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Austria Election of Kurt Waldheim as President
In 1986 Austrians prepared to elect a new president. The race
featured two major candidates, Kurt Waldheim for the ÖVP and Kurt
Steyrer for the SPÖ, plus two less well-known candidates, a Green
party activist and a former member of the FPÖ. Waldheim was one
of Austria's best known citizens by virtue of his having served
two terms as secretary general of the United Nations in the
1970s. Waldheim had joined the ÖVP only in early 1985 when the
party decided to offer him its presidential candidate's spot. He
was presented to the voters as "the man the world trusts."
Steyrer was the minister for health and the environment in the
SPÖ-FPÖ government. His campaign stressed his role as a family
man and a humanitarian.
The 1986 presidential campaign would have taken place without
many people outside Austria taking note of it, except that it
focused on an issue that proved extremely sensitive for audiences
inside and outside of the country. In March 1986, Profil,
a Vienna-based magazine specializing in investigative reporting,
began to publish a series of articles claiming that Waldheim had
left out crucial details about his service in the army, the
German Wehrmacht, during World War II. In an autobiography
published a few months before, Waldheim had glossed over most of
his wartime service, alleging that he had spent much of the war
in Vienna studying law while recuperating from wounds he had
received. Profil, foreign newspapers, and the World Jewish
Council in New York unearthed evidence that Waldheim had spent
considerable time on duty in the Balkans and in Salonika, Greece.
The German army had carried out brutal occupations of these
areas, murdering thousands of Yugoslav partisans and deporting
Greek Jews to the concentration camps in Central Europe.
Waldheim, while not accused of personally participating in any
atrocities, made the unbelievable claim that he had not heard of
any misdeeds by the German armed forces in the Balkans or Greece
until he had read the current newspaper accounts. He stuck by his
account that he had been on leave when atrocities were committed,
and he defended himself by saying he "had only done his duty as a
soldier."
As the scrutiny of Waldheim intensified, Austrians became
polarized over whether to defend or criticize him. Many older
Austrians, particularly those who had served in the German army,
agreed with his self-defense that he had merely done his duty in
a war that Austria had not wished for. Others became more
suspicious of Waldheim when documentary evidence was produced
suggesting that he may have joined the Nazi Party to further his
chances for a diplomatic career. The presidential campaign
degenerated into a mudslinging affair, and the ÖVP launched
attacks against the character of the SPÖ candidate.
Despite the furor surrounding him, on May 4, 1986, Waldheim
outpolled Steyrer by 49.7 to 43.7 percent. He fell only 16,000
votes short of the absolute majority required for victory, and
thus a runoff between the two top candidates was scheduled for
June 8. Waldheim won the runoff handily, garnering 54 percent of
the vote. Steyrer's candidacy had been handicapped by his
membership in a government burdened by financial mismanagement of
state industries and other scandals. Waldheim benefited from a
wave of sympathy from certain segments of the Austrian
electorate, who viewed him as a victim of unfair attacks.
The Waldheim presidency proved to be a major burden for
Austria. In April 1987, after a one-year study of the matter by
the United States Department of Justice, the United States placed
Waldheim on its "watch list" of undesirable aliens. The
department had concluded that there was "a prima facie case that
Kurt Waldheim assisted or otherwise participated in the
persecution of persons because of race, religion, national
origin, or political opinion." Waldheim became the first active
chief of state ever to be placed on the list of 40,000
subversives, terrorists, and criminals. Waldheim became isolated
internationally and found support only from the Soviet Union,
some of the communist governments of Eastern Europe, and Arab
states such as Jordan, one of the few countries he was to visit
during his presidency.
In June 1987, the Viennese branch of the SPÖ passed a
resolution calling for Waldheim to resign. Chancellor Vranitzky
and Sinowatz, the chairman of the SPÖ, defended Waldheim, arguing
that he had been elected democratically. Strains were beginning
to appear within the ÖVP-SPÖ coalition over the affair, and
somehow a resolution needed to be brought about. In an effort to
achieve this resolution, the Austrian government announced that
it would appoint an international panel of historians and human
rights experts to examine the whole matter.
The panel presented its findings in February 1988. The
panel found no direct evidence that Waldheim had participated in
war crimes during his military service in the Balkans and Greece.
However, it concluded that he must have had some knowledge that
atrocities were taking place. Predictably, Waldheim took the
panel's report as his exoneration, as did most ÖVP leaders. The
president gave a speech in which he said he believed it to be in
the best interests of Austria that he remain in office.
The release of the panel's report came one month before the
fiftieth anniversary of the Anschluss of March 1938. At a public
commemoration of this event in Vienna, Vranitzky solemnly
informed the Austrian people that it was time for all of them to
face up to the fact that their country had been not only the
first victim of Nazi aggression but also a participant in
Hitler's military conquests. Waldheim gave a television address
in which he described the Holocaust as one of the greatest
tragedies of history and admitted that Austrians had played a
role in it. He condemned fanaticism and intolerance and expounded
on Austria's dual role as victim and culprit. For Waldheim's
critics, it was a respectable performance, but woefully late.
Austrian emotions had been rubbed raw by the Waldheim affair, but
at least it presented Austrians with an opportunity to discuss
openly issues that had effectively been taboo for fifty years.
Data as of December 1993
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