Waldheim served in the Austrian Army (1936-37) and attended the Vienna Consular Academy, where he graduated in 1939. Waldheim's father was active in the Christian Social Party. Waldheim himself was politically unaffiliated during these years at the Academy.
Three weeks after the German annexation of Austria in 1938, Waldheim applied for membership in the National Socialist German Students' League, a division of the Nazi Party. Shortly thereafter he became a registered member of the mounted corps of the SA.
On 19 August 1944, he married Elisabeth Ritschel in Vienna; their first daughter, Lieselotte, was born the following year. A son, Gerhard, and another daughter, Christa, followed.
During World War II
In early 1941, Waldheim was drafted into the Wehrmacht and posted to the Eastern Front where he served as a squad leader. In December, he was wounded but returned to service in 1942.
His service in the Wehrmacht from 1942 to 1945 was the subject of international review in 1985 and 1986. In his 1985 autobiography, he stated that he was discharged from further service at the front and, for the remainder of the war, finished his law degree at the University of Vienna, in addition to marrying in 1944.
After publication, documents and witnesses came to light that revealed Waldheim's military service continued until 1945, during which time he rose to the rank of Oberleutnant.
Yugoslavia and Greece
Waldheim's functions within the staff of German Army Group E from 1942 until 1945, as determined by the International Commission of
Historians, were:
Interpreter and liaison officer with the 5th Alpine Division (Italy) in Pljevlja from 22 March 1942 to July 1942.
O2 (2nd Assistant Adjutant) to the 1b (General Staff Quartermaster) with Kampfgruppe West in Bosnia in June/August 1942,
Interpreter with the liaison staff attached to the Italian 9th Army in Tirana in early summer 1942,
(1st Assistant Adjutant) to the 1a (General Staff Chief of Operations) in the German liaison staff with the Italian 11th Army and in the staff of the Army Group South in Greece in July/October 1943, and (3rd Assistant Adjutant) to the 1c (General Staff Chief Intelligence Officer) officer on the staff of Army Group E in Arksali, Kosovska Mitrovica and Sarajevo from October 1943 to January/February 1945.
By 1943, Waldheim was serving in the capacity of an aide-de-camp in Army Group E which was headed by General Alexander LÃ ¶hr.
In 1986, Waldheim said that he had served only as an interpreter and a clerk and had no knowledge either of reprisals against local Serb civilians or of massacres in neighboring provinces of Yugoslavia.
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