On Sunday, August 15, 2021, three US helicopters will fly 43 men and women from the German Embassy in Kabul from the heavily secured "Green Zone" of the Afghan capital to the airport.
On the same day, the Taliban take over the capital and, after 20 years, control the whole country again.
In this podcast, Konstantin von Hammerstein, SPIEGEL expert on security and defense policy, reconstructs what happened in the German embassy in the decisive days and weeks before.
And how the federal government only accepted the reality in Afghanistan at the very end: »People acted as if they had all the time in the world, but in truth I think that everyone was hoping that things would only go down the drain after the federal elections. «
In this episode of SPIEGEL-Daily you will hear how the German embassy prepared for the Taliban to take power and under what circumstances the Bundeswehr started its rescue mission.
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