Important Takeaways:
- ‘An Extraordinary Life’: Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger Dead at 100
- Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger died Wednesday at the age of 100.
- His consulting firm said he died at his home in Connecticut.
- A towering figure of diplomacy who will always be remembered for his thick glasses and deep, gravelly voice, Kissinger forged U.S. foreign policy during critical moments in American history ranging from relations with China to the Vietnam War.
- His family fled Nazi Germany as Jewish refugees in the 1930s when he was a teenager. He later became a U.S. citizen while serving in military intelligence in the U.S. Army during World War II. After the war, he attended Harvard and received his Ph.D. in 1954. He remained on the Harvard faculty for 15 years with appointments in the Government Department and the Center for International Affairs.
- Kissinger served first as a national security adviser and later as secretary of state under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, but his influence continued long after he left office.
- Kissinger initiated the Paris negotiations that ultimately provided a face-saving means — a “decent interval,” he called it — to get the U.S. out of a costly war in Vietnam. Two years later, Saigon fell to the communists.
- He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating a cease-fire in Vietnam in 1973.
- In his later years, Kissinger cultivated the reputation of a respected statesman, giving speeches, offering advice to Republicans and Democrats alike, and managing a global consulting business. He turned up in President Donald Trump’s White House on multiple occasions.
- Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in the Bavarian city of Fuerth on May 27, 1923, the son of a schoolteacher. After his family left Nazi Germany and settled in Manhattan, Heinz changed his name to Henry.
- Kissinger had two children, Elizabeth and David, from his first marriage to Ann Fleischer whom he married in 1949. They divorced in 1969. He is survived by his wife Nancy whom he married in 1974.
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