TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/86/86cappeo.1

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Showdown with a Shadowy Past

May 5, 1986

The Waldheim controversy boils over as the election nears

Speaking before television cameras in Vienna's ornate Hofburg Palace,
Austrian President Rudolf Kirchschlager was at pains to select his
words carefully.  His aim:  to render a balanced judgment for his 7
million countrymen about accusations that Presidential Candidate Kurt
Waldheim, the former United Nations Secretary-General, had knowingly
falsified his World War II record and was involved in Nazi
atrocities.

Kirchschlager, who was once a judge, had closeted himself for ten
days with more than 500 pages of documents from the U.N., the
Yugoslav government and the World Jewish Congress that detailed
Waldheim's activities as a lieutenant in the German army from 1942 to
1945.  The first published reports about Waldheim's military service
had shattered his pretense that he had been mustered out of the army
after being wounded in 1941.  Faced with evidence to the contrary, he
has since admitted returning to active service as an army interpreter
in Greece and Yugoslavia.  Nonetheless, he maintains that he was not
aware that Greek Jews were being deported to death camps or of the
extent of Nazi massacres of Yugoslav partisans.

Waldheim, Kirchschlager declared last week, must have known about the
brutal reprisals taken against the partisans by his army unit.  But
while the President mentioned a 1948 recommendation by the War Crimes
Commission that Waldheim be prosecuted for his actions, he added, "I
would not dare to file an indictment in a regular court.  Do not
expect a verdict from me."

Waldheim interpreted the hedged pronouncement as exoneration.  "I am
most grateful to the President," he said.  "All charges are now
refuted.  Nothing remains in doubt."  But even as he tried to put the
matter behind him, his son Gerhard, 38, stirred up new embarrassment.
At a news conference in Washington last week, Gerhard implied that
Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal and Javier Perez de Cuellar, the
current U.N. Secretary-General, had accepted his father's
explanation of his wartime record.  Both Perez de Cuellar and
Wiesenthal denied that they had formed a final judgment about the
case.  Potentially graver damage to the candidate's prospects came
last week when it was revealed that an internal report from the
Justice Department's office of special investigations recommended
that Waldheim be barred from entering the U.S.

Coming just eleven days before the May 4 presidential election,
Kirchschlager's cautious assessment did little to clarify matters for
the 20% of Austrian voters who, according to private polls, are still
undecided about the Waldheim affair.  Both Waldheim, the standard-
bearer of the conservative People's Party, and Socialist Candidate
Kurt Steyrer, a onetime Health Minister, insist that the former U.N.
chief's wartime record should not be an election issue.  In fact, the
controversy has rallied support for Waldheim.  Before the March
disclosure that he had misrepresented his wartime service, most polls
showed him trailing Steyrer by a narrow margin.  After the
allegations began to mushroom, polls put Waldheim 10 points ahead,
but the gap has narrowed lately.

Beyond the immediate political repercussions, though, the controversy
over the former Secretary-General's war record has forced Austrians
to confront long-suppressed but painful questions about their
country's support for Hitler.  Unlike West Germans, most Austrians
have not had to analyze their role in World War II.  Although the
country had 600,000 registered members of Nazi organizations by the
end of the war, the Allied powers declared that Austria had been the
first victim of Hitler's aggression when he annexed the country in
1938.

After the war, political neutrality, social stability and cultural
heritage helped spawn a popular aphorism:  Austria's greatest postwar
feat was to convince the world the Beethoven was an Austrian and
Hitler a German.  Says Vienna Psychiatrist Harald Leupold-Lowenthal:
"Waldheim is not such a surprising case.  He adjusted, as many did,
and then forgot the truth."

Some Austrians believe that the charges against Waldheim, first
leaked by the World Jewish Congress, were timed to influence the
elections.  Since then, both candidates' campaign posters have been
defaced with swastikas or Stars of David, and members of Austria's
tiny Jewish community of 7,500 have received hate mail.  Waldheim has
avoided references to World War II in his campaign speeches, although
he has said that he regrets the "tragedy of Jews in Europe."

Even if he wins the presidency, Waldheim's past may continue to haunt
him.  West German President Richard von Weizsacker recently moved up
an official visit to Austria so he could be received by Kirchschlager
rather than risk having Waldheim as his host.  U.N. officials who
served under him have reportedly said that the former Secretary-
General was regarded as a blatant opportunist rather than a dedicated
diplomat.  That is hardly the image Waldheim tried to project at the
beginning of the campaign, when he was portrayed as "A Man the World
Trusts."  In recent weeks, however, his campaign has adopted a more
defiant slogan:  "We Austrians Will Vote for Whom We Want."

--By John Moody.
  Reported by Gertraud Lessing and William McWhirter/Vienna