Word: stern
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Until recently such an open challenge to the stern regime of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte would have been unthinkable. A notoriously repressive dictator, Pinochet has regularly silenced his opposition with torture, killings and exile. In the 9½ years since he took power in the bloody coup that overthrew Marxist President Salvador Allende Gossens, Pinochet has also maintained control by bringing remarkable prosperity to the Andean nation. But Chile's economic miracle may have run its course. After a booming 7.3% average yearly expansion of the economy from 1977 to 1981, Chile suffered a catastrophic 13% negative growth rate...
Last week, in one of the publishing sensations of the century, the document sleuths clearly won a victory over the forgers who seek to reap wealth while recasting history. The editors of the West German photo-weekly Stern had on April 22 dramatically announced the astounding discovery of 62 volumes of Adolf Hitler's alleged long-secret diaries. Bound in black imitation-leather covers, the magazine-size books purported to chronicle the Nazi Führer's years from 1932 to 1945. Hailed by Stern as "the journalistic scoop of the post-World War II period," the diaries were offered...
...international furor arose over the authenticity of the diaries, Stern's editors would say only that their trusted correspondent Gerd Heidemann, 51, had acquired the priceless documents and that he would not disclose who gave them to him or who had hidden them...
...Stern stuck stubbornly to its story. The magazine's claims drew heavily on the reputation of Cambridge Historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (The Last Days of Hitler), a director of the Times Newspapers Ltd. He examined some of the books in a Swiss bank and wrote...
...shortcomings of Stern and a few historians are not the most disturbing aspects of this fiasco. The diaries were clearly an attempt to show Hitler in a different, more positive light. Excerpts released before the hoax was discovered maintained that Hitler was reluctant prior to the war to persecute Jews and had attempted several times during the conflict to make peace with the allies. Every historical account to date on the Third Reich flatly contradicts these theses. But given Hitler's stamp of legitimacy, a new version of the Nazi era could conceivably have emerged and been accepted by future...