Franz Josef Strauß

Born in Munich on 6 September 1915, as the second child of a butcher, Strauss studied German letters, history and economics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München from 1935 to 1939. He was an active member of a Roman Catholic youth organization that clashed with the Nazi Party. Like most young men in Germany he was called up for military service when war began in 1939. Thanks to his university background he became an officer.

Strauss married Marianne Zwicknagl in 1957. She died in a car accident in 1984. They had three children: Maximilan Josef, Franz Georg, and Monika, who was member of the Landtag of Bavaria and a Bavarian minister. In 2009 she was elected to the European Parliament.

After the war, in 1945, he was appointed deputy Landrat (chief executive and representative of the district) of Schongau by the American military government and was involved in founding the local party organization of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU). Strauss became a member of the first Bundestag (Federal Parliament) in 1949.

In 1953, Strauss became Federal Minister for Special Affairs in the second cabinet of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, in 1955, Federal Minister of Nuclear Energy, and in 1956, Defence Minister, charged with the build-up of the new West German defence forces, the Bundeswehr – the youngest man to hold this office at the time. He became chairman of the CSU in 1961.

Strauss stated in a letter to HIAG in March 1957: "I think you know how I personally think about the front-line units of the Waffen-SS. They are included in my admiration for the German soldiers of the last world war."

Former Lockheed lobbyist Ernest Hauser admitted to investigators during a U.S. Senate hearing that Minister of Defence Strauss and his party had received at least $10 million in remuneration for arranging West Germany's purchase of 900 F-104G Starfighters in 1961, which later became part of the Lockheed bribery scandals. The party, its leaders, and Strauss all denied the allegations; and Strauss filed a slander suit against Hauser. Strauss and Hauser had met after World War II in Schongau, Bavaria, where Hauser was stationed. They were good friends, which Strauss later denied, in a denial belied by the fact that Strauss had attended Hauser's wedding. As the allegations were not corroborated, the issue was dropped. It was known at the time that a Senate hearing in the U.S. revealed that Lockheed associates paid Strauss a bribe to purchase the planes, due to Boeing suing Lockheed over the lost German business. In a Senate hearing in the U.S., it was admitted by Lockheed associates that the funds were disbursed to Strauss. In spite of this fact, Strauss was never indicted in Germany due to his influence. Lockheed at that time was on the brink of collapse; the German contract was key to the company's survival. The F-104G's development had been expensive; the U.S. Air Force refused to purchase the plane due to its unnecessary features. The German contract proved to be a windfall for Lockheed. After Germany ordered the fighter planes from Lockheed, many more European governments started to place their trust in the Starfighter and ordered more planes, saving Lockheed from financial ruin.