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the Social Democratic Party are also capable of similar politics .
They are not above claiming supposed parallels between actions of
the Nazis and those of the two conservative parties.
Germans also gloss over their past by making Hitler and a
small group of his henchmen responsible for all the immoral ac–
tivities perpetrated by the Third Reich between 1933 and 1945 . In
this view , the German people can be numbered among the
" victims" of Hitler. The most internationally visible attempt to
gloss over the past in this fashion came with Kohl's visit to the
cemetery in Bitburg with President Reagan. German victims of
Hitler buried in this cemetery were soldiers of the army and of the
SS . Kohl's glossing over of the past did not end with Bitburg. He has
proposed construction of a central monument in Bonn to honor vic–
tims of World War II and Nazi despotism. The victims that this
monument would honor include not only the Jews, gypsies and
homosexuals who were murdered by the Nazis, but also fallen Ger–
man soldiers and civilians who perished in bombing raids . One pro–
posal for the monument: a large crown of thorns suspended in the
air. After noting the bitter words exchanged in the German Parlia–
ment and the talk of an attempt to mix together victims and
perpetrators, one commentator in the press made the suggestion that
a tall cross be constructed on which nothing more would stand than
the inscription" 1933-1945." That such monuments are considered
suitable is a sign of the extent to which six million victims of Nazism
are either forgotten or considered unimportant .
Kohl is eager to free the German nation from responsibility for
the Nazi period . Alfred Dregger, chairman of the Christian
Democratic Union/Christian Social Union faction in the Parlia–
ment' has taken Kohl's interpretation one step further by emphasiz–
ing the foreign share of the blame for Hitler. For Dregger, the Ger–
man nation "fell" into Hitler's hands after the humiliation caused
by the Versailles Treaty and the weakening of the Weimar Republic
by the reparation burden. Dregger thinks that we should revere
anyone who "behaved personally honorably" during the Nazi
period, no matter "what people he came from or what branch of the
armed forces he belonged to. " Defending our right to revere Ger–
man soldiers, he cites the request by Churchill and Roosevelt in
1943 for the surrender of Germany and not of Hitler . This request
forced German soldiers into a dilemma whereby "they defended
Hitler with Germany and sacrificed Germany with Hitler. " Not–
withstanding Dregger's attempt to reinterpret history, the German
