In addition, Waldheim was elected to the post of chairman of the Safeguards Committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He became Austria's permanent representative to the UN again in 1970. Also in 1968, Waldheim was elected president of the first UN Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. For two years beginning in 1968, he was the federal minister for foreign affairs in Austria, serving for the Austrian People's Party. During his tenure as permanent representative of Austria to the UN, Waldheim served as chairman of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. 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. 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. Waldheim joined the Austrian diplomatic service in 1945, after finishing his studies in law at the University of Vienna. Questions were eventually raised about Waldheim's truthfulness regarding his World War II service. At the same time, Löhr was seeking a special deal with the British. He told the British he had fled his command (Army Group D), where he had been serving with General Löhr. In 1945, Waldheim surrendered to British forces in Carinthia, in southern Austria. But Waldheim's account is contradicted by intelligence reports and eyewitness accounts that affirmed he was present at staff meetings where such matters were routinely discussed.
In 1986, Waldheim said that he served as an interpreter and a clerk under General Löhr and had no knowledge of either reprisal enacted against civilians locally or of large-scale massacres in neighboring provinces of Yugoslavia. Waldheim was stationed for a time in Thessaloniki, as Oberleutnant for counter-insurgency efforts ( Feindaufklärung) to General Löhr. Lohr was an Austrian military officer, executed in 1947 as a war criminal for his roles in suppressing uprisings by Yugoslavian partisan forces and arranging the deportations of 40,000 Thessaloniki Jews to Auschwitz. According to these documents, by 1943 he was serving in the capacity of Ordonnanzoffizier (special duty officer) in Army Group E under the command of General Alexander Löhr. According to his autobiographies, Waldheim was given a medical discharge and returned to Vienna to pursue his doctoral studies in law.ĭocuments later came to light revealing that Waldheim's military service continued much later than 1941. In early 1941, Waldheim was drafted into the Wehrmacht and sent to the Eastern Front.
#Kurt waldheim gave the hider fascist party registration#
He denied having actually signed any registration forms for SA membership. Later, he became a registered member of the mounted corps of the Sturmabteilung (SA) ( stormtroopers). Shortly after the annexation of Austria into the German Reich in 1938, Waldheim applied for membership in the National Socialist German Student Union (known by its German initials as the NSDStB). Waldheim and his wife Elisabeth had three children. Later he attended the University of Vienna, where he graduated with a degree in jurisprudence. During this time he was considered politically non-partisan. Kurt attended the Vienna Consular Academy, graduating in 1936. His father was a Roman Catholic school inspector and an active Christian socialist.
Kurt Waldheim was born in Sankt Andrä-Wördern, a village near Vienna, Austria, on December 21, 1918. At the time of his death, he was the oldest former Austrian president and also the oldest former secretary-general of the United Nations.įollowing his election as president of Austria, allegations surfaced regarding his proximity to war crimes during World War II, which cast a shadow on his legacy as a world leader. Waldheim was president of Austria from 1986 to 1992.
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