Germany rejects call to remove Russian tanks from WWII memorial

AFP via Yahoo! ^

[wetphoenix]

Berlin (AFP) - The German government rejected Wednesday a call by two newspapers to remove Russian tanks from a World War II memorial in central Berlin in protest against spiralling tensions in Ukraine.

The top-selling daily Bild and local tabloid B.Z. launched a petition drive Tuesday to urge parliament to send a message to Moscow against last month's annexation of Crimean peninsula and the military build-up on Ukraine's eastern border.

However Chancellor Angela Merkel's deputy spokesman Georg Streiter quashed the bid Wednesday, noting that Berlin had signed a 1990 treaty with Russia pledging to "respect, maintain and care for" the Soviet war monuments in Germany in their current form.

"The German government complies with this commitment and honours this particular way of commemorating fallen Red Army soldiers," he told reporters.

The Soviet War Memorial in the Tiergarten park, one of three large Russian monuments in the German capital, is dedicated to the 80,000 Red Army troops killed during the Battle of Berlin in the spring of 1945.

It was erected just months after the end of World War II and stands near the Reichstag parliament building and the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of Germany's post-Cold War reunification.

The memorial features several columns, a giant statue of a Russian soldier and two T-34 tanks.

Germany's criticism of Russia during the crisis in Ukraine, a former Soviet state, has at times been muted by the countries' close trade ties but also by the weight of Berlin's war-time guilt.

An estimated 20 million Soviet citizens are believed to have died in the conflict unleashed by Nazi Germany.

[PaulCruz2016]

The German government...honours this particular way of commemorating fallen Red Army soldiers

It seems kind of weird to honor enemy soldiers, the ones that killed your country's people and soldiers. I know Germany lost, but still.

[tcrlaf]

It is a reminder to never let it happen again.

[Lockbar]

Its been well known for a couple of decades that a good number, well into the thousands, of the 80,000 soviets killed in Berlin were killed by other Soviet soldiers, in a competition between different Red Army units to capture the Brandenburg gate and the Reichstag building. Even with that being said, if some Germans don't like Russian war memorials in their country, then their fore-fathers shouldn't have tried to capture The USSR in 1941.

[RitchieAprile]

there are German war cemetaries and graves all over the EU Belarus Ukraine and Russia that they want to be respected.

[BenLurkin]

Now would be a good time.

[BenLurkin]

If the Germans don’t like Russian war memorials in their country — they should tear them down.

Today.

[knarf]

history never happened .. damn those ruskies anyway.

[knarf]

history never happened .. damn those ruskies anyway.

[22202NOVA]

Which thing? Starting a war, or losing it?

[Axenolith]

Plus the citizens like to have their MIAs returned, and there are a LOT of them. Most of the Russians are not identifiable because they used a little celluloid tube that you put a paper tag in, and they decayed, but the Germans had regular dog tags

[Dagnabitt]

A few years ago the Estonians declared they were going to clear some old Soviet Red Army memorial from the Tallinn city center. The local Russians got drunker than usual and rioted, but the Estonians held firm and moved the former totalitarian occupier's relic to a more remote location.

If little Estonia can rid their streets of communist garbage, why can't Germany?

[Altenkrug]

If Russians were totalitarian occupiers there would be no Germany now. It would be just another Russian province. ..

[wetphoenix]

~If Russians were totalitarian occupiers there would be no Germany now. It would be just another Russian province. ..~

True. If they were at least as cruel to German civilian population as Germans were to Russians and Ukrainian, there wouldn’t be a single German left.

[Mogger]

Its been well known for a couple of decades that a good number, well into the thousands, of the 80,000 soviets killed in Berlin were killed by other Soviet soldiers, in a competition between different Red Army units to capture the Brandenburg gate and the Reichstag building.

Wouldn't it be great if we could get the democRATS competing with one another in such a manner to capture something?

[sheik yerbouty]

They can fight each other to capture an outhouse!

[T-Bird45]

I visited this memorial as part of a Berlin tour back in 1980 when there were still Russian soldiers goose-stepping across the front because the monument was considered part of the Russian zone of occupation. I was on a tour bus that was allowed to slowly drive in front of the monument. The Russians claimed the T39 tanks on the pedestals were the first two into Berlin in 1945.

Thanks for posting as I had often wondered what happened to this after The Wall came down.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

The Russians wanted to use German industrial capacity to fight the U.S. Besides, wider wholesale slaughter of German civilians would have tarnished (even further) their international image. Virtually every German woman between 14 and 60 was raped repeatedly by the Red Army in areas that fell under Russian control. Suicide was quite rare in Germany prior to the War. Afterwards, there was no great spike in western occupied parts of Germany, and huge spike in suicides by young women in Russian occupied areas. Draw your own conclusions.

[skeeter]

I had never seen a monument like this one inside the country of a former adversary - especially one to an adversary that really wasn't any more morally righteous.

I would 'respectfully' pack up the tanks and statue and ship it back to mother Russian.

BTW the marble used in this memorial was taken from the destroyed Reich Chancellery.

[VeniVidiVici]

Get rid of it. Plenty of other Soviet monuments in Eastern Berlin they can go slobber over.