Henry Alfred Kissinger was born in Fürth, Germany, a medium-sized town neighboring the larger city of Nuremberg in Northern Bavaria. His father Louis taught in the local gymnasium, or college preparatory school. The family valued education, although young Heinz, as he was then known, preferred soccer to studying. Like many of the Jewish families of Fürth, the Kissingers enjoyed a secure position in the community until the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Louis Kissinger was fired from his job and the family lost all the rights of German citizenship. Eager to leave, the Kissingers faced the same problem as the other Jews who fell under Nazi rule, the difficulty of finding a country to take them in. In 1938, the Kissinger family — mother, father and two sons — received permission to enter the United States by way of London. The rest of the extended family remained behind in Germany, where most of them perished. The Kissinger family settled in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, among other German Jewish refugees.

The 15-year-old Heinz became Henry and applied himself to his studies, but after his first year at George Washington High School, his family’s precarious finances compelled him to take a full-time job in a shaving brush factory. He continued to study for his diploma at night, and after completing high school he entered the City College of New York, where he studied accounting. He was thriving academically when he was drafted into the United States Army in 1943.

While in basic training, he became a United States citizen at age 20, and joined his unit, the 84th Infantry, in time for the Battle of the Bulge. A superior officer, fellow German refugee Fritz Kraemer, was impressed with young Kissinger and assigned him to the military intelligence section of the division. Private Kissinger volunteered for dangerous duty and was soon promoted to sergeant in the Counter Intelligence Corps. He was given responsibility for re-organizing civilian administration in liberated towns in Germany, and won a Bronze Star for hunting down Gestapo officers and saboteurs. Sergeant Kissinger was teaching at the European Command Intelligence School when he received his discharge. He continued teaching at the school as a civilian employee for some months after his separation from the Army.

The G.I. Bill enabled Kissinger to return to college. He won admission to Harvard, where he received his undergraduate degree in history, summa cum laude, in 1950.   He remained at Harvard to earn his graduate degrees. On completing his masters degree in 1952, he became Director of the Harvard International Seminar. With the completion of his doctorate in 1954, he joined the faculty of the Department of Government and the new Center for International Affairs.

Kissinger’s doctoral research on the diplomacy of post-Napoleonic Europe provided the foundation of his first book, A World Restored: Castlereagh, Metternich and the Restoration of Peace, 1812-1822, published in 1957.  The same year saw the publication of his first book on current affairs, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy.

While teaching at Harvard, Kissinger served as a consultant to the National Security Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rand Corporation, the State Department, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. As Director of the Special Studies Project for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, he came into contact with the Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller.   Kissinger became a foreign policy advisor to Governor Rockefeller, supporting the governor’s three campaigns for the presidency in 1960, 1964 and 1968. Although Rockefeller never won the Republican nomination he had sought, Kissinger attracted the attention of the man who defeated Rockefeller for the nomination in 1968, Richard Nixon.

After winning the national election in 1968, Nixon appointed Kissinger to serve as National Security Advisor. When Nixon and Kissinger arrived in Washington, the U.S. was deeply embroiled in the Vietnam War, and peace talks in Paris had stalled. During his campaign, Nixon had promised “peace with honor.” In office, President Nixon gradually reduced the American role in ground combat, while escalating the bombing campaign against North Vietnam. Nixon ordered incursions into neighboring Cambodia, provoking bitter protests at home, while Kissinger focused on trying to negotiate a ceasefire with North Vietnam.

Nixon had first made his name as one of the most vigorous anti-communists in the U.S. Congress, but Kissinger made his top priority the promotion of a policy of détente, or relaxation of tension, between the United States and the Soviet Union. He initiated strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) with the Soviets.

Kissinger’s efforts drew criticism from both ends of the political spectrum, from liberals who favored a more rapid withdrawal from Vietnam and from conservatives who distrusted his outreach to China and the Soviet Union. Although Kissinger himself disowned the term, his foreign policy approach was often described as one of realpolitik, the pursuit of a nation’s interest based on immediate practical considerations, rather than adherence to a set of fixed principles or ideology.

Kissinger sought to exploit the growing tensions between the two communist powers, China and the Soviet Union, by playing one against the other. Since the communist revolution of 1949, the United States had had no diplomatic relations with the government in Beijing. In the summer of 1971, Kissinger made a secret trip to China and initiated a process that would eventually lead to full diplomatic recognition and the integration of China into the global economy. In 1972, he arranged for President Nixon to meet in Beijing with Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. This was a virtual earthquake in world politics. Kissinger and Nixon’s decision to “play the China card” is widely credited with inducing greater cooperation from the Soviet Union in the arms limitation talks, resulting in the SALT I Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

In October 1972, Kissinger and the North Vietnamese negotiator, Le Duc Tho, drafted an agreement, and with the American presidential election only a few weeks away, Kissinger announced that “peace is at hand.” President Nixon was elected to a second term in a 49-state landslide. The Paris Peace Agreement was signed by all parties the following January. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Le Duc Tho refused to accept his award; Kissinger announced that he would donate his prize money “to the children of American service members killed or missing in action in Indochina.

It had long been apparent that Kissinger had the greatest influence over the president in matters of foreign policy, eclipsing that of his Secretary of State, William P. Rogers. In the first year of Nixon’s second term, Rogers stepped down and Kissinger succeeded him as Secretary of State, while retaining the position of National Security Advisor.

Another controversial aspect of Kissinger’s tenure was the administration’s policy in the southern cone of South America. In Chile, the military overthrew the government of the elected president, Salvador Allende, a socialist sympathetic to communist Cuba. In Argentina, a military coup ousted President Isabel Perón, widow of the populist strongman Juan Perón. The CIA played a role in destabilizing the Allende regime, and the United States was quick to recognize the new regimes in both countries. In Kissinger’s view, the stability offered by reliably anti-communist regimes was preferable to the risk posed by unstable or openly hostile governments in the Western Hemisphere. Many years elapsed before the return of electoral democracy in Chile and Argentina, and the U.S. role in their history remains a sore spot in hemispheric relations.

The major international crisis of Nixon and Kissinger’s second term was the Yom Kippur War of 1973. With the Soviet Union supporting Egypt and Syria, and the United States supplying Israel, the conflict threatened to escalate into a confrontation between the superpowers. Kissinger helped persuade the combatants to accept a UN-proposed ceasefire. When a peace conference in Geneva failed to produce an agreement, Kissinger undertook “shuttle diplomacy,” flying back and forth between direct meetings with the Israelis, the Egyptians and the Syrians. His labors eventually produced a disengagement agreement, with the institution of UN buffer zones between Israel and its two hostile neighbors. The war had strained Egypt’s relations with its longtime patron, Russia. Kissinger seized the opportunity and cultivated a relationship with Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat. With Kissinger’s encouragement, Egypt gradually moved from the Soviet orbit to the American one.

Kissinger planned further foreign policy initiatives for President Nixon’s second term, but the president soon became hopelessly mired in the Watergate scandal. Nixon resigned in August 1974. His successor, Gerald Ford, retained Kissinger as Secretary of State, and sought to maintain continuity with the Nixon administration.

The United States had ended its ground operations in Vietnam, but the North Vietnamese failed to honor the peace agreement and resumed their advance in South Vietnam. When the capital, Saigon, fell to the communist forces in 1975, Kissinger offered to return his Nobel Prize medal to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Gerald Ford sought a full term in the presidency but lost to Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter in 1976. In his last month in office, President Ford awarded Kissinger the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Kissinger’s term as Secretary of State ended with Carter’s inauguration in January 1977.

After leaving office, Kissinger wrote, lectured and consulted widely, teaching at Georgetown University’s Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service. He also revisited an earlier interest, serving as Chairman of the North American Soccer League. In 1980 he received the National Book Award for his memoir, The White House Years. He has since continued his life story in Years of Upheaval and Years of Renewal.

In 1982, he founded a consulting firm, Kissinger and Associates. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and some of his advisors initially sought to disassociate themselves from Kissinger’s policy of détente, and the arms limitation process, but eventually pursued a similar course themselves. President Reagan called on Henry Kissinger to chair a panel on Central American policy. Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, President George W. Bush invited Kissinger to chair a commission of inquiry.

In recent years, Henry Kissinger has joined with former Secretary of State George Schultz, former Senator Sam Nunn and former Secretary of Defense William Perry in calling for the complete phasing out of nuclear weapons. His books on international affairs include Diplomacy (1994) and Does America Need a Foreign Policy? (2001).

At the time of his 2000 interview with the Academy of Achievement, Kissinger was at work on his book Vietnam: A Personal History of America’s Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (2002). His books since then include On China (2011) and World Order (2014).

In 2021, Kissinger co-wrote a book about artificial intelligence titled “The Age of AI: And Our Human Future”, warning that governments should be prepared for the potential risks associated with this technology. Following this, in 2022, he authored “Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy,” examining the distinct strategies of six extraordinary leaders. He posited that leaders balance knowledge from the past with uncertain future intuitions, setting objectives and crafting strategies accordingly. He highlighted the strategies of Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, and Margaret Thatcher, weaving historical insight with personal knowledge. The book culminated in reflections on today’s world order and the critical role of leadership.

On May 27, 2023, Henry Kissinger celebrated his 100th birthday, having outlived many of his political contemporaries who helped guide the United States through significant historical events, including the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War. His son, David Kissinger, wrote in The Washington Post that his father’s centenary could have been predicted by those who knew his force of character and passion for historical symbolism. Despite his age, Kissinger remained remarkably active well into his 90s, outliving many of his peers, notable critics, and students.

In honor of his centenary, Kissinger undertook a series of visits to New York, London, and his birthplace, Fürth, Germany. Throughout recent years, he maintained significant influence over Washington’s power brokers in his role as an elder statesman. He provided counsel to both Republican and Democratic presidents, including during the Trump administration, while keeping up an international consulting business. His speeches, often delivered in the German accent he retained since escaping the Nazi regime as a teenager, were marked by his unique insights and perspectives.

As recently as the previous month, Kissinger commented on major global issues, suggesting that the war in Ukraine was nearing a critical point with China’s entry into negotiations. He predicted these negotiations would reach their peak by the end of the year, consistently advocating for peace through negotiation to resolve the conflict.