Word: brandts
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...with its short-lived Cabinets and chronic crises, collapsed in the face of Nazism, Germans have worried about their ability to build a stable, democratic political system. The latest political crisis to confront the Federal Republic should do much to allay those fears. Less than two weeks after Willy Brandt stunned his countrymen by suddenly resigning as Chancellor, a new government was functioning smoothly in Bonn. Last Thursday, in the modern and austere Bundestag chambers, Social Democrat Helmut Schmidt, 55, took the oath as West Germany's fifth Chancellor...
Shortly after the Social Democratic Party suffered a serious setback in a Hamburg state by-election last March, Helmut Schmidt, 55, went on television and bluntly accused his boss, Willy Brandt, of weak leadership and laxity. That kind of pugnacity long ago earned West Germany's new Chancellor-nominate the nickname "Schmidt-Schnauze" (Schmidt the Lip). Friends and enemies alike describe him as an "American-style" politician, in reference to his rough-and-tumble skill as an infighter. Certainly no one has ever accused him of indecision or timidity- or of hiding his ambition to take over Brandt...
...power in 1933 and later served as an artillery battery commander in the Wehrmacht during World War II until he was captured by the British. After the war, he studied economics at the University of Hamurg, where he was a star pupil of Karl Schiller, who later served as Brandt's first Finance Minister. Schmidt entered politics while still a student and became leader of the German Socialist Student Union, precursor of today's vociferous, left-wing Young Socialists (Jusos). He won a seat in the Bundestag on the Social Democratic ticket in 1953, and 14 years later...
After the Social Democrats won the 1969 election, Brandt chose Schmidt -who would have preferred to be Foreign Minister-as his defense chief. In that thankless job, Schmidt modernized the West German arsenal and shook up the creaky officer corps, earning high marks from NATO leaders. One top American diplomat in Bonn called him "the best German Defense Minister since the war." He raised military morale and attracted volunteers by improving barracks life and allowing them to sport Beatle-length hair. To traditionalists' complaints that he was turning the Bundeswehr into the "German hair force," Schmidt asserted: "I couldn...
...free market, Schmidt relied on tight-money policies rather than wage and price controls, an approach that has helped earn him the enmity of the Jusos, who make up about 25% of his own party. Last week Juso Chairman Heidi Wieczorek-Zeul called Schmidt "the worst possible choice" as Brandt's successor. Schmidt has also recently been at odds with the S.P.D.'s coalition partners, the Free Democrats. He favors a little more inflation rather than more unemployment, while the Free Democrats want tighter measures to control inflation even if that means a little more unemployment. Despite...