Writing of Nolte's claim that Weizmann's letter was a “Jewish declaration of war”, Winkler stated that “No German historian has ever accorded Hitler such a sympathetic treatment”. Winkler wrote the current controversy over the memory of the Nazi past was caused by the controversy over Bitburg ceremony, writing that just as American had learned to forget about the My Lai massacre, the Bitburg ceremony was meant to allow German "to be able to feel an unbroken sense of pride". Winkler charged the editors of the "Frankurter Allgemeine Zeitung" in response to the Bitburg controversy had started a campaign meant to end any sense of guilt over the Nazi past. Winkler asked what was the point of these comparisons of Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union and Cambodia, writing: "Culturally, Germany is a country of the West. It participated in the European Enlightenment and in a long tradition of the rule of law. That is not the case for Russia and certainly not for Cambodia. The crimes of Stalin and the Khmer Rouge are in no way excused by this fact. But Hitler and his helpers must be judged by our Western norms. In this historical context, the systematic genocide of the Jews ordered by the German state-but also the murder of Sinti and Roma-is the greatest crime of the twentieth century, in fact of world history".