His last known job is hiring himself to companies. As intermediary, Kissinger's best fitting suit. His many diplomatic missions made him America's best-known politician, Nobel Peace Prize winner and most Most Popular Man of 1976. The jewish boy that fled Germany in 1938 reached stardom status in his new home country.
The success story begins in the German village Fürth. Baby Heinz Alfred Kissinger is born there in 1923. His parents are Jews and for obvious reasons they leave nazi Germany for the United States. Heinz changes his name into Henry and learns to speak English. Soon he is the best pupil in class.
During his army time, Kissinger ends up in a special highly gifted unit. In '45, Henry and his friends get orders to bring about order in devastated Germany. Eventually this means private Kissinger manages a whole village, as if he were some kind of mayor. For the first time, he has political power, which he enjoys enormously.
When Kissinger returns from Europe in 1947, he enters Harvard. For eight years Kissinger rises and shines at the top university. He gets his degree summa cum laude with a thesis on Austrian statesman Metternich, the first realpolitiker.
As chairman of a group studying the impact of nuclear weapons, Kissinger gets to meet important political people. In 1968, newly elected president Nixon offers him the opportunity of his life: he gets to be National Security Advisor. The era of the famous Kissinger diplomacy is off to a start.
Nixon's advisor operates fully independently and does not involve his boss (Secretary of State Rogers) on purpose. Diplomacy should stay secret, he thinks. Kissinger's tactics pay off. He opens China for the Americans, visits the Kremlin, is involved in the end of the Vietnam War and commits another bunch of intellectual fireworks, later on as Secretary of State. His popularity is overwhelming and surpasses that of Nixon.
Besides popularity, controversy is also a thread in Kissinger's life. The Christmas bombings on the Vietnamese cities Hanoi and Haiphong come from his sleeve. The bombs were aimed at military goals, but a hospital was hit as well and 1600 people were killed. On the other hand, the bombings resulted in a peace treaty. Typically enough later on he doesn't recall the number of people killed, but he can talk for hours to the press about the advantages of the bombings. These things led people and press to conclude he would be a hypocrite and heartless. Kissinger 'though wasn't an idealistic peace dove, but a realpolitiker as well: war means disorder and disrupts the world's power balance.
Credits to VT_hawkeye, panamaus, sekicho and fuzzy and blue for some additions. Transitional Man says: during the seventies Henry Kissinger made a name for himself using his fame to get dates with some rather hot women, most notably b-movie actress - and real life genius - Jill St. John.