Keyes, who had been put on Nixon’s payroll eight months earlier and became perhaps his key media adviser, is credited with creating a new image of the dour Nixon as a good sport with a sense of humor. According to many political commentators, it was that single five-second spot on the nation’s most popular television show that changed the momentum of the 1968 election and led to Nixon’s victory in what was a very close presidential race; the popular vote between the two candidates differed by a mere 0.1 percent. (Ironically, the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, had turned down a similar invitation to appear on the show.)
When Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin arrived in the U.S. for meetings with Nixon in July 1972, Kissinger contacted his friend Keyes, who arranged for the three to tour the NBC television studios. When they dropped in on a scriptwriting session of “Laugh-In,” Keyes introduced Dobrynin to the writers by saying “Mr. Ambassador, now you know where our foreign policy is being made.”
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Many biographers believe Kissinger’s Jewish origins and Holocaust experience as a youth are the key to understanding him and that his refugee soul, which remained central to his psyche throughout his life, laid the foundation for his political philosophy and policies.
Born at the height of the Weimar hyperinflation, he was 9 when Hitler came to power; 10 when his father lost his teaching job; 12 when, with the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws, he was expelled from school; a young teen when he was beaten in the streets and shunned by his friends; and 15 when, at his mother’s insistence, his family escaped to the United States, less than three months before Kristallnacht. He lost at least a dozen close relatives in the Holocaust, including his beloved grandmother, Fanny Stern.
Upon arrival in America, Henry was a faithful congregant at Kahal Adat Jeshurun (“Breuer’s”) in Washington Heights, a strictly Orthodox synagogue that did not reject mainstream American society but, rather, encouraged fidelity to both Jewish law and secular professional achievement.
Henry’s active role in the synagogue included leading a Shabbat afternoon youth group. However, as he became more comfortable with life in America, he ceased believing in many of the basic tenets of Orthodox Judaism, and he more fully abandoned his parents’ religious allegiance after being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943.
When his superiors in the military learned of Henry’s German fluency, they assigned him to the military intelligence section, in which capacity he volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties during the Battle of the Bulge. Reassigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps with the rank of sergeant, he was put in charge of tracking down Gestapo officers and other saboteurs, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star.
He also worked as a military administrator in the postwar occupation of Germany, a role that involved apprehending and interrogating Nazis, and it may well have been his experience during the Holocaust years, both as a child and as an American soldier, that severed his relationship with observant Judaism.
Back in America, Kissinger settled into a life of academia, steeping himself in the study of political science and international diplomacy at Harvard, earning a Ph.D. in 1954. For the next decade and a half he taught at Harvard, authored articles and books, and served as a consultant to a number of government agencies and think tanks. All the while he played down his Jewish roots and sought to assimilate.
When in 1973 he was sworn in as the first Jewish secretary of state, he took his oath of office on Shabbat and his observant elderly parents were forced to walk to the swearing-in ceremony. And Kissinger took his oath on a Christian Bible.
