Kurt Waldheim

Kurt Waldheim, politician: born St Andrä-Wördern, Austria 21 December 1918; First Secretary, Austrian embassy, Paris 1948-51; Counsellor and Head of Personnel Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Austria 1951-55, Director-General for Political Affairs 1960-64; Permanent Austrian Observer to the United Nations 1955-56; Minister Plenipotentiary to Canada 1956-58; ambassador to Canada 1958-60; Permanent Representative of Austria to the UN 1964-68, 1970-71; Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs 1968-70; UN Secretary-General 1972-81; Guest Professor of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 1982-84; Chairman, InterAction Council for International Co-operation 1983-85; President of the Republic of Austria 1986-92; married 1944 Elisabeth Ritschel (one son, two daughters); died Vienna 14 June 2007.

Very few Austrian politicians since 1945 have been known outside their own country, even in neighbouring Germany and Switzerland. Kurt Waldheim, Austrian President from 1986 to 1992, following two terms as Secretary-General of the United Nations, was very much an exception.

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The president of Austria is a largely symbolic figure - the Chancellor as head of government is the key politician. Yet the president is directly elected, after a campaign which turns the spotlight strongly on the contenders. It was during this process that Waldheim's Second World War service came under strong attack from the World Jewish Congress. Waldheim was never able to lay to rest the charge that he was in some way implicated in war crimes in Yugoslavia and Greece. He served as a lieutenant in the German army from 1941 to 1945. Part of his service was as assistant adjutant on the staff of General Alexander Löhr, an Austrian who was executed in 1946 for war crimes in Yugoslavia.

A decisive witness in Waldheim's favour was Simon Wiesenthal, the Jewish Nazi hunter. In his memoirs, Recht, nicht Rache (1988, translated as Justice, not Vengeance), he devoted a whole chapter to the Waldheim affair. He stated that Waldheim was neither a Nazi nor a war criminal. Wiesenthal believed that Waldheim had been foolish to have written nothing in his own memoirs about his wartime experience. He also believed that Waldheim must have known more than he admitted about war crimes in the sector where he was stationed. He thought Waldheim should, in the circumstances, have resigned. Waldheim did not.

Wiesenthal's explanation for the attacks on Waldheim was that they were largely due to rivalries between Jewish organisations. Another explanation was that during the period that Waldheim was Secretary-General (1972-81), the United Nations condemned Zionism as racism.

The Austrian government, led by the Socialist Party, established an independent commission to investigate Waldheim's wartime activities. It comprised an international group of distinguished historians from Belgium, Britain, Israel, Switzerland, the United States and West Germany. They found no evidence to substantiate the claims against Waldheim but felt he must have known about atrocities committed and made no protest. Among those who supported Waldheim was the outgoing Socialist president, Rudolf Kirchschläger.

Waldheim's election as president in 1986 with 53.9 per cent of the second, run-off ballot, was regarded as a sign that Austria had not learned from the Nazi experience. In fact, the most popular post-war Austrian politician was Bruno Kreisky, the Chancellor for many years and a Socialist of Jewish background. Some voted for Waldheim because he was the opposition candidate at a time when the Socialist government - after 16 years in office - was running into difficulties; others were impressed by his UN stature.

Some of his own generation felt that he was, like them, simply a man who had been conscripted into the Nazi German army and forced to serve. His utterances, "Ich kann mich nicht erinnern" ("I cannot remember") and "Ich habe nur meine Pflicht getan" ("I only did my duty") appealed to them. The attack on him they saw as an attack on them. They did not want outsiders telling them whom they could or could not vote for. Waldheim was the first non-Socialist President of Austria since before the Second World War.

Waldheim was ostracised by most countries during his presidency, thus reducing the effectiveness of his contribution. The United States humiliated him, and many Austrians thought their country, by placing him on the Justice Department's "Watch List". This meant he would not be admitted to the US as a private citizen. The ban remained in force until his death.

During the first Gulf war Waldheim was one of a number of notables, among them Edward Heath, who went to Baghdad to seek ways out of the conflict. Waldheim's first visit as President of Austria was to the Vatican; his last was to Cyprus in November 1991, by which time he had already announced his intention not to seek re-election for a second term.

Born in 1918 into a Catholic family in St Andrä-Wördern, Lower Austria, Waldheim grew up in an Austria which was but a shadow of its previous imperial self, a land torn by political and economic instability. His father was a school inspector who lost his job, and was arrested, after the Nazis took over Austria in 1938. Waldheim studied at the consular academy in Vienna, training for a career in diplomacy. But the incorporation of Austria into Germany and the outbreak of war in 1939 put paid to such expectations.

As a student he was a member of the Nazi Student League, which could be seen as "normal" at the time. Waldheim served as an ordinary Wehrmacht officer and, after being wounded on the Eastern Front in 1941, was sent as an interpreter to Greece. He acted on liaison duties with Germany's Italian allies. He did not exercise command during this time but, given the material he handled, would have known of Nazi atrocities, including the deportation of the Jews and the likely execution, on Hitler's orders, of Allied commandos in whose interrogation he took part. He found time to write his doctorate of law dissertation during this period, successfully completing it in 1944 at the University of Vienna. This reveals perhaps a certain callousness mixed with extreme ambition.

When the war ended, Waldheim entered the new Austrian diplomatic service and from 1948 to 1951 served as First Secretary of the Legation in Paris. He was head of the personnel department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna from 1951 to 1955. In 1955 he was appointed Permanent Observer for Austria to the United Nations and later that year became head of the Austrian Mission when Austria was admitted to the UN. From 1956 to 1960, Waldheim represented Austria in Canada, latterly as ambassador.

From 1960 to 1962, he headed the Political Department (West) in the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, becoming Director-General for Political Affairs until 1964. For the next four years, he was Austria's Permanent Representative to the United Nations. In 1968 he was elected president of the first UN Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

Waldheim served as non-party Foreign Minister in Austria's conservative government, 1968-70. After leaving office, he was unanimously elected Chairman of the Safeguards Committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and in October 1970 he again became the Austrian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, a post he held until 1971.

Waldheim's first bid to be Austrian President was in 1971 when he failed as the People's Party (conservative) candidate. The Socialists were in the ascendancy. Between 1972 and 1981 he served his two terms as Secretary- General of the United Nations.

It was the time of the Yom Kippur War, of terrorist attacks and hijackings. But it was also the era of Brezhnev in Moscow and Nixon and Carter in Washington. Carter and Brezhnev signed the SALT II treaty, after arms-reduction talks, in Vienna in June 1979. They were working for détente, something of great importance to Austria, given its geographical position and neutral status.

In February 1973, Waldheim took part in the Paris International Conference on Vietnam. He was also involved with the complicated situation in Cyprus after the Turkish invasion in July 1974. Austria played a considerable role providing UN peacekeeping forces in various parts of the world including Cyprus, where it suffered its first fatalities, and the Golan Heights. Waldheim was also embroiled in the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. It was not his fault that his efforts at mediating did not produce greater results. The UN, under Waldheim, also played a successful role in making arrangements for the transitions in Rhodesia and Namibia.

During his time at the UN there were rumours that he was being blackmailed by the Soviet KGB because of his wartime service. Declassified CIA documents produced no evidence of this. He wanted to serve a third term at the UN, but China vetoed this ambition.

On leaving the UN Waldheim was appointed a visiting professor at Georgetown University in Washington. He wrote several books, including Im Glaspalast der Weltpolitik (1985, translated as In the Eye of the Storm) about his UN experiences.

Waldheim's detractors portrayed him as a colourless bureaucrat always anxious to please. Clearly he was a very ambitious and determined man; his decision to stand again for the presidency after his earlier defeat showed that. With two terms at the UN, why did he need to be President of Austria? And given his isolation once he had become President, why did he not resign as so many, not unsympathetic to him, urged him to do on patriotic grounds?

David Childs