Helmut Schmidt

Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt was born December 23, 1918, in Hamburg, Germany. He served in the Wehrmacht during World War II and became active in the Social Democratic Party (SPD) following the war. He died November 10, 2015, in Hamburg, the day after the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.¹

Political Career Before Chancellorship

Schmidt served as Senator for Internal Affairs in Hamburg in the 1960s before entering federal politics. He distinguished himself as a crisis manager during the 1962 Hamburg flood, winning a national reputation for effective emergency leadership. In the Grand Coalition and then the SPD-FDP coalition governments he held senior cabinet positions: Defense Minister from 1969 to 1972 under Chancellor Willy Brandt, then Finance Minister from 1972 until Brandt's resignation in May 1974.

When Brandt resigned following the revelation that his personal aide Günter Guillaume had been a Stasi agent, Schmidt was the SPD's natural successor. He became Chancellor on May 16, 1974.¹

The German Autumn, 1977

The defining crisis of Schmidt's chancellorship came in the autumn of 1977, when the Red Army Faction conducted its most ambitious coordinated operation. On September 5, 1977, RAF members kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer, president of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations; on October 13, a Palestinian commando coordinating with the RAF hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 from Mallorca to Mogadishu in Somalia. The operations demanded the release of imprisoned RAF leadership.

Schmidt refused all demands and maintained this position under extreme political and personal pressure. He authorized the GSG 9 federal counterterrorism unit - created following the Munich Olympic Massacre of 1972 - to conduct a rescue operation. On October 18, 1977, GSG 9 stormed the aircraft at Mogadishu, freeing all 86 hostages with no fatalities. Hours later, Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe were found dead in Stammheim Prison. Schleyer was subsequently murdered by his captors.¹

NATO Double-Track Decision

In December 1979 Schmidt was the principal architect of the NATO double-track decision: a policy of pursuing arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union to limit intermediate-range nuclear missiles while simultaneously deciding to deploy American Pershing II and cruise missiles in West Germany if negotiations failed. The decision grew from Schmidt's concern that Soviet deployment of SS-20 missiles was creating a strategic imbalance in Europe that existing arms control frameworks did not address.

The double-track decision became intensely controversial, generating the largest anti-nuclear protests in West German history in the early 1980s. Opposition to missile deployment contributed to tensions within the SPD, where Schmidt's policy was increasingly unpopular with the party's left wing.¹

End of Chancellorship

Schmidt's governing coalition with the Free Democrats (FDP) collapsed in October 1982 when the FDP switched its support to the Christian Democrats. A constructive vote of no confidence replaced Schmidt with Helmut Kohl. Schmidt did not seek to return to elective office. He joined the editorial board of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and became one of Germany's most respected elder statesmen, regularly commenting on European and international affairs until his death.¹