Spiegel Scandal - Course

Course

Minister Strauß and editor Augstein had already clashed a year earlier, when, in 1961, Spiegel raised accusations of bribery in favor of the FIBAG construction company, which had received a contract for building military facilities. However, a parliamentary enquiry then found no evidence against Strauß.

The quarrel then escalated on October 8, 1962, when the October 10 issue of Der Spiegel was published, with the article "Bedingt abwehrbereit" ("prepared for defense to limited extent"), about a NATO maneuver called "Fallex 62". The piece uncovered the sorry state of the Bundeswehr (Germany's armed forces) facing the communist threat from the east. At that time, the armed forces had been given the grade "prepared for defense to only a limited extent", the lowest possible NATO-grade.

The magazine was accused of treason. At 9 p.m. on October 26, 1962, the magazine's offices in Hamburg were seized and (together with the houses of several journalists) searched by 36 policemen, and thousands of documents were confiscated. The offices would remain shut down for weeks. Augstein and the then-editors-in-chief Claus Jacobi and Johannes Engel were arrested. The author of the article, Conrad Ahlers, who was vacationing in Spain, was seized in his hotel during the night. Augstein would be remain in custody for 103 days.

Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was informed of Strauß's actions. However, Wolfgang Stammberger, the Minister of Justice, belonging to the smaller coalition party FDP, was deliberately left out of all decisions. News of the arrest caused riots and protest throughout Germany. Strauß initially denied all involvement, even before the Bundestag: Adenauer, in another speech, famously complained about an "abyss of treason" ("Abgrund von Landesverrat").

Strauß was finally forced to admit that he had phoned the German military attaché in Madrid and urged him to arrest Ahlers. This was clearly illegal — as Minister of the Interior Hermann Höcherl famously paraphrased, "etwas außerhalb der Legalität" ("somewhat outside of legality"). Since Strauß had lied to the parliament, on November 19, the five FDP ministers of the cabinet resigned, demanding that Strauß and Volkmar Hopf be fired. This put Adenauer himself at risk. He found himself publicly accused of backing the suppression of a critical press with the resources of the state.