Austria Trapped in the Eye of the Storm

By John Greenwald

In the baroque splendor of his 18th century offices, Kurt Waldheim entertains few visitors. The Austrian President spends his days huddling with aides -- dubbed the "bunker boys" by sharp-tongued colleagues -- or performing ceremonial functions. He lingers at receptions, hoping that people will talk to him and, more important, be seen talking to him. Asked whether Waldheim would be welcome at the royal court in Stockholm, Swedish Foreign Minister Sten Andersson diplomatically replied, "The problem does not arise. His Majesty's program is booked solid for years, and your question is therefore purely academic."

Waldheim's plight, though, is a painfully public matter. Since he was elected President 18 months ago, he has become a pariah abroad and an embarrassment to some Austrians at home. The controversy over Waldheim's World War II record continues to dominate headlines and the Viennese cocktail circuit. Even many Austrians now call for his resignation. Though he drew 54% of the vote, a poll taken in December for the monthly magazine Wiener found that 50% of those surveyed wanted him to quit. The pressure for Waldheim to leave is expected to increase next month, when an international panel of historians appointed by the Austrian government releases its long-awaited report on his wartime activities. Yet Waldheim insists that he will complete his six-year term. Says he: "I am a President for Austrians, and not for abroad."

Waldheim's defenders launched a vigorous campaign this month to clear his name finally. Their heaviest ammunition was a 299-page "white book" prepared on Waldheim's behalf by Foreign Ministry officials. Titled Kurt Waldheim's Wartime Years: A Documentation, the work asserts that all charges against him have been proved false. It repeats claims that Waldheim had no involvement in atrocities committed by German army units to which he was assigned between 1942 and 1944. The troops carried out brutal reprisals against Yugoslav resistance fighters and deported Greek Jews to Nazi death camps. The book further asserts that Waldheim dropped all mention of his Balkans service from the 278-page English-language edition of his 1985 memoir, In the Eye of the Storm, only to meet space requirements.

The white book created a split within Austria's coalition government. The Socialist Party resisted printing or distributing the work as an official document. It was finally published by a private firm.

The book is unlikely to convince Waldheim's detractors. While critics concede that Waldheim may not personally have committed war crimes, they maintain that he must have known about them as an interpreter with the rank of lieutenant and later as an intelligence officer. They insist that he then strove for four decades to conceal his knowledge. "It cannot suffice to describe Waldheim as a small wheel within wheels who saw nothing, heard nothing and knew nothing," says Hubertus Czernin, a Viennese journalist who has studied Waldheim's record. "He has to be seen in the context of the war of extermination in the Balkans."

To plead Waldheim's case, Vienna last week dispatched Fritz Molden, a filmmaker and World War II resistance hero, on a tour of the U.S. and Britain. Molden, who helped hire Waldheim for the Austrian Foreign Ministry after the war but insists that he is not a close friend, said he undertook the mission for Austria's sake. Accompanied by Ralph Scheide, a Waldheim aide and co- author of the white paper, Molden called the Austrian President the victim of a smear campaign. "If you pour two gallons of manure over somebody, he will smell," Molden said, "and then you can say that he stinks." Scheide argued that the case against Waldheim has dwindled to charges that he knew of Nazi atrocities. "Of course he knew," Scheide conceded. "So did everyone else." Such arguments did not impress the Justice Department, which last year barred Waldheim from entering the U.S. under a law aimed at undesirable aliens.

In debating the Waldheim furor, some Austrians have displayed an insensitivity toward the President's Jewish critics that has sometimes curdled into outright anti-Semitism. Michael Graff, secretary-general of the People's Party, was forced to resign last month after he told the French magazine L'Express that Waldheim had "no problem" unless he could be proved to have "strangled six Jews single-handedly." On the other hand, in Vienna last week, three neo-Nazis interrupted a nationally televised ceremony honoring Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal with repeated shouts of "Murderer!" When the program's host asked the audience to show its disapproval by giving Wiesenthal a standing ovation, the listeners responded with fervent applause.

The President's fate may now rest with a seven-member commission that has been poring over Waldheim's war record since September. Chaired by Hans Rudolf Kurz, a Swiss military historian, the panel has met for a week each month to sift 30 pounds of documents in the red silk-lined chambers of the Austrian State Archives. Scheduled to release its report on Feb. 2, the commission seems certain to go beyond the narrow question of whether Waldheim committed war crimes and to explore such issues as how much Waldheim knew and whether he acted to save lives.

Waldheim has vowed not to be bound by the panel's findings. He is busily making plans for the spring, and will greet Pope John Paul II in June when he visits Austria, which is 85% Roman Catholic. When the Pontiff met Waldheim at the Vatican last summer, the audience drew protests from the international Jewish community. This time the Vatican pointed out that John Paul's upcoming encounters with Waldheim are standard protocol for papal trips abroad.

With reporting by Gertraud Lessing/Vienna