George Frost Kennan, acclaimed as the chief architect of U.S. cold war strategy and policy, was born on February 16, 1904, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He attended St. John’s Northwestern Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin, and studied at Princeton University, where he earned his B.A. in 1925. After graduating, Kennan joined the Foreign Service, which he later described as the first and last sensible decision he ever made regarding his career. Kennan, who had a natural aptitude for languages, learned that his service entitled him to undertake graduate work without leaving the Foreign Service, so he arranged to study in Berlin, where he focused on Russian and Russian history. The polyglot Kennan also mastered German, French, Polish, Czech, Portuguese, and Norwegian.