Events from the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp to Germany's final defeat on May 8, 1945, will be marked with solemn speeches and acts of reconciliation with former foes.
But even the best-planned events could, if mishandled, turn into public-relations disasters for the democratic Germany that arose from the ashes of World War II.
The 40th anniversary of the war's end went off well, thanks to a speech by then-president Richard von Weizs?cker stressing Germany's genocide against the Jews and calling May 8 the nation's day of liberation.
But the first major 50th-anniversary event -- a 1988 speech recalling the "Kristallnacht" pogroms -- ended in uproar when parliamentary speaker Philipp Jenninger seemed to justify Adolf Hitler's appeal.
And before the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings in France there was an embarrassing uproar over whether Chancellor Helmut Kohl should attend the ceremonies. In the end, only a senior diplomat represented Bonn.
After that, Kohl and Germany's present-day allies seemed to agree to mark the end of the war in Berlin with a ceremony stressing their reconciliation and cooperation since 1945, rather than the years of horror that preceded it.
But officials and foreign diplomats in Bonn say that Germany could run into severe scheduling problems if it does not decide soon how it wants to mark May 8.
Britain has already invited Germany and the wartime allies to a youth festival in London on May 7, and Paris and Moscow are expected to announce events of their own soon, they said.
"If the Germans don't make their minds up quickly, they could find someone else has invited everybody for May 8," one diplomat remarked.
The year's first major event, the Jan. 27 anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, presents no problem for Bonn, since the former concentration camp is in Poland. President Roman Herzog will represent Germany there but make no speech.
Herzog's pledge to speak in Dresden on Feb. 13, 50 years after Allied bombers gutted the city in a firestorm, worries critics who fear the wounds that attack tore open have still not healed.
The federal government has no plans to mark any anniversary but that of the final defeat on May 8, but many cities and towns are organizing local events.
The sleepy town of Remagen will host a reunion of American and German veterans on March 7, the day the U.S. 1st Army crossed the Rhine.
The horror scenes that met the Allied troops that liberated concentration camps like Bergen-Belsen and Dachau, will come back to haunt the sad ceremonies due in March and April. Subsequent anniversaries arrive almost daily.
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