Helmut Schmidt dead: Former Chancellor of West Germany dies aged 96

Schmidt died in Hamburg on Tuesday

(GETTY IMAGES)

Helmut Schmidt, the former West German chancellor, has passed away at the age of 96.

Mr Schmidt, a centre-left Social Democrat (SPD), served as Chancellor from 1974 to 1982, leading the country at the height of the Cold War.

His office confirmed Mr Schmidt died on Tuesday afternoon after his health began declining rapidly over the past week.

Mr Schmidt led West Germany through economic instability, a wave of homegrown terrorism and the tension created by the Cold War. He served as a finance minister from 1972 to 1974, steering the country through financial turmoil caused by a weakened dollar and the first oil price explosion. His time in office also saw the first steps towards the creation of a single European currency with the European Monetary System (EMS) in 1979, a precursor to the Euro. The EMS was an initiative led by Mr Schmidt and the then French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. However, the economic situation deteriorated later during his tenure, which he responded to with attempts to cut welfare.

In 1977, Mr Schmidt coordinated the rescue of hostages kidnapped when members of the Red Army Faction hijacked a Lufthansa flight with the help of the Palestinian group PFLP. The flight landed at Mogadishu, in Somalia, and Mr Schmidt refused to meet their demands to release members of the RAF being held in German prisons. Instead, the West German counterterrorism group GSG 9 stormed the plane and freed all of the passengers without any fatalities.

He was replaced by the conservative politician Helmut Kohl in 1983, but went on to become an iconic and popular politician famed for not holding back on his opinions.

Born in 1918 shortly after the end of World War I, Mr Schmidt joined the Hitler Youth and became a group leader. He joined Hitler’s Wehrmacht in 1937 and was captured by British forces in the Winter of 1944, before being released in August 1945.

It was later revealed that his father, a school teacher, was the illegitimate son of a Jewish banker.

A life-long smoker, he often appeared on talk shows later in his life, where he would be seen dicussing world affairs through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Additional reporting by agencies