BERLIN — Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who guided West Germany through economic turbulence and Cold War tension in the 1970s and early 1980s, has died. He was 96.
Schmidt’s doctor, Heiner Greten, tells the German news agency dpa that he died Tuesday afternoon in Hamburg.
Schmidt’s chancellorship coincided with a tense period of the Cold War, including the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. He also stood firm against a wave of homegrown terrorism in West Germany.
The center-left Social Democrat led West Germany from 1974 to 1982, when he lost power to conservative Helmut Kohl.
Schmidt went on to become an iconic elder statesman, weighing in on Germany’s political debates into his 90s.
— AP
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