Henry Kissinger

Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger on May 27, 1923, into a Jewish family in Fürth, Germany. After the Nazis seized power, state-sanctioned antisemitism made life very difficult for the family.⁠[1][2]

In 1938 Kissinger’s family emigrated to the United States and settled in New York, and his name was changed to Henry.⁠[2]

Kissinger became a naturalized US citizen on June 19, 1943. During World War II he served in the US Army as a German interpreter, serving in the Army Counter Intelligence Corps from 1943 to 1946 and as a captain in the Military Intelligence Reserve from 1946 to 1949.⁠[3][2][3]

After the war Kissinger attended HarvardHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry, receiving a B.A. summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1950 and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1952 and 1954. His doctoral dissertation was published in 1957 as A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812-22.⁠[3][3]

From 1954 to 1971 Kissinger was a member of Harvard University’s faculty in the Department of Government and at the Center for International Affairs, serving as the center’s associate director from 1957 to 1960, and he directed the Harvard International Seminar (1951–1971) and the Harvard Defense Studies Program (1958–1971); he was on leave from Harvard from January 1969 to January 1971 while serving in the White House.⁠[3][3]

He was study director for nuclear weapons and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations from 1955 to 1956, work published in 1957 as Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy; he directed the Special Studies Project of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund from 1956 to 1958, and received the Woodrow Wilson Prize in 1958. In the 1950s and 1960s he served as a consultant to the National Security Council, the State Department, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the RAND Corporation and other bodies.⁠[3][3][3][3]

During the Vietnam War Kissinger had prepared the Paris peace negotiations with North Vietnam for Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson; after Republican Richard Nixon won the 1968 election, Nixon chose him as assistant to the president for national security affairs (national security adviser), a post he held from Nixon’s inauguration on January 20, 1969.⁠[1][2][2]

In his first months in office Nixon ordered secret B-52 bombings of North Vietnamese base camps in Cambodia (the “Menu bombings”) to apply military pressure. With the public Paris talks reduced to propaganda theater, Kissinger held his first private session with the North Vietnamese leadership on August 4, 1969, and thereafter met intermittently with Politburo member Le Duc Tho, initially without progress.⁠[4][4][4][4]

Around Chile’s 1970 election, the National Security Council’s 40 Committee, which reviewed covert action proposals, met repeatedly to discuss preventing Salvador Allende from taking power. Declassified documents published by the National Security Archive include minutes of meetings between Kissinger and CIA officials and records of covert operations code-named “Project FUBELT,” which the archive says provide a clear paper trail of the decisions and operations against Allende’s government; National Security Council strategy papers also record efforts from 1970 to 1973 to “destabilize” Chile economically and isolate Allende’s government diplomatically.⁠[5][6][6][6]

On September 11, 1973, the Chilean military overthrew Allende, and Augusto Pinochet subsequently took power. The State Department’s Office of the Historian notes that debate continues over whether the United States directly supported the coup; a 1975 Senate committee found that the United States had carried out covert actions in Chile and had considered “Track II,” a plan to organize a military coup, but concluded there was little evidence linking the US government to covert support of Pinochet’s coup. The State Department biography also lists his role regarding Chile among the controversies of his tenure.⁠[5][5][5][5][2]

Kissinger’s telephone transcripts released in 2004 show that one night in December 1970 Nixon ordered a massive bombing of Cambodia, after which Kissinger laughed with aide Alexander Haig about Nixon’s bluster and agreed to send only a few B-52s.⁠[7]

From March 1971 the Pakistani army cracked down in East Pakistan, refugees poured into India, war broke out between India and Pakistan at year’s end, and East Pakistan became independent as Bangladesh. US policy directed by Nixon and Kissinger leaned toward Pakistan, a course known as “The Tilt”; US Consul General in Dhaka Archer Blood sent a dissent cable condemning the United States for failing to denounce atrocities and saying the term genocide was applicable. Declassified documents published by the National Security Archive in 2002 indicate that Nixon and Kissinger approved illegal military assistance to Pakistan after the United States announced an aid cutoff; the archive also notes that Kissinger’s memoir White House Years omits the US role in Pakistan’s procurement of fighter planes.⁠[8][9][8][8][8][8]

The State Department’s Office of the Historian holds that the United States acted ambiguously during the war and that its prestige was damaged in both countries: in Pakistan for failing to prevent the loss of East Pakistan, and in India for supporting the Pakistani regime’s brutality in what became Bangladesh.⁠[9][9]

Nixon established a secret channel to China’s leadership through Pakistani President Yahya Khan. In 1971 Kissinger traveled to Beijing twice to discuss the conditions for normalizing relations; the first trip was conducted in great secrecy and revealed to the public only in a speech by Nixon, and the second, in October 1971, coincided with the UN vote on Chinese representation.⁠[10][10][10][10]

From February 21 to 28, 1972, Nixon visited China, the first US president to visit mainland China while in office, and the two sides issued the Shanghai Communiqué, which laid the groundwork for formal diplomatic relations in 1979.⁠[10][10]

On May 26, 1972, Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the interim SALT agreement in Moscow, considered the crowning achievement of the Nixon-Kissinger strategy of détente.⁠[11][11]

On October 11–12, 1972, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho agreed on a peace settlement, but South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu rejected it, forcing renewed negotiations that deadlocked. On December 14 Nixon ordered massive B-52 attacks on the North Vietnamese heartland (the “Christmas Bombing”), prompting thousands of people around the world to protest in the streets. Negotiations resumed on January 8, 1973; the United States and North Vietnam initialed the agreement on January 23 and signed it on January 27, allowing the United States to withdraw from the war and bring its prisoners of war home, though neither Vietnamese party abided by the settlement and the war continued.⁠[4][4][4][1][4][4][4]

On September 21, 1973, Nixon appointed Kissinger the 56th secretary of state; he kept his post as national security adviser, becoming the first person to hold both positions at once.⁠[2][2][2]

Just two weeks after Kissinger entered the State Department, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel. He worked to ensure a US airlift of military supplies to Israel, which helped turn the war in Israel’s favor but also led members of OPEC to impose an oil embargo on the United States; he later proposed the creation of the International Energy Agency.⁠[2][2][12]

The 1973 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Kissinger and Le Duc Tho “for jointly having negotiated a cease fire in Vietnam in 1973.” Because the government that ordered the Christmas bombing was at the same time leading the ceasefire talks, the award was controversial: Le Duc Tho declined the prize, and for the first time two members of the Nobel Committee left in protest.⁠[13][1][1]

After the ceasefire, Kissinger traveled between Middle Eastern capitals in what became known as “shuttle diplomacy,” producing the first Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreement on January 18, 1974, and a Syrian-Israeli agreement in May 1974, and contributing to OPEC’s decision to lift the embargo. The process paved the way for the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty.⁠[2][12][2][14]

After Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal on August 9, 1974, Kissinger stayed on in both roles under President Gerald Ford, helping Ford continue policies including détente with the Soviet Union, relations with the People’s Republic of China and negotiations in the Middle East.⁠[2][2]

Kissinger played a major role in the negotiations leading to the Helsinki Accords, signed by 35 countries in August 1975; in September 1975 he helped conclude a second disengagement agreement between Egypt and Israel that moved the two countries closer to peace.⁠[2][2]

On November 3, 1975, Ford removed Kissinger as national security adviser while keeping him as secretary of state.⁠[2]

In December 1975 Indonesia invaded East Timor, beginning an occupation that lasted until an international peacekeeping force arrived in 1999. Journalist Christopher Hitchens questioned whether Kissinger had given the invasion a “green light.” In December 2001 the National Security Archive published declassified documents from the Ford Library recording that Ford and Kissinger, meeting Indonesian President Suharto on the eve of the invasion, knew of and approved the plans; Kissinger told Suharto that “it is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly” but that “it would be better if it were done after we returned” to the United States. Archival material also indicates that Kissinger understood that the invasion involved use of US-supplied weapons that did not meet the self-defense requirement of US law.⁠[15][15][15][15][15][15]

Kissinger repeatedly denied having had substantive discussions of East Timor with Suharto. At a 1995 press conference he told former East Timorese resistance leader Constancio Pinto that “Timor was never discussed with us when we were in Indonesia,” then said he had learned of the invasion plans at the airport as he was leaving; in a 1999 radio interview he still said he had been told at the airport as he left Jakarta.⁠[15][15][15][15]

Kissinger’s term as secretary of state ended on January 20, 1977. That year he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.⁠[2][3]

In 1979 Kissinger and his longtime friend, Chase Manhattan chairman David RockefellerDavid RockefellerDavid Rockefeller (1915–2017) was an American banker and philanthropist and the youngest son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. He worked at Chase Manhattan Bank for 35 years, serving as chairman and chief executive officer from 1969 to 1981; he led institutions including The Rockefeller University and the Council on Foreign Relations for many years and co-founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973.Open the full entry, helped persuade President Jimmy CarterJimmy CarterJimmy Carter (1924–2024) was an American politician and Democrat who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. His administration brokered the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, signed the Panama Canal treaties and established relations with the People’s Republic of China, but he lost his reelection bid amid the energy crisis, inflation and the Iran hostage crisis; after leaving office he founded The Carter Center to work on mediation, election observation and disease control, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.Open the full entry to admit the deposed Shah of Iran to the United States for treatment, a move that helped precipitate the Iran hostage crisis.⁠[16][16]

The transcripts of Kissinger’s telephone calls in office were kept in his “private” collection at the Library of Congress. In the late 1970s journalist William Safire and organizations including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press sued for access under the Freedom of Information Act, and both the federal district court and the court of appeals ruled that the documents were government records; in 1980, in Kissinger v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Supreme Court reversed, holding that FOIA did not apply, while noting that the Federal Records Act authorized officials to recover improperly removed records. In 2001, as the National Security Archive prepared to sue, Kissinger gave copies to the National Archives and the State Department at their request; on May 26, 2004, the National Archives released about 20,000 pages of the transcripts.⁠[7][7][7][7][7][7][7][7]

Kissinger chaired the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America from 1983 to 1984; in 1986 he received the Medal of Liberty.⁠[3][3]

In 1994 Kissinger published Diplomacy, a historical analysis of modern diplomacy that also defends his policies during the Vietnam War.⁠[3]

Kissinger died in Kent, Connecticut, on November 29, 2023, at the age of 100.⁠[1][3]

After leaving government, Kissinger founded the international consulting firm Kissinger Associates and served as its chairman. His other honors included a Guggenheim Fellowship (1965–1966) and, in 1973, the American Institute for Public Service Award and the Veterans of Foreign Wars Dwight D. Eisenhower Distinguished Service Medal.⁠[3][3][3][3]

Kissinger’s major works include Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (1957), A World Restored (1957), the memoirs The White House Years (1979, covering November 1968 to January 1973) and Years of Upheaval (1982, covering January 1973 to Nixon’s resignation), and Diplomacy (1994). Among assessments of him, Seymour M. Hersh’s The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (1983) is described as an indictment based on extensive research, and Walter Isaacson’s Kissinger: A Biography (1992) as “critical, but balanced.”⁠[3][3][3][3][3]

Kissinger married Ann Fleischer in 1949; they divorced in 1964. In 1974 he married Nancy Maginnes.⁠[3][3]