At home, he compelled his left-leaning Social Democratic Party to embrace pro-business policies and to support the buildup of the West German armed forces into a bulwark of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

At the same time, he pressed the Federal Republic of Germany to forge closer ties with the Communist regime in East Germany. And working with his close friend President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing of France, he helped soften European distrust of his country for its Nazi past, still fresh in painful memory.

(Meanwhile, a cigarette smoker almost to the end of his life, he was the only public figure in Germany allowed to disregard smoking bans.)

Mr. Schmidt made grievous policy errors, which were compounded by his unwillingness to admit mistakes and a seeming disregard for diplomacy, with foes and allies alike. They were failings that led the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, to dismiss him after eight years in office.

His detractors accused him of being overwilling to assuage Moscow in his desire to salvage détente, an effort, embraced by West Germany and France, to ensure peace through stronger political and economic ties with Moscow.

Moreover, his intemperate criticism of Washington promoted neutralist, anti-American tendencies in the Social Democratic Party, which only helped undermine his chancellorship.

Image Mr. Schmidt in 1974, the year he was elected chancellor. Credit... Keystone, via Getty Images

Mr. Schmidt was confident — too confident, some said — about his ability to sustain prosperity in West Germany. Under his stewardship, his nation fared better than the rest of Europe during the economic crisis of the 1970s, provoked by a sharp rise in petroleum prices controlled by OPEC, the cartel of oil-exporting countries. But he was criticized in the early ’80s as having failed to prepare West Germans for recession.