Schroeder to lay wreath at D-Day soldier's grave
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will lay a wreath at the tomb of an unknown German soldier during this weekend’s 60th anniversary commemorations of the Allied D-Day invasion in Normandy.
Schroeder, the first German chancellor to take part in D-Day commemorations, will on Sunday visit a military cemetery in Ranville where 322 Germans are buried alongside some 2,200 fallen Commonwealth soldiers.
He will lay a wreath at a cross commemorating all the soldiers in the cemetery and another one at the grave of an unknown German soldier, said Schroeder’s spokesman Bela Anda.
The chancellor, who was born two months before the Allied invasion, has hailed his invitation by French President Jacques Chirac as a powerful sign of reconciliation and confirmation that post-Second World War acrimony is over.
Some German conservatives had criticised Schroeder, claiming the Social Democratic chancellor had no plans to visit German war graves while in France.
Anda rejected the criticism, saying that Schroeder’s visit to the cemetery had been planned for some time.
Reports and allegations that Schroeder “would not visit, or even avoid, graves of German soldiers have no basis in fact,” Anda said.
