Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt (; 23 December 1918 – 10 November 2015) was a German politician and member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), who served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982.
Before becoming chancellor, he served as the minister of defence (1969–1972) and the minister of finance (1972–1974) in the government of Willy Brandt. In the latter role he gained credit for his financial policies. He had also briefly been minister of economics and acting foreign minister.
As chancellor, he focused on international affairs, seeking "political unification of Europe in partnership with the United States" and issuing proposals that led to the NATO Double-Track Decision in 1979 to deploy US Pershing II missiles to Europe. He was an energetic diplomat who sought European co-operation and international economic co-ordination and was the leading force in creating the European Monetary System in 1978. He was re-elected chancellor in 1976 and 1980, but his coalition fell apart in 1982 with the switch by his coalition allies, the Free Democratic Party.
He retired from Parliament in 1986, after clashing with the SPD's left wing, which opposed him on defence and economic issues. In 1986 he was a leading proponent of European monetary union and a European Central Bank.
Background, family, early life and education
Helmut Schmidt was the elder of two sons of teachers Ludovica Koch (10 November 1890 – 29 November 1968) and Gustav Ludwig Schmidt (18 April 1888 – 26 March 1981) in Barmbek, a working-class district of Hamburg, in 1918. Schmidt studied at Hamburg Lichtwark School, graduating in 1937. Schmidt's father was born the biological son of a German Jewish banker, Ludwig Gumpel, and a Christian waitress, Friederike Wenzel, and then covertly adopted, although this was kept a family secret for many years. This was confirmed publicly by Schmidt in 1984, after Valéry Giscard d'Estaing revealed the fact to journalists, apparently with Schmidt's assent. Schmidt himself was a non-practising Lutheran.
Schmidt was a group leader (Scharführer) in the Hitler Youth organisation until 1936, when he was demoted and sent on leave because of his anti-Nazi views. However, documents from 1942 praise his "Impeccable national socialist [Nazi] behaviour", and in 1944 his superiors mentioned that Schmidt "stands the ground of national socialist ideology, knowing that he must pass it on." On 27 June 1942, he married his childhood sweetheart Hannelore "Loki" Glaser (3 March 1919 – 21 October 2010). They had two children: Helmut Walter (26 June 1944 – 19 February 1945, died of meningitis), and (born 8 May 1947), who works in London for Bloomberg Television. Schmidt resumed his education in Hamburg after the war, graduating in economics and political science in 1949.
Military service
Schmidt had planned to study without interruption. Therefore, he volunteered at age 18 for military service in 1937. He began serving with an anti-aircraft battery of Luftwaffe at Vegesack near Bremen.
In World War II, after brief service on the Eastern Front during the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 (including the Siege of Leningrad), he returned to Germany in 1942 to work as a trainer and advisor at the Ministry of Aviation. During his service in World War II, Schmidt was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class.
He attended the People's Court as a military spectator at some of the show trials for officers involved in the 20 July plot, in which an unsuccessful attempt was made to assassinate Hitler at Rastenburg, and was disgusted by Judge Roland Freisler's conduct.
Toward the end of the war, from December 1944 onwards, he served as an Oberleutnant in the Flak artillery on the Western Front during the Battle of the Bulge and the Ardennes Offensive. He was captured by the British in April 1945 on Lüneburg Heath, and was a prisoner of war until August of that year in Belgium. In 1958 Schmidt was promoted to Hauptmann of the Bundeswehr reserve.
Post-WWII
Schmidt joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1946, and from 1947 to 1948 was the leader of the Socialist German Student League, the student organisation of the SPD. Upon graduating from the University of Hamburg, where he read economics, he worked for the government of the city-state of Hamburg, working in the department of Economic Policy. Beginning in 1952, under Karl Schiller, he was a senior figure heading up the Behörde für Wirtschaft und Verkehr (the Hamburg State Ministry for Economy and Transport).