ABSTRACT
Contrary to expectation and despite the large majority that the coalition government enjoyed in the Bundestag, Willy Brandt's aura as a chancellor committed to domestic reforms had paled visibly and the wave of public support for his personal and political qualities had receded. The arrest of his personal assistant, Gunther Guillaume, who was unmasked as a spy for the German Democratic Republic, was the last act in a political and personal drama that led to his decision to resign. Helmut Schmidt's political awareness developed in a British prisoner-of-war camp in Belgium. Affected by the comradeship and solidarity of the war experience and by some older officers, he became a social democrat. Fiscal and economic issues, and the divisive issue of the planned stationing of modernized intermediate-range nuclear armaments in Western Europe, continued to plague the cohesion of the Social Democratic Party/ Free Democratic Party coalition.
