Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist Hardcover – September 29, 2015

“For this reason, I can predict with certainty that hostile reviewers will allege that I have in some way been influenced or induced to paint a falsely flattering picture.’’So true.“My sole commitment was to make my “best efforts to record [his] life ‘as it actually was’ on the basis of an informed study of the documentary and other evidence available.”“This commitment was part of a legal agreement, which ended with the following clause . . .“While the authority of the Work will be enhanced by the extent of the Grantor’s [i.e., Kissinger’s] assistance . . . it will be enhanced still more by the fact of the Author’s independence; thus, it is understood and agreed that . . . the Author shall have full editorial control over the final manuscript of the Work, and the Grantor shall have no right to vet, edit, amend or prevent the publication of the finished manuscript of the Work.’’And (I think) Ferguson reached that goal. No biographer can deeply see into a life and be blinded by hostile prejudice; on the other-hand, preconceived assumptions can warp his vision. The right balance requires genuine skill.Most of this extensive work (864 pages) is historical narrative. Ferguson is writing, in reality, two biographies. One, biography of a famous public intellectual; and two, the biography of twentieth century politics. In fact, seems to spend more pages on cultural, political, academic, military context — than Kissinger’s story.Great! (If you want that much detail)Students of political science, scholars looking for comprehensive references, curious readers looking for ‘inside story’, etc., etc., will all be satisfied. For general reader wanting overview . . .Nevertheless, Ferguson includes analysis, opinion, conclusions and insights. For example, in epilogue . . .“It was an education in five stages . . .The first was Kissinger’s youthful experience of German tyranny, American democracy, and world war.The second was his discovery of philosophical idealism and then historical knowledge at Harvard, and his first application in “Boswash” of these academic insights in the new field of nuclear strategy.The third stage was the harsh lesson in political reality he received in Washington, D.C., during the giddy, risky years of the Kennedy administration.Then came the exposure, from the ground up, to the new kind of warfare that was being waged in Vietnam.Finally, in Paris, Kissinger learned what it was to be diplomatically hoodwinked.’’This provides outstanding summary. Then . . .“At all but the last stage of his educational progress, there was a mentor: first, Fritz Kraemer, the monocled Mephistopheles in olive-green fatigues; then William Elliott, Dixie’s Oxonian idealist; then McGeorge Bundy, the WASP in the White House; then Nelson Rockefeller, a would-be Medici to Kissinger’s anti-Machiavelli, as naïve in his pursuit of power as Kissinger was idealistic in his counsel.’’As shown above, Ferguson’s deft sketch of many famous people adds color and interest. Many, many more — Kennedys, Johnson, Haig, Adenauer, MacGeorge Bundy, de Gaulle, Dulles, Rostow, Eisenhower, W. Y. Elliott, Ho Chi Minh, Kennan, Khrushchev, H. C. Lodge, McNamara, Nixon, etc., etc., — these are just the ones with numerous references!Some real . . . real . . . revelations . . .CHAPTER 1 HeimatCHAPTER 2 EscapeCHAPTER 3 Fürth on the HudsonCHAPTER 4 An Unexpected PrivateCHAPTER 5 The Living and the DeadCHAPTER 6 In the Ruins of the ReichCHAPTER 7 The IdealistCHAPTER 8 Psychological WarfareCHAPTER 9 Doctor KissingerCHAPTER 10 Strangelove?CHAPTER 11 BoswashCHAPTER 12 The Intellectual and the Policy MakerCHAPTER 13 Flexible ResponsesCHAPTER 14 Facts of LifeCHAPTER 15 CrisisCHAPTER 16 The Road to VietnamCHAPTER 17 The Unquiet AmericanCHAPTER 18 Dirt Against the WindCHAPTER 19 The Anti-BismarckCHAPTER 20 Waiting for HanoiCHAPTER 21 1968CHAPTER 22 The Unlikely CombinationEPILOGUE: A BildungsromanWhat surprised (astounded) me the most was Kissinger’s doctoral thesis . . .“The Meaning of History” has gone down in history—as the longest-ever thesis written by a Harvard senior and the origin of the current limit on length (35,000 words, or around 140 pages, still known to some as “the Kissinger rule”). The thesis was 388 pages long—and this was after chapters on Hegel and Schweitzer had been cut. But its size was not the most remarkable thing about it.’’Really?“In a dazzling distillation of three years’ worth of reading, Kissinger gives us not just Spengler, Toynbee, and Kant but also Collingwood, Dante, Darwin, Descartes, Dostoevsky, Goethe, Hegel, Hobbes, Holmes, Homer, Hume, Locke, Milton, Plato, Sartre, Schweitzer, Spinoza, Tolstoy, Vico, Virgil, and Whitehead—as well as Bradley, Huntington, Joseph, Poincaré, Reichenbach, Royce, Russell, Sheffer, Stebbing, and Veblen in the appendix on the logic of meaning.’’Wow! Professional philosophers would be proud to complete this . . . this . . . overwhelming dive into the depths . . . For a political science student? What does Kissinger conclude?“The experience of freedom in a determined environment is [thus] seen to be potentially meaningful after all. . . . Purposiveness is not revealed by phenomenal reality but constitutes the resolve of a soul. Freedom does have a place in a determined universe.”This decision against determinism and for freedom is rare. How did he defend this?“Where does Kissinger himself stand in the end? The answer is with freedom over necessity, with choice understood as an inward experience . . .“Freedom,” he writes in a key passage, “is not a definitional quality, but an inner experience of life as a process of deciding meaningful alternatives. This . . . does not mean unlimited choice. Everybody is a product of an age, a nation, and environment. But, beyond that, he constitutes what is essentially unapproachable by analysis . . . the creative essence of history, the moral personality. However we may explain actions in retrospect, their accomplishment occurred with the inner conviction of choice. . . . Man can find the sanction for his actions only within himself.’’Well . . . no one can claim Kissinger was superficial . . .A lot of stuff in Ferguson’s book. Reader can skip a lot (I did) and still find much to absorb.Sixty seven photographsExtensive index (linked)Thousands of notes (linked)Five hundred sources (not linked)Tremendous research!

I purchased this book as an audio book, and I listen to it during my morning hikes and exercise workouts. I am more of a history-buff than a fan of biographies, but biographies teach us much about history from a particular individual's point of view. The audio books runs for 35 hours!I have always admired H Kissinger and the author, Niall Ferguson. Listening to this wonderful audiobook has given me greater insights into the personalities and events that surrounded the life of the younger Kissinger and foreign policy and politics of the end of WW II until the 1970's.I am a Vietnam era veteran of the USAF, and I went to defcon3 or defcon2 (I can't remember exactly) during the 1973 Arab Israeli war. We were mobilized at 2AM in the morning under full alert conditions, and when I arrived on the flightline nearly all our F111s and SAC B-52 bombers were gone off toward Europe and the Middle East. We had Israeli El-AL jets and cargo planes landing on our base to pick up supplies. I helped load-up some cargo destined for Israel.One item I have not heard mentioned by Kissinger in his biography is that it is the USA and Western powers that violated the vote of the Vietnamese people, who actually voted in a communist government. Personally, I don’t care: Communism is so evil and anti-Christian, that it should be opposed wherever it pops up.In retrospect, I used to be on the fence regarding the Vietnam war. In my view, the war was worth it as it held back communism long enough in Asia to give other countries like Thailand and Singapore the chance to establish better forms of Government.I look forward to volume 2!

Niall Ferguson’s authorized biography ends with Henry Kissinger’s appointment as national security advisor to Richard Nixon in late 1968. Given the controversy that followed it is hard to believe today that his appointment was nearly universally acclaimed by both the Left and the Right. That appointment was a dramatic move up for an Orthodox Jewish kid from Furth, Germany, whose family fled Nazi oppression in 1938.Kissinger’s family established their household in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. Something must have been in the water because out of that neighborhood came Allan Greenspan and my ex-boss at Salomon Brothers, Henry Kaufman. Had not World War II intervened, Kissinger was on his way to becoming an accountant.The army changes him. He sees combat at the Battle of the Bulge, witnesses first- hand the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps and as a sergeant in the counter intelligence corps he works after the war to round up Nazis that have gone to ground. Along the way he leaves his orthodox faith. My guess is that is seeing the violence of the front in World War II enabled him 20 years later to risk is life visiting the war zones of 1965 Vietnam. Not much has been written about his physical courage. Further during his first visit he realized that the Vietnam War was unwinnable and a negotiated settlement was required.Through some lucky breaks and an active mentor Kissinger ends up in Harvard and it is in undergraduate years he becomes an idealist in the Kantian sense. He truly believes in democracy and human choice. He goes on to his Ph.D. and writes a very remarkable dissertation on the Congress of Vienna and its aftermath which is later published as “A World Restored.” Although not as famous as Keynes’s “Economic Consequences…” about Versailles, he offers a unique insight into the geopolitics of 1815 Europe and the key roles of Metternich and Castlereagh. One can certainly argue that this book offered a window into Kissinger’s later thinking the 1970s with respect to U.S. policy concerning Russia and China. Where he appears to lose his idealism is in seeing up close how policy is really made and the machinations of De Gaulle and the North Vietnamese. He begins to merge Castlereagh with Bismarck to form the foundations of the “realpolitik” that he would become known for.Kissinger becomes a public figure in 1957 with his publication of “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy” which places him in the center of the post-Sputnik foreign policy debate. From there it on to both Kennedy’s National Security Council and the Rockefeller Brothers think tank. Ferguson demonstrates Kissinger’s adroitness in balancing his loyalties to both the Democrat Kennedy and the Republican Rockefeller. After leaving the administration he works as Rockefeller’s leading foreign policy wonk writing most of his speeches. He is horrified by the 1964 Republican Convention which brought back memories of 1930s Furth and goes on to vote for Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater.Ferguson highlights the importance of history to the making of foreign policy. Too many practitioners are unaware of the path dependence of the irrevocable decisions they make. He also rightly believes that Kissinger is correct that in analyzing policy it is important to look at the counter factuals. For example had Britain and France stopped Hitler in the Rhineland they likely would have avoided World War II, but they could very well have been blamed for whatever events transpired later. Statesmen have to act with incomplete information, because when you have full information it is too late.We also see Kissinger as a man with his relationships with his parents, his less than happy marriage and his dog Smokey. In my opinion Ferguson has set the stage for his next volume, where we will see the Kissinger that most of us know, become quite a bit more controversial, to say the least.

Il volume è arrivato senza alcun problema. Davvero consigliato.

If you are interested in this extremely man, then this is certainly the book to read.

Bd. 1 der Biographie, verfasst von Niall Ferguson, deckt Leben von H. Kissinger bis zum Eintritt in die US-Administration ab. Zeigt die Grundlagen für seine späteren Aktivitäten und seine Regierungskarriere auf.Bin schon auf den 2. Bd gespannt, der meinen Informationen nach Ende 2013 erscheinen soll.

Melhor biografia de Kissinger já feita, Niall Ferguson se reafirma como o maior historiador de sua geração.Trazendo maior complexidade para a figura do talvez maior diplomata da história americana, o historiador pondera, Será que o realismo não é fruto da vida real?

Detail account of the first part of the life of Henry Kissinger, but also an account of the times he lived on.How did Nazi Germany helped shape the future statesman.An important tool for understanding the history of post WWII America.