Holocaust survivor. Harvard professor. Unlikely sex symbol.
But Henry Kissinger, who has died aged 100, will surely be remembered best as an unrivalled colossus of American politics.
As President Richard Nixon’s most trusted foreign policy aide, Kissinger’s impact on global affairs was seismic, spearheading the Western response to Soviet Russia and helping to chart the course through one of the most fraught periods in recent history.
A pioneer of ‘détente’, he oversaw a cooling of relations with Mao’s China and helped mastermind the Paris Peace Accords which precipitated the end of the Vietnam War – winning him the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize.
A formidable résumé, indeed – but Kissinger, who largely weathered the sordid and protracted Watergate scandal, even remaining in office to support Gerard Ford after Nixon’s resignation, had a personal life that garnered intrigue of its own.
Dubbed the ‘sex symbol of the Nixon Administration’, Kissinger had a string of glamorous celebrity girlfriends in his younger years, including journalist Diane Sawyer and actress Candice Bergen.
Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to Richard Nixon, has died aged 100
Kissinger, pictured at the White House in 2019 with his second wife Nancy, was a giant of U.S. politics for several decades and played a key role in the Vietnam War and the Cold War
He was the subject of gushing magazine profiles, forced to deny an affair with the glamorous actress Jill St. John, a Bond girl in Diamonds Are Forever – and even earned the nickname ‘the secret swinger’ after a Washington Post reporter audaciously asked him at a party if he was a swinger.
He later explained, ‘I told her: “I can’t admit that I’m a swinger without getting into trouble. I can’t admit that I’m not a swinger, so why don’t we say I’m a secret swinger?”‘
He also befriended Hugh Hefner – earning himself another nickname, ‘Playboy of the West Wing’ – who gifted him a subscription to his magazine after learning Kissinger had turned up to a party carrying an envelope full of classified information but telling everyone it was a copy of Playboy instead.
Few in politics maintain the potent relevance and influence that Kissinger did throughout his life.
Even in the weeks and months before his death at home in Connecticut on Wednesday, he remained active on the world stage – offering incite on global affairs, including recent controversial opinions about Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Born to a Jewish family in 1923 Germany, Henry – originally Heinz Alfred – suffered a brutal childhood.
During the Nazis’ rise to power, he was kicked out of school and made to attend an all-Jewish institution instead where he was banned from interacting with German children and subjected to regular beatings.
By the time his family fled Hitler’s regime in 1938, he had become a shy and ‘totally withdrawn’ child.
The Kissinger family went first to London before New York City, where they settled in Upper Manhattan.
In 1943, while studying accounting, Henry was drafted into the U.S. Army. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen that year, while based in South Carolina.
However, superiors swiftly recognized his sharp intellect – coupled, of course, with his fluent German – and tapped him for counter-intelligence work during the Second World War.
He saw action at the Battle of the Bulge and was awarded a Bronze Star for his service, which included leading a team assigned to track down Gestapo officers.
Kissinger, pictured in the White House’s East Room with President Richard Nixon in 1973. The pair faced accusations of operating in secrecy and ignoring protocol in a way that was anti-democratic
Kissinger is seen with actress Elizabeth Taylor in an undated photo
Kissinger attends a gala party with Diana, Princess of Wales at Christies
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is seen with Henry Kissinger
After leaving the military, Kissinger pursued studies in political science and went on to receive both a masters and a PhD from Harvard University.
He took a post at the prestigious university and began to fast establish himself as a leading figure in international relations and foreign policy, consulting each of the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson White House administrations.
His timely 1957 book ‘Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy’, meanwhile, had a profound impact on America’s approach to nuclear warfare.
However, his elevation to the very top of US politics wouldn’t come for another decade – until he was appointed as Nixon’s National Security Advisor in 1969.
In November of the previous year, the then president-elect invited Kissinger to a meeting in Washington.
‘I had no idea he was going to offer me a job,’ Kissinger later recalled, ‘I told him I’d have to think about it.’
His decision to leave Harvard and take on the role marked the beginning of a powerful and defining political partnership between the two men.
Kissinger – who was initially upset at Nixon’s nomination, describing him as ‘the most dangerous of all the men running to have as president’ – always maintained the pair never met before the election, despite reports to the contrary.
And it appears their relationship thereafter remained entirely professional (Kissinger told an interviewer in 2003 that ‘we never knew each other personally’).
In 1973, Nixon further appointed him Secretary of State, making him the first foreign-born holder of the office – and also the first to take the post while serving as National Security Advisor.
As could only be expected during such a heated period of geo-politics, Kissinger’s White House tenure was not without controversy.
U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger accepts food from Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai during a state banquet in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (L) and US president Richard Nixon (C) listen to Secretary General of NATO Joseph Luns (R) on June 26, 1974 during the 1974 Brussels summit
Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, owner and President of the Group Fortabat, poses alongside Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, in this undated image
Oprah Winfrey and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger attend The New York Public Library’s Annual Library Lions Gala at The New York Public Library on November 13, 2006
Most notably, his oversight of a bombing campaign against Cambodia between 1969 and 1973 – which killed an estimated 100,000 civilians and was hidden from Congress and the public at the time – drew particular ire.
Similar campaigns in North Vietnam, as well as his backing of Argentina’s military junta during the Dirty War that began in 1974 and support for Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War, also came under criticism.
Kissinger’s role in Vietnam was a major strand of Christopher Hitchens’s 2001 book ‘The Trial of Henry Kissinger’, that argued Kissinger should have been prosecuted for ‘war crimes [and] crimes against humanity.’
But, ultimately, it was Kissinger’s undeniably positive influence elsewhere that shaped the lasting public perception of his time in office.
Kissinger was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 with Le Duc Tho, a Vietnamese general, for their negotiation of a ceasefire.
The pair held 68 meetings, some in secret, over a four-year period before an agreement was reached. Tho refused the accolade, while Kissinger donated his prize money to charity and later tried to return his award, too.
As Secretary of State, he was credited with organizing a pivotal meeting between Nixon and Chairman Mao in 1972 – the first visit by a U.S. President to the People’s Republic of China.
He also, of course, helped stabilize bitter relations with the Soviet Union, focusing on a thawing of tensions in order to – by his own account – ‘[manage] relations with a potentially hostile country in order to preserve peace while maintaining our vital interests’.
Much of what Kissinger and Nixon achieved over Russia was, at least in part, due to their willingness to conduct ‘back-channel’ discussions, including with the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin.
However, the pair – who were in lockstep on almost every foreign policy decision – faced accusations of operating in secrecy and ignoring protocol in a way that was anti-democratic.
Kissinger and his second wife, Nancy, watch the Wimbledon men’s singles final in 2009 between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick
A 2007 photo shows Joe Biden, then a senator, welcome Kissinger before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington
A 1973 quote from Kissinger perhaps best sums up their incredible relationship: ‘I like the President. I agree with him. We’ve gone through all this for three years, like two men in a fox hole… It’s almost irrelevant whether we like each other. It’s like asking me whether I like my arm. We have no disagreement over anything central or basic. No disagreement over policy. We’re too close for that.’
Certainly, Kissinger’s long life was dominated by his work, which in turn brought him great international fame and personal satisfaction – though that is not to say his private life was without note.
After his first marriage in 1949 to Ann Fleischer – producing two children, David and Elizabeth, and a divorce in 1964 – he was single for a marked period and, for three consecutive years after joining the White House, was named ‘Washington’s most sought-after bachelor’.
In 1971 – at the height of his bachelor popularity – he memorably said: ‘I like women who are intense, intelligent and warm. And any woman who survives with me has to be very independent. It would be suicide for a woman to try and find identity through a man absolutely absorbed in his work.’
And three years later, he clearly met his match, marrying his second and last wife Nancy – who he first encountered when working at Harvard where she was a student.
Nancy – who is now 89 and survives her husband – largely put paid to the notion of Kissinger the Playboy swinger, once joking adoringly: ‘Henry’s so square. He’s always been a square.’