We can't start denazification of the cemeteries." Exactly. That's the reason to stay away.

The President's lapse is not just moral but historical. At first, he declared that he would put the past behind him: reopen no wounds, apportion no blame, visit no death camp. But one cannot pretend that the world began on V-E day 1945. One has to ask the question: Where did the new Germany come from? Some concession had to be made to history. The President decided to make it. And he chose precisely the wrong history.

V-E day separates two German histories. The moral rebirth of Germany after the war was, and is, premised on a radical discontinuity with the Nazi past. The new Germany is built around the thin strand of decency, symbolized by people like Adenauer and Brandt, that reaches back to the pre-Nazi era. If history is what the President wants to acknowledge, it is this German history that deserves remembrance. For Kohl and Reagan to lay a wreath at Bitburg is to subvert, however thoughtlessly, the discontinuity that is the moral foundation of the new Germany.

It is a Soviet propagandist's delight. The Soviets play the Nazi-West Germany theme night and day. It is false. West Germany's honorable history is its refutation. Why then a visit that cannot fail symbolically to affirm the lie?

This is not just bad history, but terrible politics. It is all the more ironic because the only conceivable reason for the Bitburg visit in the first place is politics: alliance politics. Kohl had a problem. His exclusion from D-day ceremonies last year gave ammunition to those who complain that Germany bears equally the burdens of the Western alliance but is denied equal respect. Reagan wanted to use this ceremony to help Kohl.

Now, strengthening democratic and pro-NATO forces in Germany is a laudable end, particularly in light of domestic and Soviet pressures on Germany over Euromissile deployment. But surely there are less delicate instruments than V-E day for reinforcing NATO. And surely there are limits to alliance politics. At this point President Reagan is reluctant to change his plans because of the acute embarrassment it would cause the German government. But that injury is certain to be more transient than the injury to memory that would result from sticking to his plans.

The Bitburg fiasco is a mess, but even messes have a logic. This incident is a compound of some of the worst tendencies of the Reagan presidency: a weakness for theater, a neglect of history and a narrowly conceived politics.

Commemorating victory over radical evil demands more than theater, history or politics. Among the purposes of remembrance are pedagogy (for those who were not there) and solace (for those too much there). But the highest aim of remembrance (for us, here) is redemption. The President and the Chancellor did indeed want this V-E day to bring some good from evil. But for that to happen at Bitburg will require more than two politicians. It will require an act of grace, and that is not for politicians--or other mortals--to dispense.

It is perhaps just as difficult to find redemption at Bergen-Belsen, but there is a difference. There the blood of Abel cries out from the ground. We cannot answer that cry, but listening for it is in itself a redemptive act. To imagine that one can do the same over the tomb of Cain is sad illusion. --By Charles Krauthammer