(dramatic music) My name is Henry Kissinger.

And I came to America in September, 1938.

Dr. Henry Kissinger, who passed away in 2023, was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in 1923, in Fürth, Germany.

And by any standard lived a remarkable life.

He fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1938, to become one of the most influential American political figures of our time.

When I came to America at the age of 15, I did not have any specific ambitions because the change in my life was dramatic.

(dramatic music) It's important to keep in mind that I came from Germany, where I was a member of a minority, the Jewish minority that was being actively persecuted.

(dramatic music) I think native born Americans take the basic principles for granted even as they value them.

And the circumstances that I had known were a dictatorship that was persecuting people of my ethnic background.

There was not much attachment to where I had lived previously.

So, the process of assimilation went very well and very easily.

(gentle music) The Kissinger family, father Louis, mother Paula, and younger brother Walter, settled in the German-Jewish neighbourhood of Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan.

Henry attended high school at night and worked a factory job during the day.

I started working at the minimum age permitted for work because of the financial condition of our family.

That particular style of life was not typical of middle class Americans, but it was fulfilling because it gave me an opportunity to meet a range of Americans that I would not have met otherwise (dramatic music) 1943 was a pivotal year for 20-year old Henry.

He was studying at City College in New York when he was drafted into the army and then naturalized as a United States citizen.

It was of course, a culmination for all of us who generally had emigrated because of a systematic persecution to come to a country and be fully accepted as a citizen.

And it was a very moving and fulfilling event.

(sinister music) With America at war in Europe and the Pacific, Henry was assigned to the 83rd Infantry Division, along with Midwesterners from Illinois and Wisconsin.

The reception of me by these people from the Middle West had an openness and a friendliness and a warmth which has been with me all my life.

So friendly in fact, that they never asked me about my accent and I thought I had lost it.

(foreboding music) (bombs exploding) Because he was fluent in German, Henry was sent to Europe, where he fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and volunteered for hazardous intelligence missions.

(dramatic music) I would be able to read German documents and interrogate German prisoners.

(dramatic crescendo) Kissinger was awarded a Bronze Star for tracking down Gestapo officers.

But with the local population, he took care to avoid any abuses during his command.

(dramatic music) After the war, which Kissinger said made him feel like a true American, he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and then earned a master's and PHD from Harvard University in the early 1950s.

(soft music) Dr. Kissinger joined the Harvard faculty in 1954 as a member of the Department of Government and Center for International Affairs, gaining a reputation as an authority on U.S. strategic policy.