Bergen-Belsen should not be the cause for Germans to have any "guilt feelings" about the Nazi past. The Bitburg ceremony was widely interpreted in Germany as the beginning of the "normalization" of the Nazi past, namely the viewpoint that the Germans had a "normal" history that would not cause shame or guilt, and instead inspire pride in being German. The Christian Democratic politician and Second World War veteran Alfred Dregger in a public letter published on 20 April 1985 and written to a group of 53 U.S. senators opposed to the Bitburg service, stated for Reagan to not attend the Bitburg service would be an insult both to himself and to his brother who had been killed fighting the Red Army in 1945. Dregger stated that he was proud to have served in the Wehrmacht and to have fought the Red Army in Silesia in 1945, insisting he and his brother had fought in World War II in an effort to save Europe from Communism. Finally, Dregger linked Nazi Germany's war against the Soviet Union to the Cold War, arguing that all of the men buried in Bitburg, whatever they were in the Wehrmacht or the Waffen-SS, had died fighting nobly and honorably against the Soviet Union, which was just as much the enemy in 1985 as it had been in 1945. Bringing up a point later made by Andreas Hillgruber, Dregger emphasized Red Army atrocities against German civilians in 1945, insisting he and everybody else served on the German side in the Eastern Front had waged an "honorable" fight to protect German civilians from the Red Army. Dregger called Hitler and his regime a small criminal clique that had nothing to do with the honorable and noble war waged by the Wehrmacht to "defend" Germany from the Red Army, arguing that the battles and campaigns to protect German civilians from the Red Army was an episode in Germany worthy of the utmost admiration, and should be honored with Reagan attending the Bitburg memorial service. Amid much controversy, on 8 May 1985, Kohl and Reagan visited the Bitburg cemetery and placed memorial wreathes to honor all of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS men buried there. The American historian Fritz Stern wrote that Kohl and Reagan were engaging in "symbolic politics" with the Bitburg ceremony, to suggest the memory of the Nazi past should to a certain extent be exorcised with the