Henry Kissinger: Political Icon and Immigrant
Henry Kissinger, the 56th United States Secretary of State under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in 1923 in Fürth, a small city in south-central Germany. Kissinger’s family was Jewish, and in 1938 they left Germany for London in response to rising Nazism and threats against Jews. Soon after, the Kissingers immigrated to New York, where they settled in to Washington Heights, an Upper Manhattan neighborhood with a large population of fellow German Jewish immigrants.
Kissinger’s journey from German teenager to U.S. politician likely has its roots in 1943, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. Kissinger was stationed in South Carolina when he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. During World War II, Kissinger made his way back to Germany, this time to the city of Krefeld as a private. His ability to speak German was a major asset to his division, and helped him accomplish the army’s goal of establishing a civilian administration in Krefeld within a very short period of time. In 1945, Kissinger helped with the de-Nazification efforts in nearby Hesse.
After his time in the army, Kissinger returned to the United States and graduated summa cum laude with a degree in political science from Harvard College. He received his master’s and PhD from Harvard, and eventually became a faculty member in the Department of Government. Kissinger quickly established himself as an expert in U.S. foreign policy, co-founding the Center for International Affairs and releasing a book titled Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. He was a foreign policy advisor to Nelson Rockefeller during his bids for the Republican presidential nomination in 1960, 1964, and 1968, and, when Richard Nixon became president in 1968, was appointed National Security Advisor, a role that eventually led to him becoming the U.S. Secretary of State.
Despite being born in Germany, Kissinger is one of the foremost American political icons. He was instrumental in shaping U.S. policy during the Vietnam War, and even after he retired from politics in 1976 he remained an advisor to Republican leaders and conservative think tanks. In 2008, he founded the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving relations between the two superpowers and attempting peaceful cooperation, particularly in terms of immigration.