Austria Trapped in the Eye of the Storm

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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."