'You Need Passion. And Cigarettes.'

A Helmut Schmidt only comes around once in a century. When he was born on Dec. 23, 1918, the German Empire had just ceased to exist. When he was a young man, Hitler's Germany was seeking to establish a global empire by way of war and racial fanaticism. When he was studying at university, two new global powers appeared -- the United States and the Soviet Union -- and Mao founded modern China. Nine years after the end of his term as chancellor, the new world order collapsed along with the Soviet Union.