Ronald Reagan 4 Press Books May 1985 Official Presidential Europe Trip (Bitburg)

This trip made the news headlines because President Reagan had scheduled a ceremonial visit to a German military cemetery in Bitburg, a town in extreme western Germany near the border with Luxembourg, as part of his activities to commemorate the end of World War II.  The visit aroused considerable criticism, both in the United States and around the world, when it became known that members of the Waffen-SS were also buried there. The entire SS was judged to be a criminal organisation at the Nuremberg trials.   The fact that Reagan had not been scheduled to visit former Nazi concentration-camp sites compounded the controversy, and a trip to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was later added to his itinerary.  Complicatng the issue was the fact that no American soldiers were buried at the cemetery, something that was not known by the planners of the trip until mid April, a few weeks prior to the trip.  As can be seen in the book related to the German segment of the trip, both Bitberg and Bergen-Belsen were on the official sites to be visited.