In a new PBS biography of Henry Kissinger, viewers learn how growing up in an observant Jewish household in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s shaped the future secretary of state. Kissinger witnessed the Nazi regime’s rise to power as it imposed terror on large segments of society and fled to the United States in 1938 to escape persecution. He was horrified, Roham Alvandi, a history professor at the London School of Economics, says in the documentary, to see how “a society was seemingly so civilized, so refined, could descend into this kind of madness.” Thirteen members of Kissinger’s family were killed. Then, as a U.S. soldier in World War II, Kissinger participated in the liberation of the Hannover-Ahlem concentration camp. What he saw there shocked him and left him with a deeply pessimistic view of human nature. “It was an illustration for him that strength was an unavoidable facet of resisting evil,” recalls his son, David. The documentary’s featured experts conclude that Kissinger had a crucial realization as a result of this encounter with totalitarianism: Norms and rules could not protect people from the danger of fascist totalitarians taking over the world. Only power could achieve that goal.

The two-part Kissinger, showing as part of the American Experience series, does an excellent job portraying how the national security advisor (1969 to 1975) and secretary of state (1973 to 1977) under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford deployed his own power to try to stabilize the Cold War and prevent a nuclear holocaust. Kissinger’s achievements are many. In the Middle East, when several Arab countries went to war with Israel in 1973, he engaged in tireless shuttle diplomacy that helped bring the conflict to an end. As the driving force behind détente, Nixon’s policy of easing relations with communist adversaries, he diminished the risk of war. And especially as the mastermind of Nixon’s opening relations with China and signing the SALT I treaty with the Soviets in 1972, his legacy is undoubtedly large. It is also complicated.

In a new PBS biography of Henry Kissinger, viewers learn how growing up in an observant Jewish household in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s shaped the future secretary of state. Kissinger witnessed the Nazi regime’s rise to power as it imposed terror on large segments of society and fled to the United States in 1938 to escape persecution. He was horrified, Roham Alvandi, a history professor at the London School of Economics, says in the documentary, to see how “a society was seemingly so civilized, so refined, could descend into this kind of madness.” Thirteen members of Kissinger’s family were killed. Then, as a U.S. soldier in World War II, Kissinger participated in the liberation of the Hannover-Ahlem concentration camp. What he saw there shocked him and left him with a deeply pessimistic view of human nature. “It was an illustration for him that strength was an unavoidable facet of resisting evil,” recalls his son, David. The documentary’s featured experts conclude that Kissinger had a crucial realization as a result of this encounter with totalitarianism: Norms and rules could not protect people from the danger of fascist totalitarians taking over the world. Only power could achieve that goal.

The two-part Kissinger, showing as part of the American Experience series, does an excellent job portraying how the national security advisor (1969 to 1975) and secretary of state (1973 to 1977) under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford deployed his own power to try to stabilize the Cold War and prevent a nuclear holocaust. Kissinger’s achievements are many. In the........

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