Henry Kissinger on his honeymoon with his wife Nancy in 1974.
Kissinger's forgotten title: "White House playboy"
Henry Kissinger's life was not only characterized by diplomacy and politics. The former US Secretary of State, who died on Wednesday, was also a person who attracted women, writes the Washington Post.
An example of when the two worlds collided occurred in 1970, when Kissinger was National Security Advisor under President Richard Nixon. In connection with a dinner in California organized by the White House, Kissinger got to know the Hungarian-American actress Zsa Zsa Gabor. After dinner, Kissinger accompanied Gabor home for a drink. But just as he was about to "make a loving approach" his pager beeped. It was Nixon who needed him. Kissinger had to pack up and leave. Duty above all.
The Washington Post also notes that the fashion magazine Women's Wear Daily once named Kissinger the "White House Playboy."
Henry Kissinger turned 100 years old.
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Beloved war criminal or skilled diplomat?
The world media is doing its best to sum up Henry Kissinger's century-long life, which ended on Wednesday. Rolling Stone's writer Spencer Ackerman is very critical of the former US Secretary of State's life's work. He
refers, among other things, to researcher Greg Grandin who estimated
that Kissinger, along with former presidents Gerald Ford and Richard
Nixon, was responsible for the deaths of 3-4 million people worldwide in
the 1970s. Ackerman labels Kissinger a "notorious war criminal" who was loved by the "American elite".
On
the other hand, one can also regard Kissinger as a politician with
"unparalleled diplomatic skills", writes Jonathan Steele in The
Guardian. He
remembers how Kissinger hammered out the first peace agreement between
Israel and Egypt which, along with several other efforts, resulted in
him being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
However, leaked documents later showed Kissinger's "contempt for human rights". The
revelations showed how he asked the FBI to tap his associates' phones,
that he gave the green light for Indonesia's dictator to invade East
Timor, and that he allowed the South African apartheid regime to invade
Angola.
Foreign Policy columnist Michael Hirsh calls Henry Kissinger a "colossus on the world stage." Despite
the criticism and controversies that came to surround the former top
politician, he never lost the label as "the United States' leading
foreign affairs expert", writes Hirsh.
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Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is dead
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is dead. He died at his home in Connecticut at the age of 100.
As Secretary of State under Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford between 1973 and 1977 and National Security Advisor between 1969 and 1975, he played a central role in American foreign policy and world politics during the Cold War and the Vietnam War.
Among other things, he opened up US diplomatic relations with China, played an important role in the disarmament talks with the Soviet Union during the Cold War and, together with his North Vietnamese counterpart Le Duc Tho, received the Nobel Peace Prize for the negotiations that ended US involvement in the Vietnam War.
The latter drew strong criticism as it appeared that the war was far from over when the prize was awarded. Critics said that Kissinger could have concluded the same peace agreement several years earlier and thus saved thousands of lives, writes the New York Times.
Kissinger was born in Germany and came to the United States with his family as Jewish refugees in 1938. There he earned a doctorate in political science from Harvard in 1954.
- I thought I would become an accountant. I never thought I would be teaching at Harvard. Becoming a foreign minister was not something I dreamed of, he said in an interview with USA Today in 1985.
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