The DU Lounge

"Bonzo Goes to Bitburg," the Ramones 1985 single, pictured Reagan's controversial visit to a German military cemetery in Bitburg earlier that year. Critics in the US, Europe, and Israel decried the presidential visit because among the 2,000 German soldiers buried there were 49 members of the Waffen-SS who had committed genocidal atrocities. The phrase "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" was coined by protesters in the weeks leading up to Reagan's trip.[138] Before the trip, Reagan ignited more controversy when he expressed his belief that the soldiers buried at Bitburg "were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps."