The intense controversy caused by the Bitburg memorial service with its suggestion that the Nazi era was a "normal" period led those who were in favor of "normalization" to redouble their efforts. The "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" newspaper published an opinion piece in early 1986 saying that the Jews needed to be "tactful" in dealing with Germans and should not be bringing up the Holocaust as that would insult German sensitivities. The minister-president of Bavaria, Franz Josef Strauss, complained that the Germans had spent too long "on their knees" and needed to learn how to "walk tall again", arguing that 40 years of guilt had been quite enough. As part of his "walk tall" speech, Strauss argued that West Germany needed to "become a normal nation again", saying "German history cannot be presented as an endless chain of mistakes and crimes", and that Germans should be proud to be German. Strauss's reference to the Germans "kneeling" in his "walk tall" speech was to the "Kniefall von Warschau" when in 1970 the West German chancellor Willy Brandt had knelt before a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto, saying as a German he felt ashamed of what had happened. Strauss's "walk tall" speech, with its implicit criticism of Brandt kneeling in guilt before the site of the Warsaw Ghetto, was very polarizing.