US President Barack Obama swapped the political heat of the Middle East for a solemn two-day mission of World War II remembrance, and a fresh round of transatlantic diplomacy.
He met German Chancellor Angela Merkel early Friday in the heart of Dresden, where Allied bombing in the final months of World War II flattened the city and killed an estimated 35,000 people.
After policy talks and a news conference at around 0810 GMT, Obama and Merkel were due to travel to Buchenwald, the former Nazi concentration camp where more than 56,000 prisoners perished.
After paying a visit to wounded US troops in Landstuhl medical centre, the US president was due to wrap up his trip in France at the 65th anniversary commemorations of the D-Day landings in Normandy on Saturday.
Obama flew in late Thursday from Cairo after a landmark address to the Muslim world vowing to forge a "new beginning" for Islam and America and laid out a new blueprint for US Middle East policy.
International leaders hailed Obama's speech on ties with the Muslim world as opening a "new page" but arch foes called for Washington to deliver action rather than words.
Ahead of his visit to Germany Merkel praised the "special historical significance" of Obama's trip.
She told the Leipziger Volkszeitung daily in an interview that Dresden, Normandy and Buchenwald were all "examples of the dreadful suffering" unleashed by Nazi Germany across Europe.
Obama pointedly mentioned Buchenwald in his University of Cairo address.
"Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust," he said.
"Tomorrow (Thursday), I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich.
"Six million Jews were killed -- more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful," Obama said in a clear swipe at Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who has questioned whether the Holocaust took place.
German media said the visit was also a conciliatory gesture to Israel and to Jews in the United States after Obama's landmark Cairo address's also included criticisms of Israeli settlement policy.
Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who was accompanying Obama to Buchenwald, told AFP he expected the president to be "very moved" by what he would see there.
Obama's visit to Buchenwald would also have an important personal element as his great-uncle, Charlie Payne, took part as a US army private in the 1945 liberation of Ohrdruf, a forced labour camp that was a satellite of Buchenwald.
Payne, now 84 and in frail health, decided not to accompany the president to Buchenwald, but will join Obama's party at the Normandy commemorations at the US war cemetery at Colleville-sur-mer.
The decision to visit Dresden has prompted conservative US bloggers to speculate that Obama plans an "apology" for the raids in 1945 that destroyed three-quarters of the once-beautiful eastern city.
The city has been lovingly restored in the intervening years, and Merkel led the president through the Green Vault museum of treasures collected by the Saxon royal family.
Obama remains extremely popular in Germany, nearly a year after he drew a rapturous crowd of 200,000 to the streets of Berlin as a presidential candidate.
An aide said Obama was interested in hearing about life behind the Iron Curtain from Merkel, who grew up in the former communist East Germany.
The US president will follow up his meeting with Merkel with talks with French President Sarkozy.
Copyright 2009  AFP American Edition
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