Bitburg

Really? Who paid for your flights..?

“They suffer a great guilt complex over the Nazi period... I’m suggesting including them this time & making the occasion one of celebrating when the hatred stopped & peace & friendship began which has continued for 40 yrs.”

Ronald Reagan Personal Diary,

November 1984

“There is no way I’ll back down & run for cover... Would Helmut be wrong if he visited Arlington Cemetery on one of his U.S. visits?” 

Ronald Reagan Personal Diary,

April 1985

“They [the press] are really sucking blood & finding every person of Jewish faith they can who will denounce me.”

Ronald Reagan Personal Diary,

April 18 1985

The following day, Reagan referred to the uproar as his “‘Dreyfus’ case,” refusing his advisers’ calls to cancel the visit. Even first lady Nancy Reagan, renowned for her supportiveness, was described as “uptight about the situation.” Though peeved, Reagan remained undaunted. “I’m not going to cancel anything no matter how much the bastards scream,” he wrote.

When it ultimately came time for the May 5 visit, Reagan’s angry defensiveness returned to the cool conviction that otherwise colors most of his writing. After declaring that “we must never forget & we must pledge, ‘never again’” during a morning visit to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Reagan arrived at the Kolmeshöhe Cemetery to a large crowd of German onlookers, most of whom he believed to be approving. During a brief ceremony, an American and German general from World War II each laid a wreath at the cemetery monument. When the two unexpectedly shook hands at the close of the ceremony, Reagan called it a “truly dramatic moment.”

Polls later showed that 59% of Americans supported Reagan’s visit — up from 49% before his trip. “I always felt it was the morally right thing to do,” he wrote.

While Reagan’s own account of his decision to visit Bitburg is a deeply disturbing read, it is generally considered the exception in an otherwise positive record on Jewish-relevant issues. “I think it was an episode — a sad episode,” said the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman. “The Jewish community’s attitude toward Reagan was that he was a friend, and certainly a friend of Israel. He could have been a greater friend, but [the Bitburg visit] did not tarnish him significantly.”

According to Foxman, the Bitburg visit was far more damaging to Germany’s image among American Jews. “It backfired on Germany,” he said. “We saw that they were impatient to achieve normalcy, without understanding that we can never be normal. We can have relations. We can have understanding. But it can never be normal, certainly not as long as survivors and perpetrators [of the Holocaust] are around.” 

For this reason, it was the German government — and not Reagan — that undertook efforts to repair relations with the Jewish community after the Bitburg controversy, Foxman said.

If Reagan’s visit to Bitburg soured relations with the American Jewish community, the president never seemed to notice. While Reagan continued recording his efforts to liberate Soviet Jewry, secure reparations for Holocaust victims and engage domestic Jewish groups, he never wrote of Bitburg — or the furor it engendered — again.

Eric Trager is a doctoral student in political science at the University of Pennsylvania.