Former UN Leader Waldheim Dies

John F. McManus
JBS.org
Jun. 15, 2007

He was a Nazi officer during World War II but that didn't keep Kurt Waldheim from being named Secretary General of the Union Nations and, later, President of Austria.

After his Nazi past became known to the Establishment's media in the 1980s, Kurt Waldheim always protested that he had served in the Balkans and was unaware of the many atrocities being committed by Hitler's regime. He had made a practice of omitting any mention of his war-time service in biographical sketches, claiming that he had been wounded in the German invasion of Russia in 1941 and had spent the war years studying at the University of Vienna.

The truth is that he served for three years in the former Yugoslavia and in Greece. He even took part in the deportation of 60,000 Jews from Greece. Most of those hapless individuals died in captivity.

After the war, Waldheim entered the international diplomatic corps and, when Austria gained reentry to the world community as an independent nation in 1955, he secured a post for his country at the United Nations. By 1962, he was Austria's ambassador to the world body.

Named UN Secretary-General in 1972, he served as the world body's leader for ten years. His predecessor, Burma's U Thant, had once praised Soviet mass murderer Vladimir Lenin as "a political leader whose ideals were reflected in the UN Charter." Waldheim never did anything to correct that assertion. In fact, he won acceptance for the UN's top job when, as the New York Times reported, he became known "as the preferred candidate of the Soviet Union from an early stage."

In 1976, The John Birch Society led the way in noting that Waldheim had been a Nazi officer during World War II. Rotary International had just forced Austrian industrialist Wolfgang Wick to withdraw his name as the sole nominee to become the group's president. Rotary officials discovered that Wick had been a soldier in the Nazi army during the war. In supreme irony, and probably because they were ignorant of Waldheim's past, Rotary officials then chose him to give the main address at its annual convention in June 1976.

After ten years at the UN's helm, Waldheim returned to Austria during a period when his Nazi past was becoming more widely known. Nevertheless, he won election in 1986 and served as Austria's president for six years. Even though he was Austria's leader, his name was added to a State Department list of those who were not allowed entry into our country. During the years he held the presidency, he rarely traveled outside Austria because he knew his past had caught up with him.

It is easy to note that a double standard took center stage when Waldheim was ostracized by the United States and other nations. At the same time these nations were completely ignoring the crimes of Soviet Union officials and their handpicked lackeys in the Captive Nations. Their crimes far exceeded those of Nazi Germany and Kurt Waldheim.

Even today, there are Nazi hunters still tracking down ex-Nazi corporals but no similar campaigns have been conducted against the many Communist thugs who continue to be accorded undeserved dignity. Like Waldheim, they should at a minimum be shunned and barred from our shores.