The point — one of them — that Niall Ferguson raises in the first volume of his biography of Henry Kissinger is that any coherent arrangement for world order must give more freedom of action to the major powers which created that order in the first place
Kissinger: Volume One: 1923–1968: The Idealist
by Niall Ferguson
Penguin Press, 2015, 1008 pages, $79.99
Henry Kissinger’s career has unquestionably made him one of the leading statesmen not only of the United States but also of the Western world for much of the last third of the twentieth century. That fact alone ensures that he has been, and will continue to be, the subject of unstinted admiration as well as virulent hatred. Both kinds of comments have centered on the two decades from 1960 to around 1980, when Kissinger was effectively in charge of the foreign policy of the world’s greatest power.
To write his life story, he has commissioned Niall Ferguson, previously known for his major books—such as Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire and The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World—and for his lectures and television appearances. But this time he has written, with meticulous care, the first half of what may yet turn out to be his masterpiece. In writing it, he has been able to make full use of the huge Kissinger archive—it weighs several tons—at the Library of Congress.
The story begins with the experience of the Kissinger family in Fuerth, northern Bavaria, and in what became the Third Reich before they managed to emigrate. Ferguson has identified at least twenty-three close family members who perished in the Holocaust arranged by Adolf Hitler, who believed, quite literally, that Jews were sub-human. The Kissingers were lucky. They had a relative in the United States who could help with money, visas and passports, so they were able to leave in 1938 and settle in the Washington Heights section of New York.
At school young Henry was notably studious. After the Second World War began, he joined the army, which in turn slowly recognised him as uncommonly able. He served in the 84th Infantry Division and went through the 1944-45 Battle of the Bulge, where he escaped injury. He then joined the Counter-Intelligence Corps, where he became a most effective hunter of Nazis. He even came across a Nazi death camp, an experience he never forgot, and managed to find, and “take care of”, a group of ex-Gestapo officials trying to form a resistance group in post-war West Germany.
