Men and Powers: A Political Retrospective

Helmut Schmidt's autobiography gives us a candid look behind the curtain of world politics at the highest level. It shows us Schmidt as a shrewd, tough and cunning politician with a brilliant insight into political and economical world problems in the short as well as in the long run. He saw the foreign policy of the Soviet Union as a continuation of tsarist expansionism (Witte: from the Ural to the North Sea). He understood also that the SU military budget constituted a heavy drag on the whole soviet economy. For the CEE, he saw big problems ahead: a crazy agricultural regime, no independent military force and splintered economic and monetary policies. Only one of these problems has been partly solved today. This book shows also the importance of think tanks: the Council of Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the London Institute for Strategic Studies, the Bilderberg Conferences and the Library Group which was co-founded by him. H. Schmidt was also a brilliant economist with his magical rectangular: price stability, growth, high employment and foreign trade equilibrium. His sworn enemy was US President Jimmy Carter. The latter wanted that Germany inflated its economy and that it stopped its export of nuclear reactors. He threatened to block the delivery of enriched uranium with the risk of an energy black-out in the whole of Germany. H. Schmidt also opposed a recall of Western credits to Poland during the Jaruzelski regime. He knew all too well that a Polish revolution would have the same fatal outcome as those in Budapest and Prague. This book contains valuable information on the Suez-crisis, hawk Brzezinski and Khrushchev. A must for historians and for all those interested in world politics.

Interesting book by former German chancelor Helmut Schmidt about his experiences with nations and leaders while he was in power during 1974 to 1982. He is along with former French President Valery Giscard D'Estain the founder of the European Monetary Union (Ecu, later EURO) and thinks that most of the current brokers on Wall Street are crazy psycopaths, who drive US economy to a big crash!