Editing Henry Kissinger (section)

=== U.S. Army ===
Kissinger underwent basic training at [[Camp Croft]] in [[Spartanburg, South Carolina]]. On June 19, 1943, while stationed in South Carolina, he became a [[naturalized]] [[U.S.&nbsp;citizen]]. The army sent him to study engineering at [[Lafayette College]] in Pennsylvania under the [[Army Specialized Training Program]], but the program was canceled and Kissinger was reassigned to the [[84th Division (United States)|84th Infantry Division]]. There, he made the acquaintance of [[Fritz G. A. Kraemer|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 division's [[military intelligence]]. According to [[Vernon A. Walters]], Kissinger also received training at [[Camp Ritchie]], Maryland, before being shipped to Europe.<ref>Cartwright, J. B., The Quiet Contingent: An Addendum on WWII: The Boys of Camp Ritchie, 2024; p. 324. {{ISBN|979-8-89379-322-2}}</ref> Kissinger saw combat with the division and volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties during the [[Battle of the Bulge]]. On April 10, 1945, he participated in the liberation of the Hannover-Ahlem concentration camp, a subcamp of the [[Neuengamme concentration camp]]. At the time, Kissinger wrote in his journal, "I had never seen people degraded to the level that people were in Ahlem. They barely looked human. They were skeletons." After the initial shock, however, Kissinger was relatively silent about his wartime service.{{sfn|Isaacson|1992|pp=39–48}}<ref>{{Cite news | author-link = Mark Joseph Stern | last = Stern  |first=Mark Joseph |date=November 30, 2023 |title=The Lesson Henry Kissinger Took When He Liberated the Concentration Camp That Held My Grandfather |language=en-US |work=Slate |url=https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/11/henry-kissinger-jewish-history-holocaust-atrocities.html |access-date=December 3, 2023 |issn=1091-2339 |archive-date=December 2, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231202111911/https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/11/henry-kissinger-jewish-history-holocaust-atrocities.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

During the American advance into Germany, Kissinger, though only a [[Private (rank)#United States Army|private]], was put in charge of the administration of the city of [[Krefeld]] because of a lack of German speakers on the division's intelligence staff. Within eight days he had established a civilian administration.{{sfn|Isaacson|1992|p=48}} Kissinger was then reassigned to the [[Counter Intelligence Corps]] (CIC), where he became a [[United States Army Counterintelligence|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]].{{sfn|Isaacson|1992|p=49}} Kissinger drew up a comprehensive list of all known Gestapo employees in the Bergstraße region, and had them rounded up. By the end of July, 12 men had been arrested. In March 1947, Fritz Girke, Hans Hellenbroich, Michael Raaf, and Karl Stattmann were subsequently caught and tried by the [[Dachau Military Tribunal]] for killing two American prisoners of war. The four men were all found guilty and sentenced to death. They were executed by hanging at [[Landsberg Prison]] in October 1948.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ferguson |first=Niall |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yh9hDQAAQBAJ |title=Kissinger: 1923–1968: The Idealist |date=September 27, 2016 |publisher=Penguin |isbn=978-0-14-310975-4 |pages=181–182 |language=en |access-date=December 3, 2023 |archive-date=December 4, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231204151329/https://books.google.com/books?id=yh9hDQAAQBAJ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In June 1945, Kissinger was made commandant of the [[Bensheim]] metro CIC detachment, [[Bergstrasse (district)|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.{{sfn|Isaacson|1992|p=53}}

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.{{sfn|Isaacson|1992|p=55}}<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript1138.html |title=Henry Kissinger at Large, Part One |date=January 29, 2004 |publisher=[[PBS]] |access-date=February 13, 2016 |archive-date=June 28, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110628221419/http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript1138.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

Kissinger recalled that his experience in the army "made me feel like an American".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Isaacson |title=Kissinger |page=695}}</ref>