Germany - Rise to power

Schröder's base of power has been his home state of Lower Saxony. He first made his name in German politics during the early 1970s as a leader of an anti-American, antinuclear youth group of the SPD. Upon completing his law training, Schröder became a member of the SPD Executive Committee for the Hannover constituency in 1977, and then the national chairman of the SPD Young Socialists the following year. In 1980, at the age of 36, he became a member of the Bundestag, representing the district of Hannover for six years. Schröder returned to Lower Saxony and served as chairman of the SPD Party Group and leader of the opposition in the Lower Saxony Parliament from 1986 to 1990. He then focused on the premiership of Lower Saxony and won his party's nomination to run for premier in 1986. While he did not win that election, he won four years later becoming premier of Lower Saxony in 1990.

In March 1998, Schröder won his third term as premier in a landslide victory. Many observers say that this success established Schröder as the most viable SPD candidate to challenge Helmut Kohl. In April, at the party conference in Leipzig, Schröder won his party's nomination. On 27 September 1998, Schröder was able to defeat Kohl, the longest-serving German chancellor since Otto von Bismarck. Five years later, Schröder won reelection in polling held 22 September 2002, but by a very narrow margin. In the weeks leading up to the election, Schröder, trailing slightly in the polls, took a public stand against the U.S.-led international initiative aimed at achieving regime change in Iraq. Observers writing in the international press described U.S.-German relations as the worst in 20 years following Schröder's comments. But his position helped him win the election. The election was controversial, however, and in December the Bundestag voted to establish a commission to investigate allegations that the Schröder government misled voters about the state of the economy in the weeks prior to the election. The government denied that it knew—but did not disclose—that economic conditions were worsening in the summer of 2002; the fact that Schröder supporters in the Bundestag could not muster enough votes to defeat the proposal to investigate charges of fraud underscored the weakness of his government coalition.