Scheduled to be in Bonn for the G7 summit during the week of the fortieth anniversary of V-E Day celebrations, US president Ronald Reagan agreed, as a demonstration of the strength and steadfastness of West German-American relations—feeling he owed Helmut Kohl a photo-opportunity for the public and political backlash the chancellor suffered for conceding to host ballistic weapons—to visit a military cemetery logistically close to the joint airbase of Bitburg. 
Although planned months in advance, the ceremony intended to commemorate the end of hostilities and the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht to Allied Forces, the event was overshadowed by controversy once discovered that forty-nine of the two thousand German soldiers interred at the site at Kolmeshöhe were members of the Waffen-Schutzstaffel, drawing condemnation from Jewish activists and others worldwide. An impromptu and unscheduled visit to the memorial Bergen-Belsen was added to the itinerary to limit the leaders’ time at the cemetery, a stop which met with resistance by the president’s handlers as it might awaken old memories. The botched execution on both sides strained relations between the White House and the Chancellery, both sides blaming each other and not helped by Reagan’s statement equating those “drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis” suffered “just as surely as the victims of the victims of in the concentration camps.” In response, the Ramones recorded the single “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” in June of that year, the co-starring chimpanzee of “Bedtime for Bonzo” employed as an epithet for the former actor.
synchronoptica
one year ago: alien autopsy (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links to revisit
eight years ago: a natural battery spanning a Norwegian valley, Valerian and the City of a 1000 Planets plus a clever and effective flyer
nine years ago: on tour in Cornwall
ten years ago: The Meaning of Liff, more links to enjoy, populuxe design plus assorted trivia that sounds untrue
eleven years ago: fetishising fruit
