In the fall of 1962, the newsmagazine Der Spiegel published a cover story holding its alltime favorite enemy, Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss, responsible for a long list of deficiencies in West Germany's defenses. What happened next reminded Germans of a part of their heritage most of them would rather forget.
Squads of security police stormed into the magazine's Hamburg head quarters and its bureau in Bonn, ransacking files and arresting everyone in sight. Publisher Rudolf Augstein was held without bail, and Military Editor Conrad Ahlers was forcibly sent back from a vacation...
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