Don't take this post as an endorsement of any political philosophy, just a cold calculation. Helmut Schmidt just died at age 96. He was President of Germany from 1974 to 1982 and did such a good job, as his counterparts in Japan also did at the time, in developing the country's economy that children just a few years younger than I was got confused about who won World War II. He was defeated by Helmut Kohl in 1982 in the clash of Helmuts. Kohl's success made me feel good because our ancestors in the middle ages were probably coal miners, but also started forcing me to spell my name to people. In any case I never had occasion to read Schmidt's biography until today. He was a Hitler Youth and a member of the German army since 1937, captured in the battle of the bulge. Here's where someone might start getting mad. Suppose Hitler did some things a little differently, like a treaty with Russia in 1942. The battle of the bulge might still have happened, but it wouldn;t have been a desperate effort to extend the hopeless war but a carefully planned plan c if France was successfully invaded. All the Germans who died or were captured on the eastern front in 1943 and 44 would have been amassed in 3 long layers (a military wall) just inside the French border. When the first line marched forward with tanks and infantry the Maginot and Siegfried lines behind them would have been full of men able to reinforce while they remained staffed with a shrinking but adequate number of soldiers. The front would have advanced before the winter started wearing out the allies and draining morale as the coldest winter began with a standoff mimicking the trench warfare 28 years earlier. Obviously a treaty soon would have followed and war hero Schmidt would have been a hero rising through the government ranks until Hitler retired in his 80s and let Schmidt take over for life. I'm glad that didn't happen, but it could have.
Helmut Schmidt never was the president of Germany (West - Germany at that time), he was the chancellor - there's a difference. Is Joe Biden the interior secretary? Don't think so. Schmidt wasn't beaten by Helmut Kohl in 1982. The FDP (Liberal Party) simply left and broke up the coalition they had with the SPD (Social Democrats). They ditched Schmidt and decided to follow Kohl who then became the new chancellor without a federal election. Helmut Schmidt was captured by British troops in an area called Lüneburger Heide (Lüneburg Heath) in 1945, hundreds of miles away from where the Battle of the Bulge took place.
