Politics in a Changing Western World 1181further political instability, although the Christian Democrats, forming a
series of center-left coalition governments, continued to dominate Italian
politics. In West Germany, the Christian Democrats refused any negotia
tions of consequence with the German Democratic Republic or the Soviet
Union. However, following waves of student protest, Social Democrats
bucked the tide and came to power in 1969. They were helped by an alliance
with the centrist Free Democrats, who abandoned their Christian Democrat
allies. Willy Brandt (1913-1992), who had fled Nazi Germany and fought
with the Norwegian resistance during the Second World War before becom
ing mayor of Berlin, took office as chancellor. In 1970, Brandt signed a
nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, paving the way for the develop
ment of trade between the two states. He signed the Treaty of Warsaw, which
recognized the frontier between Poland and East Germany as redrawn after
the war. While echoing his predecessors’ commitment to NATO, Brandt
improved relations with the German Democratic Republic, calling for an
“opening toward the East.” Millions of people were allowed to cross the wall
to visit the other side, overwhelmingly most were West Germans allowed to
visit East Berlin.
Brandt resigned in 1974 following the discovery that one of his aides was
a spy for East Germany. Helmut Schmidt (1918— ), a more conservative
Social Democrat, became chancellor. Schmidt weathered political storms,
but drew the wrath of environmentalists and anti-nuclear groups in 1979
when he asked the United States to station medium-range nuclear missiles
on West German soil to counter similar Soviet missiles. Schmidt and centrist
French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing (1926- ; president 1974-1981)
believed that Germany and France had to become the center of Western
Europe. However, economic recession, rising unemployment, and Schmidts
refusal to reduce welfare payments led to the return to power in 1982 of the
Christian Democrats. They were led by Helmut Kohl (1930— ), who cut taxes
and reduced government spending. However, in September 1998, elections
swept the Social Democrat Gerhard Schroder into the chancellorship, based
on a coalition between Social Democrats and the German ecological party,
known as the Greens, replacing Kohl, who resigned two years later as chair
man of the Christian Democratic Party in the wake of a financial scandal. In
2005, Angela Merkel (1954- ), a Christian Democrat who had grown up in
the Communist German Democratic Republic, became the first female
chancellor of Germany.
In Britain, under the pressure of the oil crisis and following bitter mining
strikes, the Conservative government fell in 1974. But the subsequent
Labour governments of Harold Wilson (1916-1995) and James Callaghan
(1912-2005) were buffeted by soaring inflation, which was exacerbated by
a series of major union victories in prolonged strikes during the Callaghan
government.
Upper- and middle-class Britons turned against Callaghan, claiming that
the unions now held their country hostage. In 1979, Conservative leader