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Austrian politician and diplomat (1918–2007)

Kurt Josef Waldheim (; 21 December 1918 – 14 June 2007) was an Austrian politician and diplomat. Waldheim was the Secretary General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981 and president of Austria from 1986 to 1992. While he was running for the latter office in the 1986 election, the revelation of his service in Greece and Yugoslavia, and participation in Nazi atrocities, as an intelligence officer in Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht during World War II, raised international controversy.

Waldheim was born in Sankt Andrä Wördern, near Vienna, on 21 December 1918. He was the eldest child of Walter Watzlawik, a schoolmaster of Czech origin, and his wife Josefine Petrasch. Watzlawik (original Czech spelling Václavík) changed his name to "Waldheim" that year as the Habsburg monarchy collapsed and eventually rose to become superintendent of schools for the Tulln District, attaining the rank of Regierungsrat (government councillor). Active in the Christian Social Party, he was well regarded as a devoutly Catholic family man. Waldheim and his two younger siblings, a brother, Walther, and a sister, Gerlinde, enjoyed a comfortable middle class upbringing. From his youth, Waldheim was distinguished by his unusual height of As a gymnasium student in Klosterneuburg, he excelled at languages and was a competent violinist in the school orchestra, also enjoying swimming, boating and tennis. Although his father wanted him to study medicine, Waldheim had an aversion to the sight of blood, and had already decided to enter the foreign service. In March 1936, the Schuschnigg government passed a law mandating a period of military service for prospective civil servants. Consequently, following his graduation Waldheim volunteered for a 12 month term of enlistment in the Austrian Army, and was posted to the 1st Dragoon Regiment on his 18th birthday. In the autumn of 1937, now an army reservist, Waldheim entered the prestigious Consular Academy in Vienna on a scholarship, where he began his studies in law and diplomacy. Along with his family, Waldheim opposed the German annexation of Austria in 1938, and while actively campaigning against it in Vienna was attacked and injured by Austrian Nazis. Following the annexation, Waldheim's father was briefly arrested by the Gestapo and dismissed from his post, while Waldheim's scholarship was cancelled. He managed to continue his studies by working as a Latin and Greek tutor and borrowing funds from relatives. Waldheim applied for membership in the National Socialist German Students' League (NSDStB), a division of the Nazi Party. Shortly thereafter he became a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party's original paramilitary wing. On 19 August 1944, he married Elisabeth Ritschel in Vienna; their first daughter, Lieselotte, was born the following year. A son, Gerhard, and another daughter, Christa, followed.

In early 1941, Waldheim was drafted into the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany, specifically to the Heer (Army), and posted to the Eastern Front where he served as a squad leader. In December, he was wounded but returned to service in 1942. His service from 1942 to 1945 was the subject of international review in 1985 and 1986. In his 1985 autobiography, he claimed that he was discharged from further service at the front and, for the remainder of the war, finished his law degree at the University of Vienna, in addition to marrying in 1944. After publication, documents and witnesses came to light that revealed Waldheim's military service continued until 1945, during which time he rose to the rank of Oberleutnant.

After finishing his studies in law at the University of Vienna Waldheim joined the Austrian diplomatic service in 1945. He served as First Secretary of the Legation in Paris from 1948, and in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna from 1951 to 1956. In 1956 he was made Ambassador to Canada, returning to the Ministry in 1960, after which he became the Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations in 1964. For two years beginning in 1968, he was the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs for the Austrian People's Party, before going back as Permanent Representative to the U. N. in 1970. Shortly afterwards, he ran and was defeated in the 1971 Austrian presidential elections.

After losing the presidential election, Waldheim ran for Secretary General of the United Nations in the 1971 selection. Waldheim was supported by 11 votes, including the Soviet Union, and led the first two rounds of voting. The United States and United Kingdom initially supported him in the second round of voting. However, he was vetoed by China in the second round. Waldheim won an accidental victory in the third round of voting when those three permanent members failed to coordinate their vetoes and all abstained. According to Finnish diplomat Risto Hyvärinen, Waldheim's former Nazi connections were already known to the Finnish officials who supported Max Jakobson for Secretary General in the election. However, this knowledge was not used against Waldheim, because the Finns believed he would not be chosen anyway due to the United States having promised to veto him. As secretary general from 1972 onward, Waldheim opened and addressed a number of major international conferences convened under United Nations auspices. These included the third session of the U. N. Conference on Trade and Development (Santiago, April 1972), the U. N. Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm, June 1972), the third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (Caracas, June 1974), the Third World Population Conference (Bucharest, August 1974) and the World Food Conference (Rome, November 1974), and the World Conference on Women, 1975 (Mexico City, June 1975). During the later, UN Resolution 3379, which considered Zionism as a form of racism and equated it with South African Apartheid, was approved by impulse of Arab countries, the Soviet bloc, and Non Aligned Movement countries. His diplomatic efforts particularly in the Middle East were overshadowed by the diplomacy of then U. S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. On 11 September 1972, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin sent a telegram to Waldheim, copies of which went to Yasser Arafat and Golda Meir. In the telegram, Amin "applauded the massacre of the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich and said Germany was the most appropriate locale for this because it was where Hitler burned more than six million Jews". Amin also called "to expel Israel from the United Nations and to send all the Israelis to Britain, which bore the guilt for creating the Jewish state". Amidst international protest, "the UN spokesman said [in his daily press conference] it was not the secretary general's practice to comment on telegrams sent him by heads of government. He added that the secretary general condemned any form of racial discrimination and genocide." Waldheim ran for a second term in the 1976 UN Secretary General selection. However, China was still opposed to Waldheim and approached several Third World countries seeking challengers. Outgoing Mexican President Luis Echeverría finally entered the race in October 1976, making Waldheim the only Secretary General to face a contested re selection campaign. Waldheim resoundingly defeated Echeverría in the first round of voting. China cast a single symbolic veto against Waldheim in the first round and voted for him in the second round, handing him an easy victory with 14 of 15 votes on the Security Council. In 1977, Waldheim recorded a greeting for the Voyager Golden Records, a pair of discs containing sounds and images representing the diversity of life and culture on Earth, which were launched into deep space on the Voyager spacecraft. The craft were also inscribed with a written message from then U. S. President Jimmy Carter. Waldheim was the first Secretary General to visit North Korea, in 1979. In 1980, Waldheim flew to Iran in an attempt to negotiate the release of the American hostages held in Tehran, but Ayatollah Khomeini refused to see him. Waldheim ran for an unprecedented third full term as Secretary General in the 1981 selection. China was determined to unseat him this time and lined up a strong candidate in Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania. In the first round of voting, Waldheim lost to Salim by one vote. However, Salim was vetoed by the United States, while Waldheim was vetoed by China. The veto duel between China and the United States lasted a record 16 rounds. After six weeks of deadlock, Waldheim and Salim both withdrew from the race. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru won the selection and succeeded Waldheim as Secretary General of the United Nations. The events of 1981 established a customary two term limit on the office, and no Secretary General since Waldheim has run for a third term.

Waldheim had unsuccessfully sought election as President of Austria in 1971, but his second attempt on 8 June 1986 proved successful. During his campaign for the presidency in 1985, what became known internationally as the "Waldheim affair" began. Before the presidential elections, investigative journalist Alfred Worm revealed in the Austrian weekly news magazine Profil that Waldheim's recently published autobiography had several omissions about his life between 1938 and 1945. Waldheim had previously claimed to have received a medical discharge after being wounded in winter 1942. His aides at the United Nations even accused the Israeli mission of spreading rumors that he supported the Nazis. Israeli ambassador Yehuda Zvi Blum denied the charges, saying, "We don't believe Waldheim ever supported the Nazis and we never said he did. We have many differences with him, but that isn't one of them." A short time later, beginning on 4 March 1986, the World Jewish Congress alleged that Waldheim had lied about his service in the mounted corps of the SA and had concealed his service as a special missions staff officer (Ordonnanzoffizier) for Germany's Army Group E in Yugoslavia and Greece, from 1942 to 1944, based primarily on captured German wartime records held at the United States National Archives in Washington, DC, and in other archives. The 23 March 1986 public disclosure by the World Jewish Congress that the organization had unearthed the fact that the United Nations War Crimes Commission concluded after the war that Waldheim was implicated in Nazi mass murder and should be arrested arguably transformed the Waldheim affair into the most sensational of all post war Nazi scandals. Waldheim called the allegations, which grew in magnitude in the ensuing months, "pure lies and malicious acts". Nevertheless, he admitted that he had known about German reprisals: "Yes, I knew. I was horrified. But what could I do? I had either to continue to serve or be executed." Stolen Jewish art remained public property a generation after the Waldheim affair. Because the revelations leading to the Waldheim affair came shortly before the presidential election, there has been speculation about the background of the affair. Declassified documents from the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency show that the CIA had been aware of some details of his wartime past since 1945. Information about Waldheim's wartime past was also previously published by a pro German Austrian newspaper, Salzburger Volksblatt, during the 1971 presidential election campaign, including the claim of an SS membership, but the matter was supposedly regarded as unimportant or even advantageous for the candidate at that time. In view of the ongoing international controversy, the Austrian government decided to appoint an international committee of historians to examine Waldheim's life between 1938 and 1945. Their report found no evidence of any personal involvement in those crimes. Although Waldheim had stated that he was unaware of any crimes taking place, the committee cited evidence that Waldheim must have known about war crimes. The International Committee in February 1988 concluded that Waldheim had been "in close proximity to some Nazi atrocities, knew they were going on and made no attempt to stop them". The committee also noted that "he only had very minor possibilities to act against the injustices happening".

On 27 April 1987, the United States Departments of Justice and of State announced that evidence amassed in an investigation conducted by the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) had established a prima facie case that Waldheim participated in Nazi sponsored persecution during World War II and therefore that his entry into the United States was prohibited by federal statute. This marked the first time that a head of state had been put on an immigration watchlist. The 232 page internal Department of Justice 9 April 1987 investigative report was released in 1994 by that agency, and it is available at the agency's website. The report catalogues evidence that, the U. S. government concluded, proved that Waldheim had taken part in, among other actions: the transfer of civilian prisoners to the SS for exploitation as slave labor; the mass deportation of civilians—including Jews from Greek islands and the town of Banja Luka, Yugoslavia—to concentration and death camps; the utilization of antisemitic propaganda; the mistreatment and execution of Allied prisoners; and reprisal executions of hostages and other civilians. Additional allegations of participation in Nazi crimes, with citations to captured Nazi documents and other records, were leveled in a 1993 book by Eli Rosenbaum, the former U. S. federal prosecutor who had directed the World Jewish Congress investigation that led to the New York Times initial exposure of Waldheim's hidden Nazi era past in 1986. The book also alleged that the Soviet Union was aware of Waldheim's alleged involvement in Nazi crimes and that, after vetoing other candidates in order to get Waldheim installed as U. N. Secretary General in 1972, used that information to extract concessions at the United Nations that facilitated KGB espionage in the United States, and that the CIA's failure to anticipate this possibility was a major failure for the intelligence agency. In a letter to the editor published in Foreign Affairs magazine two years after Rosenbaum's book was released, former Finnish ambassador to the U. N. Max Jakobson (one of the candidates whom the USSR had vetoed) wrote, "The Soviets knew everything about Waldheim. That is why they preferred him." Throughout his term as President (1986–1992), Waldheim was officially deemed persona non grata by the United States and, officially or informally, by nearly every other nation in the world outside the Arab world.

After his term ended in 1992, Waldheim did not seek re election. The same year, he was made an honorary member of K. H. V. Welfia Klosterneuburg, a Roman Catholic student fraternity part of the Austrian Cartellverband. In 1994, Pope John Paul II awarded Waldheim a knighthood in the Order of Pius IX and his wife a papal honor. He died on 14 June 2007, at the age of 88 from heart failure. On 23 June, his funeral was held at St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, and he was buried at the Presidential Vault in the Zentralfriedhof ("central cemetery"). In his speech at the cathedral, Federal President Heinz Fischer called Waldheim "a great Austrian" who had been wrongfully accused of having committed war crimes. Fischer also praised Waldheim for his efforts to solve international crises and for his contributions to world peace. At Waldheim's own request, no foreign heads of states or governments were invited to attend his funeral except Hans Adam II, the Prince of Liechtenstein. Also present was Luis Durnwalder, governor of the Italian province of South Tyrol. Japan and Syria were the only two countries that laid wreaths on his grave. Ban Ki moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, issued a message 'voicing sadness'. In a two page letter, published posthumously by the Austrian Press Agency the day after he died, Waldheim admitted making "mistakes" ("but these were certainly not those of a follower let alone an accomplice of a criminal regime") and asked his critics for forgiveness.