Waldheim, Kurt Josef

▪ 2008

 Austrian diplomat and statesman

born Dec. 21, 1918, Sankt Andrä-Wördern, Austria

died June 14, 2007, Vienna, Austria

served two terms as the fourth UN secretary-general (1972–81) and one as president of Austria (1986–92) until an international scandal concerning his alleged complicity in Nazi atrocities during World War II made him an international pariah and ended his career. Waldheim served (1936–37) in the Austrian army before studying for a diplomatic career. He was soon conscripted into the German army, however, and served on the Russian front until 1941, when he was wounded. Waldheim's later claims that he spent the rest of the war studying law at the University of Vienna were contradicted by the rediscovery in 1986 of documents suggesting that he had been a German army staff officer from 1942 to 1945. After the war Waldheim entered the Austrian diplomatic service and held a variety of posts, including ambassador to Canada (1958–60), ambassador to the UN (1955, 1964–68, 1970–71), and foreign minister (1968–71), before being elected UN secretary-general in 1972. In that position Waldheim oversaw effective and sometimes massive relief efforts in Bangladesh, Nicaragua, the Sudan-Sahel area of Africa, and Guatemala, as well as numerous peacekeeping operations. He was reelected in 1976 despite some opposition, but a third term was vetoed by China in 1981. His candidacy for president of Austria in 1986 became controversial following the dissemination of wartime and postwar documents that pointed to his having been an interpreter and intelligence officer for a German army unit that engaged in brutal reprisals against Yugoslav partisans and civilians and deported most of the Jewish population of Salonika (Thessaloniki), Greece, to Nazi death camps in 1943. Waldheim admitted that he had not been candid about his past but disclaimed all knowledge of or participation in wartime atrocities, and in June 1986 he won the presidential election. An international commission cleared Waldheim of complicity in war crimes, but the “Waldheim affair” continued to provoke criticism, and he chose not to run for reelection in 1992.

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