Kissinger: The Idealist, 1923-1968

by Niall Ferguson,
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 11, 2015

Born in Germany in 1923, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger immigrated to the United States with his family in 1938. He served in the 84th Infantry Division and in Counter Intelligence during World War II. A faculty member at Harvard University, specializing in international relations, in the 1950s and ’60s, Mr. Kissinger was a consultant to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. National security adviser and secretary of state to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Mr. Kissinger was acclaimed and vilified as the master practitioner of “Realpolitik” in foreign policy. He sought detente with the Soviet Union, opened up diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, negotiated the Paris Peace Accords that ended the Vietnam War, and enlisted the CIA to help engineer the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the president of Chile.