It began as part of a well-intentioned plan to observe the 40th
anniversary of V-E Day -- May 8, 1945, the day Hitler's Third Reich
collapsed and Europe was freed from Nazi tyranny. Since President Ronald
Reagan was scheduled to attend an economic summit in Bonn that week in
1985, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl saw an opportunity to demonstrate
the strength of the friendship that existed between his nation and its
former foe, the United States. During a November 1984 visit to the White
House, Kohl appealed to Reagan to join him in appearing at a German
military cemetery to symbolize the reconciliation of their two countries,
once mortal enemies and now staunch allies. Kohl suggested the Kolmeshohe
Cemetery at Bitburg, a quaint town in the Eifel hills where nearly 11,000
Americans attached to a nearby airbase lived in harmony with the same
number of Germans. Approximately 2,000 German servicemen were interred at
Kolmeshohe. Reagan agreed. As he later told an aide, he felt he owed
Helmut Kohl, who despite considerable public and political opposition had
stood steadfast with Reagan on the deployment of Pershing missiles in West
Germany a few years earlier, when Reagan had been determined to respond to
the placement of Soviet missiles that threatened Europe.

What the newspapers said about the Bitburg visit:

The Washington Post (23 April 1985): "President Reagan cannot go to
Bitburg. It is out of the question for the leader of the Western world to
lay a wreath in a war cemetery where Nazi storm troopers are buried. . . .
http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id342.htm

Reagan went and layed the wreath anyway, like a good little Nazi.