Born on May 29, 1923, in Fuerth, Germany, to an assimilated, middle-class Jewish couple, Kissinger as a boy experienced increasing discrimination in Nazi Germany after 1933. In 1938, the family fled to New York. There, Kissinger studied at City College, until in 1943 he entered the U.S. Army as an intelligence specialist. He served until 1946, ending as a local administrator in occupied Germany. Upon leaving the Army, he entered Harvard to study history, philosophy and international relations. He received his doctorate in 1954. In 1955 he became a study director for the Council on Foreign Relations, and during the late 1950s published several works on the issue of nuclear weapons and foreign policy. In 1957, Kissinger returned to Harvard, meanwhile cultivating his relations with the world of politics and government.

After Richard Nixon won the presidency in 1968, he offered Kissinger the job of national security adviser. Together, the men conducted U.S. foreign policy from the White House, circumventing government bureaucracies and frequently Congress as well. Their main preoccupation was with the war in Vietnam. They pursued a strategy of "Vietnamization," opened secret peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese, but also increased the bombing of North Vietnam and widened the war into Cambodia. In addition, Nixon and Kissinger sought to improve relations with the Soviet Union and China, with the partial aim of getting their help in ending the Vietnam War. In late 1972, their efforts produced a fragile peace accord. Meanwhile, Nixon and Kissinger's strategy of improving the U.S. position in world affairs had produced successes such as an arms control agreement with Moscow and the spectacular "opening" to China.

In 1973, Kissinger became secretary of state. In this capacity he helped negotiate a truce to the 1973 Yom Kippur war in the Middle East. After Nixon's resignation in 1974, he became even more influential under President Gerald Ford. But his final years in government were not happy ones. His complex, cooperative approach to the Soviet Union, "detente," failed, and he increasingly came under fire in Congress, the media and inside the Republican Party. Ford lost the 1976 election, in part because of Republican division over Kissinger's policies. But perhaps his greatest disappointment came in 1975 when, after Congress refused his request for support, South Vietnam was overrun by the North, thereby demolishing the peace accords of 1972-73. Since leaving government, Kissinger has been advising business and international leaders through his company, Kissinger Associates.