Mr Churchill's greatest achievement: five hundred at a time, the victims of his holocaust are cremated on the city's main square, February 1945 (Exclusive Website Picture: FPP/Walter Hahn).

Germans shun Churchill barracks plan

By Andrew Gimson in Berlin

A SUGGESTION to rename a German army barracks after Winston Churchill was welcomed yesterday by British war veterans but condemned by many Germans. Germany's [Socialist] defence minister, Rudolf Scharping, wants a review of all barracks named after soldiers from the Wehrmacht - the wartime army - and has said he would in future prefer to name barracks after foreigners who helped Germany into the Western alliance after the war.

Mr Scharping said: "We are rightly proud that Winston Churchill in 1946 in Zurich spoke of the United States of Europe and did not exclude Germany from it."

But the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper yesterday advised Mr Scharping "not to start with Dresden" when he looked round for a barracks to name after Churchill - a reference to the devastating air raid on the city by British and American bombers in 1945.

The former Bundeswehr General Günter Kiessing said Churchill's record was "tragically inseparable from his responsibility for fatal mistakes, ranging from . . . Dresden to the expulsion of Germans from their eastern territories".

Our opinion

  FURTHER PROOF OF the Charakterschweine that German politicians have become.