Posted on 04/17/2014 10:27:00 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
They even still have Karl Marx Allee in Eastern Berlin.
Yep. Its an eyesore in an otherwise picturesque park.
During the Cold War this war memorial was one of three places the Russians had the right to post their troops, based on the outcome of the Second World War. The other two were Spandau Prison and the Berlin Air Safety Center.
Given the tank in the picture is a T-34 with a 76mm gun and the primary assault armies would be using T-34/85s i doubt they were the first tanks even though the soviets were using plenty of T-34/76s in 1945.
A lot of those Red Army soldiers were Ukrainians.
You actully posted this in reply to a comment about Estonia? A country that was forcebly held as "just another Russian province" for 50 years? You're joking right?
And that's a joke too regarding totalitarian East Germany?
Crap - went back and read my post again, saw I typed the tank model wrong. Thanks for your further info and correction on that tank. We weren’t allowed as close as the picture shows when I did the slow roll bus drive-by so I never looked, just took the word of the tour guide.
Typos happen even on the model building forums but here you cant go back and correct later.
Was at ipms club breakfast talking about new ww1 kits coming out and one guy said some soviet at teams were still carrying 14.5mm and the like at rifles in ‘45. Always learning something.
the syrians still had a couple of PZ-IVs, late models with L75/48s, on the golan heights in ‘67 war.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.