Kurt Waldheim

Kurt Waldheim

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4th Secretary-General of the United Nations
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Kurt Josef Waldheim (born December 21, 1918) is an Austrian diplomat and conservative politician. He was Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981, and President of Austria from 1986 to 1992. He is the oldest former Austrian President and also the oldest former Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Early life

Waldheim was born in Sankt Andrä-Wördern, a village near Vienna, Austria, on December 21 1918. His father was a Roman Catholic school inspector and an active Christian Socialist. He attended the Vienna Consular Academy where he graduated in 1936; during this time he was considered to have been non-partisan politically.

Nazi Party and SA affiliations

Shortly after the Annexation of Austria in to the German Reich in 1938, Waldheim applied for membership in the National Socialist German Student Union (known by its German initials as the NSDStB), and later became a registered member of the mounted corps of the SA (stormtroopers). He later denied having actually signed any registration forms for SA membership.

Military career

In early 1941 Waldheim was drafted into the Wehrmacht and sent to the Eastern Front where he served as a squad leader. Sometime early in 1941 he was apparently wounded, and, according to his autobiographies, given a medical discharge and returned to Vienna to pursue his doctoral studies in law.

Continuing service in the Balkans

Later, documents would come to light revealing that Waldheim's military service continued much later than 1941; by 1943 he was serving the capacity of Ordonnanzoffizier (or special duty officer) in Army Group E under the direction of General Alexander Löhr, an Austrian who would be executed in 1947 as a war criminal for his roles in suppressing uprisings by Yugoslav partisan forces and arranging the deportations of 40,000 Thessaloniki Jews to Auschwitz.

Waldheim himself would eventually be stationed in Thessaloniki, where he reported as an Oberleutnant for counter-insurgency efforts (Feindaufklärung) to General Löhr. In 1986 Waldheim would say that he served only as an interpreter and a clerk and would have had no knowledge either of reprisals enacted against civilians locally or of large-scale massacres in neighboring provinces of Yugoslavia, but this is contradicted by intelligence reports and eyewitness accounts affirming that he was present at staff meetings where such matters were routinely discussed.

Surrender to British authorities

In 1945, he surrendered to British forces in Carinthia, at which point he said he had fled his command (Army Group D), where he was serving with General Löhr, who was seeking a special deal with the British. Questions were later raised about Waldheim's truthfulness as to his World War II service (see "The Waldheim Affair," below).

Diplomatic career

Waldheim joined the Austrian diplomatic service in 1945, after finishing his studies in law at the University of Vienna. He served as First Secretary of the Legation in Paris from 1948, and in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna from 1951 to 1956. In 1956 he was made Ambassador to Canada, returning to the Ministry in 1960, after which he became the Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations in 1964. For two years beginning in 1968, he was the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs in Austria serving for the Austrian People's Party, before going back as Permanent Representative to the U.N. in 1970. He was defeated in the Austrian presidential elections in 1971, but was then elected to succeed U Thant as United Nations Secretary-General the same year (see Video of Kurt Waldheim sworn in as UN-Secretary-General). He was re-elected in 1976 despite some opposition. In 1981, his bid for a third term was blocked by a veto by China, and he was succeeded by Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru.

As Secretary-General, Waldheim opened and addressed a number of major international conferences convened under United Nations auspices. These included the third session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Santiago, April 1972), the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm, June 1972), the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (Caracas, June 1974), the World Population Conference (Bucharest, August 1974) and the World Food Conference (Rome, November 1974).

Presidency of Austria and the Waldheim Affair

Waldheim had unsuccessfully sought election as President of Austria in 1971, but his second attempt on June 8, 1986, proved successful. 1986 also marked the beginning of what became known as the Waldheim affair. Before the presidential elections, the Austrian weekly news magazine Profil revealed that there had been several omissions about Waldheim's life between 1938 and 1945 in his recently-published autobiography. A short time later, it was revealed that Waldheim had lied about his service as an officer in the SA-Reitercorps (Stormtroopers - Cavalrycorps), and his time as an ordnance officer in Saloniki, Greece, from 1942 to 1943. Instead, Waldheim had stated that he was wounded and had spent the last years of the war in Austria. Speculation grew, and Waldheim was accused of being either involved, or complicit, in war crimes.

Throughout his term as President (1986-1992), Waldheim, and his wife, Elisabeth, were deemed personae non gratae by many countries. In 1987, they were put on a watch list of persons banned from entering the United States. In six years Waldheim visited the Middle East and the Vatican, but did not visit any other European states or the United States.

Because of the ongoing international controversy, the Austrian government decided to appoint an international committee of historians to examine Waldheim's life between 1938 and 1945. Their report cited evidence of Waldheim's knowledge about preparation for war crimes but denied any personal involvement in those crimes. According to a controversial book by Jewish American author Eli Rosenbaum, the Austrian government and a number of media outlets vigorously opposed the allegations both before and after the release of the report.

Cultural references

• His memoir, mainly about his time as U.N. Secretary-General, was published in 1985 under the title In the Eye of the Storm (ISBN 0-297-78678-4).

• Waldheim and then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter both prepared statements for inclusion on the Voyager Golden Records. The spacecraft carrying the records is now in deep space.

• He organized the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, with Paul McCartney, to raise money for Cambodia.

• Waldheim is the subject of Lou Reed's song "Good Evening, Mr. Waldheim," in which he is criticized as a racist along with Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and Pope John Paul II, characterizing Jackson's pleas for common ground as hypocritical.

• He is an honorary member of K.H.V. Welfia Klosterneuburg, a Roman Catholic student fraternity that is a part of the Cartellverband.

• Waldheim was awarded several papal honours from Pope John Paul II.

• W. G. Sebald's novel The Rings of Saturn (1995; English trans., 1998) refers to Waldheim, though not by name.

• The Dame Edna Experience talk-show fronted by Dame Edna Everage had "Kurt Waldheim" as an invited guest, except he was dispatched off-stage by a hidden slide.

• A running segment on the Howard Stern radio show is called Guess Who's The Jew and features Fred Norris portraying a Nazi Kurt Waldheim Jr.

External links

• Official U.N.S.G. Biography
• Austria and Nazism: Owning Up to the Past (A BBC Report)

Preceded by: Rudolf Kirchschläger	President of Austria 1986-1992	Succeeded by: Thomas Klestil
Preceded by: U Thant	UN Secretary-General 1972-1981	Succeeded by: Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
Preceded by: Lujo Tončić-Sorinj	Foreign Minister of Austria 1968-1970	Succeeded by: Rudolf Kirchschläger

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