Henry Kissinger has been among the most important voices on national security and US foreign policy for well over a half century. Most famously, he served as National Security Advisor to President Richard Nixon, forging a partnership so close they were jointly known as “Nixinger.” He later became secretary of state and stayed in that position for President Gerald Ford following Nixon’s resignation in August 1974. Born Heinz Kissinger in 1923 in Germany, he and his Jewish family emigrated to the United States in 1938 to evade Nazi persecution. He returned to Europe with the US Army in 1944, eventually taking control of a counterintelligence unit in the city of Hanover to track down Nazis in hiding. After the war, he received a PhD at Harvard University and joined the faculty, also serving as a consultant to the US government and think tanks, including the Council on Foreign Relations and the RAND Corporation. As a German Jewish immigrant at a time when the foreign policy establishment remained overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Kissinger found common cause with the Quaker Richard Nixon, joining his team in 1968.

Kissinger’s time in government is both celebrated and harshly criticized. Many praise his diplomacy during the 1973 Yom Kippur War as well as his work in establishing ties between the US and Communist China.