Chancellor Helmut Kohl was attending a gathering of parliamentarians from his Christian Democratic Union last week when the bad news arrived: the Bonn public prosecutor's office was opening an investigation into allegations that Kohl had lied about campaign contributions from one of West Germany's largest industrial conglomerates, the Friedrich Flick Industrieverwaltung. It was the first time ever that a sitting West German Chancellor had been the subject of such a probe, and raised the possibility that Kohl might face criminal charges while still in office.
Kohl has acknowledged that as chairman of the CDU between 1974 and 1980, he accepted political...
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