Henry Kissinger, the revered and controversial statesman who once tried to return his Nobel Peace Prize, dead at 100

• Henry Kissinger died at his Connecticut home. He was 100.
• The controversial and polarizing statesman made choices in foreign policy that impact the US today.

Henry Kissinger, a scholar and the former US secretary of State, died at 100 at his home in Connecticut, Kissinger Associates Inc. said in a statement Wednesday.

The statement did not provide a cause of death.

Kissinger was born in Germany in 1923, and his family fled the Nazi regime to America in 1938.

In his time as a US Secretary of State, he dramatically shifted US relations in the Cold War, in Vietnam, and in China, though his foreign policy approaches were just as heavily critiqued as they were lauded.

He dominated foreign policy as the United States extricated itself from Vietnam and broke down barriers with China. After he left the government, Kissinger was dogged by critics who argued that he should be called to account for his policies on Southeast Asia and support of repressive regimes in Latin America.

In 1973, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to broker the Paris Peace Accords, under which the US military agreed to withdraw from South Vietnam. But fighting went on for another two years, to devastating effect. In 1975, a day after the fall of Saigon, Kissinger attempted to return his prize, saying the "peace we sought through negotiations has been overturned by force," according to recently released nomination papers reported on by Reuters. The committee declined to take back the prize.

He is survived by his wife Nancy Kissinger, his two children, David and Elizabeth, and five grandchildren.

He rose to prominence in politics while teaching at Harvard

After studying political history and getting a Ph.D. in government studies, he worked for Harvard's government department in the mid-1950s.

While still teaching there, Kissinger worked advising then presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson on foreign-policy decisions.

He was national security advisor from 1969 to 1975

After catching Nixon's attention, he was appointed security advisor, and subsequently nominated for the secretary of state position in 1973.

For a time, he served in both roles.

He served as secretary of state from 1973 to 1977

For eight restless years — first as national security advisor, later as secretary of State, and for a time in the middle holding both titles — Kissinger ranged across the breadth of major foreign policy issues. He conducted the first "shuttle diplomacy" in the quest for Middle East peace. He used secret channels to pursue ties between the United States and China, ending decades of isolation and mutual hostility.

He initiated the Paris negotiations that ultimately provided a face-saving means — a "decent interval," he called it — to get the United States out of a costly war in Vietnam. Two years later, Saigon fell to the communists.

And he pursued a policy of detente with the Soviet Union that led to arms-control agreements and raised the possibility that the tensions of the Cold War and its nuclear threat did not have to last forever.

He has also been harshly criticized and called a 'war criminal' for his actions

Kissinger was a practitioner of realpolitik — using diplomacy to achieve practical objectives rather than advance lofty ideals. Supporters said his pragmatic bent served US interests; critics saw a Machiavellian approach that ran counter to democratic ideals.

In 2015, an appearance by the 91-year-old Kissinger before the Senate Armed Services Committee was disrupted by protesters demanding his arrest for war crimes and calling out his actions in Southeast Asia, Chile, and beyond.

At a 2012 Harvard appearance, Kissinger was confronted by one audience member about the deaths that resulted in his foreign policy maneuvering.

"How do you justify receiving the Nobel Peace Prize when you were the architect of, with Richard Nixon, of killing 4 million southeast Asians during the Vietnam War?" one audience member asked, per NPR. "Do you deny these war crimes? Basically, how do you sleep with yourself at night?"

"Just study who did what, not people who live off proving their country is evil and their leaders are criminal," Kissinger responded, according to NPR. "Start from the assumption that rational people were in government. What led to what decisions?"

He was castigated for authorizing telephone wiretaps of reporters and his own National Security Council staff to plug news leaks in Nixon's White House. He was denounced on college campuses for the bombing and allied invasion of Cambodia in April 1970, intended to destroy North Vietnamese supply lines to communist forces in South Vietnam.

That "incursion," as Nixon and Kissinger called it, was blamed by some for contributing to Cambodia's fall into the hands of Khmer Rouge insurgents who later slaughtered some 2 million Cambodians.

In his later years, he continued doing business trips and book deals

In 2022, when he was 99, Kissinger was still touring for his book about leadership.

ABC asked him in July of that year if he wished he could change any decisions he made previously, per AP.

"I've been thinking about these problems all my life. It's my hobby as well as my occupation," Kissinger told ABC. "And so the recommendations I made were the best of which I was then capable."

He similarly dismissed claims of war crimes in a CBS interview shortly before his 100th birthday, according to AP. During the interview, he was asked about people who think his conduct was akin to criminal behavior or reprehensible.

"That's a reflection of their ignorance," Kissinger said to CBS. "It wasn't conceived that way. It wasn't conducted that way."