Former president of Austria Kurt Waldheim has the notorious distinction of being the only head of state ever placed on the U.S. Immigration and Nationalization Service’s Watch List. People placed on the Watch List are those who are undesirable, suspected of having assisted the Axis powers in persecution based on race, religion, national origin, or political persuasion; of committing human rights crimes or terrorism; or of posing a security threat to the United States. Ideally, people who are on the Watch List are stopped at the border and denied entry into the United States. Waldheim gained prominence in the 1970s because of his two terms as secretary-general of the United Nations. In the mid-1980s he was a candidate in the Austrian presidential election. He had unsuccessfully run for the highest office in Austria in 1971. Although there had been rumors for years, Waldheim had deflected all questions about his wartime activities by presenting a brief standard narrative that investigators and pertinent political officials had accepted.
A more in-depth investigation of Waldheim began in late January 1986, after the World Jewish Congress (WJC) received a tip about his military service as a senior intelligence officer with the German army in the Balkans. According to Waldheim’s autobiography and official statements, after he had been wounded in 1941 on the Russian front, he became a law student in Vienna and did not return to his unit on the front lines. Acting on the tip, the WJC sought and found documents that presented a vastly different story. These documents indicated “that Waldheim had served in a unit that had taken civilian hostages, burned homes, and shot male prisoners.”1 The WJC released this information to the media, and Waldheim admitted that he had served in the Balkans but denied knowledge of any atrocities. The investigation by the WJC put the organization at odds with one of Waldheim’s staunchest supporters—Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. At the end of the day, Wiesenthal’s adamant defense of Waldheim led him to launch public, personal attacks against the WJC investigators. Wiesenthal’s behavior ultimately tarnished his prominent, global reputation.
By April 1986 the Office of Special Investigations had commenced its investigation of the Austrian president and would release a detailed report a year later. Throughout this period the WJC shared information with OSI. The two organizations pursued documents and witness testimonies to answer the following questions: What was the complete story of Kurt Waldheim’s wartime service? How had he managed to perpetrate a cover-up for forty years? What did countries like the United States, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and Israel know about Waldheim’s history from 1942 until 1945? When did they know it? If they had unearthed evidence about Waldheim and war crimes, why did they keep silent?
It was one thing for the WJC to investigate Kurt Waldheim to determine whether or not he had committed war crimes. It was another altogether for the OSI to get involved. Waldheim was not a U.S. citizen, and he was no longer secretary-general of the United Nations. He had not immigrated—legally or illegally—to the United States after the war nor had he applied for entry in 1986. At the time the OSI commenced its investigation into Waldheim, he was running for president of his home country: Austria. Before OSI submitted its report a year later, Waldheim had won a runoff election and was Austria’s president. What gave the OSI the authority to investigate a head of state? Who was the real Kurt Waldheim? Was he a patriot who had just done his duty during the war, as he had suggested, or was he a villain, a perpetrator of crimes against humanity?
On 21 December 1918 Kurt Josef Waldheim was born in Austria, in the village of Sankt Andrä-Wördern, which is approximately fifteen and a half miles from Vienna. His parents were Josefine Petrasch and Walter Waldheim, although Waldheim was not his father’s original surname. Born in 1889, Walter Watzlawik, a Roman Catholic, was of Czech descent. His father was a blacksmith in Tulln. Not wanting a physically hard life like his father, Watzlawik qualified as a teacher and obtained a job nearly ten miles away, in Sankt Andrä-Wördern. Shortly after the outbreak of war in 1914, Watzlawik met his future wife, whose father was a “well-to-do farmer.”2 The couple married and moved to Tulln because Watzlawik was headed off to war.
Watzlawik came back from war to a fractured empire and to a country with fewer opportunities for citizens with Czech surnames. Even though he had the skills to get a provincial teaching post and contacts from his wife and father-in-law to help on the job front, he did not find it easy to gain employment—until he took advice from a colleague. Because his Czech surname cast him as an outsider in his homeland and because he needed to be more of a “German Austrian,” Walter Watzlawik became Walter Waldheim. Changing his name proved to be fortuitous because shortly thereafter doors opened up for the elder Waldheim.
During the interwar period, when Kurt Waldheim was growing up, his father achieved success. After being chosen as “head of the Wieselburg Boys School,” he became “superintendent of schools for the entire Tulln district.” His work as superintendent and his involvement in adult education earned him the title of Regierungsrat—“government counselor.” His father’s career successes and improvement in Austria’s economy made life for Kurt; his brother, Walther; and his sister Gerlinde easier than it had been for their father, who had grown up impoverished.3 Kurt, like his siblings, had access to an excellent education, thanks to his father. He was a graduate of the Vienna Consular Academy and the University of Vienna, where he earned a doctor of jurisprudence in 1944. Both achievements would eventually facilitate his career.
As a young man, Waldheim was tall and thin. Amiable, he exuded a quiet confidence. Growing up in the interwar period, he was intrigued by global politics. Setting his sights on becoming a diplomat, Waldheim focused on learning the law and multiple languages, which he knew would stand him in good stead. Driven by his father’s hopes for him and a determination to succeed, he worked hard. Waldheim was focused on his career and was not to be deterred. Prior to the university, his father enrolled him in the gymnasium in Klosterneuburg. Every morning Waldheim commuted an hour by train to the town, which was north of Vienna. While attending the gymnasium, he “joined the Catholic Comagena fraternity,” excelled in all subjects except mathematics, and played the violin in the school orchestra. He also participated in extracurricular activities—swimming, boating, and tennis.4
Despite appearances, life was not all a bed of roses. Waldheim pursued his studies against the backdrop of political turmoil, as three political groups vied for “political dominance”: the Christian Social Party, the Social Democrats, and the “Greater German or pan-German groups. All three movements had roots in the defunct empire, and all three held views and prejudices that made it difficult for them to adjust to the changed environment” of post–World War I Austria and the world. Following the violence of riots by socialist workers in 1927, the Austrian chancellor imposed a more authoritarian system and “introduced a new constitution” that granted the chancellor more power and made the position an appointed, rather than elected, one.5 By the time the chancellor retired in 1929, on the eve of a worldwide economic crisis, the new constitution was in place. The political situation that existed in Austria became more tenuous during the Depression—a time when desperation and violence plagued the nation.
In 1932 Christian Socialist Engelbert Dollfuss became chancellor at a time when political and social unrest was pervasive throughout the world. To the north of Austria, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany. Although there was talk of Anschluss, unification with Germany, Dollfuss and his party “officially rejected the idea” in favor of a closer relationship with Benito Mussolini and Italy. Dollfuss took things to the next level and indicated his rejection of the Nazis by June 1933. He made the Nazi movement illegal in Austria. “From then on—until the Nazis were allowed aboveground again in March 1938—all members of the National Socialist German Workers Party, NSDAP, were known as ‘Illegals.’”6
When the chancellor created a “Patriotic Front, a mass organization intended to encompass the entire nation,” Waldheim’s father joined. Dollfuss’s plan with the Patriotic Front was to abolish political parties, even the Christian Social Party. Citizens felt pressure to become members: “State employees were required to join.” Waldheim’s father, who saw the “Front” as the solution to Austria’s problems, did not have to be pressured to embrace membership. Dollfuss’s goal was the recrafting of Austria into a “Ständestaat, a Christian corporate state.” The chancellor established a Central Police Directorate and continued efforts to limit the presence of Nazis, communists, and socialists by suggesting that these groups introduced “poisonous ‘fremde Ideen’ (foreign ideas) into Austria.”7
Not only were these political machinations the order of the day during Waldheim’s impressionable years, but they were also on Hitler’s radar. Hitler was unwilling to tolerate Dollfuss’s political agenda and took steps to foment regime change in neighboring Austria. The first attack was an economic one. Germans planning to vacation in Austria would have to pay a hefty fee to the German government for that privilege. Then on 25 July 1934 the Nazis staged an “uprising” in Austria. During the violence that resulted, seizure of government facilities in Vienna and elsewhere and the assassination of Dollfuss occurred. Because he sent troops to the Brenner Pass, Benito Mussolini, who condemned the uprising, possibly saved Austria from occupation—at least temporarily.
While he, like the rest of his family, was appalled by the uprising and the murder of Dollfuss, Waldheim realized that not all of his classmates at the Klosterneuburg gymnasium felt the same way. Some vocalized their solidarity with the Nazis. The irony here is that, while Waldheim seemed to reject the violence perpetrated by the Nazis in 1934, he later came to embrace their policies, despite his protests to the contrary. Dollfuss’s successor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, who faced an uphill battle from the very beginning, moved to increase the size of the Federal Army, which would have the dual role of providing internal and external protection. In the spring of 1936, as he completed his studies at the gymnasium and prepared to enter an uncertain world, Waldheim—age seventeen—made a decision that would have an enormous impact on his future. Upon his graduation on 22 June 1936, he enlisted in the “Austrian army as a ‘one-year volunteer,’” which would fulfill the mandatory military service requirement for new government employees. His twelve-month enlistment would commence on his eighteenth birthday—21 December.8
While Waldheim waited for his eighteenth birthday and his first posting, the political chaos within Austria continued, as von Schuschnigg awkwardly tried to shift the country’s orientation from Italy to Germany. The chancellor hoped to accomplish two goals with this reorientation: an easing of the economic situation and help in curtailing the violence committed by Austrian Nazis. On 11 July 1936 von Schuschnigg and Hitler formalized a “gentlemen’s agreement” between the two countries. As a result, Austria became a “German state.” Anti-German—or anti-Nazi—press was consequently forbidden.9 Unfortunately for Austria, the situation did not improve. Its economic situation worsened instead. Only Austrians with government jobs, like Waldheim’s father, had job security. Thus was the situation in Austria as Waldheim prepared to perform his military service.
When his orders arrived in late 1936, Waldheim was pleased. He had hoped to receive posting to a cavalry unit, which is exactly what happened. He was sent to “Stockerau, the headquarters of the elite Dragoon Regiment 1.” For Waldheim, this was an ideal assignment. Not only was Stockerau about ten miles from Tulln, but, as a member of an elite unit, he would also have the opportunity to “meet the right sort of people,” who could potentially facilitate his future career. As far as he was concerned, it was a win-win assignment. A model recruit, Waldheim “worked hard, was a good comrade, and coped well with the inevitable stress and tedium of military service.” In addition to standard military training, he participated in “dress parades.” Waldheim “cut a splendid figure in his cavalry uniform, tall, slim, and self-assured, and he took real pride in the symbols of imperial greatness—the banners and standards—that surrounded him.”10
When his year was up, Waldheim mustered out and applied for admission to the Vienna Consular Academy, which was the next logical step in pursuit of his chosen career. Not only was he accepted to the academy, but he also received a scholarship. His chosen fields of study were diplomacy and law. Waldheim commenced classes in the fall of 1937. During his first academic year, he completed courses in “languages, diplomacy, international studies, and law” while also dabbling in political science and finance. Waldheim also received training in other aspects of diplomatic service: “etiquette and protocol,” hand shaking and bowing, speaking, and rank and status.11 After a somewhat idyllic first year, Waldheim had little inkling that his life would soon change dramatically.
While Waldheim was taking classes at the Vienna Consular Academy, Hitler indicated his determination to alter the recently established Germany-Austria relationship. If all went according to plan, Austria would have the short end of the stick. Receiving a summons from Hitler on 12 February 1938, von Schuschnigg traveled to Bavaria to meet with the führer, who gave the Austrian leader an ultimatum: either a “National Socialist ‘coalition government’” in Austria or a German invasion of Austria. According to Hitler, if von Schuschnigg accepted the latter option, he would be responsible for the “spilling of innocent blood.” The Austrian leader found himself between a rock and a hard place. Accepting the reality that neither England nor Italy could help Austria avoid a German invasion, he conceded and “agreed” to a wide range of “Hitler dictated” concessions, including “the appointment of Nazi lawyer Artur Seyss-Inquart as minister of security.” Von Schuschnigg did stand firm on one issue. The Austrian Nazi Party was still banned, but that became a moot point, because he also agreed to the release of Nazis from Austrian prisons and to allowing Nazis to protest publicly.12
As might be expected, news of the new German-Austrian agreement emboldened Austrian Nazis. The release of imprisoned Nazis from the Linz prison on 18 February 1938 exacerbated the situation. The Nazis offered the poor an alternative to socialism—National Socialism—and the economically and socially disadvantaged flocked to the call. Targeting Jews and Jewish businesses also garnered support for the “cause.” As the situation deteriorated, von Schuschnigg demonstrated that he was not giving up without a fight. He called for a referendum to be held on 13 March. The Austrian people would have an opportunity to vote for—or against—independence. Choosing not to remain detached from the situation, Waldheim campaigned with his family for an independent Austria, despite the risk. The family suffered reprisals for their political activity. In addition to graffiti being painted on their house, Kurt Waldheim was physically attacked.
Hitler demanded the cancelation of the referendum vote and the establishment of a “decent” government in Austria. Not confident that von Schuschnigg would comply, the führer upped the ante.13 “At 1 a.m. on March 11, less than forty-eight hours before the voting was to begin, Hitler signed the final orders for a German invasion of Austria. The only thing that could forestall bloodshed now, he said, would be the immediate ouster of the ‘traitor’ Schuschnigg and the installation of a Nazi-dominated government.”14 Von Schuschnigg caved. With his resignation, the minister of security—Artur Seyss-Inquart—became the new chancellor. The Anschluss would happen. Moving forward, Waldheim would think more carefully before publicly taking a political stand.
Violence, particularly against Jews, increased, but while in class Waldheim was removed from it. On 10 April a plebiscite to “ratify the Anschluss” occurred, and “over 99 percent of the voters” supported unification with Germany. While some truly supported unification, others accepted reality and acknowledged the consequences of not voting yes; however, not all Austrians escaped unscathed. The Gestapo paid a visit to the Waldheim house and arrested Walter Waldheim. Although he was only detained for a couple of days, when he was released, he no longer had a job, and his pension had been drastically reduced. Furthermore, according to Kurt Waldheim, he lost his Vienna Consular Academy scholarship. The harassment continued. SA (Sturmabeilung) men periodically searched the family home for “subversive literature.” They arrested Walter Waldheim and briefly detained him a second time. Harassment spawned ostracism by the neighbors.15 According to Waldheim, “Our family was under constant surveillance. We lived in daily apprehension.”16
Waldheim remained focused on his studies, but his future at the Vienna Consular Academy was not a certainty. Without a scholarship, he was responsible for tuition. Although relatives loaned him money, Waldheim supplemented those funds by tutoring students in Latin and Greek. The tentacles of the Nazi octopus, which reached into all aspects of Austrian society, touched the Vienna Consular Academy as well. The result was Gleichschaltung, or Nazi coordination. Despite the disgrace his family faced, Waldheim was able to continue at the academy—even while other students, especially Jewish ones, were expelled—because Director Hlavec von Rechtwall supported him. Waldheim, however, recognized the precarious nature of his position, and, although he later denied it, he joined the National Socialist German Students’ League on 1 April 1938. His later army records acknowledged his position as a “full member.”17
The end of the academic year brought obligation before pleasure—military service before vacation—and military service in the German, not the Austrian, army. On 17 August Waldheim reported to a “cavalry instructional unit,” where he remained until 9 September, when he left for additional “combat training” at Stockerau. His assignment was to the Fourth Squadron of the Eleventh Cavalry Regiment—formerly Dragoon Regiment One—with “the rank of Wachtmeister, or sergeant.” While Waldheim performed his military obligations, the situation in Europe continued to deteriorate. Conflict between Germany and Czechoslovakia was avoided only by negotiations, which resulted in the Munich Pact, signed on 30 September 1938 by British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, French prime minister Édouard Daladier, and Adolf Hitler. While the world collectively sighed in relief and Chamberlain announced to the British people that they had achieved “peace for our time,” the German annexation of the Sudetenland would change Waldheim’s life yet again.18
The German annexation of the Sudetenland dictated occupation, and the Fourth Squadron of the Eleventh Cavalry Regiment—Waldheim’s unit—received this assignment. Waldheim’s tour, however, concluded by the end of October. He received the designation “reserve officer candidate” and returned to his studies at the Vienna Consular Academy. In mid-November, after the infamous Reichskristallnacht—Reich Crystal Night—during which the Nazis launched violent attacks against Jewish citizens, businesses, and homes, Waldheim became a member of the SA. His initial assignment in a SA cavalry unit, the Reitstandarte, was to Storm Detachment Five, Unit Ninety, in Vienna. Years later, when he was under scrutiny, he denied being a member of the “N.S. Student League or the SA.” According to Waldheim, “his SA ‘Unit’ was merely a riding group at the Consular Academy that was ‘coordinated’ by the regime.” He suggested that he had participated in just “two or three harmless horseback outings” with the group.19
In the spring of 1939 Waldheim completed his studies at the Vienna Consular Academy and graduated. Although he would have preferred a trip to Italy, he was required for military service and proceeded to the Eleventh Cavalry Reserve Section in Stockerau by August. By the end of that month his unit was incorporated into the Forty-Fifth Reconnaissance Unit. Waldheim received posting to the unit’s First Mounted Squadron. Because he was accepted as an “officer candidate,” his next assignment was to the “Krampnitz Cavalry Academy near Berlin,” where he would receive several months of reserve officer training. Although his plan was to visit Italy after completing his training, but before resuming his law studies in Vienna, events in Poland would intervene.20
On 1 September 1939 German forces invaded Poland. The move was the culmination of a crisis situation between the two countries. The declaration of war on Germany by France and Britain made Waldheim’s planned trip to Italy impossible. Instead, he reported—as ordered on 19 November—to the Forty-Fifth Reconnaissance Unit’s First Cavalry Squadron. Although many hoped that, as a result of the “German victory in Poland,” the war would be short lived, that would soon prove to be wishful thinking. The resolution of the situation in Poland, however, enabled Waldheim to apply for leave successfully. While hoping that Germany would sign a peace agreement with Britain and France, he returned to his law studies in Vienna. When no peace agreement had been announced by the time his leave was over, Waldheim’s return to duty was unavoidable. By March 1940 he was with the First Cavalry Squadron in Hesse, Germany. Impatient to resume his law studies and begin his desired career in foreign service, Waldheim hoped that the “phony war” would be the end of things because he knew that a campaign in the west would signal a lengthy conflict.21
The war provided an unwanted complication in Waldheim’s life. It derailed his career plans. He was not exactly pleased, but he was stuck. In all likelihood, he would be in the Wehrmacht until the end of the war. He could only hope that the conflict would be over sooner rather than later. Waldheim did, however, understand that his wartime military service could only help him when he pursued his postwar career. He knew “that a respectable military record would look good on his résumé, cleansing him of the taint of having a suspected anti-Nazi for a father.”22
Waldheim also understood how lucky he was not to be ordered to a combat situation, even during the “phony war.” Being based in Hesse allowed him to continue his preparations for the “basic” law exam, which he took on 15 March 1940 in Vienna. Ten days later, because he had “passed with a satisfactory grade,” he earned the probationary title “junior barrister.” A month later Waldheim’s unit—the Forty-Fifth Reconnaissance—was put on alert, which was not a good sign. On 10 May 1940 the German invasion of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands began. When the dust cleared five weeks later, the Germans had achieved victory in the west.23
Waldheim and his unit did not experience much action as they traveled to Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. By the time he received his next leave home in August, Waldheim had received promotion to “senior noncommissioned officer.” He joined his family in their new home in Baden. While in Baden, Waldheim petitioned the “chief of the Nazi Party Personnel Office for the Lower Danube region” for permission to “pursue a legal career” and received approval. Luckily for him, his dubious political past did not sink him. In his assessment, the chief wrote, “The above-mentioned was, like his father, a supporter of the Schuschnigg regime, and . . . boasted ample evidence of his hateful attitude towards our movement. The above-mentioned has now been conscripted and is said to have proven his worth as a soldier of the German Army, so that I do not oppose his admission to judicial service.”24 Breathing a sigh of relief, Waldheim returned to his unit a few weeks later. By 1 December he received a commission as a reserve lieutenant.
Although France capitulated, the unwillingness of Britain to follow suit meant that the war continued. Because the front was quiet, however, Waldheim obtained “study leave” and started the next step toward his diplomatic career goal.25 He enrolled in an international law doctorate program. He obtained leave to take classes but was back in France with his unit by mid-February 1941. Waldheim’s easy life in France came to an end in the summer of 1941. He and his comrades would participate in Operation Barbarossa—the 22 June invasion of the Soviet Union. Tasked with attacking Soviet defenses around Brest-Litovsk, they learned what combat really entailed. It was dirty, noisy, and bloody. After Brest-Litovsk fell to the Germans, Waldheim received his first battlefield award: Iron Cross, Second Class.
Following the battle, Waldheim’s unit became part of Vorausabteilung (Vanguard Unit), or VA, Forty-Five and received new responsibilities. SS forces joined them with the express purpose of “cleansing” the region of partisan forces. Unlike the situation in the west, Soviet forces did not crumble. There were attacks and counterattacks. It seemed never ending to Waldheim and his fellow soldiers. Waldheim did his part and then some. This did not go unnoticed by his superiors. On 18 August Lieutenant Waldheim received the Cavalry Assault Badge. On 8 October, in the absence of his squadron leader, he stepped in as temporary First Squadron, VA Forty-Five, leader. That same month Waldheim and his men found themselves near Moscow, in the Orel sector, and tasked with mopping up enemy resistance in the area.26
While conditions—on the battlefield and in terms of weather—were not great, Waldheim survived unscathed as winter neared. In early December the Soviets launched a counteroffensive in Army Group Center’s sector, and Waldheim and the men in his unit found themselves hard pressed. On 14 December his luck ran out, and Waldheim was injured. He would turn twenty-three exactly one week later. Although not life threatening, the shrapnel wound to his leg was serious. It took several days to transport Waldheim to the field hospital in Minsk, where he received treatment from an Austrian doctor. In one sense, however, his luck held out. Waldheim did not lose his leg. Evacuated to Austria, Waldheim received treatment in Reserve Field Hospital Twenty-Three in Vienna. He recovered enough to spend Christmas with his family before beginning physical therapy. On 23 January 1942 Waldheim received another medal: the Wounded Badge in Black.
According to Waldheim, his injury ended the war for him. In numerous postwar accounts he claimed that—after a year-long recuperation—he was “discharged from military duties.” Consequently, he returned to Vienna and continued his doctoral studies in law, which he completed in 1944.27 For forty years this was Waldheim’s version of his wartime activities. It was rarely questioned. In fact, Waldheim’s short biography on the United Nations website does not even mention what he did during the war except earn his law degree in 1944. Later Waldheim, who denied his membership in a Nazi youth organization, confirmed this narrative in a 19 December 1980 letter to U.S. congressman Stephen J. Solarz. Not completely satisfied, the congressman contacted the Central Intelligence Agency to determine what information, if any, that agency had with regard to Waldheim’s membership in Nazi organizations and his military service during the war.28 The CIA’s legislative counsel, Frederick P. Hitz, responded to Solarz’s query:
We believe that Waldheim was not a member of the Nazi Youth Movement, nor was he involved in anti-Jewish activities.
We have no intelligence reporting in detail on Waldheim’s military service. However, we have gleaned the following from German open source materials. Upon the outbreak of war in 1939, Waldheim was drafted at age 20 into the German Army. He served as a staff intelligence officer with the rank of lieutenant, assigned to the 45th Infantry Division. This Division saw action in the Polish Campaign (September 1939) and the assault on France (May 1940). It was sent to the eastern front in June 1941 to take part in the invasion of the USSR. Waldheim’s service with this Division ended in 1941 when he received a leg wound. There is nothing in the files to suggest that while in this unit Waldheim participated directly or indirectly in anti-Jewish activities.
His recuperation from the leg wound required almost a year; he was discharged from military duties following his recovery and returned to study law in Vienna. He received his doctorate in law in 1944 and in 1945 began his diplomatic career in the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.29
Several years would pass before Waldheim’s wartime narrative would be more thoroughly investigated, challenged, and proven false.
As the war neared an end, Waldheim was ready to move on to bigger and better things—especially a diplomatic career. The year 1944 was a good one for Waldheim. Not only did he complete his law degree, but he also married Elizabeth “Cissy” Lieselotte Ritschel. Shortly after the war in Europe ended, Waldheim was reunited with his wife in Ramsau and met his daughter, Lieselotte, who had been born on the day that Adm. Karl Dönitz had given Germany’s unconditional surrender to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and senior officers from the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.30 It was time to put the past behind him and move toward the future. Waldheim was ready. The past was just that—the past. There was no need to discuss it, to dwell on it, to provide a long narrative when asked what he did during the war. Waldheim apparently concluded that an abridged version of his wartime military service was the way to go. He embraced his version of events, repeated it when asked, and was reluctant—years later when challenged—to abandon it.
With the war over, Waldheim needed to be officially separated from the army if he hoped to pursue his chosen career. Consequently, he presented himself at the Wehrmacht “demobilization” center in Ramsau, surrendered his weapon, “and had his paybook stamped.” Unfortunately, that was not the end of it. While he was no longer in the Wehrmacht, he had to be cleared by the U.S. Army; therefore, he reported to the “American processing center” in Schladming in mid-May. Waldheim was not overly worried because his military rank at the beginning—and the end—of the war was lieutenant. Although he thought that he would not be held for long, he did not know that the Americans had received information from British military intelligence that suggested Waldheim had been Gen. Alexander Löhr’s intelligence officer in the Balkans. Consequently, he learned that his tenure with the Americans would be longer than he had expected—or hoped it would be—and he found himself “an inmate at the POW [prisoner of war] camp near Bad Tölz” in Bavaria. During his subsequent interrogations, Waldheim did not raise any red flags for the Americans. Because he was appropriately anticommunist, Waldheim was back with his family in Ramsau within a month.31
After temporarily relocating to Obermettenback, Austria, Waldheim and his family returned to Baden in early August 1945, and he began to look for a job. With help from Herr Schwanzer and Heinrich Wild, both well-known anti-Nazis who wrote letters of support, he returned to his prior position (“junior magistrate at the district court in Baden”), but he had his sights on bigger things—on a foreign-service job. The letters from Schwanzer and Wild, which he had “formally notarized,” would help. Waldheim composed a résumé that glossed over what he did during the war. Because of a shortage of Austrian diplomats, he believed that he had a good shot at success. His plan was to get his ducks in a row and then to make his case to Secretary of State Karl Gruber.32
On 25 November 1945 Austrians went to the poll and voted for a new government. The Austrian People’s Party (öVP), Volkspartei, which was a recrafted Christian Social Party, achieved an overwhelming victory. The election results solidified Gruber’s position. Gruber’s aide was Fritz Peter Molden. Approximately six weeks earlier, on 8 October, Waldheim showed up at Gruber’s office and asked Molden for directions to the personnel office, where he submitted his credentials. After consulting Molden, Gruber summoned Waldheim and announced that, if he passed the requisite security checks, he would be the minister’s “new personal diplomatic secretary.” Molden received the task of conducting Waldheim’s background check. After a cursory investigation in which his party memberships did not surface, Molden reported that Waldheim was “clean.”33 In the 1980s, when questions arose, Molden claimed “that it was clear to him and Gruber at the time that they were dealing with ‘a man who is not a hero, not the type of guy who goes into the underground.’” He also admitted that he failed at the time to solicit much information from Waldheim himself. Furthermore, he did not investigate Waldheim’s military record.34 Consequently, Waldheim’s secret remained safe. He was able to craft a narrative of limited service until he was wounded and released from military duties.
As a result of his “vetting” by Molden, Waldheim had the job and a fancy title—“Provisional Attaché in the chancellor’s office, Department of Foreign Affairs.” With his new position secured, Waldheim, confident that he was on his way to a lucrative diplomatic career, stopped working at the Baden court, effective 30 November, five days after the People’s Party swept into power. At a young age—not quite twenty-seven—Waldheim had gotten his foot in the door and was on the path to his dream job, or at least he hoped that he was. He had a three-month probationary period in which to prove himself. He would draw on the lessons that he had learned at the Vienna Consular Academy. Waldheim presented himself with “the same modesty, enthusiasm, and dedication that had so impressed his superiors in the Wehrmacht,” and Gruber was suitably impressed.35
Waldheim—by demonstrating his competence and efficiency—worked his way up the diplomatic ladder. In 1948 he became “First Secretary of the Legation in Paris,” a position that he held until 1951, when he returned to Vienna to assume a new position as “head of the personnel department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.” After four years Waldheim received his next assignment, which seemed to suggest that he had “arrived.” In 1955 he traveled to New York to assume the duties of “Permanent Observer for Austria to the United Nations.” Later that year, when Austria became a member of the UN, the head of the new, official “Austrian mission” was Waldheim, who was now positioned to put his diplomatic skills into action.36
Waldheim did not let the grass grow under his feet. Like Gruber, who by this time was the Austrian ambassador to the United States, his superiors were pleased with the ways in which he represented Austria’s interests. The reward was a new posting to Canada in 1956. Although initially he was “Minister Plenipotentiary,” before he left Canada four years later he was the Austrian ambassador. Waldheim returned to Vienna and had responsibility for the “Political Department (West)” at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs until 1962, when he was transferred to a new position—“Director-General for Political Affairs”—before returning to the United Nations in June 1964 to assume the role as Austria’s “Permanent Representative.” For the next four years he chaired the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Waldheim, who served as committee chair with distinction, was rewarded in 1968, when the UN called the first United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and elected him as the conference president.37
Although he ran the UN conference, Waldheim returned to Austria, where he served as “Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs” from January 1968 to April 1970. After a unanimous vote elected him “Chairman of the Safeguards Committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),” Waldheim officially returned to the United Nations, where he resumed his previous position—“Austrian Permanent Representative to the United Nations”—in October 1970. In less than a year, however, he decided to go in a different direction, although he was able to do so without resigning his position at the UN. He ran for president of Austria but was defeated in the April 1971 election. Luckily, the defeated candidate was able to return to the UN, where an unexpected door opened.
On 21 December 1971—on his fifty-third birthday—the United Nations Security Council put Waldheim’s name forward for consideration as the next secretary-general. On 22 December “the General Assembly approved it by acclamation.”38 On 1 January 1972 Waldheim officially became UN secretary-general, which was a five-year appointment. He was reelected in 1977 and served a second five-year term as secretary-general. Although there were suggestions in the 1980s that the Soviets had exerted undo influence over him when it came to important appointments, Waldheim had been an active secretary-general who was involved in numerous causes that were important to the UN membership.
Being engaged in these causes spurred Waldheim to travel to the various “hot spots” on the UN radar, particularly during his first term. In March 1972, after receiving a Security Council mandate to determine the best way to resolve problems that existed in Namibia, Waldheim proceeded to South Africa and visited the country, which was plagued by a migrant workers’ strike and involved in an independence war that had already been waging for six years and would continue for another sixteen. The crisis over Cyprus resulted in three visits by Waldheim to the island. He purpose was two-fold: facilitate leadership talks and “inspect” the UN’s “Peace-keeping Force” based on Cyprus. His final visit, in August 1974, occurred approximately a month after a coup and an invasion by Turkish forces. Waldheim successfully orchestrated the commencement of negotiations between Glafcos Clerides, a Greek Cypriot politician and “Acting President” of Cyprus; and Rauf Denktash, a Turkish Cypriot politician and first president of Northern Cyprus.39
Waldheim was very much involved with trying to bring peace to the Middle East. The result was multiple trips and meetings over a sixteen-month period beginning in August 1973, when he sat down with government officials in “Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, and Jordan.” Ten months later he returned to those countries for additional discussions. His personal efforts to broker a peace in the Middle East culminated with a final round of talks in “Syria, Israel, and Egypt in connection with the extension of the mandate of United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF)” in November 1974. In each case Waldheim combined diplomatic conversations with inspections of UN peace-keeping operations, including “the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), and UNDOF.” Undeterred by the varying degrees of success—or failure—of these missions, he continued to travel the globe, meeting with governmental leaders, participating in international conferences, and attending Security Council meetings held abroad.40
Waldheim served two terms as UN secretary-general—from 1 January 1972 until 31 December 1981. He did not run for a third term. Although there are no limits on the number of terms a secretary-general serves, there has never been a case when one has received appointment for more than two consecutive terms.41 Once his tenure was over, it was time for Waldheim to return to Austria. After the excitement of the life that he had led for a decade, it could not have been easy to adapt to a quiet life of retirement. By the mid-1980s Waldheim would make a decision that would result in controversy, a resurgence in antisemitism in Austria, a scrutiny of global proportions, and a very public, verbal “trial” that pitted friend against friend, organization against organization, professional against professional, nation against nation and that would have unexpected—and to some extent unacceptable—consequences for Waldheim and for the Austrian people. Waldheim decided to make a second run for president.
Although rumors about his military activities had circulated behind the scenes for years, particularly when he was secretary-general, Waldheim’s decision for a presidential bid opened the floodgates. Various groups—including the World Jewish Congress, the OSI, and news organizations—initiated investigations into his wartime past. The man who basically got the ball rolling was Eli Rosenbaum, a former OSI attorney. While working as WJC’s general counsel in January 1986, Rosenbaum received “a tip that Waldheim had served as a senior intelligence officer with the German army in the Balkans from 1942 to 1945.”42 Rosenbaum was curious because the “tip” contradicted Waldheim’s narrative that had been part of the public discourse since his UN days. Waldheim reiterated his account in his autobiography, which had been released after he left the UN. According to the narrative, after he had been wounded in December 1941, he had been released from military duties, and he returned to the University of Vienna, where he completed his law degree. Rosenbaum wondered what Waldheim had to hide and decided to dig deeper.
During the course of his investigation, which lasted for over a year, Rosenbaum located German documents that contradicted Waldheim’s version of events. The documentary evidence placed Waldheim “in a unit that had taken civilian hostages, burned homes, and shot male prisoners.” In an effort to expose Waldheim’s past, the WJC provided the New York Times with “its preliminary findings.” The newspaper conducted its own research to corroborate the WJC story and published an article in which it claimed that “Waldheim had served with a German Army command that fought ‘brutal campaigns against Yugoslav partisans and engaged in mass deportations of Greek Jews.’” Furthermore, according to the article, Waldheim’s commanding officer—Löhr—“had been executed for war crimes.”43
As a result of the article, Waldheim was forced to admit that he had served in the Balkans during the period in question, but he issued the first of many denials of culpability: “He denied knowing about, or being involved in, any atrocities or persecution.”44 He also suggested that his political opponents were trying to undermine his presidential bid, and he accused the WJC of interfering in an Austrian political election. As Rosenbaum described in his coauthored book, Betrayal: The Untold Story of the Kurt Waldheim Investigation and Cover-Up, the WJC’s release of “its preliminary findings” and the documentary evidence that it continued to uncover provided a target for Waldheim and his supporters, including Simon Wiesenthal—the Nazi hunter. Not only did they accuse the WJC of fabricating lies about Waldheim and of trying to change the course of the presidential election, but they also blamed the organization for a resurgence of antisemitic rhetoric and violence. Before the election was over, however, the Waldheim campaign actually adopted both Nazi and antisemitic rhetoric to promote the candidate. Waldheim opponents frequently found themselves the brunt of physical and verbal harassment, particularly when they tried to protest the Austrian at his rallies.
The New York Times article, however, would also have ramifications outside of Austria. The U.S. attorney general, Edwin Meese, received requests to prevent Waldheim from traveling to the United States by placing him on the “Watchlist.” The requests came from the WJC and Elizabeth Holtzman, who by this time was a “former Congresswoman.” Meese tasked OSI with looking into the matter. Even before completing an investigation, however, OSI supported the requests from WJC and Holtzman. On 7 April 1986 OSI director Neal Sher justified his recommendation:
As a counterintelligence officer in a unit which—according to orders of its commander—was engaged in activities which included reprisals against civilians, the taking of hostages, the burning of homes and destruction of villages, and the shooting of male prisoners, Waldheim must be considered implicated in activities which fit squarely with[in the Holtzman Amendment]. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that among his responsibilities were prisoner interrogations (and we know from the military order that prisoners were treated very harshly) and “special tasks.” . . . If such a person was a United States citizen (who had concealed his wartime service in the Balkans, as Waldheim has done for decades) he would be an OSI subject and a prime candidate for denaturalization proceedings.45
Although he suggested that Meese delay a decision until initiating another request to the UN for its war crimes files, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mark M. Richard supported Sher’s recommendation.
Despite Sher’s and Richard’s positions, the Waldheim case was not necessarily a cut-and-dried one, and Meese took his time in making a decision. His decision was complicated by the opinion offered by Assistant Attorney General Stephen S. Trott after he met with Waldheim’s son, Gerhard, who provided a written letter from his father, in which he refuted the allegations. The AAG stated,
I am not persuaded that we ought to take any action at this juncture other than to continue privately to review with great care the evidence on the subject. I remain very skeptical based on the timing of these charges, the fact that Kurt Waldheim has been a world-renown person for years without any of this coming to the fore, Waldheim’s assertions that he can refute or explain everything, and Waldheim’s support by no lesser an authority than Simon Wiesenthal.
So, let’s get the United Nations (UN) file and continue to study the evidence, and let’s do it without any public comment whatsoever. . . . We have a special obligation under these unusual circumstances not only to enforce our own laws but also to not allow ourselves to be used as a wedge in the Austrian electoral process. It also goes without saying that we do not want to slander any person before we get all the facts and determine what they mean.46
When the UN files arrived, investigators received a shock. “Waldheim’s name was on a UN War Crimes Commission list of persons who ‘should be delivered up for trial.’”47 This was not what Department of Justice (DOJ) investigators expected, but it affirmed the need to carry on with the investigation into Waldheim’s wartime military record, especially in light of another bombshell dropped by the WJC weeks earlier. According to a WJC statement released at a press conference in New York on 22 March, the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects of 1948 listed Kurt Waldheim “as being sought by Yugoslavia for ‘murder’ and other crimes allegedly committed during the service in the Balkans.”48 Because of the seriousness of the information from the UN files and from documents provided by the WJC, Sher renewed his recommendation to the attorney general, but a leak complicated matters and caused strained relations between the United States and Austria.
Less than two weeks before the presidential election in Austria, a former DOJ official leaked Sher’s memos to the attorney general in which he had recommended adding Waldheim’s name to the Watch List—to the press. Not surprisingly, the media published the leaked information about the DOJ’s internal investigation and the Watch List recommendation. In an official communication the Austrian ambassador to the United States informed Meese that the placement of Waldheim on a Watch List would constitute “interference in the current presidential campaign.” Meese immediately tried to reassure the Austrian ambassador that DOJ “would act ‘with due regard for the sensitivities of the Presidential campaign to avoid as much as possible any appearance of interference.’”49 He did not, however, promise to drop it. Despite the attorney general’s assurances, demonstrations protesting U.S. interference in the Austrian election broke out, and the Waldheim campaign used the incident to its best advantage. Whether or not the leak affected the outcome of the election, on 4 May Waldheim received 49.64 percent of the vote, which propelled him into the runoff election approximately a month later.50
Continuing his investigation into Waldheim’s wartime military record, Rosenbaum regularly passed information to Sher, who was a friend from his OSI days. Meanwhile, Sher reiterated his recommendation about Waldheim and the Watch List in another internal memo to Meese. He also ordered an OSI inquiry into the allegations resulting from the UN file and those that continued to emerge from the WJC investigation. In addition to the information provided by the WJC, OSI obtained information from the Yugoslavian archives with regard to Waldheim’s unit’s involvement in “processing prisoners for deportations and executions.” Besides reviewing the documents as they arrived, OSI was also inundated with explanations from Waldheim every time new facts became public. The drip, drip, drip of information about Waldheim’s wartime service did not generally come from OSI, but Waldheim was aware of the DOJ investigation. Waldheim’s repeated explanations did not necessarily help his case: “OSI found his responses riddled with inconsistencies, distortions, and misleading statements. One could argue that Waldheim’s statements were deliberately convoluted.” Perhaps he was trying to deflect or discourage additional investigation of his military record. Unimpressed, “Trott thought Waldheim’s submissions were starting ‘to sound like the “I-just-worked-there-and- followed-orders” explanation.’”51 Waldheim’s statements had an unintended consequence. They raised questions that he did not want pursued—not just about his record but also about what he had been hiding for forty years.
Waldheim’s attorneys issued a covert threat to the U.S. government. If the DOJ placed Waldheim on the Watch List, “the U.S. Government would seriously undermine larger U.S. interests in which Austria is a factor.” They also suggested that a “Watchlist” designation would negatively affect Waldheim’s ability to lead Austria as president. His attorneys had a point, because in the midst of the controversy surrounding Waldheim, the runoff election took place. On 8 June, in a close election, Waldheim edged out his opponent with approximately three hundred thousand more votes (53.89 percent) and became the president of Austria.52 Waldheim’s election and his attorneys’ implied threats did not derail the OSI investigation, which continued until the next spring.
On 9 April 1987 OSI submitted its report on Kurt Waldheim to Attorney General Meese. Four OSI names graced the cover of the report, “In the Matter of Kurt Waldheim”: Director Neal M. Sher, Deputy Director Michael Wolf, Historian Patrick J. Treanor, and Supervisory Historian Peter R. Black. In the most important section of the two-hundred-plus-page report, OSI itemized the “Chronology of Mr. Waldheim’s Military Service.” This chronology refuted Waldheim’s claims that he had been discharged from military service after he was wounded during the fighting around Moscow in December 1941 and that he “did not know about, nor was he involved in, any atrocities or persecution.” Although the chronology commenced with the summer of 1936, when “Waldheim entered the Austrian Army as a volunteer and served as a reserve officer cadet in a cavalry unit until August 31, 1937,” for the purposes of refuting Waldheim’s narrative of his military service, this story begins in December 1941.53
According to OSI, Waldheim was engaged in fighting near Orel, Russia, in December 1941, when he received a leg wound, which earned him the “Wounded Badge in Black.” After recuperating in Austria—generally in Baden—for four months, Waldheim “was declared fit for service on March 6, 1942. His convalescent leave ended on April 7, 1942.”54 While he was still recuperating, he received notification of his next assignment: the Twelfth Army, which was based in the Balkans. By this time, at the age of twenty-three, he was a Wehrmacht officer in the German army, and after four years in the military he had participated in two major campaigns and “had been promoted, decorated, and wounded.” He was an “experienced junior officer.” According to the OSI report, while in the Balkans, “Lieutenant Waldheim was assigned to various staffs, usually as a special missions staff officer (Ordonnanzoffizer) and sometimes as an interpreter (Dolmetscher). In the German Army, special missions staff officers were essentially aides-de-camp or adjutants. That is, they were usually junior officers who were attached to the senior staff officers.”55 Furthermore, “special missions staff officers had permanently assigned duties within the appropriate staff departments. . . . Special missions staff officers thus occupied responsible and very sensitive positions on the staff, one step below general staff officers.”56
Waldheim also performed the duties of an interpreter. According to the OSI report, an interpreter did more than translate and liaise: “One of the primary functions of interpreters in the German Army was the interrogation of prisoners and the evaluation of captured documents.” The designation “interpreter,” therefore, was a misnomer. Interpreters functioned as intelligence officers and were “assigned to the Intelligence Branch of the staff, where they might have performed other duties as well.”57
Beginning on 22 March 1942 “Waldheim was assigned to Battle Group Bader, a unit of the Twelfth Army, and attached to the Italian Fifth Mountain (Pusteria) Division as an interpreter in a liaison detachment.”58 His new unit’s mission was the elimination of “guerrilla activity in eastern Bosnia.” To that end, the commander issued the following order: “The more unequivocal and harsh the reprisal measures are from the beginning, the less necessary they will be later. No sentimentalism! It is better if 50 suspected persons are liquidated than if one German soldier goes to ruin.”59 Consequently, the elimination of guerrilla activity involved “the routine shooting or hanging of captured insurgents and any persons who were either found in their company or had supported them in any manner whatsoever.” Interrogation to obtain intelligence only delayed execution.60 The Twelfth Army commander also authorized reprisals against civilians when “insurgents” could not be located, and he specified the numbers who should be punished. He encouraged “the shooting of male inhabitants of villages located in areas of guerrilla activity at the ratio of 100 civilians for every German soldier killed and 50 civilians for every German soldier wounded.”61 In July 1942 Gen. Alexander Löhr replaced the acting Twelfth Army commander, Lt. Gen. Walter Kuntze. After the war Löhr was tried for war crimes in Yugoslavia, convicted, and executed on 26 February 1947. Although Löhr was held accountable for committing war crimes, Waldheim could not be deemed equally guilty just because he served under the general; however, Waldheim did, on occasion, report directly to Löhr. By November 1943 Waldheim “enjoyed an increasingly personal relationship” with Löhr. “Löhr enjoyed discussing intellectual matters with the young Austrian doctoral candidate on his intelligence staff, and he occasionally took Waldheim along on plane trips to the Greek islands”62
When Waldheim joined Battle Group Bader in March 1942, it included several different ethnic units: German, Italian, and Croatian. Waldheim’s assignment was to the German Liaison Detachment Five of the Italian Fifth Mountain (Pusteria) Division, and he reported in early April 1942 after his convalescence had ended. When Waldheim arrived, Battle Group Bader was engaged in fulfilling its mission—targeting and eliminating partisan activity in the region—although with limited success due to unenthusiastic support from the Italians. Although the Germans—and later Waldheim—suggested that only armed partisans fell victim to the area “cleansing” operations, the documents reputed that contention. By 15 May 1942 a total of “154 people had been killed (including 10 shot for possession of weapons) and 1,610 had been captured (of whom 10 were shot and 5 hanged)”; however, very few weapons were recovered. The Italian Pusteria Division had captured 488 (presumably) civilians and transferred them to the SS and the Belgrade police chief. The majority were deported to Norway for slave labor. The rest were “used as forced laborers on road construction.” Although he denied knowledge of the deportations, Waldheim later admitted that he was “the” liaison officer in German Liaison Detachment Five. As the OSI report indicated, Waldheim’s claim was unsustainable: “Waldheim, as the liaison officer, would have played a role in this transfer of approximately 500 persons to the SS for slave labor. Such an operation would have required communication and coordination between the Pusteria Division and German authorities, precisely the functions which liaison officers are assigned to perform.”63 The deportations indicated that eastern Bosnia was secured, which ended the battle group’s usefulness.
By 28 May, however, with the disbanding of Battle Group Bader, Lieutenant Waldheim received a new assignment—in the operations staff of Battle Group Western Bosnia, which was also tasked with eliminating guerrilla activity. His base of operations was Banja Luka. His position as the quartermaster’s deputy put Waldheim in the thick of things, particularly since this officer was responsible for more than supplies. As the “Second General Staff Officer,” the quartermaster was tasked with “various matters including, inter alia, the processing of prisoners, rear area security and questions of executive authority and administration in operational areas.” To carry out his numerous tasks, quartermaster utilized “supply troops and security forces such as the Field Gendarmerie.” As “chief assistant,” it would have been Waldheim’s responsibility to see that the quartermaster’s orders were executed.64
Two months later the operations staff, including Waldheim, relocated forty miles northwest to Kostajnica on the Una River. Two weeks later they were on the move again—this time northeast to Novska, twenty miles away. By the end of August Battle Group Western Bosnia no longer existed. Before it was disbanded, however, the battle group committed “acts of persecution against civilians during a most brutal campaign in the Kozara mountain region.” Although he again contended that he was not involved in the committing of atrocities, one factor suggests otherwise: On 22 July 1942 “Waldheim was awarded a high Croatian military decoration, the Silver Medal of the Crown of King Zvonimir with Oak Leaves.”65
After digging deeper into the events that had occurred in the Kozara Mountains and into Waldheim’s award, the OSI succeeded in unearthing evidence that provided a clearer picture than had been previously available. On 5 July 1942 Battle Group Western Bosnia commenced an operation to destroy partisan forces based in the Kozara Mountains “north of Banja Luka.” According to Kurt Neher, “an official German war correspondent on the scene,” the Kozara operation was “a struggle against Partisans who were ‘rotten sub-humans subjected to “final liquidation” without pity or mercy.’” By 18 July it was all over except the “mopping-up.” A couple of weeks later an official report documented the outcome. The “battle group put enemy losses at 4,310 dead and 10,704 captured. The dead included an unknown number of persons previously apprehended (i.e., prisoners) as well as several hundred people shot in reprisal, while the prisoners included approximately 3,000 women and children.” Additional “refugees” were transported to “Croatian concentration camps.”66
The massacre in the Kozara Mountains is only part of the story. While Waldheim was assigned to Yugoslavia, the deportation of Jews also occurred. In fact, there was a Jewish community based in Banja Luka, where Waldheim was sent when he was first posted to Battle Group Western Bosnia. In early April 1942 Banja Luka police requested the deportation of the Jewish population to a camp “in the interest of public order and security.” Following multiple requests “arrests and deportations” commenced in mid-June—after Waldheim’s arrival. First, Jewish refugees were deported, but soon the local Jewish population was targeted as well. Bowing to pressure from the Germans, the Croatian II Home Defense Corps embraced the Nazi attitude toward Jews and other “undesirable” groups. According to the corps, “the Jews, like the Gypsies, ‘should be 100% eliminated from public life,’” as subsequent action demonstrated. Beginning on 3 July Banja Luka’s Jews had to wear “visible markings” identifying their ethnicity. Officials in Zagreb sent a thousand copies of the documents needed for the deportations on 23 July. The “roundup” of Banja Luka Jews occurred “on the night of July 27–28.” Within a couple of days, 160 Jews—the entire Jewish population of Banja Luka—were on their way to Stara Gradiska concentration camp. While it was possible that German forces did not participate in the deportation of Banja Luka Jews, they did capture and transfer thirteen Jews to Croatian police a week later.
Although he denied knowledge of the deportations, Waldheim was physically present in Banja Luka at the time, and it would have been established protocol for the quartermaster to have facilitated the deportations. Although the OSI could not find specific evidence linking Waldheim to the Kozara campaign, the fact that he received one of the highest decorations awarded by the “Nazi Puppet State of Croatia”—“the Silver Medal of the Crown of King Zvonimir with Oak Leaves”—was significant.67 The King Zvonimir medal was reserved for soldiers who demonstrated “valorous conduct in fights against rebels in Western Bosnia in spring and summer 1942.” While German soldiers could receive this decoration, it was rare for them to receive one with “Oak Leaves.” That honor was reserved for “distinguished service under enemy fire.” Of the twenty thousand soldiers—both German and Croatian—involved in the massacre, only thirty-four received “special mention.” Waldheim was number twenty-five on the list of those honored after this operation. Waldheim received the decoration shortly after the conclusion of the Kozara campaign, but before he participated in any other action.68 His posting to Bosnia was not the end of Waldheim’s wartime military career, nor was it the only part of his service that fueled the controversy in the 1980s.
As the campaign in Bosnia ended, Waldheim received orders to proceed to Arsakli, Greece, which was less than ten miles from Salonika. Between 19 November and 31 March 1943, he was on study leave back in Austria. On 1 December 1942 Waldheim received a promotion to first lieutenant. When his study leave ended, he did not return to Greece. His new orders sent Waldheim to Tirana, Albania, where he “was assigned to the German liaison staff attached to the Italian Ninth Army,” a position he held from April to July 1943, before returning to Greece. From 19 July to 4 October Waldheim “served as the First Special Missions Staff Officer (‘0 1’) in the Operations Branch of a new German staff in Athens” and “Third Special Missions Staff Officer (‘0 3’) in the Intelligence and Counterintelligence (IC/AO) Branch of the High Command Army Group E” from October to April 1945. He was granted study leave three times—23 November to 25 December 1943, 25 February to 16 April 1944, and 15 August to 4 September 1944. His leaves paid off: on 14 April 1944 he earned his law doctorate from the University of Vienna after submitting his dissertation.69
Although the earning of his law degree in the midst of a war was laudable because it illustrated Waldheim’s focus on his postwar career plan, one final episode warrants mention—the Komeno Massacre, 16 August 1943. In some respects, the discovery of this event in relation to Waldheim was the final nail in the coffin of his postwar account that remained the accepted narrative for forty years. After his four month stint in Albania, Waldheim returned to Greece, where he was attached to the “planning office of the German general staff in Athens.” Waldheim’s duties included collecting troop reports, analyzing “their implications for the overall strategic situation,” and including a summary of these reports in his daily brief to Army Group E Headquarters in Salonika. Waldheim generally sanitized the language for his briefs. For example, he substituted the word “victims” for “civilians” when referring to casualties within the local civilian population. He also used the term “bandits” when referencing “civilians shot by Wehrmacht troops.”70
In August 1943 a Wehrmacht raid on the Greek village—Komeno—resulted in the execution of 317 villagers. The youngest victim was one-year-old Alexandra Kritsima; the oldest was Anastasia Kosta, aged seventy-five. Among the victims seventy-four were children under the age of ten. At least twenty families were completely wiped out. According to historian Mark Mazower, the raid was conducted by “highly trained regular soldiers from one of the elite divisions of the Wehrmacht.”71
Why did the Wehrmacht carry out this raid, and where did Waldheim fit in? The villagers had managed to live peacefully next to their Italian occupiers for two years, but that changed when members of the Greek resistance—andartes—moved into the area to gain access to locally produced food. The Italian commandant in Arta initially ignored the situation, and the villagers could not prevent the andartes from entering the village. On 12 August 1943, when a group of armed andartes entered Komeno to “collect” food, however, they were spotted by a “two-man Wehrmacht reconnaissance team,” who did not have the same lackadaisical response that the Italians had. When the Germans quickly retreated from the village, the inhabitants suspected that was not the end of things. They were particularly concerned because Germans had never entered their village before. A village delegation traveled to Arta and met with the Italian commandant. The villagers were worried because they normally put on a celebration for the Feast of the Assumption—15 August. The Italian commander’s assurances allowed the villagers to continue their preparations and to celebrate the feast day as they usually did.72
Meanwhile, the German reconnaissance unit returned to its home base—First Mountain Division Headquarters, Jannina—and notified their superiors of the presence of andartes in Komeno. The German commander, who needed a successful operation against the andartes, tasked the Ninety-Eighth Regiment with carrying out a raid against Komeno. The regiment was in position on the night of 15 August. D-day was 16 August. Around dawn on the sixteenth, German vehicles and “about one hundred men from 12 Company,” entered the village.73 Lieutenant Röser, the company commander, gave his men clear orders: “They were to go into the village ‘and leave nothing standing.’”74 Röser’s order suggested that all villagers either were andartes or they supported the resistance—both crimes punishable by death, according to the Germans. The attack on the village lasted for six hours, during which time German soldiers shot as many villagers as they could—including the priest who was shot by Röser—and set fire to the village. The inhabitants, even if they had weapons and were able to use them, did not fire on their attackers. By 1:00 p.m. the Germans left the burning village behind and returned to base. They took the village livestock with them.
The Ninety-Eighth Regiment submitted two accounts of the operation—one a couple hours after vacating the village, the other in the evening. The first description is revealing:
This morning during the encirclement of Komeno, which was carried out on three sides, 12 Co. came under heavy gunfire from all the houses. Thereupon fire was opened by the Co. with all weapons, the place was stormed and burned down. It appears that during this battle some of the bandits managed to escape to the south-east. 150 civilians are estimated to have died in this battle. The houses were stormed with hand-grenades and for the most part were set on fire as a result. All the cattle as well as wool were taken away as booty. Booty-report follows separately. In the burning of the houses large amounts of ammunition went up in smoke and hidden weapons are also likely to have burned with them.75
As was the case with similar reports, they were written in such a way to mask the actual events that had occurred. Even the later Ninety-Eighth Regiment report, however, acknowledged that the villagers were unable to put up any resistance. In addition to being caught off-guard when the dawn attack began, the villagers had only a total of six weapons on hand—“5 Italian carbines, 1 Italian machine-pistol”—six weapons against a hundred armed soldiers. The report concluded, “Result of this action confirms once again the opinion and report of this Division that a strong guerrilla centre is located on the east bank of the Gulf of Arta, including strong, active bandit groups.”76 Although he did not physically participate in the raid, Waldheim reported its occurrence the next day “in his unit’s War Diary: ‘17 August: Increasing enemy air raid activity against the Western Greek coast and Ionian islands. In the area of 1st Mountain Division, the town of Komeno (north of the Gulf of Arta) is taken against heavy enemy resistance. Enemy losses.’” He also included an account in his daily brief to Army Group E Headquarters: “‘heavy enemy resistance against the Säuberungsunternehmen’ and . . . ‘enemy losses’ . . . totalled 150.” Like the troops in the field, Waldheim used language to disguise what had actually occurred.77 He conveniently “forgot” about this event when describing his wartime experiences.
The rest of Waldheim’s service during the war did not raise any flags for the OSI investigators. According to the German wartime record, Waldheim served with distinction. His medals provide a testament to that fact: on 1 January 1944 he received “the War Merit Cross Second Class with Swords” and on 20 April 1945, “the War Merit Cross First Class with Swords.” In late April 1945 Waldheim received orders transferring him from the Army Group E staff in Zagreb to an “infantry division” near Trieste. According to Waldheim, “conditions prevented him from reaching this unit,” and when Admiral Dönitz tendered Germany’s surrender, he was in southern Austria around Villach. As noted earlier, on 9 May Waldheim received his formal discharge from the German Wehrmacht.78 To Waldheim’s dismay—and Wiesenthal’s—the OSI chronology of his wartime military record was vastly different from the one that Waldheim had presented to the world for forty years and damning to the reputation that he had so carefully built during that time.
During the period in which Waldheim was under investigation by the WJC and the OSI, January 1986 through April 1987, Simon Wiesenthal remained a steadfast supporter of his fellow Austrian. On numerous occasions he issued public statements in which he criticized WJC officials, including Israel Singer, WJC secretary-general; Elan Steinberg, the executive director; and Eli Rosenbaum, the general counsel. In addition to accusing them of attempting to interfere in the Austrian presidential election, Wiesenthal questioned their integrity. He, in effect, accused them of conducting an unsubstantiated witch hunt. Furthermore, Wiesenthal failed to acknowledge the validity of the documentary evidence unearthed by both the WJC and the OSI. In fact, although he declined an invitation to review the WJC’s evidence, he publicly accused the organization of not letting him review the documents that they had acquired. According to Rosenbaum, Wiesenthal’s support of Waldheim had begun at least as early as 1971—when Waldheim ran for president the first time.79 Despite the evidence unearthed by the WJC and the OSI that painted an entirely different picture of Waldheim, he remained steadfast in his support. Wiesenthal also found fault with the OSI investigation, which he claimed was evidence of the U.S. government’s efforts, like those of the WJC’s, to influence the outcome of the 1986 Austrian presidential election. The more evidence that emerged about Waldheim’s military record, however, the less credibility Wiesenthal had, although few of his critics wanted to take him on publicly. It is highly possible that the Waldheim case destroyed Wiesenthal’s reputation, which had been built on a shaky foundation. Apparently, not all of his Nazi-hunting activities had been above reproach. Some of his unsubstantiated claims had been proven to be false. Wiesenthal’s attacks on the WJC did not, however, deter Rosenbaum or his bosses. They continued to search for the truth—even after Waldheim was officially persona non grata outside of Austria.80
Like the WJC, the OSI did not abandon the investigation into Waldheim’s wartime service. The evidence compiled by both the WJC and the OSI proved that Waldheim had been responsible for “identifying areas of suspected resistance activity.”81 Within days of his identification, cleaning operations occurred. It was just a matter of connecting the dots. When it was released, the April 1987 OSI report destroyed Waldheim’s version of events. It provided a detailed description of his service record from 1942 until 1945. In analyzing the evidence, OSI
concluded that Waldheim—who was awarded a prestigious medal by the Nazi puppet regime in Croatia—had been involved in the transfer of civilian prisoners to the SS for exploitation as slave labor, the mass deportation of civilians to concentration and death camps, the use of anti-Semitic propaganda, the turning over of Allied prisoners to the SS, and reprisal executions of hostages and other civilians. Moreover, as the officer responsible for assessing prisoner of war interrogation reports at the headquarters of his Army Group, Waldheim played a key role in determining the fate of individual prisoners. His wartime record thus established that he had “assisted or otherwise participated in persecution because of race, religion, national origin or political opinion.”82
When submitting the report “In the Matter of Kurt Waldheim”—to Attorney General Meese, the OSI reiterated its earlier recommendation “that he be placed on the Watchlist.”83 After reviewing the OSI report, Meese rendered a decision, which was announced by the DOJ and the Department of State on 27 April 1987. Kurt Waldheim’s name was added to the Watch List. Consequently, Waldheim became the first sitting president to be denied entry to the United States—even on official state business. Furthermore, Waldheim found himself unwelcome in many other nations. Even though the British government did not put him on a similar watch list, Waldheim never received an invitation to visit Britain while he was president, which would have been a normal courtesy extended to a newly elected head of state.
The pressure that he faced convinced Waldheim not to run for reelection in 1992. His decision did not result in removal from the Watch List, even though numerous appeals were made by Waldheim and his supporters. In 1998 Waldheim failed to receive the visa that would have allowed him “to attend a UN celebration of its fiftieth anniversary of peacekeeping operations.”84 The Department of Justice stood behind its decision not to let the good work that Waldheim had done while he was secretary-general of the United Nations whitewash the acts that he had committed as a Wehrmacht lieutenant in the Balkans between 1942 and 1945.