The boy from Germany who left his mark on the US: Henry Kissinger is dead. American justice charges Indian with attempted murder of Sikh activist

When Henry Kissinger was last seen in the Oval Office of the White House in October 2017, the head of the House, then President Donald Trump, said: “He usually asks his guests if they have ever been in this room, it power center in Washington. But he wasn’t concerned about Kissinger. Because it is an open secret that his old acquaintance entered the president’s study “many, many” times.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Kissinger went in and out of the White House and left his mark on American foreign policy. After serving as an official and unofficial adviser to Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the Harvard professor moved to the civil service under Republicans Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In the meantime, Kissinger not only served as national security advisor from 1969 to 1975, but also as secretary of state from 1973 to early 1977.

And while it was ultimately the presidents who were responsible for the greatest foreign policy failures and achievements of these two extremely turbulent decades; Kissinger was always at the center of the action – as an envoy to the peace talks in Vietnam, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, as a door opener in communist China, as a mediator in the Cold War with the Soviet Union or as a cruel spectator during the genocide in what is now Bangladesh.

With intelligence, charm, ruthlessness and an almost iron constitution, America’s most famous diplomat tried to achieve his life’s goal: creating a ‘constructive, peaceful world order’.

Shaped by the Weimar Republic and Hitler

The fact that Kissinger pursued this goal can also be explained by his life story. The football-loving Heinz – his given name – was born in 1923 in the small Franconian town of Fürth in Bavaria and grew up in the Weimar Republic, the German experiment with democracy that ended in the Nazi dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.

Kissinger later emphasized, “I don’t really care about Fürth,” as if a Jewish boy could simply ignore the unpleasant experiences he had to endure during Hitler’s rise to power. “You must remember that I am an American first, Foreign Minister second, and a Jew third,” Kissinger reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the early 1970s. (Clever Meir’s response? “Henry, you forgot that in Israel we read from right to left.”)

Kissinger’s refusal to engage in self-reflection never sounded convincing. Throughout his life he never lost his thick English accent, which immediately identified him as German. (His younger brother Walter once answered the question of why he, unlike Henry, got rid of his Bavarian accent by saying, “Because I am the Kissinger who listens.”)

And yet, starting in 1938, after his family fled to America and started a new life in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, Kissinger grew up as a true American. In 1943, the twenty-year-old was called up for military service, which he also performed in his native country, as part of an infantry division of the American armed forces. Kissinger lived to see the end of World War II and the surrender of Nazi Germany on the Elbe.

Success as “scientific fireworks”

In 1947, with his return to civilian life, Kissinger’s academic career began. In 1954 he received his doctorate in political science from Harvard University in Cambridge (Massachusetts). His dissertation was on the Austrian statesman Metternich, which later led to the author being constantly compared to the architect of the Congress of Vienna.

Kissinger appreciated these comparisons. He did not want to be satisfied with an academic career. He was a practical man, a ‘scientific whiz’, as one American newspaper described him. He became increasingly involved in current geopolitical debates, as an advisor to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller (who had ambitions for the White House) and as an assistant to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Kissinger distinguished himself as a cold warrior who, thanks to his German roots, was familiar with conditions in Europe.

The real breakthrough came at the end of 1968, when election winner Richard Nixon appointed him as his chief adviser on security policy. The staff came as a surprise; Behind closed doors, Kissinger made disparaging remarks about Nixon in the 1960s: “I’ve hated Nixon for years,” he told a companion. Nixon later repaid him in kind, with the Republican claiming that his wealthy adviser suffered from an inferiority complex.

And despite this personal antipathy, which was fodder for countless minor and major dramas in the years to come, a very fruitful collaboration emerged between Nixon, the introverted politician, and Kissinger, the extroverted intellectual. The two complex personalities made sense in the same way, even if they didn’t always understand each other. And together they laid the foundation for an end to the Cold War and a globalized world, with détente towards the Soviet Union, Nixon’s historically important visit to China (1972) and the (brutal) end of the war in Vietnam.

A diplomat with whom you could also talk about football

Of course, these achievements in realpolitik – which were accompanied by serious failures in countries such as Cambodia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Indonesia, Cyprus and Chile – were all overshadowed by Watergate, the largest political scandal in American post-war history. And although Kissinger was one of the few high-ranking Nixon advisers to escape unscathed, the scandal also had a negative impact on him.

After stepping down in 1977, when new Democratic President Jimmy Carter took over the reins in Washington, Kissinger began to burnish his reputation. The prolific writer benefited from the fact that he maintained excellent contacts with the establishment in Washington and New York.

Thanks to a mixture of humor and wit – his quip “Power is the greatest aphrodisiac” is still repeated today – Kissinger was also a popular party guest. You could talk to him about the Chinese economy, the war in Iraq or the World Cup.

Perhaps this explains why, half a decade after his retirement, Kissinger was still asked for his opinion on current conflicts – even though he represented a worldview that no longer reflected the spirit of the times. Recently, his consultancy firm’s proximity to autocratic rulers has come under criticism.

Kissinger’s role as a statesman is ‘heavily’ overestimated, the historian David Greenberg wrote a few years ago. He was not intellectually influential nor did he make decisions that changed over time. Luke Nichter, a historian in Texas, has taken the opposite view. He says: Kissinger had a “larger than life” influence on the world we live in today. A few years ago, Kissinger said in a loud voice: You shouldn’t ask former officials about their legacy. “You have a tendency to exaggerate.”

Henry Kissinger, the football-loving boy from Fürth who temporarily became one of the most powerful men in the world in his new home, died Wednesday at his home in Kent, Connecticut. He was 100 years old.