“What are you supposed to do with 550,000 registered Nazis?”Ĭomposed of archive material, both from TV and from video footage that Beckermann herself shot in the 1980s, the film traces the unmaking of a reputation – and presents alarming proof that, whatever emerges about a politician’s nefarious past and mendacious present, some officials are impregnably coated with Teflon when it comes to catching votes. There’s little waltzing in The Waldheim Waltz, although we do see its subject beaming as he conducts a brass band, but Ruth Beckermann’s documentary is a reminder that politicians’ maintenance of their image is an intricate and slippery dance, with the public not always allowed to know all the steps. An international commission judged in his favour but was critical of his lack of candidness about this period of his life.Dir. This contrasted with Waldheim’s version that he had returned to his studies in Austria following his discharge from the Eastern Front. As a counter-intelligence officer for General Alexander Löhr until the latter stages of the war, it was alleged that Waldheim had taken part in vicious reprisals against dissidents in Yugoslavia and had then participated in the mass deportation to concentration camps of Jews from Thessaloniki in Greece. His history after his wounding in 1941 up until the end of the war had been hazy and his opponents produced documentation that suggested he had known of and been involved in Nazi war atrocities. During the election campaign the opposition made claims about Waldheim’s war record. In 1986 he once again stood as the People’s Party’s candidate for the Austrian presidency. The following year he took up a professorship at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He was defeated in 1981 by a Chinese veto. His re-election in 1976 was opposed by a number of Third World nations but he secured re-appointment. He oversaw peacekeeping operations in Cyprus, visiting the country three times, and in Guinea, Yemen and Angola. He actively pursued Middle East peace, making visits to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. His tenure saw humanitarian projects in Bangladesh, Guatemala and Nicaragua. In 1972 he was appointed UN secretary-general, a post he held for over 9 years. In April of the following year he stood for the national presidency on behalf of the conservative People’s Party but was defeated. 1968 and April 1970 he was minister of foreign affairs in the government of Josef Klaus, but left the post following the collapse of Klaus’ administration. He was Austria’s ambassador to the UN, 1964–68, when he worked on the exploration and peaceful uses of outer space. In 1955–56 he was Austria’s permanent observer to the UN, then minister plenipotentiary to Canada (based in Ottawa) for 2 years and ambassador to Canada for a further two.įrom 1960–64 he worked again at the ministry of foreign affairs, as chief of the political department (West) until 1962 and then as director-general for political affairs. He was first secretary of the Austrian delegation in Paris between 19 and followed this with a period as chief of the department of personnel at the ministry of foreign affairs in Vienna until 1955. For 2 years he served with the Austrian delegation to the Austrian State Treaty negotiations. In 1945, with Austria regarded as an unwilling partner to Germany’s actions, Waldheim entered the Diplomatic Service. He eventually finished his legal studies at the University of Vienna. Fighting on the Russian front in 1941, he was wounded and it was the subsequent period of his life that was at the centre of later allegations against him. He then began studying for a degree in jurisprudence at the University of Vienna but his studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the German army. In 1937–38 he was in the Austrian army before undertaking studies at the Vienna Consular Academy. 1918, the son of a Catholic Czech civil servant. Waldheim was born in Sankt Andrä-Wörden in Lower Austria on 21 Dec.
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