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US Presidents in Germany

 
President Truman visited Germany about two months after the end of World War II to participate in the watershed Potsdam Conference. The purpose of the meeting with the other heads of states of the victorious powers, Great Britain and Soviet Union, was to put the resolutions drafted at the Yalta conference into action. Truman, Churchill and Stalin discussed the partitioning of the post-war world and resolving the problems of the war in the Far East. It was to be Truman's only presidential trip to Germany during his eight-year term that lasted until 1953. President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited Bonn on Aug. 26, 1959, where he met with German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer for talks largely addressing the occupation of West Berlin and growing strife with the Soviet Union concerning communist East Germany. Eisenhower had been instrumental in changing the post-war occupation of Germany and supporting the country’s efforts to be included in NATO. When US President John F. Kennedy visited Germany in June 1963, he held a legendary speech in front of the Schoeneberg Rathaus during which he expressed his solidarity with the divided German people by declaring in German: President Lyndon B. Johnson visited Germany from April 23-26, 1967, holding talks with German Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger and other Western state leaders in Bonn after attending the funeral of Germany's first post-war Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in Cologne on April 25, 1967. The long-delayed presidential visit solidified the US-German relations, which had been strained over the question of continued West German funding of American military occupation. On his official trip to Germany from Feb. 26-27, 1969, Richard Nixon visited Bonn and Berlin, where he met with Berlin's Mayor Klaus Schuetz for a tour of the Berlin Wall. During his speech in front of the German parliament, the Bundestag, in Bonn, Nixon pointed out that this was the first time that he, as President of the United States, appeared before any legislative body as he had not yet had the opportunity to appear before Congress at this early point of his presidency. On his two-day trip to Germany in July 1975, President Gerald Ford visited Bonn to hold talks with German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and then continued on to Giessen, where he stopped at the military barracks in Kirchgoens to address German soldiers. President Jimmy Carter came to Germany in July 1978. On his four-day trip, he visited Bonn, the Wiesbaden-Erbenheim Air Base, Frankfurt and Berlin. He met with German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and President Walter Scheel and held speeches in Bonn and Frankfurt. He also attended the Economic Summit Meeting in Bonn. On his first official visit to Germany, President Ronald Reagan stopped at Checkpoint Charlie, the notorious border crossing point between East and West Berlin on June 11, 1982. He was accompanied by German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Richard von Weizsaecker, who then served as Berlin's major. Reagan's visit to the military cemetery in Bitburg on May 5, 1985 stirred a lot of controversy as 49 members of the Nazi Visiting Berlin on the occasion of its 750th anniversary, President Ronald Reagan held a speech in front of the Berlin Wall on June 12, 1987. He delivered his speech to the people of West Germany, but it was audible in East Berlin as well. Reagan demanded of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: Mainz was on the list of destinations on President George Bush's visit to Germany in May 1989. After talks in Bonn, he held a speech in the Rheingoldhalle in Mainz, which was applauded by Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The two state leaders then took a boat trip on the Rhine from Oberwesel to Koblenz. President Bill Clinton shook hands in the crowd after his speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on July 12, 1994. He was the first American President to hold a speech at the historical sight in a united Berlin and he would visit Germany another four times during his presidency.
 

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