Henry Kissinger Recordings

Henry Kissinger
(1923 – 2023)

Critics say that as secretary of state towards the end of the Vietnam War; he lost his war.  Others like Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry would seek his advice as an elder statesman.  At age 100, Henry Kissinger still had plenty to say regarding American foreign policy.

Born in what was called the Weimar Republic, now Germany in 1923; Heinz (his given name) Kissinger was born to a father who was a schoolteacher and a mother who was a homemaker.  He was the eldest of two boys, the other being named Walter.  Born of Jewish decent; the Kissinger surname was adopted by his great-great grandfather in 1817 from a Bavarian Spa Town known as Bad Kissinger.  As a boy, Henry enjoyed playing soccer and was one one of the best clubs at the time in his area.

In 1933, a profound event occurred for the Kissinger family and Germany as a whole when Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany.  The Kissingers would be regularly harassed and beaten by Hitler Youth gangs.  One time; defying the segregation laws against Jews, young Henry snuck into a soccer stadium only to be beaten by the security guards.  As a result of Germany's antisemitism laws; the elder Kissinger was relieved of his teaching duties.  Of the Nazi Germany of Henry Kissinger's youth he described it this way…"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."

By August 1938, the Kissingers were able to flee Germany, first staying in London before arriving in New York City in September.  Living in the Jewish-German immigrant neighborhood of Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, Kissinger would attend high school.  After a year of high school, he would work at a shaving brush factory during the day and attend night school.  After high school, Kissinger would enroll at City College of New York where he studied and excelled in accounting.  He continued working through school only to have his education interrupted in 1943 when he was drafted into the United States Army.

While at training in the US Army at Camp Croft in South Carolina, Henry Kissinger would become a naturalized America citizen at the age of 20.  At first, Kissinger was assigned to study engineering at Lafayette College, a private liberal arts college in Easton, Pennsylvania.  But, when the program was cancelled, Kissinger was reassigned to the 84th Infantry Division.  Because of his fluency in German, he was assigned to the military intelligence of the division where during the Battle of the Bulge he volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties.  In addition, while only a private, but again because of his fluency in German, Kissinger was put in charge of the administration of the city of Krefeld.  Kissinger would go on to be assigned the Counter Intelligence Corps where he obtained the enlisted rank of sergeant.  He was in charge of a team in Hanover where they were to track down Gestapo officers as well as other saboteurs.  For this, Henry Kissinger was awarded the Bronze Star.  Then by June 1945, Kissinger would become the commandant of the Bensheim Metro CIC detachment.  His responsibility was for the denazification of the locals in the Bergstrasse district of Hesse.  Under his command, although he had now power to arrest, Kissinger was careful not to abuse the local population.  Kissinger would be reassigned to Camp King and would teach at the European Comnand Intelligence School after the war.  He continued in this position even when he was discharged and was again a civilian.  Of his service in the US Army, Henry Kissinger said that it made him feel like an American.

In 1950, Henry Kissinger would graduate from Harvard College as summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa earning his bachelors degree in political science.  While studying under William Yandell Elliot; an American historian as well as well as a political advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon; the latter while he was Vice President under Dwight D. Eisenhower as a scriptwriter during the Presidential Election of 1960.  Kissinger wrote his senior undergraduate thesis titled THE MEANING OF HISTORY: REFLECTIONS ON SPENGLER, TOYNBEE, AND KANT.  This was a thesis that reached 35,000 words within 400 pages, which was the current origin on the limit of length at the time.  Respectively, Henry Kissinger would receive his masters degree in 1951 and his PhD in 1954, both from Harvard.  It was during his times as a graduate student that he in 1952 founded a magazine called CONFLUENCE.  It was also during this time that he sought work as a spy for the FBI.  He would remain at Harvard where he would serve on the faculty where he was part of the Department of Government.  From 1951 to 1971, Kissinger would serve as the director of the Harvard International Seminar.

Because of his expertise in foreign policy and his work with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Henry Kissinger served as a foreign policy to Nelson Rockefeller in his bids for the Republican Presidential Nomination in the Presidential Election of 1960, the Presidential Election of 1964, and the Presidential Election of 1968.  Kissinger would meet Former Vice President Richard Nixon at a party in 1967 saying if Nixon that he was more thoughtful than he expected.  As mentioned, Kissinger acted as Nelson Rockefeller's foreign policy advisor and saying of Richard Nixon that among the candidates for the Republican Presidential Nomination in 1968 that he (Nixon) is the most dangerous of the men running for president.  However, after Nixon secured the nomination, Kissinger contacted Richard Allen, a Nixon aide stating that he would do anything to help the Former Vice President win the election.  Kissinger would become Richard Nixon's National Security Advisor in 1969, and at the time; Henry Kissinger was one of the most important foreign policy theorists ever to be produced by the United States.

As Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and the president were as close as Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins were.  Kissinger represented the Nixon administration, and later the Gerald Ford administration in regards to ending the Vietnam War as well as opening American relations with China.

In his retirement, Henry Kissinger would write books, give lectures, and made himself available for advisement for future presidents and secretaries of state.  With the death of George Shultz, Henry Kissinger was the sole surviving member of the Nixon Cabinet.  On May 27, 2023, Henry Kissinger turned 100 years of age.  He died November 29, 2023.