Henry Kissinger, a prominent figure in American diplomacy and secretary of state under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has died at the age of 100, his organization said in a press release from AFP and Agerpres on Wednesday.

A key player in global Cold War diplomacy, Henry Kissinger “died today at his home in Connecticut,” according to a source cited.

Here are some key facts about Henry Kissinger, who died Wednesday at the age of 100, according to Reuters:

• Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born on May 27, 1923 in Fürth, a city in the Bavarian region of Germany. As an Orthodox Jew, he was persecuted by anti-Semites, and in 1938 his family joined the escape from Nazi Germany, moving to Neua. York. He became a naturalized American in 1943.

• Kissinger returned home during World War II as part of the 84th Infantry Division of the US Army. He worked as a translator for intelligence and helped track down the Gestapo, receiving a medal for his efforts.

• After a distinguished career at Harvard University, Kissinger joined the Nixon administration as national security adviser in 1969, and retained the position after Nixon resigned. He was also Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford.

• Kissinger witnessed many of the world-changing global events of the 1970s, including the Vietnam War, China’s diplomatic opening, arms control negotiations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and the expansion of dialogue between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

• The 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to Kissinger and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam, was one of the most controversial in the history of this trophy. They were chosen for their efforts at the Paris talks, which were to organize the withdrawal of American troops, a cease-fire and the preservation of the government of South Vietnam. Two members of the Nobel committee resigned over the choice, and Tho declined the prize on the grounds that their work had not actually brought peace.

• Kissinger was associated with actresses Candice Bergen, Shirley MacLaine, Jill St. John, Marlo Thomas, Liv Ullman and Samantha Eggar, as well as Diane Sawyer, then a White House staffer and later an ABC News anchor. However, those who knew him said that the playboy image was largely a product of the media.

• Kissinger last worked in the presidential administration in 1977, but maintained a relationship with George W. Bush. The president at the time chose Kissinger to lead the commission investigating the September 11, 2001 attacks, but he resigned because he did not want to reveal the names of his consulting clients.

Kissinger remained a strategist into his old age. He drew criticism when, in May 2022, he offered Ukraine to cede part of Russia’s territory in order to reach a peace agreement. These comments were made approximately three months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Later, speaking via video link in January 2023 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Kissinger said that Russia must be given the opportunity to one day join the international system.

Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born on May 27, 1923 in Fürth, Germany, an industrial suburb of the Bavarian city of Nuremberg, into an orthodox Jewish family. His father, Louis, was a school teacher and his mother, Paula, was a homemaker. The couple had another son, Walter, who was born a year after the future American diplomat and died in May 2021 at the age of 96.

Five years after Hitler came to power, the Kissingers fled Nazi Germany in 1938 — just in time — first to London, then to New York. Kristallnacht followed two months later, when anti-Semitic mobs spread terror across Germany, setting fire to Jewish synagogues, homes and shops. Kissinger was then 15 years old.

After graduating from George Washington High School in New York City at night, as he worked in a shaving brush factory during the day, Kissinger entered the City College of New York, planning to become an accountant. Three years later, in 1943, he was drafted into the army and soon became a naturalized American citizen. He eventually returned to Germany to fight against Hitler’s murderous regime, which killed his grandmother and 12 other members of his family.

At first he served in the infantry. In April 1945, he and his comrades from the 84th Infantry Division discovered a small concentration camp in Alem near Hanover, freeing the remaining 35 emaciated prisoners. An event he recalled six decades later as “the most terrifying experience I ever had.”

With the help of another German expatriate in the US Army, Fritz Kremer, Pvt. Kissinger was assigned to military intelligence, tasked with the denazification of Krefeld in western Germany. Later, as a sergeant, he led efforts to track down a secret cell of Gestapo officers operating undercover in the Hanover area, earning him a Bronze Star

After the war, he turned to studying history and strategic studies, and was accepted to Harvard in 1947. His thesis, entitled The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant, was 388 pages long, making it subject to the University Senate’s “Kissinger Rule”, which limited any such work to 150 pages.

After graduating with honors, he defended his doctoral thesis. at Harvard and began publishing the quarterly journal Confluence.

“Our current military policy is based on the doctrine of massive retaliation: we threaten an all-out attack on the Soviet Union if the Soviet Union begins aggression anywhere in the world. This means that against almost any form of attack, we base our policy on the threat of annihilation of all humanity; and it is too risky and too expensive,” the professor told Mike Wallace in a 1958 interview.

Kissinger held advisory positions in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and became a top adviser to moderate Republican billionaire Nelson Rockefeller before the 1968 presidential campaign.

Shortly before the Republican National Convention that year, Kissinger said, “Richard Nixon is the most dangerous candidate.” But after Nixon won the nomination over Rockefeller and defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey in the election, he appointed Kissinger as national security adviser in 1969.

In 1949, Kissinger married a German-Jewish émigré Anne Fleischer. The couple had two children, Elizabeth and David, before divorcing in 1964.