jazzeum
Four Star General
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2005
- Messages
- 38,435
But cold war events apparently conspired to save Mr. Waldheim. Yugoslavia broke with the Soviet Union, declared its neutrality and, as part of its realignment, agreed to drop its claims on Austrian territory. It also appeared to have no further interest in extraditing Mr. Waldheim or even exposing his past.
Both the Americans and the Russians were aware of Mr. Waldheim’s wartime record. Mr. Kolendic, the former Yugoslav intelligence official, told The New York Times in 1986 that he had handed over to a senior Soviet intelligence officer a list of “about 25 or 27” Austrians sought for war crimes, including Mr. Waldheim.
It is unclear why American intelligence officials decided not to expose Mr. Waldheim’s wartime record early in his diplomatic career. But the C.I.A.’s failure to do so aroused Congressional resentment.
“We now know that our government had in its possession information and documents on Kurt Waldheim,” a bipartisan group of 59 legislators wrote to President Clinton. “There is no more onerous example of the harm these hidden files can cause than the fact that Kurt Waldheim was elected secretary general of the United Nations while the Central Intelligence Agency concealed his wartime past.”
By 1951, Mr. Waldheim was chief of the personnel division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Foreign Minister Gruber lost his post in 1954, but Mr. Waldheim was already cultivating another mentor and rising star in the Austrian government — Bruno Kreisky, a socialist and a Jew who had survived the war by fleeing to Sweden.
In 1955, Mr. Waldheim was named Austria’s first representative to the United Nations. In 1968, with Mr. Kreisky installed as chancellor of Austria, Mr. Waldheim became his foreign minister. Soon he traveled to Belgrade, where Tito bestowed upon him the Order of the Grand Cross of the Yugoslav Flag, citing his efforts to improve relations between the two countries.
Mr. Waldheim was now in the singular position of having been decorated by both the Fascist wartime authorities and the postwar Communist government in Yugoslavia.
Three years later, when U Thant stepped down as secretary general, the United States, France, Britain and the Soviet Union backed Mr. Waldheim for the post. He became secretary general in 1972 and won another five-year term in 1977.
Mr. Waldheim was criticized as being ineffective and too willing to yield to pressure. Western countries complained that he had failed to press Vietnam to abandon its military occupation of Cambodia.
The United States and Israel said he was not being evenhanded in the Middle East. He endorsed Palestinian statehood without mentioning Israel’s right to exist, and when an Israeli commando unit staged its daring rescue of hostages at Entebbe airport in Uganda in 1976, Mr. Waldheim called the action “a serious violation of the national sovereignty of a United Nations member state.”
Mr. Waldheim retired from the United Nations after it became clear that he had no support for his bid for a third term. He returned to Austria and retired from the Foreign Ministry in 1984.
If Mr. Waldheim had stayed away from public office at this point, his Nazi past would probably never have been revealed. But in 1985 he sought the largely ceremonial post of president of Austria, running as the candidate of the right-wing People’s Party.
Rival socialist politicians began to circulate stories about Mr. Waldheim’s past, and archival material made its way into a leading magazine, Profil. Its interest aroused, the World Jewish Congress asked Professor Herzstein, the scholar of Nazi history, to comb the National Archives in Washington for evidence of Mr. Waldheim’s possible involvement in war crimes.
On March 4, 1986, a Times reporter, John Tagliabue, wrote an article from Vienna detailing documentary evidence about Mr. Waldheim’s wartime service in the Balkans and his prewar Nazi associations. And on March 25, the World Jewish Congress announced Mr. Herzstein’s findings at a news conference in New York.
The revelations set off a fierce debate in Austria. Socialists tried to convince voters that a Waldheim victory would stain Austria’s reputation abroad. But conservatives convinced much of the electorate that the accusations against Mr. Waldheim were an intolerable interference by foreigners in Austrian internal affairs. Campaign posters reflected the backlash, asserting under images of Waldheim, “Now More Than Ever.” Hate mail threatened violence against Austrian Jews if Mr. Waldheim lost.
On June 8, 1986, in a two-round election, Mr. Waldheim won the runoff for Austria’s presidency with 53.9 percent of the 4.7 million votes cast. But the controversy over his past did not subside. On April 28, 1987, the Justice Department barred Mr. Waldheim from entering the United States after determining that he had “assisted or participated in” the deportation, mistreatment and execution of civilians and Allied soldiers in World War II.
At Mr. Waldheim’s request, the Austrian government appointed a commission of historians from more than a half-dozen countries to investigate the accusations. On Feb. 8, 1988, the panel said it had no evidence that Mr. Waldheim was guilty of war crimes. But it concluded that he must have been aware of the atrocities committed around him and that by doing nothing about the crimes, he had facilitated them.
Rejecting a Hint of Guilt,
Refusing to Offer Regrets
Mr. Waldheim maintained that he was guiltless. He never expressed remorse or regret for his Balkan service or for his efforts to hide it.
Mr. Waldheim did not seek a second six-year term when his presidency ended in 1992. In a 1996 autobiography, “The Answer,” he contended that his banishment from the United States had resulted from a conspiracy by American Jews, who he said had pressed the Reagan administration to send a “useful signal” to Jewish voters in the 1988 presidential campaign.
And throughout his later years, Mr. Waldheim portrayed himself as an ordinary citizen who had been caught up in a maelstrom.
“Waldheim was clearly not a psychopath like Dr. Josef Mengele nor a hate-filled racist like Adolf Hitler,” Professor Herzstein wrote. “His very ordinariness, in fact, may be the most important thing about him. For if history teaches us anything, it is that the Hitlers and the Mengeles could never have accomplished their atrocious deeds by themselves.
“It took hundreds of thousands of ordinary men — well-meaning but ambitious men like Kurt Waldheim — to make the Third Reich possible.”
Both the Americans and the Russians were aware of Mr. Waldheim’s wartime record. Mr. Kolendic, the former Yugoslav intelligence official, told The New York Times in 1986 that he had handed over to a senior Soviet intelligence officer a list of “about 25 or 27” Austrians sought for war crimes, including Mr. Waldheim.
It is unclear why American intelligence officials decided not to expose Mr. Waldheim’s wartime record early in his diplomatic career. But the C.I.A.’s failure to do so aroused Congressional resentment.
“We now know that our government had in its possession information and documents on Kurt Waldheim,” a bipartisan group of 59 legislators wrote to President Clinton. “There is no more onerous example of the harm these hidden files can cause than the fact that Kurt Waldheim was elected secretary general of the United Nations while the Central Intelligence Agency concealed his wartime past.”
By 1951, Mr. Waldheim was chief of the personnel division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Foreign Minister Gruber lost his post in 1954, but Mr. Waldheim was already cultivating another mentor and rising star in the Austrian government — Bruno Kreisky, a socialist and a Jew who had survived the war by fleeing to Sweden.
In 1955, Mr. Waldheim was named Austria’s first representative to the United Nations. In 1968, with Mr. Kreisky installed as chancellor of Austria, Mr. Waldheim became his foreign minister. Soon he traveled to Belgrade, where Tito bestowed upon him the Order of the Grand Cross of the Yugoslav Flag, citing his efforts to improve relations between the two countries.
Mr. Waldheim was now in the singular position of having been decorated by both the Fascist wartime authorities and the postwar Communist government in Yugoslavia.
Three years later, when U Thant stepped down as secretary general, the United States, France, Britain and the Soviet Union backed Mr. Waldheim for the post. He became secretary general in 1972 and won another five-year term in 1977.
Mr. Waldheim was criticized as being ineffective and too willing to yield to pressure. Western countries complained that he had failed to press Vietnam to abandon its military occupation of Cambodia.
The United States and Israel said he was not being evenhanded in the Middle East. He endorsed Palestinian statehood without mentioning Israel’s right to exist, and when an Israeli commando unit staged its daring rescue of hostages at Entebbe airport in Uganda in 1976, Mr. Waldheim called the action “a serious violation of the national sovereignty of a United Nations member state.”
Mr. Waldheim retired from the United Nations after it became clear that he had no support for his bid for a third term. He returned to Austria and retired from the Foreign Ministry in 1984.
If Mr. Waldheim had stayed away from public office at this point, his Nazi past would probably never have been revealed. But in 1985 he sought the largely ceremonial post of president of Austria, running as the candidate of the right-wing People’s Party.
Rival socialist politicians began to circulate stories about Mr. Waldheim’s past, and archival material made its way into a leading magazine, Profil. Its interest aroused, the World Jewish Congress asked Professor Herzstein, the scholar of Nazi history, to comb the National Archives in Washington for evidence of Mr. Waldheim’s possible involvement in war crimes.
On March 4, 1986, a Times reporter, John Tagliabue, wrote an article from Vienna detailing documentary evidence about Mr. Waldheim’s wartime service in the Balkans and his prewar Nazi associations. And on March 25, the World Jewish Congress announced Mr. Herzstein’s findings at a news conference in New York.
The revelations set off a fierce debate in Austria. Socialists tried to convince voters that a Waldheim victory would stain Austria’s reputation abroad. But conservatives convinced much of the electorate that the accusations against Mr. Waldheim were an intolerable interference by foreigners in Austrian internal affairs. Campaign posters reflected the backlash, asserting under images of Waldheim, “Now More Than Ever.” Hate mail threatened violence against Austrian Jews if Mr. Waldheim lost.
On June 8, 1986, in a two-round election, Mr. Waldheim won the runoff for Austria’s presidency with 53.9 percent of the 4.7 million votes cast. But the controversy over his past did not subside. On April 28, 1987, the Justice Department barred Mr. Waldheim from entering the United States after determining that he had “assisted or participated in” the deportation, mistreatment and execution of civilians and Allied soldiers in World War II.
At Mr. Waldheim’s request, the Austrian government appointed a commission of historians from more than a half-dozen countries to investigate the accusations. On Feb. 8, 1988, the panel said it had no evidence that Mr. Waldheim was guilty of war crimes. But it concluded that he must have been aware of the atrocities committed around him and that by doing nothing about the crimes, he had facilitated them.
Rejecting a Hint of Guilt,
Refusing to Offer Regrets
Mr. Waldheim maintained that he was guiltless. He never expressed remorse or regret for his Balkan service or for his efforts to hide it.
Mr. Waldheim did not seek a second six-year term when his presidency ended in 1992. In a 1996 autobiography, “The Answer,” he contended that his banishment from the United States had resulted from a conspiracy by American Jews, who he said had pressed the Reagan administration to send a “useful signal” to Jewish voters in the 1988 presidential campaign.
And throughout his later years, Mr. Waldheim portrayed himself as an ordinary citizen who had been caught up in a maelstrom.
“Waldheim was clearly not a psychopath like Dr. Josef Mengele nor a hate-filled racist like Adolf Hitler,” Professor Herzstein wrote. “His very ordinariness, in fact, may be the most important thing about him. For if history teaches us anything, it is that the Hitlers and the Mengeles could never have accomplished their atrocious deeds by themselves.
“It took hundreds of thousands of ordinary men — well-meaning but ambitious men like Kurt Waldheim — to make the Third Reich possible.”