Who was Henry Kissinger, Former U.S. Secretary of State Who Passed Away?

On the morning of November 30, 2023, the former Secretary of State of the United States government, Henry Kissinger, passed away. According to his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates Inc., he passed away at his home in Connecticut at the age of 100.

Kissinger played a crucial role in shaping American foreign policy during the Cold War era, particularly in relation to China and the former Soviet Union. His realpolitik approach and his efforts to promote détente earned him praise but more criticism throughout his career. 

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He was born on May 27, 1923, in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany, into a German-Jewish family. He was 9 years old when Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany. During the Nazi regime, he and his family, like every other Jewish, suffered at the hands of Hitler's gang. In 1938, at the age of 15, Kissinger fled from Germany with his parents to avoid persecution and settled in the United States.

Despite his traumatic experiences, Kissinger was able to excel academically. In 1943, when he was 20, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. Kissinger went on to become a prominent and controversial figure in American politics. He served as the National Security Advisor and later as Secretary of State under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. His experiences during World War II undoubtedly shaped his perspective on international relations and influenced his approach to diplomacy during the Cold War era.

While a few praised Kissinger for his diplomacy, he was branded a war criminal by the majority, rightfully. A few of his atrocities include bombing Cambodia during the Vietnam War, which led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime. The Khmer Rouge recruited members to its organization using the bombings, and once in power, they carried out one of the worst genocides of the 20th century. At least 500,000 Cambodians were killed as a result. 

Kissinger has the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian people as well as tens of thousands of American soldiers on his hands. He was a major contributor to the extension of US conflicts in Southeast Asia. When he was the National Security Advisor, the US dropped 9 billion pounds of explosives on Indo-China.

He was also responsible for Pakistan's Yahya Khan killing off 30,000 Bangladeshis in the Pak-Bangladesh conflict. The list of his war crimes is unending, but one thing is sure, Kissinger was directly and indirectly involved in killing off more than 3 million people across the globe. 

Ironically, Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 with his North Vietnamese counterpart Le Duc Tho. Tho refused to share the award with him and two members of the Nobel community resigned to protest against this decision. 

Henry Kissinger died at the age of 100 in Connecticut. The good indeed die young.