Henry Alfred Kissinger is an American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant. He served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. A practitioner of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a prominent role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. For his actions negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam, Kissinger received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize under controversial circumstances.
About Henry Kissinger in brief
Henry Alfred Kissinger (born Heinz Alfred Kissinger; May 27, 1923) is an American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant. He served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. A practitioner of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a prominent role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. For his actions negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam, Kissinger received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize under controversial circumstances, with two members of the committee resigning in protest. He was born in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany in 1923 to a German Jewish family. In 1938, when Kissinger was 15 years old, he and his family fled Germany as a result of Nazi persecution. After leaving government, he formed Kissinger Associates, an international geopolitical consulting firm. He has written over a dozen books on diplomatic history and international relations. Kissinger remains a controversial and polarizing figure in U.S. politics, both condemned as an alleged war criminal by many journalists, political activists, and human rights lawyers, as well as venerated as a highly effective U. S. secretary of state by many prominent international relations scholars. The surname Kissinger was adopted in 1817 by his great-great-grandfather Meyer Löb, after the Bavarian spa town of Bad Kissingen. The family briefly emigrated to London before arriving in New York City on September 5, 1938. In his youth, Kissinger enjoyed playing soccer. He played for the youth wing of SpVgg Furth, which was one of the nation’s best clubs at the time.
After high school, Kissinger enrolled in the City College of New York, studying accounting. He excelled academically as a part-time student, continuing to work while enrolled. His studies were interrupted in early 1943, when he was drafted into the US Army. On June 19, 1943, at the age of 20 years, he underwent basic training at Camp Croft in South Carolina, where he became a naturalcitizen. The army sent him to study at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, but the program was canceled and he was reassigned to the 84th Infantry Division. During the Battle of the Bulge, Kissinger was only a private in the American administration of the city of Krege, Germany, and was put in charge of the military intelligence section of the Krege. He never lost his pronounced German accent, due to childhood shyness that made him hesitant to speak. He later downplayed the influence his experiences of Nazi persecuted had on his policies, writing “Germany of my youth had a great deal of order and very little justice; it was not the sort of place likely to inspire devotion to order in the abstract. ” However many scholars, including Kissinger’s biographer Walter Isaacson, have disagreed and argued that his experiences influenced the formation of his realist approach to foreign policy. In 1973, Kissinger negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, ending American involvement in the Vietnam War. During this period, he pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated the opening of relations with the People’s Republic of China.
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