At age 17, close to the end of the war, he and his fellow soldiers became members of the Nazi Party due to a collective application (Sammelantrag) by his Wehrmacht unit.

[6] Late in the war, Genscher was deployed as a soldier in General Walther Wenck's 12th Army, which ostensibly was directed to relieve the siege of Berlin.

[7] Following World War II, he studied law and economics at the universities of Halle and Leipzig (1946–1949) and joined the East German Liberal Democratic Party (LDPD) in 1946.

In 1972, while minister for the interior, Genscher rejected Israel's offer to send an Israeli special forces unit to Germany to deal with the Munich Olympics hostage crisis.

[9] In the negotiations on a coalition government of SPD and FDP following the 1976 elections, it took Genscher 73 days to reach agreement with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

"During the Cold War, his penchant to seek the middle ground at times exasperated United States policy-makers who wanted a more decisive, less equivocal Germany", according to Tyler Marshall.

[15] "Fundamental to Genscherism was said to be the belief that Germany could play a role as a bridge between East and West without losing its status as a reliable NATO ally.

In 1988, he appointed Jürgen Hellner as West Germany's new ambassador to Libya, a post that had been vacant since the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, a tragedy which U.S. officials blamed on the government of Muammar Gaddafi.

He later was among the politicians who pushed hard for monetary union alongside Edouard Balladur, France's finance minister, and Giuliano Amato,[22] circulating a memorandum to that effect.

[24] Genscher is most respected for his efforts that helped spell the end of the Cold War, in the late 1980s when Communist eastern European governments toppled, and which led to German reunification.

From the beginning, he argued that the West should seek cooperation with Communist governments rather than treat them as implacably hostile; this policy was embraced by many Germans and other Europeans.

In the years before German reunification, he made a point of maintaining strong ties with his birthplace Halle, which was regarded as significant by admirers and critics alike.

[31] In 1991, Genscher successfully pushed for Germany's recognition of the Republic of Croatia in the Croatian War of Independence shortly after JNA entered Vukovar.

[32] After Croatia and Slovenia had declared independence, Genscher concluded that Yugoslavia could not be held together, and that republics that wanted to break from the Serbian-dominated federation deserved quick diplomatic recognition.

[33] The UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar had warned the German Government, that a recognition of Slovenia and Croatia would lead to an increase in aggression in the former Yugoslavia.

At a meeting of the European Community's foreign ministers in 1991, Genscher proposed to press for a war crimes trial for President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, accusing him of aggression against Kuwait, using chemical weapons against civilians and condoning genocide against the Kurds.

Germany made a substantial financial contribution to the allied cause but, citing constitutional restrictions on the use of its armed forces, provided almost no military assistance.

[20] In January 1991, Germany sent Genscher on a state visit to Israel and followed up with an agreement to provide the Jewish state with $670 million in military aid, including financing for two submarines long coveted by Israel, a battery of Patriot missiles to defend against Iraqi missiles, 58 armored vehicles specially fitted to detect chemical and biological attacks, and a shipment of gas masks.

[37] More than half a century after Nazi leaders assembled their infamous exhibition "Degenerate Art", a sweeping condemnation of the work of the avant-garde, Genscher opened a re-creation of the show at the Altes Museum in March 1992, describing Nazi attempts to restrict artistic expression as "a step toward the catastrophe that produced the mass murder of European Jews and the war of extermination against Germany's neighbors."

[20] In a surprise decision, however, a majority of the FDP parliamentary group rejected her nomination and voted instead to name Justice Minister Klaus Kinkel to head the Foreign Ministry.

[40] Ahead of the German presidential election in 1994, Genscher proclaimed his lack of interest in the position, but was nonetheless widely considered a leading contender.

[45] In 2008, Genscher joined former Czech President Václav Havel, former United States Ambassador to Germany John Kornblum and several other well-known political figures in calling for a Cold War museum to be built at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin.

[48] On 20 December 2013, it was revealed that Genscher played a key role in coordinating the release and flight to Germany of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of Yukos.

While keeping the chancellor informed, Khodorkovsky's attorneys and Genscher spent the ensuing months developing a variety of legal avenues that could allow Putin to release his former rival early, ranging from amendments to existing laws to clemency.

[52] Genscher signed on in 2014 to be a member of the Southern Corridor Advisory Panel, a BP-led consortium which includes former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Peter Sutherland, chairman of Goldman Sachs International.