The anguish caused by Barbarossa's death gave birth to the legend that he was
not really dead, but sleeping in a cave inside the Kyffhäuser mountain located at
the border of Thuringia, sitting on his throne surrounded by his loyal knights,
with his crown upon his head, his eyes half-closed in slumber and his white
beard so long it trailed on the ground. Peasants said, for many long years,
“When the ravens cease to fly round the mountain, Barbarossa shall awake and
restore Germany to its ancient greatness." A dwarf checks every 100 years
whether the ravens are still flying, for every 1000 years he is to be awakened
by a raven, long enough for him to see if it is his time to come back. Some say
this legend originally pertained to his father but was modified in the 16th century
Various German associations during the late German Empire financed the construction of a grand
memorial to Barbarossa on the Kyffhäuser mountain. In January 1900, they united into "The
Kyffhäuser Federation of the Landwarrior Union," dedicated to the care and repair of the monument.
In 1945, Allied directives issued as part of  the "re-education" process demanded the destruction all
German monuments and museums "dedicated to the military and nationalism" and outlawed all
"patriotic or nationalistic" organizations, the Kyffhäuser federation being one of them. Few objects
were exempted from destruction, this monument fortunately being one of them, although through no
fault of the Allies who wanted it destroyed. Oddly enough, it was the Russians who, for some
unknown reason, saved the monument. The innocuous Association has recently reformed.
Germany was a land of grand and lovely monuments dating from before the Middle Ages. 90% of
them were destroyed by indiscriminate Allied bombing. The remaining few which were deemed by
the occupying Allies or Red Army as "patriotic, nationalistic or idealizing German culture" were
demolished without regard to their age, artistic merit, rarity, history or beauty in all occupied zones.
At the behest of Emperor Wilhelm I, the old Berlin Armory was
converted in the years from 1877 to 1880 into a Hall of Fame to
honour the Brandenburg- Prussian army. The project cost 4.33
million marks and was based on plans by Friedrich Hitzig (1811
-1881). It was modelled on the Armory in Vienna. On October 18,
1945 the Armory War Museum, left, was dissolved on the orders of
Berlin Allied Command.
At the same time that the parks and squares of other European cites are full of old and new
monuments to warlike, controversial figures from their own histories such as Arthur Harris, German
get to gaze at monuments to the Soviets, the French and other former foes on their own soil and do
so quite submissively. Part of the re-education process had its base in theories of psychological
experts in World War One which concluded that Germans were inherently more violent than other
ethnic groups and had to be "de-militarized" in such a violent way that they would lose the will to
fight forever. Continuing cultural devastation by the Allied forces took place all over occupied
Germany. Even plaques with the names of war dead were often destroyed in this frenzy, and some
ancient tombs and crypts were raided and their contents removed to prevent "hero worship."
Destroying the "Will to Wage Future War"
Meanwhile, in Red Army zones, especially in stolen German cities and towns,
virtually every vestige of German culture was erased. While Germany is still not
allowed to sufficiently honor its own war dead, the massive Soviet memorial built
in Berlin from 1946-1949 (a small portion shown on right) commemorates the
20,000 Soviet soldiers that fell in the battle of Berlin. It juts up from the landscape
and is located in the heart of the calm gardens of Treptower Park in a city where
well over a million women suffered violent Red Army rape.
Some monuments, unlike the lovely old memorials in Düsseldorf and Hamburg, above left, actually
survived the cultural carnage of bombing and occupation only to fall later. Magdeburg had a beautiful
monument to beloved Prussian queen Luise, above center, who was a symbolic figure for the release
of Germany from Napoleon's tyranny. This old monument survived the monument desecration of
the post war era until 1963 when a communist professor insisted that the statue be razed for
"ideological reasons." Other monuments have been repeatedly vandalized recently by communists
and encouraged by the political left, above right. The historical monument above, second from right,
to the fallen soldiers in what was once German East Afrika has recently been smashed and stripped
of its ornaments by groups opposed to the "appalling genocide".
The occupying US military government replaced the
First World War monument in Erlangen, far left, with
a flower bowl. The other monument was built in
1897 in honor of Wilhelm l, and graced an Erlangen
square. The Allies tore it down in 1946 as part of an
effort to "de-militarize" the occupied Germans by
destroying their "negative" and "warlike" culture.
The Zoo grounds in Berlin were dotted with figures such as
the one of Goethe, far left. Almost all were destroyed by
Allied bombing which levelled Berlin. The victory column,
Die Siegessäule am Großen Stern, near left, was built from
1864 to 1873 at the Zoo to honor the German-Danish war
and the Franco-Prussian war. Amazingly, it survived the
bombing, but the communist and socialist municipal
authorities that the Allies put in charge of German cities
after war's end, in this case Berlin, vociferously requested
the destruction of all "nationalistic" monuments.
The French occupying the ruins of Berlin in 1945 also demanded that this monument be blown up.
The British and Americans rejected the idea based on the formal "legal" reason that the victory
column had been built before August 1,1914, the beginning of the First World War, and the very
arbitrary date from which the destruction of German monuments was given legitimacy. To appease
the French, they were allowed to remove the bronze sections of the monument and take them to
Paris. On the 750th anniversary of Berlin, France returned the Bronze sections, but in damaged and
fragmented condition. Even thus, the monument was finally renovated, giving back to Berlin one
small remnant of its cultural history. The French went even one step further in the Rhineland.
Monumental Destruction
The Battle of Sasbach took place on July 27, 1675, when imperial troops commanded by General
Raimondo Conte de Montecuccoli met forces under French General Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne,
Vicomte de Turenne. Turenne is regarded as France's greatest general next to Napoleon. He dutifully
served French kings Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. Although his men called him the "Father of the
soldiers", Germans understandably connected Turenne to the bloodshed and devastation the French
inflicted upon the German Palatine, especially in 1674.
The battle took place near the church of Sasbach and soon the whole village erupted into sorrow and
flames. As Turenne, sure of victory, mounted his horse and rode toward a small hill from where he
could observe the battle, a German gunner under the command of the Margrave Hermann of Baden
fired at him. The fatal cannon ball tore off the arm of a nearby general, then struck Turenne in his
stomach. Turenne fell off his horse and died under a chestnut tree. The French consequently
retreated in chaos across the Rhine.
In 1782, a monument in Turenne's honor under the auspices of
Cardinal Louis de Rohan was erected in Sasbach and was called the
'Monument of the Cardinal'. A guardhouse was erected near the
monument for its protection and a veteran of Turenne's regiment was
housed there. The monument was crowned by a lily, the symbol of the
French monarchy.  A fierce storm destroyed the monument in
1786.When French troops again occupied the right bank of the Rhine in
1796, their commander-in-chief ordered the destroyed monument
rebuilt. It was unfinished because of the revolutionary wars and
Napoleon had the corpse of Turenne transferred to the "dome des
Invalides" in 1800. The monument fell into decay
Under King Charles X. of France,1757-1836, a third monument was
ordered built, and Alsacian artist André Friedrich was commissioned to
erect it between 1826 and 1829. It was inscribed: "La France à
Turenne". The monument became a bitter symbol for French violence
and destruction for many Germans, and although it survived World War
I, after the German victory over France in 1940, it was destroyed on
September 26, 1940. On October 1945, a few months after the end of
the Second World War, French Occupation Forces in Germany under
General de Gaulle pompously inaugurated the fourth Turenne
monument in Sasbach to rub salt in the wound of German defeat.
It still exists today, but now has a new museum in the historic guardhouse and is  heralded as "a place
where Germans and French meet in friendship"and sponsor typical EU global youth peace projects.
The occupied German population was injected with expertly crafted and
inordinate amounts of guilt and self-deprecation, then re-educated further
to believe that their "redemption" would be hastened if their national
history was to "begin anew" at war's end, a thought which became a catch
phrase for their politicians who soon took to repeating it, and one which
would predominate even into today for many Germans who have grown
quite accustomed to their hair shirts and amazing loss of cultural history.
France especially hated German monuments. The 1897 monument to German Emperor
William I  was inaugurated on a spit of land on the Rhine near Koblenz known since the
days of the Teutonic Knights as Deutsches Eck, or German corner. During World War II,
the statue was blown up by US artillery (it was rumored that this was on  Eisenhower's
personal order) and the horse was mostly destroyed snd its valuable copper plates stolen.
Finally, the remaining statue was removed and melted down, although fragments of figures,
including the head of the emperor, reappeared later and now rest in a Koblenz Museum.
The French military occupational government intended to dismantle the base and replace it
with a new monument to "peace and international understanding" (yes, this from the same
peaceful folks who made over 40  bloody incursions into Germany over the centuries and
pillaged and burned down all the Rhine castles), but this plan failed due to lack of money.
Against all obstacles, in 1953, what was left of the monument was re-dedicated to German
unification, the once proud horse replaced by a German flag and its base graced with the
emblems of the western federal German states as well as those of the lost areas in the East.
The French-occupied Saarland was added four years later after its population voted to rejoin Germany. On October 3,
1990, when communist East Germany fell, those former states also joined in, and their emblems were added to the
monument. All that remained were the names of the lost German areas which had been stolen by Russia, ceded to Poland
and lost to France. That would not happen. Since it was demanded that Germany give up any hopes and claims for these
areas as a price for re-unification, all that was later added were three concrete pieces of the demolished Berlin Wall which
were installed next to the monument and dedicated to the victims of the separation. On September 25th, 1993, despite
the usual frenzied left wing protests, a new statue created with private funds and was inaugurated to replace the flag.