Kissinger, Henry b. May 27, 1923; Furth, Bavaria

Henry Kissinger came to the United States in 1938 as a refugee from Hitler’s Ger­many, and eventually became one of the most powerful policymakers in the United States during the administrations of Re­publican presidents Richard M.

Kissinger’s Jewish ancestors were known for their loyalty to the German state, but this changed after the Nazis came to power in 1933. As Jews, the Kissingers became subject to the full force of Nazi an­tisemitic legislation. His father lost his teaching job, and Kissinger and his younger brother were taunted by Gentile boys and barred from non-Jewish schools. In 1938 the Kissingers left Germany for the United States. The choice to leave was a wise one; thirteen of Kissinger’s close rel­atives died in death camps during the Holocaust.

Kissinger was studying accounting in New York when his draft notice came in

1943. Because he was still a citizen of an enemy country, Kissinger was drafted as an “enemy alien” and became a citizen only after his induction into the U.S. Army. He was a lowly private in the 84th Infantry Di­vision when he met and ultimately became the protege of another German expatriate, a sergeant by the name of Fritz Kraemer. After the 84th was shipped overseas in

1944, Kraemer recommended Kissinger to administer the newly liberated German city of Krefeld. Although Kissinger was only a private and had no security clear­ance, he rose to the challenge and built a functional civilian government for the city in only eight days. Kraemer’s influence also

President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger conversing on the grounds of the White House, Washington, D.C., August 16, 1974. (Library of Congress)

got Kissinger a teaching job at a military intelligence school in Germany, and Krae­mer also advised Kissinger to go to Har­vard after his discharge.

In his biography of Kissinger, Walter Isaacson quotes Kissinger saying that his life experiences up to this time did not make him a stronger person: “Living as a Jew under the Nazis, then as a refugee in America, and then as a private in the army, isn’t exactly an experience that builds confidence” (Isaacson 1996, 56); his rapid rise to fame after his military dis­charge belies this statement. He earned his doctorate from Harvard in 1954 and eventually joined its faculty as a professor of government. During the late fifties and early sixties, he wrote several books on nu­clear strategy and foreign policy. His ex­pertise impressed then-president Nixon who in turn appointed Kissinger head of the National Security Council in 1969. Four years later, he was made secretary of state. Kissinger’s peacemaking efforts in Vietnam and the Middle East earned praise at home and abroad. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1973. He left office in 1977 after the elec­tion of Democrat Jimmy Carter to the presidency. But Kissinger did not slip into obscurity; he remained in the spotlight as a writer and lecturer and served as an in­formal adviser to presidents on foreign policy.

In recent years, however, reevalua­tions of Kissinger’s policies as secretary of state have cast a cloud over his achieve­ments. Several critics from the New Left have accused Kissinger of war crimes in Chile, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The most vociferous of these critics is columnist Christopher Hitchens, whose 2002 book, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, alleges that the former secretary of state is guilty of offenses against international law, including conspiracy to commit mur­der, kidnap, and torture. In 2002 Ar­gentina and France opened investigations into American support for and involve­ment in Operation Condor, a plot that al­lowed several Latin American dictators during the 1970s to persecute and elimi­nate their opponents. Kissinger is re­garded as a potential suspect in these in­vestigations.

These allegations had no impact on President George W. Bush, who in Novem­ber 2002 appointed Kissinger to lead an in­dependent panel to investigate possible U.S. intelligence failures prior to the Sep­tember 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But Kissinger resigned only one month after his appointment, citing his desire to avoid questions about the possibility of a conflict of interest regarding his ties to several or­ganizations and public figures.

Patricia Kollander

See also Kraemer, Fritz Gustav Anton; World War II

References and Further Reading

Hitchens, Christopher. The Trials of Henry

Kissinger. London: New Left Books, 2002.

Isaacson, Walter. Kissinger: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Kornbluh, Peter. The Pinochet Fle: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. New York: New Press, 2003.