Helmut Schmidt: German strongman who helped to bring down the Soviets
1918-2015
HELMUT Schmidt, who has died aged 96, dominated the European stage more than any other politician during the ’70s as chancellor of West Germany; his eight years in office (1974-82) were marked by his restless energy and personal command of such difficult areas as defence and finance.
Schmidt led from the front, a quality appreciated by voters but scorned by his Social Democratic Party. Its leftward drift in the early ’80s let him down and condemned it to the opposition benches for much longer than expected.
Small in stature and, physically frail, Schmidt (or Schnauze, “The Lip”) was a tough, terrierlike politician, impatient of mediocrity. He had an intellectual breadth and versatility rare among his peers — and knew it. He was especially hurt that a man of much less obvious talent, Helmut Kohl, should unseat him as chancellor through the political treachery of his liberal coalition partners.
Nonetheless, physically exhausted by the exigencies of his hands-on approach to government, Schmidt might have lived a shorter life had he had a longer spell in office.
When he lost his job in 1982. he was cushioned by other interests, notably music; he was a pianist of near-professional standard. He also became a joint publisher of the weekly Die Zeit, and had a spell on the lucrative US lecture circuit.
Schmidt’s contribution to German, European and Nato politics will be remembered especially for its uncompromising stance on the Soviet arms buildup during the Brezhnev years.
Mindful of the invasions in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, his priority was to ensure that an inward-looking US was securely coupled to Europe. He thus became the chief architect and protagonist of Nato’s “dual track” decision to counter Moscow’s SS-20 medium-range rocket arsenal by stationing American cruise and Pershing-II missiles in Europe.
It was a bold stand for a social democrat and was to incur the displeasure of his party’s left wing and the large anti-nuclear movement. But it was endorsed by his principal political opponents, the Christian Democrats.
Moscow’s invasion of Afghanistan in December 1980 only strengthened Schmidt’s resolve, and by then he could count on Margaret Thatcher’s unequivocal support from London. In the end, Schmidt’s determination may have contributed to his losing power in Germany, but it was undoubtedly a factor in the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union at the end of the decade.
Schmidt will also be remembered as joint architect in 1978 — with French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing — of the European Monetary System, in which the robust German currency was destined to play a pivotal role. He could thus claim to be a pioneer of European monetary union.
Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt was born on December 23 1918 — six weeks after the UNDAUNTED: Helmut Schmidt gives a speech at a birthday party organised for him by Die Zeit, of which he was publisher, in January last year armistice that ended World War 1 — in Barmbeck, a tough working-class district of Hamburg. His father was a schoolmaster.
Like the other boys at his school, Schmidt joined the Hitler Youth, and in 1937, aged 18, was drafted into the Wehrmacht. He served with an anti-aircraft battery on the Russian front in 194142. He was decorated with the Iron Cross and transferred to operations in the western front. In 1944, Oberleutnant Schmidt was captured by British troops and held as a prisoner of war in Belgium for six months.
It was during this time that he became a socialist and abandoned his earlier ambition of becoming an architect. On his release he went to Hamburg University, where he read economics, joined the Social Democratic Party and became president of the university’s Socialist Student Federation. On graduating, at the age of 30, he went to the Hamburg state office for economics. In 1953, he was elected to BUST AND BOOM: Topless dancer Carol Doda at Kennedy Airport outside New York after arriving from San Francisco, where she launched the craze the Bundestag in Bonn as a Social Democrat deputy.
Among the rank and file of the SPD he quickly earned a reputation as a maverick. To a party emotionally opposed to rearmament, Schmidt argued that it should master defence policy issues and assert parliamentary control over the armed forces. He raised some eyebrows by taking part as a reserve officer in manoeuvres of the new Bundeswehr (West German armed forces).
Schmidt left the Bundestag in 1962 for the Hamburg state government. Soon after, Hamburg was struck by a hurricane and the Elbe River burst its banks. A fifth of the city was flooded and 300 people drowned.
But Schmidt, cutting through red tape, took control of the emergency so forcefully that a further 1 000 people were saved, and the thousands made homeless were swiftly rehoused. He became a national hero; his reputation as an “action” politician — Macher (doer) — was made.
In 1965, Schmidt returned to the Bundestag and became leader of the SPD. When, in 1969, the SPD emerged as the largest party, and its chairman, Willy Brandt, opted for an alliance with the liberal Free Democrats, Schmidt was an obvious choice for the defence portfolio. He allowed recruits to grow their hair long. In 1972, Schmidt moved to his other area of specialisation: economics and finance.
In 1974, the chancellorship was suddenly thrust upon him after the resignation of Brandt, whose personal assistant, Günter Guillaume, had been found to be an East German spy. In 1977, Schmidt’s reputation for getting results was enhanced when German commandos stormed a Lufthansa airliner held by Baader-Meinhof terrorists at Mogadishu in Somalia.
He was married in 1942 to Hannelore (“Loki”) Glaser. Earlier this year the 96-year-old Schmidt admitted that about 45 years earlier he had had an extramarital affair, but had turned down his wife’s offer to stand aside for his mistress. — © The Daily Telegraph, London