title: Ernest Hemingway

text: In January 1941, Martha was sent to China on assignment for "Collier's" magazine. Hemingway went with her, sending in dispatches for the newspaper "PM", but in general he disliked China. A 2009 book suggests during that period he may have been recruited to work for Soviet intelligence agents under the name "Agent Argo". They returned to Cuba before the declaration of war by the United States that December, when he convinced the Cuban government to help him refit the "Pilar", which he intended to use to ambush German submarines off the coast of Cuba.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Hemingway was in Europe from May 1944 to March 1945. When he arrived in London, he met "Time" magazine correspondent Mary Welsh, with whom he became infatuated. Martha had been forced to cross the Atlantic in a ship filled with explosives because Hemingway refused to help her get a press pass on a plane, and she arrived in London to find him hospitalized with a concussion from a car accident. She was unsympathetic to his plight; she accused him of being a bully and told him that she was "through, absolutely finished". The last time that Hemingway saw Martha was in March 1945 as he was preparing to return to Cuba, and their divorce was finalized later that year. Meanwhile, he had asked Mary Welsh to marry him on their third meeting.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Hemingway accompanied the troops to the Normandy Landings wearing a large head bandage, according to Meyers, but he was considered "precious cargo" and not allowed ashore. The landing craft came within sight of Omaha Beach before coming under enemy fire and turning back. Hemingway later wrote in "Collier's" that he could see "the first, second, third, fourth and fifth waves of [landing troops] lay where they had fallen, looking like so many heavily laden bundles on the flat pebbly stretch between the sea and first cover". Mellow explains that, on that first day, none of the correspondents were allowed to land and Hemingway was returned to the "Dorothea Dix".


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Late in July, he attached himself to "the 22nd Infantry Regiment commanded by Col. Charles "Buck" Lanham, as it drove toward Paris", and Hemingway became de facto leader to a small band of village militia in Rambouillet outside of Paris. Paul Fussell remarks: "Hemingway got into considerable trouble playing infantry captain to a group of Resistance people that he gathered because a correspondent is not supposed to lead troops, even if he does it well." This was in fact in contravention of the Geneva Convention, and Hemingway was brought up on formal charges; he said that he "beat the rap" by claiming that he only offered advice.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: On August 25, he was present at the liberation of Paris as a journalist; contrary to the Hemingway legend, he was not the first into the city, nor did he liberate the Ritz. In Paris, he visited Sylvia Beach and Pablo Picasso with Mary Welsh, who joined him there; in a spirit of happiness, he forgave Gertrude Stein. Later that year, he observed heavy fighting in the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. On December 17, 1944, he had himself driven to Luxembourg in spite of illness to cover The Battle of the Bulge. As soon as he arrived, however, Lanham handed him to the doctors, who hospitalized him with pneumonia; he recovered a week later, but most of the fighting was over.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: In 1947, Hemingway was awarded a Bronze Star for his bravery during World War II. He was recognized for having been "under fire in combat areas in order to obtain an accurate picture of conditions", with the commendation that "through his talent of expression, Mr. Hemingway enabled readers to obtain a vivid picture of the difficulties and triumphs of the front-line soldier and his organization in combat".


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Hemingway said he "was out of business as a writer" from 1942 to 1945 during his residence in Cuba. In 1946 he married Mary, who had an ectopic pregnancy five months later. The Hemingway family suffered a series of accidents and health problems in the years following the war: in a 1945 car accident, he "smashed his knee" and sustained another "deep wound on his forehead"; Mary broke first her right ankle and then her left in successive skiing accidents. A 1947 car accident left Patrick with a head wound and severely ill. Hemingway sank into depression as his literary friends began to die: in 1939 William Butler Yeats and Ford Madox Ford; in 1940 F. Scott Fitzgerald; in 1941 Sherwood Anderson and James Joyce; in 1946 Gertrude Stein ; and the following year in 1947, Max Perkins, Hemingway's long-time Scribner's editor, and friend. During this period, he suffered from severe headaches, high blood pressure, weight problems, and eventually diabetes—much of which was the result of previous accidents and many years of heavy drinking. Nonetheless, in January 1946, he began work on "The Garden of Eden", finishing 800 pages by June. During the post-war years, he also began work on a trilogy tentatively titled "The Land", "The Sea" and "The Air", which he wanted to combine in one novel titled "The Sea Book". However, both projects stalled, and Mellow says that Hemingway's inability to continue was "a symptom of his troubles" during these years.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: In 1948, Hemingway and Mary traveled to Europe, staying in Venice for several months. While there, Hemingway fell in love with the then 19-year-old Adriana Ivancich. The platonic love affair inspired the novel "Across the River and into the Trees", written in Cuba during a time of strife with Mary, and published in 1950 to negative reviews. The following year, furious at the critical reception of "Across the River and Into the Trees", he wrote the draft of "The Old Man and the Sea" in eight weeks, saying that it was "the best I can write ever for all of my life". "The Old Man and the Sea" became a book-of-the-month selection, made Hemingway an international celebrity, and won the Pulitzer Prize in May 1953, a month before he left for his second trip to Africa.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: In January 1954, while in Africa, Hemingway was almost fatally injured in two successive plane crashes. He chartered a sightseeing flight over the Belgian Congo as a Christmas present to Mary. On their way to photograph Murchison Falls from the air, the plane struck an abandoned utility pole and "crash landed in heavy brush". Hemingway's injuries included a head wound, while Mary broke two ribs. The next day, attempting to reach medical care in Entebbe, they boarded a second plane that exploded at take-off, with Hemingway suffering burns and another concussion, this one serious enough to cause leaking of cerebral fluid. They eventually arrived in Entebbe to find reporters covering the story of Hemingway's death. He briefed the reporters and spent the next few weeks recuperating and reading his erroneous obituaries. Despite his injuries, Hemingway accompanied Patrick and his wife on a planned fishing expedition in February, but pain caused him to be irascible and difficult to get along with. When a bushfire broke out, he was again injured, sustaining second-degree burns on his legs, front torso, lips, left hand and right forearm. Months later in Venice, Mary reported to friends the full extent of Hemingway's injuries: two cracked discs, a kidney and liver rupture, a dislocated shoulder and a broken skull. The accidents may have precipitated the physical deterioration that was to follow. After the plane crashes, Hemingway, who had been "a thinly controlled alcoholic throughout much of his life, drank more heavily than usual to combat the pain of his injuries."


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: In October 1954, Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He modestly told the press that Carl Sandburg, Isak Dinesen and Bernard Berenson deserved the prize, but he gladly accepted the prize money. Mellow says Hemingway "had coveted the Nobel Prize", but when he won it, months after his plane accidents and the ensuing worldwide press coverage, "there must have been a lingering suspicion in Hemingway's mind that his obituary notices had played a part in the academy's decision." Because he was suffering pain from the African accidents, he decided against traveling to Stockholm. Instead he sent a speech to be read, defining the writer's life:


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: From the end of the year in 1955 to early 1956, Hemingway was bedridden. He was told to stop drinking to mitigate liver damage, advice he initially followed but then disregarded. In October 1956, he returned to Europe and met Basque writer Pio Baroja, who was seriously ill and died weeks later. During the trip, Hemingway became sick again and was treated for "high blood pressure, liver disease, and arteriosclerosis".


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: In November 1956, while staying in Paris, he was reminded of trunks he had stored in the Ritz Hotel in 1928 and never retrieved. Upon re-claiming and opening the trunks, Hemingway discovered they were filled with notebooks and writing from his Paris years. Excited about the discovery, when he returned to Cuba in early 1957, he began to shape the recovered work into his memoir "A Moveable Feast". By 1959 he ended a period of intense activity: he finished "A Moveable Feast" (scheduled to be released the following year); brought "True at First Light" to 200,000 words; added chapters to "The Garden of Eden"; and worked on "Islands in the Stream". The last three were stored in a safe deposit box in Havana, as he focused on the finishing touches for "A Moveable Feast". Author Michael Reynolds claims it was during this period that Hemingway slid into depression, from which he was unable to recover.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: The Finca Vigía became crowded with guests and tourists, as Hemingway, beginning to become unhappy with life there, considered a permanent move to Idaho. In 1959 he bought a home overlooking the Big Wood River, outside Ketchum, and left Cuba—although he apparently remained on easy terms with the Castro government, telling "The New York Times" he was "delighted" with Castro's overthrow of Batista. He was in Cuba in November 1959, between returning from Pamplona and traveling west to Idaho, and the following year for his 61st birthday; however, that year he and Mary decided to leave after hearing the news that Castro wanted to nationalize property owned by Americans and other foreign nationals. On July 25, 1960, the Hemingways left Cuba for the last time, leaving art and manuscripts in a bank vault in Havana. After the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Finca Vigía was expropriated by the Cuban government, complete with Hemingway's collection of "four to six thousand books". President Kennedy arranged for Mary Hemingway to travel to Cuba where she met Fidel Castro and obtained her husband's papers and painting in return for donating Finca Vigía to Cuba.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Hemingway continued to rework the material that was published as "A Moveable Feast" through the 1950s. In mid-1959, he visited Spain to research a series of bullfighting articles commissioned by "Life" magazine. "Life" wanted only 10,000 words, but the manuscript grew out of control. He was unable to organize his writing for the first time in his life, so he asked A. E. Hotchner to travel to Cuba to help him. Hotchner helped him trim the "Life" piece down to 40,000 words, and Scribner's agreed to a full-length book version ("The Dangerous Summer") of almost 130,000 words. Hotchner found Hemingway to be "unusually hesitant, disorganized, and confused", and suffering badly from failing eyesight.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Hemingway and Mary left Cuba for the last time on July 25, 1960. He set up a small office in his New York City apartment and attempted to work, but he left soon after. He then traveled alone to Spain to be photographed for the front cover of "Life" magazine. A few days later, the news reported that he was seriously ill and on the verge of dying, which panicked Mary until she received a cable from him telling her, "Reports false. Enroute Madrid. Love Papa." He was, in fact, seriously ill, and believed himself to be on the verge of a breakdown. Feeling lonely, he took to his bed for days, retreating into silence, despite having the first installments of "The Dangerous Summer" published in "Life" in September 1960 to good reviews. In October, he left Spain for New York, where he refused to leave Mary's apartment, presuming that he was being watched. She quickly took him to Idaho, where physician George Saviers met them at the train.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: At this time, Hemingway was constantly worried about money and his safety. He worried about his taxes and that he would never return to Cuba to retrieve the manuscripts that he had left in a bank vault. He became paranoid, thinking that the FBI was actively monitoring his movements in Ketchum. The FBI had, in fact, opened a file on him during World War II, when he used the "Pilar" to patrol the waters off Cuba, and J. Edgar Hoover had an agent in Havana watch him during the 1950s. Unable to care for her husband, Mary had Saviers fly Hemingway to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota at the end of November for hypertension treatments, as he told his patient. The FBI knew that Hemingway was at the Mayo Clinic, as an agent later documented in a letter written in January 1961.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Hemingway was checked in under Saviers's name to maintain anonymity. Meyers writes that "an aura of secrecy surrounds Hemingway's treatment at the Mayo" but confirms that he was treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as many as 15 times in December 1960 and was "released in ruins" in January 1961. Reynolds gained access to Hemingway's records at the Mayo, which document ten ECT sessions. The doctors in Rochester told Hemingway the depressive state for which he was being treated may have been caused by his long-term use of Reserpine and Ritalin. Of the ECT therapy, Hemingway told Hotchner, “What is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient.”


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Hemingway was back in Ketchum in April 1961, three months after being released from the Mayo Clinic, when Mary "found Hemingway holding a shotgun" in the kitchen one morning. She called Saviers, who sedated him and admitted him to the Sun Valley Hospital; and once the weather cleared Saviers flew again to Rochester with his patient. Hemingway underwent three electroshock treatments during that visit. He was released at the end of June and was home in Ketchum on June 30. Two days later he "quite deliberately" shot himself with his favorite shotgun in the early morning hours of July 2, 1961. He had unlocked the basement storeroom where his guns were kept, gone upstairs to the front entrance foyer, and shot himself with the "double-barreled shotgun that he had used so often it might have been a friend", which was purchased from Abercrombie & Fitch.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Mary was sedated and taken to the hospital, returning home the next day where she cleaned the house and saw to the funeral and travel arrangements. Bernice Kert writes that it "did not seem to her a conscious lie" when she told the press that his death had been accidental. In a press interview five years later, Mary confirmed that he had shot himself.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Family and friends flew to Ketchum for the funeral, officiated by the local Catholic priest, who believed that the death had been accidental. An altar boy fainted at the head of the casket during the funeral, and Hemingway's brother Leicester wrote: "It seemed to me Ernest would have approved of it all." He is buried in the Ketchum cemetery.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Hemingway's behavior during his final years had been similar to that of his father before he killed himself; his father may have had hereditary hemochromatosis, whereby the excessive accumulation of iron in tissues culminates in mental and physical deterioration. Medical records made available in 1991 confirmed that Hemingway had been diagnosed with hemochromatosis in early 1961. His sister Ursula and his brother Leicester also killed themselves. Hemingway's health was further complicated by heavy drinking throughout most of his life.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: A memorial to Hemingway just north of Sun Valley is inscribed on the base with a eulogy Hemingway had written for a friend several decades earlier:


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: "The New York Times" wrote in 1926 of Hemingway's first novel, "No amount of analysis can convey the quality of "The Sun Also Rises". It is a truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame." "The Sun Also Rises" is written in the spare, tight prose that made Hemingway famous, and, according to James Nagel, "changed the nature of American writing". In 1954, when Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, it was for "his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in "The Old Man and the Sea", and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Henry Louis Gates believes Hemingway's style was fundamentally shaped "in reaction to [his] experience of world war". After World War I, he and other modernists "lost faith in the central institutions of Western civilization" by reacting against the elaborate style of 19th-century writers and by creating a style "in which meaning is established through dialogue, through action, and silences—a fiction in which nothing crucial—or at least very little—is stated explicitly."


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Because he began as a writer of short stories, Baker believes Hemingway learned to "get the most from the least, how to prune language, how to multiply intensities and how to tell nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more than the truth." Hemingway called his style the iceberg theory: the facts float above water; the supporting structure and symbolism operate out of sight. The concept of the iceberg theory is sometimes referred to as the "theory of omission". Hemingway believed the writer could describe one thing (such as Nick Adams fishing in "Big Two-Hearted River") though an entirely different thing occurs below the surface (Nick Adams concentrating on fishing to the extent that he does not have to think about anything else). Paul Smith writes that Hemingway's first stories, collected as "In Our Time", showed he was still experimenting with his writing style, and when he wrote about Spain or other countries he incorporated foreign words into the text, which sometimes appears directly in the other language (in italics, as occurs in "The Old Man and the Sea") or in English as literal translations. He also often used bilingual puns and crosslingual wordplay as stylistic devices. In general, he avoided complicated syntax. About 70 percent of the sentences are simple sentences without subordination—a simple childlike grammar structure.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Jackson Benson believes Hemingway used autobiographical details as framing devices about life in general—not only about his life. For example, Benson postulates that Hemingway used his experiences and drew them out with "what if" scenarios: "what if I were wounded in such a way that I could not sleep at night? What if I were wounded and made crazy, what would happen if I were sent back to the front?" Writing in "The Art of the Short Story", Hemingway explains: "A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff that you, not your editors, omit."


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: The simplicity of the prose is deceptive. Zoe Trodd believes Hemingway crafted skeletal sentences in response to Henry James's observation that World War I had "used up words". Hemingway offers a "multi-focal" photographic reality. His iceberg theory of omission is the foundation on which he builds. The syntax, which lacks subordinating conjunctions, creates static sentences. The photographic "snapshot" style creates a collage of images. Many types of internal punctuation (colons, semicolons, dashes, parentheses) are omitted in favor of short declarative sentences. The sentences build on each other, as events build to create a sense of the whole. Multiple strands exist in one story; an "embedded text" bridges to a different angle. He also uses other cinematic techniques of "cutting" quickly from one scene to the next; or of "splicing" a scene into another. Intentional omissions allow the reader to fill the gap, as though responding to instructions from the author and create three-dimensional prose.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Hemingway habitually used the word "and" in place of commas. This use of polysyndeton may serve to convey immediacy. Hemingway's polysyndetonic sentence—or in later works his use of subordinate clauses—uses conjunctions to juxtapose startling visions and images. Benson compares them to haikus. Many of Hemingway's followers misinterpreted his lead and frowned upon all expression of emotion; Saul Bellow satirized this style as "Do you have emotions? Strangle them." However, Hemingway's intent was not to eliminate emotion, but to portray it more scientifically. Hemingway thought it would be easy, and pointless, to describe emotions; he sculpted collages of images in order to grasp "the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always". This use of an image as an objective correlative is characteristic of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust. Hemingway's letters refer to Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" several times over the years, and indicate he read the book at least twice.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Hemingway's writing includes themes of love, war, travel, wilderness, and loss. Critic Leslie Fiedler sees the theme he defines as "The Sacred Land"—the American West—extended in Hemingway's work to include mountains in Spain, Switzerland and Africa, and to the streams of Michigan. The American West is given a symbolic nod with the naming of the "Hotel Montana" in "The Sun Also Rises" and "For Whom the Bell Tolls". According to Stoltzfus and Fiedler, in Hemingway's work, nature is a place for rebirth and rest; and it is where the hunter or fisherman might experience a moment of transcendence at the moment they kill their prey. Nature is where men exist without women: men fish; men hunt; men find redemption in nature. Although Hemingway does write about sports, such as fishing, Carlos Baker notes the emphasis is more on the athlete than the sport. At its core, much of Hemingway's work can be viewed in the light of American naturalism, evident in detailed descriptions such as those in "Big Two-Hearted River".


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Fiedler believes Hemingway inverts the American literary theme of the evil "Dark Woman" versus the good "Light Woman". The dark woman—Brett Ashley of "The Sun Also Rises"—is a goddess; the light woman—Margot Macomber of "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"—is a murderess. Robert Scholes says early Hemingway stories, such as "A Very Short Story", present "a male character favorably and a female unfavorably". According to Rena Sanderson, early Hemingway critics lauded his male-centric world of masculine pursuits, and the fiction divided women into "castrators or love-slaves". Feminist critics attacked Hemingway as "public enemy number one", although more recent re-evaluations of his work "have given new visibility to Hemingway's female characters (and their strengths) and have revealed his own sensitivity to gender issues, thus casting doubts on the old assumption that his writings were one-sidedly masculine." Nina Baym believes that Brett Ashley and Margot Macomber "are the two outstanding examples of Hemingway's 'bitch women.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: The theme of women and death is evident in stories as early as "Indian Camp". The theme of death permeates Hemingway's work. Young believes the emphasis in "Indian Camp" was not so much on the woman who gives birth or the father who kills himself, but on Nick Adams who witnesses these events as a child, and becomes a "badly scarred and nervous young man". Hemingway sets the events in "Indian Camp" that shape the Adams persona. Young believes "Indian Camp" holds the "master key" to "what its author was up to for some thirty-five years of his writing career". Stoltzfus considers Hemingway's work to be more complex with a representation of the truth inherent in existentialism: if "nothingness" is embraced, then redemption is achieved at the moment of death. Those who face death with dignity and courage live an authentic life. Francis Macomber dies happy because the last hours of his life are authentic; the bullfighter in the corrida represents the pinnacle of a life lived with authenticity. In his paper "The Uses of Authenticity: Hemingway and the Literary Field", Timo Müller writes that Hemingway's fiction is successful because the characters live an "authentic life", and the "soldiers, fishers, boxers and backwoodsmen are among the archetypes of authenticity in modern literature".


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: The theme of emasculation is prevalent in Hemingway's work, notably in "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" and "The Sun Also Rises". Emasculation, according to Fiedler, is a result of a generation of wounded soldiers; and of a generation in which women such as Brett gained emancipation. This also applies to the minor character, Frances Clyne, Cohn's girlfriend in the beginning of "The Sun Also Rises". Her character supports the theme not only because the idea was presented early on in the novel but also the impact she had on Cohn in the start of the book while only appearing a small number of times. In "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen", the emasculation is literal, and related to religious guilt. Baker believes Hemingway's work emphasizes the "natural" versus the "unnatural". In "An Alpine Idyll" the "unnaturalness" of skiing in the high country late spring snow is juxtaposed against the "unnaturalness" of the peasant who allowed his wife's dead body to linger too long in the shed during the winter. The skiers and peasant retreat to the valley to the "natural" spring for redemption.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Descriptions of food and drink feature prominently in many of Hemingway's works. In the short story "Big Two-Hearted River" Hemingway describes a hungry Nick Adams cooking a can of pork and beans and a can of spaghetti over a fire in a heavy cast iron pot. The primitive act of preparing the meal in solitude is a restorative act and one of Hemingway's narratives of post-war integration.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Susan Beegel reports that Charles Stetler and Gerald Locklin read Hemingway's "The Mother of a Queen" as both misogynistic and homophobic, and Ernest Fontana thought that a "horror of homosexuality" drove the short story "A Pursuit Race". Beegel found that "despite the academy's growing interest in multiculturalism ... during the 1980s ... critics interested in multiculturalism tended to ignore the author as 'politically incorrect.'", listing just two "apologetic articles on [his] handling of race". Barry Gross, comparing Jewish characters in literature of the period, commented that "Hemingway never lets the reader forget that Cohn is a Jew, not an unattractive character who happens to be a Jew but a character who is unattractive because he is a Jew."


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Hemingway's legacy to American literature is his style: writers who came after him either emulated or avoided it. After his reputation was established with the publication of "The Sun Also Rises", he became the spokesperson for the post-World War I generation, having established a style to follow. His books were burned in Berlin in 1933, "as being a monument of modern decadence", and disavowed by his parents as "filth". Reynolds asserts the legacy is that "[Hemingway] left stories and novels so starkly moving that some have become part of our cultural heritage."


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Benson believes the details of Hemingway's life have become a "prime vehicle for exploitation", resulting in a Hemingway industry. Hemingway scholar Hallengren believes the "hard-boiled style" and the machismo must be separated from the author himself. Benson agrees, describing him as introverted and private as J. D. Salinger, although Hemingway masked his nature with braggadocio. During World War II, Salinger met and corresponded with Hemingway, whom he acknowledged as an influence. In a letter to Hemingway, Salinger claimed their talks "had given him his only hopeful minutes of the entire war" and jokingly "named himself national chairman of the Hemingway Fan Clubs".


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: The extent of his influence is seen from the enduring and varied tributes to Hemingway and his works. 3656 Hemingway, a minor planet discovered in 1978 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Chernykh, was named for Hemingway, and in 2009, a crater on Mercury was also named in his honor. "The Kilimanjaro Device" by Ray Bradbury featured Hemingway being transported to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, while the 1993 motion picture "Wrestling Ernest Hemingway" explored the friendship of two retired men, played by Robert Duvall and Richard Harris, in a seaside Florida town. His influence is further evident from the many restaurants bearing his name and the proliferation of bars called "Harry's", a nod to the bar in "Across the River and Into the Trees". Hemingway's son Jack (Bumby) promoted a line of furniture honoring his father, Montblanc created a Hemingway fountain pen, and multiple lines of clothing inspired by Hemingway have been produced. In 1977, the International Imitation Hemingway Competition was created to acknowledge his distinct style and the comical efforts of amateur authors to imitate him; entrants are encouraged to submit one "really good page of really bad Hemingway" and the winners are flown to Harry's Bar in Italy.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Mary Hemingway established the Hemingway Foundation in 1965, and in the 1970s she donated her husband's papers to the John F. Kennedy Library. In 1980, a group of Hemingway scholars gathered to assess the donated papers, subsequently forming the Hemingway Society, "committed to supporting and fostering Hemingway scholarship", publishing "The Hemingway Review". Numerous awards have been established in Hemingway's honor to recognize significant achievement in the arts and culture, including the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and the Hemingway Award.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Almost exactly 35 years after Hemingway's death, on July 1, 1996, his granddaughter Margaux Hemingway died in Santa Monica, California. Margaux was a supermodel and actress, co-starring with her younger sister Mariel in the 1976 movie "Lipstick". Her death was later ruled a death by suicide.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: Three houses associated with Hemingway are listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places: the Ernest Hemingway Cottage on Walloon Lake, Michigan, designated in 1968; the Ernest Hemingway House in Key West, designated in 1968; and the Ernest and Mary Hemingway House in Ketchum, designated in 2015. His boyhood home, in Oak Park, Illinois, is a museum and archive dedicated to Hemingway. Hemingway's childhood home in Oak Park and his Havana residence were also converted into museums.


title: Ernest Hemingway

text: On April 5, 2021, "Hemingway", a three-episode, six-hour documentary, a recapitulation of Hemingway's life, labors, and loves, debuted on the Public Broadcasting System. It was co-produced and directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Alexander Rae Baldwin III (born April 3, 1958) is an American actor, comedian, and producer. In his early career, Baldwin played both leading and supporting roles in a variety of films such as Tim Burton's "Beetlejuice" (1988), Mike Nichols' "Working Girl" (1988), Jonathan Demme's "Married to the Mob" (1988), and Oliver Stone's "Talk Radio" (1988). He gained attention for his performances as Jack Ryan in "The Hunt for Red October" (1990) and in "Glengarry Glen Ross" (1992). Since then he has worked with directors such as Woody Allen in "Alice" (1990), "To Rome with Love" (2012) and "Blue Jasmine" (2013), and Martin Scorsese in "The Aviator" (2004) and "The Departed" (2006). His performance in the drama "The Cooler" (2003) garnered him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He has done voice work for "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" (2004), "" (2008), "Rise of the Guardians" (2012), and "The Boss Baby" film franchise (2017–present).


title: Alec Baldwin

text: From 2006 to 2013, Baldwin received critical acclaim starring alongside Tina Fey as Jack Donaghy on the NBC sitcom "30 Rock", winning two Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and seven Screen Actors Guild Awards for his work on the series, making him the male performer with the most SAG Awards in history. On stage, he portrayed Stanley Kowalski in the 1992 Broadway production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" and the title character in a 1998 Off-Broadway production of "Macbeth", the former earning him a Tony Award nomination. Baldwin co-starred in "" (2015) and "" (2018), the fifth and sixth installments of the "" series. He is also a columnist for "The Huffington Post". He also was the host of "Match Game" from 2016 until 2021.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin has received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Donald Trump on the long-running sketch series "Saturday Night Live", both during the latter part of the 2016 presidential election campaign and following the inauguration, a role that won him his third Primetime Emmy in 2017. He was nominated again in 2018 and 2021.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: In 2021, while on the "Rust" film set, Baldwin discharged a revolver used as a prop, which killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Alexander Rae Baldwin III was born on April 3, 1958, in Amityville, New York, and raised in the Nassau Shores neighborhood of nearby Massapequa, the eldest son of Carol Newcomb ("née" Martineau; December 15, 1929 – May 26, 2022) from Syracuse and Alexander Rae Baldwin Jr. (October 26, 1927 – April 15, 1983), a high school history/social studies teacher and football coach from Brooklyn. He has three younger brothers, Daniel (born 1960), William (born 1963), and Stephen (born 1966), who also became actors. He also has two sisters, Elizabeth "Beth" Baldwin Keuchler (born 1955) and Jane Ann Baldwin Sasso (born 1965).


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Alec and his siblings were raised as Roman Catholics. They are of Irish, French, and English ancestry. Through his father, Baldwin is descended from "Mayflower" passenger John Howland, and through this line, is the 13th generation of his family born in North America and the 14th generation to live in North America.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin attended Alfred G. Berner High School in Massapequa and played football there under Coach Bob Reifsnyder. In New York City, Baldwin worked as a busboy at the famed discotheque, Studio 54. From 1976 to 1979, he attended George Washington University. In 1979, he lost the election for student body president and received a personal letter from former U.S. president Richard Nixon (with whom he had a common friend) encouraging him to use the loss as a learning experience.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Afterward, he transferred to the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University (NYU) where he studied with, among others, Geoffrey Horne and Mira Rostova at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. Later, he was accepted as a member of the Actors Studio. In 1994, he completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at NYU.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin made his Broadway debut in 1986 in a revival of Joe Orton's "Loot" alongside Zoë Wanamaker, Željko Ivanek, Joseph Maher, and Charles Keating. This production closed after three months. His other Broadway credits include Caryl Churchill's "Serious Money" with Kate Nelligan and a revival of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire", for which his performance as Stanley Kowalski garnered a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor. Baldwin also received an Emmy nomination for the 1995 television version of the production, in which both he and Jessica Lange reprised their roles, alongside John Goodman and Diane Lane. In 1998, Baldwin played the title role in "Macbeth" at The Public Theater alongside Angela Bassett and Liev Schreiber in a production directed by George C. Wolfe. In 2004, Baldwin starred in a revival of Broadway's "Twentieth Century" about a successful and egomaniacal Broadway director (Baldwin), who has transformed a chorus girl (Anne Heche) into a leading lady.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: On June 9, 2005, he appeared in a concert version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "South Pacific" at Carnegie Hall. He starred as Luther Billis, alongside Reba McEntire as Nellie and Brian Stokes Mitchell as Emile. The production was taped and telecast by PBS on April 26, 2006. In 2006, Baldwin made theater news in Roundabout Theatre Company's Off-Broadway revival of Joe Orton's "Entertaining Mr. Sloane". In 2010, Baldwin starred opposite Sam Underwood in a critically acclaimed revival of Peter Shaffer's "Equus", directed by Tony Walton at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin returned to Broadway as Harold in "Orphans". The show, which opened April 18, 2013, was also to have starred Shia LaBeouf as Treat, but LaBeouf left the production in rehearsals and was replaced by Ben Foster.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin's first acting role was as Billy Aldrich in the NBC daytime soap opera "The Doctors" from 1980 to 1982. In the fall 1983, he starred in the short-lived television series "Cutter to Houston". He went on to appear as the brother of Valene Ewing and son of Lilimae Clements (played by Joan Van Ark and Julie Harris, respectively) in "Knots Landing" from 1984 to 1985. In 1986 Baldwin starred in "Dress Gray", a four-hour made-for-television miniseries, as an honest cadet sergeant who tries to solve the mystery of a murdered gay classmate. In 1998 he became the third narrator and George Carlin's replacement for the fifth and sixth seasons of "Thomas & Friends". In 2000 he starred in "Thomas and the Magic Railroad" as Mr. Conductor. He left the show in 2002 after winning the role of Lawrence Quinn in "The Cat in the Hat" and was replaced by Michael Brandon.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: In 2002, Baldwin appeared in two episodes of "Friends" as Phoebe's overly enthusiastic love interest, Parker. He also portrayed a recurring character in several seasons 7 and 8 episodes of "Will & Grace", in which he played Malcolm, a "top secret agent" and the lover of Karen Walker (Megan Mullally). He also guest-starred in the first live episode of the series. Baldwin wrote an episode of "Law & Order" entitled "Tabloid", which aired in 1998. He played Dr. Barrett Moore, a retired plastic surgeon, in the series "Nip/Tuck".


title: Alec Baldwin

text: He starred as Jack Donaghy on NBC's "30 Rock", which first aired in October 2006. He met his future co-stars Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan while appearing on "Saturday Night Live." Since season 3, Baldwin was credited as one of "30 Rock"s producers. Baldwin has won three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe awards and seven Screen Actors Guild Awards for his role. He received his second Emmy nomination for Best Actor in a Television Comedy or Musical as Jack Donaghy in 2008, marking his seventh Primetime Emmy nomination and first win. He won again in 2009.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin joined TCM's "The Essentials" Robert Osborne as co-host beginning in March 2009. In 2009, he appeared in a series of commercials for Hulu that premiered during the Super Bowl broadcast. In 2010, he made a five-second cameo appearance with comedian Andy Samberg in a musical video titled "Great Day" featured on the bonus DVD as part of Lonely Island's album "Turtleneck & Chain".


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin co-hosted the 82nd Academy Awards with Steve Martin in 2010. He has hosted "Saturday Night Live" 17 times , and holds the record for most times hosting the show. He also impersonated Republican nominee Donald Trump during "SNL" coverage of the 2016 Presidential election, to critical acclaim. In 2017, he won a Primetime Emmy for his portrayal of Trump. Baldwin continued in the role until Trump's defeat in the 2020 election.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Beginning in 2010, Baldwin appeared in a television campaign for Capital One as their spokesperson. Following his 2013 confrontation with a videographer reported by TMZ, his contract was not renewed, and he was succeeded in the campaign by Jennifer Garner.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: On February 4, 2012, he hosted the 2011 NFL Honors awards show. He later hosted the second show on February 2, 2013.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: In 2013 Baldwin briefly hosted "Up Late with Alec Baldwin" on MSNBC. On November 26, 2013, the program was cancelled after only five episodes, due in part to a street tirade captured on video. TMZ claimed Baldwin's insult toward the videographer was "cocksucking fag". Baldwin, who denied that he used the word "fag", later cited this incident as a major turning point in his public life.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: In 2016 Baldwin began hosting a reboot of the game show "Match Game" on ABC. In 2017, he took over as sole host of TCM's "The Essentials" following the death of his co-host, Robert Osborne.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: In August 2017, Baldwin's production company, El Dorado Pictures, signed a first-look deal with ABC Studios.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: On March 3, 2018, following the broadcast of the 90th Academy Awards, ABC broadcast a preview episode of the talk show "The Alec Baldwin Show", at the time called "Sundays With Alec Baldwin", scheduled to formally debut with a nine-episode order that fall.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin was the subject of the 2019 edition of the Comedy Central Roast, which included among the roastees a surprise appearance by his daughter Ireland.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: In 2021, Baldwin starred opposite Jamie Dornan and Christian Slater in the miniseries "Dr. Death" on Peacock.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin made his film debut with a minor role in the 1987 film "Forever, Lulu". In 1988, he appeared in "Beetlejuice" and "Working Girl". He gained further recognition as a leading man with his role as Jack Ryan in "The Hunt for Red October" (1990). That same year, he also starred in the black comedy crime film "Miami Blues" alongside Jennifer Jason Leigh and Fred Ward.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin met his future wife Kim Basinger when they played lovers in the 1991 film "The Marrying Man". Next, Baldwin played a ferocious sales executive in "Glengarry Glen Ross" (1992), a part added to the film version of David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play (including the monologue "Coffee's for closers").


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Later that same year, he starred in "Prelude to a Kiss" with Meg Ryan, which was based on the Broadway play. The film received a lukewarm reception by critics and grossed only $22 million worldwide. He appeared with Basinger again in "The Getaway", a 1994 remake of the 1972 Steve McQueen film of the same name.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Also, in 1994, Baldwin made a foray into pulp fiction-based movies with the role of the title character in "The Shadow". The film made $48 million. In 1996 and 1997 he starred in several more thrillers, including "The Edge", "The Juror", and "Heaven's Prisoners".


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin shifted towards character acting, beginning with "Pearl Harbor" in 2001. He played Lt. Col. James Doolittle in the film. With a worldwide box office of $449,220,945, this film remains the highest-grossing film Baldwin has appeared in during his acting career. Baldwin was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance in the 2003 gambling drama "The Cooler".


title: Alec Baldwin

text: He appeared in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator" (2004) and "The Departed" (2006). In 2006, he starred in the film "Mini's First Time". He performed opposite Sarah Michelle Gellar in "Suburban Girl" (2007). Two years later, he co-starred in the hit romantic comedy "It's Complicated" with Meryl Streep and Steve Martin.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin directed and starred in "The Devil and Daniel Webster" with Anthony Hopkins, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Dan Aykroyd in 2001. The then-unreleased film became an asset in a federal bank fraud trial when investor Jed Barron was convicted of bank fraud while the movie was in production. The film was eventually acquired by The Yari Group without Baldwin's involvement.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: In 2007, the Yari Film Group announced that it would give the film, now titled "Shortcut to Happiness", a theatrical release in the spring, and cable film network Starz! announced that it had acquired pay TV rights for the film. "Shortcut to Happiness" was finally released in 2008. Baldwin, displeased with the way the film had been cut in post-production, demanded that his directorial credit be changed to the pseudonym "Harry Kirkpatrick".


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin co-starred in "", the fifth installment of the "" series, released on July 31, 2015, and reprised the role in "", released on July 27, 2018.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: On August 27, 2018, it was announced that Baldwin would join the cast for ""Joker"", playing Thomas Wayne, father of Bruce Wayne. Later, on August 29, 2018, Baldwin withdrew from the role. That same year, Baldwin made cameo appearances in the Best Picture-nominated films "BlacKkKlansman" and "A Star Is Born" as Dr. Kennebrew Beaureguard and himself, respectively.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: On January 12, 2009, Baldwin became the host of "The New York Philharmonic This Week", the nationally syndicated radio series of the New York Philharmonic. He has recorded two nationally distributed public service radio announcements on behalf of the Save the Manatee Club.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: On October 24, 2011, WNYC public radio released the first episode of Baldwin's podcast "Here's the Thing", a series of interviews with public figures including artists, policy-makers, and performers. The first two episodes featured actor Michael Douglas and political consultant Ed Rollins. Between 2011 and 2020, Baldwin completed more than 150 interviews, with guests who included musician Wynton Marsalis, filmmaker Edward Norton, comedian David Letterman, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Lang Lang among many others. "Here's the Thing" was developed for Alec Baldwin by Lu Olkowski, Trey Kay, Kathy Russo, and Emily Botein.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin co-authored the book "A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce" with Mark Tabb in 2008. His 2017 memoir "Nevertheless" debuted at No. 5 on "The New York Times" hardcover nonfiction best-seller list.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin, along with his mother Carol, created the Carol M. Baldwin Cancer Research Fund. This led to the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Care Center at the Stony Brook University Hospital to be named in her honor.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: During his 2010–2013 stint as a spokesperson for Capital One, Baldwin's contract was written to fund Baldwin's charity foundation. He was paid $15 million over nearly five years. After taxes and accounting fees, the remainder, $14.125 million, was given to charity.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: In March 2011, Baldwin donated $1 million to the New York Philharmonic (on whose board he served), and $500,000 to the Roundabout Theatre Company, where he has performed plays in New York. In recent years, his foundation has donated bookstore gift certificates to Long Island libraries to support literacy programs.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin has also received a number of awards and nominations throughout his career for stage, television, and film roles. He has been nominated for the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Tony Award and has received three Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and eight Screen Actors Guild Awards.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: On May 12, 2010, Baldwin gave a commencement address at New York University and was awarded a Doctor of Fine Arts degree, honoris causa.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin was named Esteemed Faculty by Stony Brook University after teaching a master class in acting at Stony Brook Southampton.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: In May 1990, Baldwin met actress Kim Basinger when they played lovers in the film "The Marrying Man". They married on August 19, 1993, and had a daughter, Ireland (born October 23, 1995). They separated on December 5, 2000 and divorced on September 3, 2002.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin has called the attorneys in the case "opportunists", and has characterized Basinger's psychologists as part of the "divorce industry". He has faulted them more than Basinger and writes, "In fact, I blame my ex-wife least of all for what has transpired. She is a person, like many of us, doing the best she can with what she has. She is a litigant, and therefore, one who walks into a courtroom and is never offered anything other than what is served there. Nothing off the menu, ever."


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin wrote that he spent over a million dollars, has had to put time aside from his career, has had to travel extensively, and needed to find a house in California (he lived in New York), so that he could stay in his daughter's life.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin contended that after seven years of these issues, he hit a breaking point and, on April 11, 2007, left an angry voicemail message in response to another unanswered arranged call, in which Baldwin called his 11-year-old daughter a "rude, thoughtless little pig". He contends that the tape was sold to TMZ, which released the recording, despite laws against publishing media related to a minor without the permission of both parents. Baldwin admitted that he made a mistake but asked not to be judged as a parent based on a bad moment. He later admitted to "Playboy" in June 2009 that he contemplated suicide over the voicemail that leaked to the public. Of the incident, he said, "I spoke to a lot of professionals, who helped me. If I committed suicide, [Kim Basinger] would have considered that a victory. Destroying me was their avowed goal."


title: Alec Baldwin

text: In late 2008, Baldwin toured in support of his book on fatherhood and divorce, speaking about his experiences related in it.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: By August 2011, Baldwin began dating Hillary "Hilaria" Thomas, a yoga instructor with Yoga Vida in Manhattan. Baldwin and Thomas moved from the Upper West Side to Greenwich Village that August. The couple became engaged in April 2012 and married on June 30, 2012, at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in New York City. They have seven children together.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: On October 26, 1995, Baldwin allegedly assaulted a photographer for videotaping Basinger and their three-day-old daughter. The couple was returning from the hospital and was confronted by the photographer outside their Los Angeles home. Whoopi Goldberg praised Baldwin for his actions during her opening monologue while hosting the 68th Academy Awards.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: In December 2011, Baldwin was on an American Airlines flight at Los Angeles International Airport, playing "Words with Friends" on his phone while waiting for takeoff. When instructed to put away the "electronic device" by the flight attendant, he reportedly became belligerent and was eventually removed from the plane. He later publicly apologized to the passengers who were delayed. The incident was humorously referenced in the following months in TV commercials for Capital One credit cards and Best Buy electronics stores. Baldwin also spoofed the incident during a cameo appearance on "Saturday Night Live" "Weekend Update" segment.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: On October 21, 2021, Baldwin was filming on the set of the upcoming film "Rust", of which he was also the producer, at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when he discharged a gun being used as a prop, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza. The Hutchins family filed a wrongful death suit against Baldwin for his part in the fatal shooting. On October 5, 2022, Baldwin reached an undisclosed settlement with the family of Hutchins in their wrongful death lawsuit.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin adopted a vegan diet in 2011. In 2019, he authored an article for CNN supporting the EAT Lancet report and recommended a plant-based diet due to global environmental issues.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin is a Democrat and endorsed Barack Obama in his two presidential campaigns. He serves on the board of People for the American Way. He is an animal rights activist and a staunch supporter of PETA, for which he has done work that includes narrating the video entitled "Meet Your Meat". Baldwin lent his support to the Save the Manatee Club by donating his time to record several public service announcements for the group, which had contacted him following his role in "The Bonfire of the Manatees", an episode of "The Simpsons" in which he was the voice of a biologist working to save the endangered mammals. Baldwin also gave his support for Farm Sanctuary's Adopt A Turkey Project and stated, "At least 46 million turkeys suffer heartbreaking fear and pain before being killed each and every Thanksgiving..."


title: Alec Baldwin

text: During his appearance on the comedy late night show "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" on December 11, 1998, eight days before President Bill Clinton was to be impeached, Baldwin said, "If we were in another country ... we would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families, for what they're doing to this country." Baldwin later apologized for the remarks, and the network explained that it was meant as a joke and promised not to re-run it.


title: Alec Baldwin

text: Baldwin said in a 2006 interview with "The New York Times" that if he did become involved in electoral politics, he would prefer to run for Governor of New York. When asked if he was qualified for the office, Baldwin responded that he considered himself more qualified than California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. On December 21, 2011, Baldwin, addressing speculation, said he was abandoning plans to run for mayor of New York City and would instead continue in his role on "30 Rock". That April, he suggested he might change his mind, saying, "Let's see what things are like in 2014. I would love to do it."


title: Alec Baldwin

text: In February 2009, Baldwin spoke out to encourage state leaders to renew New York's tax break for the film and television industry, stating that if the "tax breaks are not reinstated into the budget, film production in this town is going to collapse and television production is going to collapse and it's all going to go to California".


title: Alec Baldwin

text: During the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards in 2011, Baldwin was slated to appear in a taped skit. However, the producers of the show cut a portion of the skit containing a reference to Rupert Murdoch and the News International phone hacking scandal. Baldwin subsequently boycotted the Emmy Awards and requested that his entire appearance be removed from the broadcast. Producers complied and he was replaced with Leonard Nimoy.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Henry Alfred Kissinger (; ; born Heinz Alfred Kissinger, May 27, 1923) is a German-born American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. A Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1938, Kissinger excelled academically, receiving his BA degree "summa cum laude" from Harvard College in 1950, studying under William Yandell Elliott. He received his MA and PhD degrees at Harvard University in 1951 and 1954, respectively. For his actions negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam, Kissinger received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize under controversial circumstances.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: A practitioner of "Realpolitik", Kissinger played a prominent role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977, pioneering the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrating an opening of relations with the People's Republic of China, engaging in what became known as shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East to end the Yom Kippur War, and negotiating the Paris Peace Accords, which ended American involvement in the Vietnam War. Kissinger has also been associated with such controversial policies as U.S. involvement in the 1973 Chilean military coup, a "green light" to Argentina's military junta for their Dirty War, and U.S. support for Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War despite a genocide being perpetrated by Pakistan. After leaving government, he formed Kissinger Associates, an international geopolitical consulting firm. Kissinger has written over a dozen books on diplomatic history and international relations.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger remains a controversial and polarizing figure in U.S. politics, both venerated by some as a highly effective U.S. Secretary of State and condemned by others for allegedly tolerating or supporting war crimes committed by allied nation states during his tenure. A 2015 survey of top international relations scholars, conducted by College of William & Mary, ranked Kissinger as the most effective U.S. secretary of state in the 50 years to 2015. With the death of centenarian George Shultz in February 2021, Kissinger is the oldest living former U.S. Cabinet member and the last surviving member of Nixon's Cabinet.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger on May 27, 1923, in Fürth, Bavaria, Weimar Republic, the son of homemaker Paula ("née" Stern; 1901–1998, from Leutershausen), and Louis Kissinger (1887–1982), a schoolteacher. He had a younger brother, businessman Walter (1924–2021). His family was German Jewish. The surname Kissinger was adopted in 1817 by his great-great-grandfather Meyer Löb, after the Bavarian spa town of Bad Kissingen. In his youth, Kissinger enjoyed playing soccer. He played for the youth team of SpVgg Fürth, which was one of the nation's best clubs at the time. In a 2022 interview, he vividly recalled being nine years old in 1933 and learning of Adolf Hitler's election as Chancellor of Germany, which proved to be a profound turning point for the Kissinger family.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: In 1938, when Kissinger was 15 years old, he and his family fled Germany as a result of Nazi persecution. During Nazi rule, Kissinger and his friends were regularly harassed and beaten by Hitler Youth gangs. Kissinger sometimes defied the segregation imposed by Nazi racial laws by sneaking into soccer stadiums to watch matches, often resulting in beatings from security guards. As a result of the Nazis' anti-Semitic laws Kissinger was unable to gain admittance to the "Gymnasium", while his father was dismissed from his teaching job. The family briefly emigrated to London before arriving in New York City on September 5. Kissinger later downplayed the influence his experiences of Nazi persecution had on his policies, writing "Germany of my youth had a great deal of order and very little justice; it was not the sort of place likely to inspire devotion to order in the abstract." However, many scholars, including Kissinger's biographer Walter Isaacson, have disagreed and argued that his experiences influenced the formation of his realist approach to foreign policy.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger spent his high school years in the Washington Heights section of Upper Manhattan as part of the German Jewish immigrant community that resided there at the time. Although Kissinger assimilated quickly into American culture, he never lost his pronounced German accent, due to childhood shyness that made him hesitant to speak. After his first year at George Washington High School, he began attending school at night and worked in a shaving brush factory during the day.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Following high school, Kissinger enrolled in the City College of New York, studying accounting. He excelled academically as a part-time student, continuing to work while enrolled. His studies were interrupted in early 1943, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger underwent basic training at Camp Croft in Spartanburg, South Carolina. On June 19, 1943, while stationed in South Carolina, at the age of 20 years, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. The army sent him to study engineering at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, but the program was canceled, and Kissinger was reassigned to the 84th Infantry Division. There, he made the acquaintance of Fritz Kraemer, a fellow immigrant from Germany who noted Kissinger's fluency in German and his intellect, and arranged for him to be assigned to the military intelligence section of the division. Kissinger saw combat with the division, and volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties during the Battle of the Bulge.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: During the American advance into Germany, Kissinger, only a private, was put in charge of the administration of the city of Krefeld, owing to a lack of German speakers on the division's intelligence staff. Within eight days he had established a civilian administration. Kissinger was then reassigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), where he became a CIC Special Agent holding the enlisted rank of sergeant. He was given charge of a team in Hanover assigned to tracking down Gestapo officers and other saboteurs, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star. In June 1945, Kissinger was made commandant of the Bensheim metro CIC detachment, Bergstrasse district of Hesse, with responsibility for denazification of the district. Although he possessed absolute authority and powers of arrest, Kissinger took care to avoid abuses against the local population by his command.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: In 1946, Kissinger was reassigned to teach at the European Command Intelligence School at Camp King and, as a civilian employee following his separation from the army, continued to serve in this role.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Henry Kissinger received his BA degree "summa cum laude", Phi Beta Kappa in political science from Harvard College in 1950, where he lived in Adams House and studied under William Yandell Elliott. His senior undergraduate thesis, titled "The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant", was over 400 pages long, and was the origin of the current limit on length (35,000 words). He received his MA and PhD degrees at Harvard University in 1951 and 1954, respectively. In 1952, while still a graduate student at Harvard, he served as a consultant to the director of the Psychological Strategy Board, and founded a magazine, "Confluence". At that time, he sought to work as a spy for the FBI.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: His doctoral dissertation was titled "Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium (A Study of the Statesmanship of Castlereagh and Metternich)". In his PhD dissertation, Kissinger first introduced the concept of "legitimacy", which he defined as: "Legitimacy as used here should not be confused with justice. It means no more than an international agreement about the nature of workable arrangements and about the permissible aims and methods of foreign policy". An international order accepted by all of the major powers is "legitimate" whereas an international order not accepted by one or more of the great powers is "revolutionary" and hence dangerous. Thus, when after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the leaders of Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia agreed to co-operate in the Concert of Europe to preserve the peace after Austria, Prussia, and Russia participated in a series of three Partitions of Poland, in Kissinger's viewpoint this international system was "legitimate" because it was accepted by the leaders of all five of the Great Powers of Europe. Notably, Kissinger's "primat der aussenpolitik" approach to diplomacy took it for granted that as long as the decision-makers in the major states were willing to accept the international order, then it is "legitimate" with questions of public opinion and morality dismissed as irrelevant.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger remained at Harvard as a member of the faculty in the Department of Government where he served as the director of the Harvard International Seminar between 1951 and 1971. In 1955, he was a consultant to the National Security Council's Operations Coordinating Board. During 1955 and 1956, he was also study director in nuclear weapons and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He released his book "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy" the following year. The book, which criticized the Eisenhower Administration's "massive retaliation" nuclear doctrine, caused much controversy at the time by proposing the use of tactical nuclear weapons on a regular basis to win wars. That same year, he published "A World Restored", a study of balance-of-power politics in post-Napoleonic Europe.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: From 1956 to 1958, Kissinger worked for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as director of its Special Studies Project. He served as the director of the Harvard Defense Studies Program between 1958 and 1971. In 1958, he also co-founded the Center for International Affairs with Robert R. Bowie where he served as its associate director. Outside of academia, he served as a consultant to several government agencies and think tanks, including the Operations Research Office, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Department of State, and the RAND Corporation.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Keen to have a greater influence on U.S. foreign policy, Kissinger became foreign policy advisor to the presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller, supporting his bids for the Republican nomination in 1960, 1964, and 1968. Kissinger first met Richard Nixon at a party hosted by Clare Boothe Luce in 1967, saying that he found him more "thoughtful" than he expected. During the Republican primaries in 1968, Kissinger again served as the foreign policy adviser to Rockefeller and in July 1968 called Nixon "the most dangerous of all the men running to have as president". Initially upset when Nixon won the Republican nomination, the ambitious Kissinger soon changed his mind about Nixon and contacted a Nixon campaign aide, Richard Allen, to state he was willing to do anything to help Nixon win. After Nixon became president in January 1969, Kissinger was appointed as National Security Advisor. By this time he was arguably "one of the most important theorists about foreign policy ever to be produced by the United States of America", according to his official biographer Niall Ferguson.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon, and continued as Secretary of State under Nixon's successor Gerald Ford. With the death of George Shultz in February 2021, Kissinger is the last surviving member of the Nixon administration Cabinet.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: The relationship between Nixon and Kissinger was unusually close, and has been compared to the relationships of Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, or Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins. In all three cases, the State Department was relegated to a backseat role in developing foreign policy. Kissinger and Nixon shared a penchant for secrecy and conducted numerous "backchannel" negotiations, such as that through the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, that excluded State Department experts. Historian David Rothkopf has looked at the personalities of Nixon and Kissinger, saying:


title: Henry Kissinger

text: They were a fascinating pair. In a way, they complemented each other perfectly. Kissinger was the charming and worldly Mr. Outside who provided the grace and intellectual-establishment respectability that Nixon lacked, disdained and aspired to. Kissinger was an international citizen. Nixon very much a classic American. Kissinger had a worldview and a facility for adjusting it to meet the times, Nixon had pragmatism and a strategic vision that provided the foundations for their policies. Kissinger would, of course, say that he was not political like Nixon—but in fact he was just as political as Nixon, just as calculating, just as relentlessly ambitious ... these self-made men were driven as much by their need for approval and their neuroses as by their strengths.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: A proponent of "Realpolitik", Kissinger played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. In that period, he extended the policy of "détente". This policy led to a significant relaxation in US–Soviet tensions and played a crucial role in 1971 talks with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. The talks concluded with a rapprochement between the United States and China, and the formation of a new strategic anti-Soviet Sino-American alignment. He was jointly awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Lê Đức Thọ for helping to establish a ceasefire and U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. The ceasefire, however, was not durable. Thọ declined to accept the award and Kissinger appeared deeply ambivalent about it - he donated his prize money to charity, did not attend the award ceremony, and later offered to return his prize medal. As National Security Advisor in 1974, Kissinger directed the much-debated National Security Study Memorandum 200.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger initially had little interest in China when he began his work as National Security Adviser in 1969, and the driving force behind the rapprochement with China was Nixon. In April 1970 both Nixon and Kissinger promised Chiang Ching-kuo, a leader in Taiwan, that they would never abandon Taiwan or make any compromises with Mao Zedong, although Nixon did speak vaguely of his wish to improve relations with the People's Republic.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger made two trips to China in July and October 1971 (the first of which was made in secret) to confer with Premier Zhou Enlai, then in charge of Chinese foreign policy. During his visit to Beijing, the main issue turned out to be Taiwan, as Zhou demanded the United States recognize that Taiwan was a legitimate part of China, pull U.S. forces out of Taiwan, and end military support for the Kuomintang regime. Kissinger gave way by promising to pull U.S. forces out of Taiwan, saying two-thirds would be pulled out when the Vietnam war ended and the rest to be pulled out as Sino-American relations improved.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: In October 1971, as Kissinger was making his second trip to the People's Republic, the issue of which Chinese government deserved to be represented in the United Nations came up again. Out of concern to not be seen abandoning an ally, the United States tried to promote a compromise under which both Chinese regimes would be UN members, although Kissinger called it "an essentially doomed rearguard action". While American ambassador to the UN George H. W. Bush was lobbying for the "two Chinas" formula, Kissinger was removing favorable references to Taiwan from a speech that Rogers was preparing, as he expected China to be expelled from the UN. During his second visit to Beijing, Kissinger told Zhou that according to a public opinion poll 62% of Americans wanted Taiwan to remain a UN member, and asked him to consider the "two Chinas" compromise to avoid offending American public opinion. Zhou responded with his claim that the People's Republic was the legitimate government of all China and no compromise was possible with the Taiwan issue. Kissinger said that the United States could not totally sever ties with Chiang, who had been an ally in World War II. Kissinger told Nixon that Bush was "too soft and not sophisticated" enough to properly represent the United States at the UN, and expressed no anger when the UN General Assembly voted to expel Taiwan and give China's seat on the UN Security Council to the People's Republic.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: His trips paved the way for the groundbreaking 1972 summit between Nixon, Zhou, and Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, as well as the formalization of relations between the two countries, ending 23 years of diplomatic isolation and mutual hostility. The result was the formation of a tacit strategic anti-Soviet alliance between China and the United States. Kissinger's diplomacy led to economic and cultural exchanges between the two sides and the establishment of "liaison offices" in the Chinese and American capitals, though full normalization of relations with China would not occur until 1979.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger's involvement in Indochina started prior to his appointment as National Security Adviser to Nixon. While still at Harvard, he had worked as a consultant on foreign policy to both the White House and State Department. In a 1967 peace initiative, he would mediate between Washington and Hanoi.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: When he came into office in 1969, Kissinger favored a negotiating strategy under which the United States and North Vietnam would sign an armistice and agreed to pull their troops out of South Vietnam while the South Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were to agree to a coalition government. Kissinger had doubts about Nixon's theory of "linkage", believing that this would give the Soviet Union leverage over the United States and unlike Nixon was less concerned about the ultimate fate of South Vietnam. Though Kissinger did not regard South Vietnam as important in its own right, he believed it was necessary to support South Vietnam to maintain the United States as a global power, believing that none of America's allies would trust the United States if South Vietnam were abandoned too quickly.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: In early 1969, Kissinger was opposed to the plans for Operation Menu, the bombing of Cambodia, fearing that Nixon was acting rashly with no plans for the diplomatic fall-out, but on March 16, 1969. Nixon announced the bombing would start the next day. As he saw the president was committed, he became more and more supportive. Kissinger would play a key role in bombing Cambodia to disrupt raids into South Vietnam from Cambodia, as well as the 1970 Cambodian campaign and subsequent widespread bombing of Khmer Rouge targets in Cambodia.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: The Paris peace talks had become stalemated by late 1969 owing to the obstructionism of the South Vietnamese delegation. The South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu did not want the United States to withdraw from Vietnam, and out of frustration with him, Kissinger decided to begin secret peace talks with Thọ in Paris parallel to the official talks that the South Vietnamese were unaware of.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: In June 1971, Kissinger supported Nixon's effort to ban the Pentagon Papers saying the "hemorrhage of state secrets" to the media was making diplomacy impossible.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: On August 1, 1972, Kissinger met Thọ again in Paris, and for first time, he seemed willing to compromise, saying that political and military terms of an armistice could be treated separately and hinted that his government was no longer willing to make the overthrow of Thiệu a precondition.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: On the evening of October 8, 1972, at a secret meeting of Kissinger and Thọ in Paris came the decisive breakthrough in the talks. Thọ began with "a very realistic and very simple proposal" for a ceasefire that would see the Americans pull all their forces out of Vietnam in exchange for the release of all the POWs in North Vietnam. Kissinger accepted Thọ's offer as the best deal possible, saying that the "mutual withdrawal formula" had to be abandoned as it been "unobtainable through ten years of war ... We could not make it a condition for a final settlement. We had long passed that threshold".


title: Henry Kissinger

text: In the fall of 1972, both Kissinger and Nixon were frustrated with Thiệu's refusal to accept any sort of peace deal calling for withdrawal of American forces. On October 21 Kissinger and the American ambassador Ellsworth Bunker arrived in Saigon to show Thiệu the peace agreement. Thiệu refused to sign the peace agreement and demanded very extensive amendments that Kissinger reported to Nixon "verge on insanity".


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Though Nixon had initially supported Kissinger against Thiệu, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman urged him to reconsider, arguing that Thiệu's objections had merit. Nixon wanted 69 amendments to the draft peace agreement included in the final treaty, and ordered Kissinger back to Paris to force Thọ to accept them. Kissinger regarded Nixon's 69 amendments as "preposterous" as he knew Thọ would never accept them. As expected, Thọ refused to consider any of the 69 amendments, and on December 13, 1972, left Paris for Hanoi. Kissinger by this stage was worked up into a state of fury after Thọ walked out of the Paris talks and told Nixon: "They're just a bunch of shits. Tawdry, filthy shits".


title: Henry Kissinger

text: On January 8, 1973, Kissinger and Thọ met again in Paris and the next day reached an agreement, which in main points was essentially the same as the one Nixon had rejected in October with only cosmetic concessions to the Americans. Thiệu once again rejected the peace agreement, only to receive an ultimatum from Nixon which caused Thiệu to reluctantly accept the peace agreement. On January 27, 1973, Kissinger and Thọ signed a peace agreement that called for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Vietnam by March in exchange for North Vietnam freeing all the U.S. POWs.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Along with Thọ, Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1973, for their work in negotiating the ceasefires contained in the Paris Peace Accords on "Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam", signed the previous January. According to Irwin Abrams, this prize was the most controversial to date. For the first time in the history of the Peace Prize, two members left the Nobel Committee in protest. Thọ rejected the award, telling Kissinger that peace had not been restored in South Vietnam. Kissinger wrote to the Nobel Committee that he accepted the award "with humility", and "donated the entire proceeds to the children of American servicemembers killed or missing in action in Indochina". After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, Kissinger attempted to return the award.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: By the summer of 1974, the U.S. embassy reported that morale in the ARVN had fallen to dangerously low levels and it was uncertain how much longer South Vietnam would last. In August 1974, Congress passed a bill limiting American aid to South Vietnam to $700 million annually. By November 1974, Kissinger lobbied Brezhnev to end Soviet military aid to North Vietnam. The same month, he also lobbied Mao and Zhou to end Chinese military aid to North Vietnam. On April 15, 1975, Kissinger testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee, urging Congress to increase the military aid budget to South Vietnam by another $700 million to save the ARVN as the PAVN was rapidly advancing on Saigon, which was refused. Kissinger maintained at the time, and still maintains, that if only Congress had approved of his request for another $700 million South Vietnam would have been able to resist.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: On November 4, 1972, Kissinger agreed to an interview with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci. Kissinger, who rarely engaged in one-on-one interviews with the press and knew very little about Fallaci, accepted her request after reportedly being impressed with her 1969 interview with Võ Nguyên Giáp. The interview turned out to be a political and public relations disaster for Kissinger as he agreed that Vietnam was a "useless war", implied that he preferred to have dinner with Lê Đức Thọ over Nguyễn Văn Thiệu (in her 1976 book "Interview with History", Fallaci recalled that Kissinger agreed with many of her negative sentiments towards Thiệu in a private discussion before the interview), and engaged in a now infamous exchange with the hard-pressing Fallaci comparing himself to a Cowboy leading the Nixon Administration:


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Nixon was enraged by the interview, in particular the comedic "Cowboy" comparison which infuriated and offended Nixon. For several weeks afterwards, he refused to see Kissinger and even contemplated firing him. At one point, Kissinger, in desperation, drove up unannounced to Nixon's San Clemente residence only to be rejected by Secret Service personnel at the gates. Kissinger later claimed that it was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press". Fallaci, on her part, later described the interview with the evasive, monotonous, non-expressive Kissinger as the most uncomfortable and most difficult she ever did, criticizing Kissinger as a "intellectual adventurer" and a self-styled Metternich.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Nixon supported Pakistani dictator, General Yahya Khan, in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. Kissinger sneered at people who "bleed" for "the dying Bengalis" and ignored the first telegram from the United States consul general in East Pakistan, Archer K. Blood, and 20 members of his staff, which informed the US that their allies West Pakistan were undertaking, in Blood's words, "a selective genocide" targeting the Bengali intelligentsia, supporters of independence for East Pakistan, and the Hindu minority. In the second, more famous, Blood Telegram the word genocide was again used to describe the events, and further that with its continuing support for West Pakistan the US government had "evidenced ... moral bankruptcy".


title: Henry Kissinger

text: As a direct response to the dissent against US policy Kissinger and Nixon ended Archer Blood's tenure as United States consul general in East Pakistan and put him to work in the State Department's Personnel Office. Christopher Clary argues that Nixon and Kissinger were unconsciously biased, leading them to overestimate the likelihood of Pakistani victory against Bengali rebels.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger was particularly concerned about the expansion of Soviet influence in the Indian subcontinent as a result of a treaty of friendship recently signed by India and the USSR, and sought to demonstrate to the People's Republic of China (Pakistan's ally and an enemy of both India and the USSR) the value of a tacit alliance with the United States.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger had also come under fire for private comments he made to Nixon during the Bangladesh–Pakistan War in which he described Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as a "bitch" and a "witch". He also said "The Indians are bastards", shortly before the war. Kissinger has since expressed his regret over the comments.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: As National Security Adviser under Nixon, Kissinger pioneered the policy of "détente" with the Soviet Union, seeking a relaxation in tensions between the two superpowers. As a part of this strategy, he negotiated the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (culminating in the SALT I treaty) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. Negotiations about strategic disarmament were originally supposed to start under the Johnson Administration but were postponed in protest upon the invasion by Warsaw Pact troops of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Nixon felt his administration had neglected relations with the Western European states in his first term and in September 1972 decided that if he was reelected that 1973 would be the "Year of Europe" as the United States would focus on relations with the states of the European Economic Community (EEC) which had emerged as a serious economic rival by 1970. Applying his favorite "linkage" concept, Nixon intended henceforward economic relations with Europe would not be severed from security relations, and if the EEC states wanted changes in American tariff and monetary policies, the price would be defense spending on their part. Kissinger in particular as part of the "Year of Europe" wanted to "revitalize" NATO, which he called a "decaying" alliance as he believed that there was nothing at present to stop the Red Army from overrunning Western Europe in a conventional forces conflict. The "linkage" concept more applied to the question of security as Kissinger noted that the United States was going to sacrifice NATO for the sake of "citrus fruits".


title: Henry Kissinger

text: According to notes taken by H. R. Haldeman, Nixon "ordered his aides to exclude all Jewish-Americans from policy-making on Israel", including Kissinger. One note quotes Nixon as saying "get K. [Kissinger] out of the play—Haig handle it".


title: Henry Kissinger

text: In 1973, Kissinger did not feel that pressing the Soviet Union concerning the plight of Jews being persecuted there was in the interest of U.S. foreign policy. In conversation with Nixon shortly after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on March 1, 1973, Kissinger stated, "The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy, and if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern."


title: Henry Kissinger

text: In September 1973, Nixon fired Rogers as Secretary of State and replaced him with Kissinger. He would later state he had not been given enough time to know the Middle East as he settled into the State Department. Kissinger later admitted that he was so engrossed with the Paris peace talks to end the Vietnam war that he and others in Washington missed the significance of the Egyptian-Saudi alliance. Sadat expected as a reward that the United States would respond by pressuring Israel to return the Sinai to Egypt, but after receiving no response from the United States, by November 1972 Sadat moved again closer to the Soviet Union, buying a massive amount of Soviet arms for a war he planned to launch against Israel in 1973.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger delayed telling President Richard Nixon about the start of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 to keep him from interfering. On October 6, 1973, the Israelis informed Kissinger about the attack at 6 am; Kissinger waited nearly hours before he informed Nixon. According to Kissinger, he was notified at 6:30 a.m. (12:30 pm. Israel time) that war was imminent, and his urgent calls to the Soviets and Egyptians were ineffective. On October 12, under Nixon's direction, and against Kissinger's initial advice, while Kissinger was on his way to Moscow to discuss conditions for a cease-fire, Nixon sent a message to Brezhnev giving Kissinger full negotiating authority. Kissinger wanted to stall a ceasefire to gain more time for Israel to push across the Suez Canal to the African side, and wanted to be perceived as a mere presidential emissary who needed to consult the White House all the time as a stalling tactic.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger promised the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that the United States would replace its losses in equipment after the war, but sought initially to delay arm shipments to Israel, as he believed it would improve the odds of making peace along the lines of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. In 1973, Meir requested $850 million worth of American arms and equipment to replace its material losses. Nixon instead sent some $2 billion worth. The arms lift enraged King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and he retaliated on October 20, 1973, by placing a total embargo on oil shipments to the United States, to be joined by all of the other oil-producing Arab states except Iraq and Libya.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: On November 7, 1973, Kissinger flew to Riyadh to meet King Faisal and to ask him to end the oil embargo in exchange for promising to be "even handed" in the Arab-Israeli dispute. Despite all of Kissinger's efforts to charm him, Faisal refused to end the oil embargo. Only on March 19, 1974, did the king end the oil embargo, after Sadat reported to him that the United States was being more "even handed" and after Kissinger had promised to sell Saudi Arabia weapons that it had previously denied under the grounds that they might be used against Israel.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger pressured the Israelis to cede some of the newly captured land back to its Arab neighbors, contributing to the first phases of Israeli–Egyptian non-aggression. In 1973–74, Kissinger engaged in "shuttle diplomacy" flying between Tel Aviv, Cairo, and Damascus in a bid to make the armistice the basis of a preferment peace. Kissinger's first meeting with Hafez al-Assad lasted 6 hours and 30 minutes, causing the press to believe for a moment that he had been kidnapped by the Syrians. In his memoirs, Kissinger described how, during the course of his 28 meetings in Damascus in 1973–74, Assad "negotiated tenaciously and daringly like a riverboat gambler to make sure he had exacted the last sliver of available concessions".


title: Henry Kissinger

text: In contrast, Kissinger's negotiations with Sadat, though not without difficulties, were more fruitful. The move saw a warming in U.S.–Egyptian relations, bitter since the 1950s, as the country moved away from its former independent stance and into a close partnership with the United States.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: A major concern for Kissinger was the possibility of Soviet influence in the Persian Gulf. In April 1969, Iraq came into conflict with Iran when Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi renounced the 1937 treaty governing the Shatt-al-Arab river. On December 1, 1971, after two years of skirmishes along the border, President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr broke off diplomatic relations with Iran. In May 1972, Nixon and Kissinger visited Tehran to tell the Shah that there would be no "second-guessing of his requests" to buy American weapons. At the same time, Nixon and Kissinger agreed a plan of the Shah's that the United States together with Iran and Israel would support the Kurdish "peshmerga" guerrillas fighting for independence from Iraq. Kissinger later wrote that after Vietnam, there was no possibility of deploying American forces in the Middle East, and henceforward Iran was to act as America's surrogate in the Persian Gulf. Kissinger described the Baathist regime in Iraq as a potential threat to the United States and believed that building up Iran and supporting the "peshmerga" was the best counterweight.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Following a period of steady relations between the U.S. Government and the Greek military regime after 1967, Secretary of State Kissinger was faced with the coup by the Greek junta and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July and August 1974. In an August 1974 edition of "The New York Times", it was revealed that Kissinger and State Department were informed in advance of the impending coup by the Greek junta in Cyprus. Indeed, according to the journalist, the official version of events as told by the State Department was that it felt it had to warn the Greek military regime not to carry out the coup. Kissinger was a target of anti-American sentiment which was a significant feature of Greek public opinion at the time—particularly among young people—viewing the U.S. role in Cyprus as negative. In a demonstration by students in Heraklion, Crete, soon after the second phase of the Turkish invasion in August 1974, slogans such as "Kissinger, murderer", "Americans get out", "No to Partition" and "Cyprus is no Vietnam" were heard. Some years later, Kissinger expressed the opinion that the Cyprus issue was resolved in 1974. "The New York Times" and other major newspapers were highly critical, and even State Department officials did not hide their dissatisfaction with his alleged arrogance and ignorance of the basics.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: However, Kissinger never felt comfortable with the way he handled the Cyprus issue. Journalist Alexis Papahelas stated that Kissinger's "facial expression changes markedly when someone - usually Greek or Cypriot - refers to the crisis". According to him, Kissinger had felt since the summer of 1974 that history would not treat him lightly in relation to his actions.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: The United States continued to recognize and maintain relationships with non-left-wing governments, democratic and authoritarian alike. John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress was ended in 1973. In 1974, negotiations over a new settlement for the Panama Canal began, and they eventually led to the Torrijos–Carter Treaties and the handing over of the Canal to Panamanian control.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger initially supported the normalization of United States-Cuba relations, broken since 1961 (all U.S.–Cuban trade was blocked in February 1962, a few weeks after the exclusion of Cuba from the Organization of American States because of U.S. pressure). However, he quickly changed his mind and followed Kennedy's policy. After the involvement of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces in the independence struggles in Angola and Mozambique, Kissinger said that unless Cuba withdrew its forces relations would not be normalized. Cuba refused.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Chilean Socialist Party presidential candidate Salvador Allende was elected by a plurality of 36.2 percent in 1970, causing serious concern in Washington, D.C., due to his openly socialist and pro-Cuban politics. The Nixon administration, with Kissinger's input, authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to encourage a military coup that would prevent Allende's inauguration, but the plan was not successful.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: On September 11, 1973, Allende died during a military coup launched by Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet, who became president. In September 1976, Orlando Letelier, a Chilean opponent of the new Pinochet regime, was assassinated in Washington, D.C. with a car bomb. Previously, Kissinger had helped secure his release from prison, and had chosen to cancel an official U.S. letter to Chile warning them against carrying out any political assassinations. This murder was part of Operation Condor, a covert program of political repression and assassination carried out by Southern Cone nations that Kissinger has been accused of being involved in.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: On September 10, 2001, the family of Chilean general René Schneider filed a suit against Kissinger, accusing him of collaborating in arranging Schneider's kidnapping which resulted in his death. The case was later dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, citing separation of powers: "The decision to support a coup of the Chilean government to prevent Dr. Allende from coming to power, and the means by which the United States Government sought to effect that goal, implicate policy makers in the murky realm of foreign affairs and national security best left to the political branches." Decades later, the CIA admitted its involvement in the kidnapping of General Schneider, but not his murder, and subsequently paid the group responsible for his death $35,000 "to keep the prior contact secret, maintain the goodwill of the group, and for humanitarian reasons".


title: Henry Kissinger

text: Kissinger took a similar line as he had toward Chile when the Argentine Armed Forces, led by Jorge Videla, toppled the elected government of Isabel Perón in 1976 with a process called the National Reorganization Process by the military, with which they consolidated power, launching brutal reprisals and "disappearances" against political opponents. An October 1987 investigative report in "The Nation" broke the story of how, in a June 1976 meeting in the Hotel Carrera in Santiago, Kissinger gave the military junta in neighboring Argentina the "green light" for their own clandestine repression against leftwing guerrillas and other dissidents, thousands of whom were kept in more than 400 secret concentration camps before they were executed. During a meeting with Argentine foreign minister César Augusto Guzzetti, Kissinger assured him that the United States was an ally, but urged him to "get back to normal procedures" quickly before the U.S. Congress reconvened and had a chance to consider sanctions.


title: Henry Kissinger

text: As the article published in "The Nation" noted, as the state-sponsored terror mounted, conservative Republican U.S. Ambassador to Buenos Aires Robert C. Hill was shaken, he became very disturbed, by the case of the son of a thirty-year embassy employee, a student who was arrested, never to be seen again,' recalled Juan de Onis, former reporter for "The New York Times". 'Hill took a personal interest.' He went to the Interior Minister, a general with whom he had worked on drug cases, saying, 'Hey, what about this? We're interested in this case.' He questioned (Foreign Minister Cesar) Guzzetti and, finally, President Jorge R. Videla himself. 'All he got was stonewalling; he got nowhere.' de Onis said. 'His last year was marked by increasing disillusionment and dismay, and he backed his staff on human rights right to the hilt."