Austria "I Wanted to Survive"

By John Greenwald

For nearly two years questions have swirled around Kurt Waldheim and his World War II service with German army units that committed atrocities in Greece and Yugoslavia. Last week an international panel of historians delivered its report on the Austrian President's conduct as a Wehrmacht lieutenant from 1942 to 1945. While the government-commissioned study found no proof that Waldheim, 69, had committed war crimes, it said he was "excellently informed" about such acts and made no attempt to stop them. Waldheim had concealed his war record, it added, "until that was no longer possible" and even then made "untrustworthy" remarks before the panel.

The 202-page document plunged Austria's fragile coalition government into crisis. Amid renewed calls for the President's resignation, the pro-Waldheim People's Party reportedly met with Chancellor Franz Vranitzky's Socialists to discuss how to get Waldheim to step down. Karl Gruber, a former Foreign Minister and longtime Waldheim friend, ignited a fire storm of criticism by charging that the six-member historians' panel was filled with Waldheim's "enemies." He said one member was a Socialist "and the others are of Jewish descent." Vranitzky immediately sent apologetic telegrams to the commission, and a People's Party official called Gruber's remarks "catastrophic."

- Waldheim, meanwhile, showed no sign of quitting. Bolstered by polls showing that most Austrians want him to stay in office, Waldheim privately threatened to dissolve the government -- one of his few real powers -- unless it rejected the document. The Socialists refused the demand, but Vice Chancellor Alois Mock, leader of the People's Party, charged that the panel had overstepped its mandate by passing moral judgments. The Cabinet finally issued a bland statement noting that Panel Chairman Hans-Rudolf Kurz, a Swiss military historian, acknowledged that his group had found "no personal guilty behavior nor participation in war crimes" on Waldheim's part.

The report was nonetheless filled with damning language. Lieut. Waldheim, it found, was "much more than just a second-rate administration officer" and must have known of such atrocities as the deportation of 60,000 Greek Jews to Nazi concentration camps. While the panel conceded that Waldheim "had only extremely modest possibilities for resisting the injustice," it said other German officers had disobeyed illegal orders. Conclusion: "The commission cannot accept Waldheim's excuse that he was unconditionally bound to do his military duty."

Waldheim publicly treated the report as an exoneration. The gist of the study, said he, "is that I cannot be accused of personal involvement in atrocities." With rare candor, Waldheim plaintively told the Vienna daily Die Presse, "Yes, I admit, I wanted to survive" by following orders. He added: "I have the deepest respect for all those who resisted. But I ask understanding for all the hundreds of thousands who didn't do that, but nonetheless did not become personally guilty."

The Austrian President did win a victory of sorts last week when the official Yugoslav news agency Tanjug reported that a 1942 telegram that allegedly dispatched Yugoslav civilians to transit camps on Waldheim's orders was a likely forgery. But that must have been cold comfort to Waldheim, who has found that while he can try to forget his past, others will not.

With reporting by Gertraud Lessing/Vienna