The
poster being distributed in Germany announcing the Obama
speech:
already a collector's item.
Frankfurter Rundschau, Germany
On Obama's Speech, and the Nazi Past of the Victory Column ...
"We
recommend: blowing it up! And not just the Victory Column! Berlin was Hitler’s
capitol and so it's impossible to find any historically untainted place."
Berlin's Victory
Column: Some Germans feel it's the wrong place for Obama's speech because
of Hitler's relocation of the Column as part of hisgrand plan for Berlin .
When he visits us this week, the most promising candidate
for the U.S. presidency will deliver a keynote address on the principles of his
foreign policy. This is a great expression of high regard. But many of those
who have been following the German debate about Barack Obama’s appearance have
come to a more-surprising explanation of why he's here: Perhaps the candidate
enjoys visiting us so much because there's so much to laugh about in our
country.
Probably nowhere else in the world would people debate the
correct location for a speech with such seriousness. The latest news: some
second and third tier politicians have now realized that Berlin’s Victory
Column , the place
where Obama intends to deliver his speech, possesses a martial past - from the
Nazi period no less.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
We
recommend: blowing it up! And not just the Victory Column! Berlin was Hitler’s
capitol and so it's impossible to find any historically untainted place. In any
event, we can't expect Obama to display such an awareness of German history
during his speech.
Perhaps we should declare Bonn Germany’s capitol again. At
least that city is as small as the stature of our debate. And historically, it
is relatively unencumbered.
View
toward Brandenburg Gate from atop the Victory Tower
in
Berlin. About a million people are expected to gather there
on Thursday
to hear Barack Obama Speak.
[Editor's Note: Conceived in 1864
to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian war, by the time the
Victory Column, or Tiergarten, was inaugurated in 1873, Prussia had also
defeated Austria in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and France in the
Franco-Prussian War (1870/1871), giving the statue a new purpose. These later
victories in the so-called Unification Wars, inspired the addition of the 8.3
meter-high bronze sculpture of Victoria. As part of his megalomaniacal plans to
redesign Berlin, Hitler had the column moved from another part of Berlin to
where it stands today .]
