American Experience. KissingerAmerican Experience. Kissinger

An unlikely celebrity who drew fire from across the political spectrum, Henry Kissinger is widely recognized as one of the great American statesmen of the twentieth century. According to biographer Robert Schulzinger, "Kissinger seizes the imagination because he engineered the most significant turning point in United States foreign policy since the beginning of the cold war." Born in 1923 in Germany, to devout Jewish middle-class parents, the young Kissinger was forced to flee Hitler₂s anti-Semitic regime, settling with his family in New York City in 1938. After studying at City College, he joined the U.S. Army in 1943, serving as an interpreter and intelligence officer in Europe. Kissinger returned home in 1947 to a brilliant academic career at Harvard University, where he became a professor of government and international affairs in 1957.