Helmut Sonnenfeldt

Helmut Sonnenfeldt (September 13, 1926 – November 18, 2012), also known as Hal Sonnenfeldt, was an American foreign policy expert. He was known as Kissinger’s Kissinger for his philosophical affinity with and influence on Henry A. Kissinger, the architect of American foreign policy in the Nixon and Ford administrations.

He was a veteran staff member of the National Security Council, and held several advisory posts in the U.S. government and the private sector. Later in life he was a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Guest Scholar at The Brookings Institution.

Sonnenfeldt was born in 1926 in Berlin, Germany, to Drs. Walther and Gertrud (Liebenthal) Sonnenfeldt. His family was Jewish. He spent his childhood in Gardelegen, Germany, where his parents had a family medical practice. In 1938, Sonnenfeldt was sent to Anna Essinger's Bunce Court School in England, as was his brother, Richard Sonnenfeldt. Helmut Sonnenfeldt remained in England until 1944, when he immigrated to the United States and rejoined his parents, who had resettled in Baltimore, Maryland. He entered the U.S. Army in 1944, became a naturalized American citizen and served in both the Philippines and in the U.S. occupation forces in Germany.

After military service, he attended Johns Hopkins University (BA 1950, MA 1951, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies).

Sonnenfeldt entered service in the U.S. Department of State in 1952 as a member of the staff of the Office of Research on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and served as the Director of that Office from 1963–1969.

Within days of the 1968 Nixon election, Henry Kissinger picked him to serve on the National Security Council staff. He was a senior staff member of the National Security Council from 1969–1974. In 1974, he was appointed Counselor of the U.S. Department of State, where he served from 1974, continuing after Nixon's resignation for the duration of the Ford administration.

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