Bertelsmann: DER SPIEGEL has examined documents that show exactly what actions by whom led up to CEO Thomas Middelhoff’s departure.

“The General’s Desert of Death”

Afghanistan: In November 2001, thousands of Taliban fighters surrendered to the Northern Alliance. Later, hundreds of skeletons were found in the desert. A member of President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet appears to be responsible for a massacre. Did the Americans condone the mass murder? Anyone searching for answers will inevitably stumble across the name of Rashid Dostum. Compassion is alien to this man with a Stalin-type beard. Dostum has a totally innocent-sounding explanation for the dead in his desert: they are, he says, Usbeks who were butchered years ago by the Taliban. However, the dead of Sheberghan did not die in battle, not even Dostum’s men claim that. “The containers stood in the desert for several days,” says an eye-witness. In the end, the soldiers removed the corpses, “perhaps six or seven hundred”. In the north of Afghanistan, mass murder using containers has for many years been one way of getting rid of captive enemies. The method is always the same: first as many prisoners as possible are crowded together in as small a space as possible. The lack of oxygen leads to slow, agonising death by suffocation.

“An Easier Life”

Immigration: Fleeing from terrorism and economic crisis, many Israelis are applying for German passports – also as a ticket to Europe. Although the Holocaust still has an inevitable influence on German/Israeli relations, a German passport is no longer a taboo. The German embassy in Tel Aviv estimates that some 60,000 Israelis already hold a second passport bearing the German eagle. For many Israelis, it says, the document is a kind of insurance policy if the worst should come to the worst and the situation deteriorates even further.

“We Always Reckon with Violence”

Minorities: Celebrated as musicians, humiliated as “blacks”, the position of Eastern European Gypsies needs to be improved, to come in line with the demands of the EU towards its candidates for membership. But integration is making slow progress. EU investigators report that hostility and prejudice are still omnipresent. Clichés about sly, mean gypsies are a popular way of getting votes.

“The Aeroplane Hunters”

Militaria: Treasure-seekers are digging up crashed Wehrmacht aeroplanes and tanks in the Russian swamps, to sell them to collectors in the West. In doing so they often destroy any hope of establishing the fate of missing soldiers. Digging up old arms from the World War is not forbidden by Russian law, but to salvage a wreck you need a permit, which in turn is not granted to everyone. Inventive salvagers therefore work by night and smuggle their illegal wares out of the country via St. Petersburg, with the help of incorrectly declared documents and bribed officials.

“Kafka Was Even Crazier”

SPIEGEL interview with best-selling US author Tom Clancy, about terrorist fantasies before and after September 11, the filming of his thriller “The Sum of All Fears” and his latest novel “Red Rabbit”:

“I don’t think about politics when I’m writing. I think it’s unlikely that terrorists will set off an atom bomb in US cities. … In the late 1980s, I told a general who was responsible for the surveillance of the capital’s airspace what we had thought up [Editors’ note: A kamikaze pilot steers a jumbo jet into the Capitol, killing almost the entire US administration]. He went very quiet. Then he said: if plans for such an event existed, I would not be allowed to talk about them. But we have never considered this kind of threat. … As a matter of principle, I don’t talk about my books before they have been published. That would be cheating the reader. All I’ll say is this: it is about a true event in the 1980s. That’s what I spin my story around.”

“Playing Poker over a Phantom”

Art collectors: Berlin’s cultural policy-makers and museum directors are hoping to secure the huge art collection of billionaire Mick Flick, but preferably quietly and discreetly. The spectacular art deal is threatened by protests against the collection, which was financed by a controversial fortune. Mick Flick’s wealth is viewed as disreputable. The collector is one of the heirs to the arms mogul Friedrich Flick. The latter, Mick’s grandfather, made a career for himself under Hitler, accumulating even more money. Tens of thousands of slave labourers suffered in Flick’s factories. Nevertheless, Mick Flick refused to contribute to the compensation fund for the selfsame slave labourers. Cultural policy in a tight spot: one the one hand, no one in Berlin wants to be seen as an obstructer when in comes to getting their hands on a priceless collection of artwork; on the other hand, none of the capital’s cultural watchdogs want to be accused of being war profiteers.