"I was glad to deliver Schmidt… to Reagan."

[Skybird]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...721449,00.html

A missionary meets a v oluminous ego - no wonder the two men's relation did not work.

Until today, Helmut Schmidt is something like an institution in Germany, being as famous in Germany as Churchill was in England (just that after his political career, Schmidt did not fall into meaninglessness, like Churchill, but even gained in popularity until today). When he talks, everybody listens, because he talks no nonsenes but knows his stuff, and he knows it extremely well, and is of a reasonability and realism that NONE of the currently active generation of German politicians can compete with. even with the young ones who were not even born when he was chancellor, Schmidt is popular and highly respected.

After his chancellorship, he became long-time chief editor of Die Zeit, a weekly national newspaper. His editorials and contributions to public debates were often quoted.

That Carter accused him of wanting to appease the Soviets, is absurd. Maybe he was not willing to fall into a one-sided pro-US bias as probably wanted by Carter, but was more of an objective neutrality that considered the Soviet perspective as well, like Kissinger implied (the wtwo are close friends until today). But what many people in America maybe do not know is that on a NATO level and in German-US relation, NATO's double-track decision of the early 80s that led to the stationing of Perhsing II and Cruise Missiles in Wetsern Europe, was no project Reagan intiially had love for, but that it was Schmidt who time and again pressed the Americans into this - against American resistence to it.

Schmidt had a reputation of chasing women, and being arrogant and balking at memmebers of even his own cabinat. Nevertheless he pürobbaly was the by far most intelliogent and competent chancellor Germany has ever had, fired by a very strong sense of duty and understanding his job to be a job not to boost his own interest, but to serve the nation. In that, althoiugh being a Hanseatic, he is also very "Prussian". Now, at his high age, he has become much milder, and no longer so rocky around the edges. When after his chancellorshig they wanted to give him the Bundesverdienstkreuz (the German version of the Congress Medal of Honour), he refused to accept it, saying that he did his duty, and that fuilfillment of mandatoy duties do not need nor deserve additional rewards and honours. He also was the one chancellor who sent special commandoes to take out the Palestinian hijackers of a German airliner at Mohadishu. While in interviews he also shows signs of sadness about decisons he made back then (some lifes of victims got lost), he neverthjless also reveals a grim humour, pointing out that those bastards massively underestimated him and the German cabinet - which for the molst was formed up by former soldiers and officers who had actively fought in WWII, including Schmidt. WWII Schmidt alsways refers to, and never names it any differently, as "Die große Scheiße" (the big sh!t), even in public and in front of cameras.

An original he is. Carter probably did not had what it takes to keep up with sombody of this format. To bad that men of his format (and war-experience) are no more available to modern leadership. We feel the lack, and very intensely.