1986: The Waldheim Affair

In 1986 a debate during the presidential election campaign would change Austria. Since the reestablishment of the Republic on 27 April 1945, Austria had defined itself as the “first victim” of National Socialism and had successfully evaded any responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi regime. The conflict surrounding Kurt Waldheim’s war record overturned this victim thesis. Waldheim, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, was nominated as the presidential candidate for the ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party). In early March 1986 it became known that he had concealed his membership in a Nazi organisation and his wartime deployment in the Balkans. When Waldheim was confronted with suspicions that he had participated in war crimes in the Balkans as an officer of the Wehrmacht, he defended himself by saying that he had been doing “his duty as a soldier”. At a stroke, this statement brought to light the contradictions inherent in the official victim thesis. Waldheim’s concealed wartime past in Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht became a symbol of how Austria had dealt with its National Socialist past.

Later it became clear that Waldheim himself was not directly responsible for any war crimes, but must have known about the terror and deportations. His evasive behaviour made the “Waldheim Affair” a turning point in how Nazi crimes were remembered. For the first time, the focus was on the question of Austria’s shared responsibility.

Even after his election to the office of federal president, a post he held from 1986 to 1992, Waldheim continued to attract criticism. Today he is considered an “unwilling educator” who motivated an entire generation to fight against the suppression and downplaying of the crimes committed by Austrians during the years of Nazi rule from 1938 to 1945, and to campaign for the memory of the victims of National Socialism, who still lacked recognition, to be honoured. The “Waldheim Affair” provided the impetus for the first Holocaust memorials—only now were the more than 66,000 Jewish Austrians murdered in the Shoah commemorated. 

Erste Fernsehreportage über die Waldheim-Affäre im ORF-Inlandsreport, 6.3.1986

Unterrichtsmaterialien des hdgö zur Erinnerungskultur in Österreich nach 1945

Unterrichtsmaterialen mit Tondokumenten zur Waldheim-Affäre in der Mediathek