William Tyler
Into Europe: Austria Joins the EU
William Tyler - Into Europe: Austria Joins the EU
- Welcome to everyone who’s joined me today. What I’m going to talk about today is modern European Austria, and it takes a talk on from last week and to largely brings it to a close although the final close comes next time. Last week, we saw how Austria, the rump Habsburg state, after the First World War finally began to discover what it was to be an independent democracy, a small alpine republic with an old imperial capital Vienna recalling past glories, a very odd state. And then we saw how that interwar Austria collapsed with the Anschluss with Nazi Germany in 1938, lasting through to the defeat in 1945. And out of the defeat of 1945, Austria had to start again in terms of redefining itself. And it wasn’t very easy because the four occupying powers, America, Russia, Britain, and France had occupied and divided up Austria and had indeed divided up Vienna between them in the same way that they had divided up Germany and Berlin. The difference being, as we saw last week, that in 1955, Austria became independent, independent of obviously of the Western powers, but independent also of the USSR, which was not the case of course in East Germany, which remained a puppet state. Austria escaped as indeed did Finland, the clutches of the USSR, but it didn’t really know still quite what it was. Today we could say that Austria has become rather irrelevant in the political history of Western Europe. Instead, we might say most people would think of Austria and would think of it as, well, they think of Vienna and as a beautiful place to visit, and others might think of wider Austria as a tourist destination.
And Steven Beller, in his history of Austria, which I’ve been using, writes in this way, “Austria’s tourism industry benefited immensely "from new prosperous German visitors, West German obviously. "But its flourishing was also the result of conscious, "politically motivated encouragement of tourism "as the engine of growth.” The government had analysed the fact that in Vienna in particular, they had something they could sell. “Interwar conservatives have been attracted to tourism "for its promise of prosperity "without social or cultural modernity. "And now in the 1950s, independent at last, "this fitted well with the new conservative "self-image of Austrians as a peace-loving, "orderly, churchgoing, happy-go-lucky people.” Peace-loving, orderly, churchgoing, happy-go-lucky people, not the Austrians in 1938-45. Beller goes on to say, “This made an ironic "but strangely effective complement "to the very heart of those class-based social partnership. "The touristic image of Austria "was both economically productive "and an important part of the new national identity.” But it was largely built, constructed on a lie, or if not on a lie, on a unwillingness to come to terms with its Nazi past. It was no victim of Nazi Germany, no victim. It was complicit in the Third Reich, and as we’ve seen in previous talks, supplied many of the leaders, not least Hitler himself of course, of the Third Reich, and many of the senior administrators in concentration and extermination camps. But in those 10 years between 45 and 55, it’s almost as though subconsciously the Austrians washed their hands of the past.
And I suppose in that well-honed British phrase, “don’t mention the war.” And they relaunched themselves as a tourist destination, a leisure part of Western Europe. One of the key elements to all of this was its proclamation in the year of its independence, 1955, of its neutrality. Austria passed a law of neutrality. It’s called the Declaration of Neutrality technically, but it was actually passed as a law and contained within the constitution of the new Austria. And the words it used was “it declared its permanent neutrality of its own accord.” And it goes on to say, “in all future times, "Austria will not join any military alliances "and will not permit the establishment "of any foreign basis on her territory.” Thus, today, Austria is not a member of NATO. It was said that this declaration of neutrality was voluntary. Well, it depends, as they say, how you define the word voluntary. It had difficulty extracting itself from the four nation occupying powers because of Russia. The Soviet Union would never have agreed to the State Treaty of Austria in 1955, which gave it its independence, had it not declared itself neutral, and it had not got rid of all the allied forces, basically means the Americans. So it’s entirely neutral. Now that of course is the argument that Putin is using about Ukraine in very different circumstances. But here, Austria’s voluntary declaration of neutrality is not all it might seem. They choose that road because it’s the road that gives them independence. But as one Austrian commentator has said, “it was a detour on the way to Europe,” a detour on the way to Europe. The Russians had got what they wanted. No American troops in Austria and neutrality. The Russians realised, I think absolutely clearly, that they could not occupy even part of Austria, nor could they put in a puppet Marxist government in Austria. In 1955, the moment has passed.
And if they were going to do that, the same as with Finland, they should have done it in 1948 or something. But the Austrian historian says it was a detour on the road to Europe, and by Europe, he means Western Europe. And the Russians must have realised that and felt, well, it’s a price worth paying. We cannot, we cannot go to war over Austria. East Germany is different. Austria’s gone by 1955. The best we can do is a guarantee of neutrality, which they’ve had ever since, and no foreign, i.e., American bases in Austrian territory. And the Austrians, the Austrians move very gradually, so very slowly, but intentionally towards Western Europe. I’ve already mentioned that many of their first tourists came from Western Germany. Then of course it spreads out and so on. And by the 1960s, there’s lots of English people doing tours to Vienna and tours to Austria in general. And it also joined EFTA, the European Free Trade Association, the organisation that Britain joined before it joined the common market. And Russia made no objection to it joining EFTA. EFTA was no threat in that sense to Russia. And the Austrian economy began after a blip or so to recover and the Austrian economy became stable. It also had, well, I suppose you have to say a stability in its politics as well, but it’s an uncertain stability. The stability in its politics is a coalition between centre left, the Socialist Party, and the centre right, the People’s Party. So the two party, in British terms, this will be a labour conservative coalition. In Austrian terms, this coalition provided two things. On the left, it meant that Austria put a lot of money into social infrastructure, not in a Marxist way, but in a socialist way. And on the right, it meant that Austria was certainly entrepreneurial and capitalist. And the system worked well, but, there’s always a but, but there was a third party called the Freedom Party. Anything called the Freedom Party is likely to be not free.
This Freedom Party was populist, nationalist, and gradually moved to the further to the right, dallied with Nazis and neo-Nazis. And I’ll come back to that story next time. The Austrian economy began to plough ahead, partly because of trade with West Germany in particular, because it had always had that. And Beller writes this about Austrian trade. He says, “Austria undoubtedly piggybacked "on the even greater growth in West Germany, "the West German economic miracle, if you like. "But Austrian prosperity also had many internal causes. "A leading factor was technological innovation, "especially in industries that had benefited "from development under the Third Reich. "The invention in 1949 of the process "for making high quality steel made the steelworks in Linz "the top performing steel producer in the world. "It was the basic nationalised industries "that led the economic boom of the 30s. "Part of this was the Marshall Plan, "money that the Americans poured in.” Part of it was there was no expenditure or hardly any expenditure on defence, unlike, for example, France and Britain post-war. So it recovered quite quickly due to its own entrepreneurial push, due to technological innovation which had begun under the Nazis, trade in particular with West Germany, which gave a kickstart to trade with other places, minimal expenditure to virtually no expenditure on arms and martial aid, all of which meant that the Austrian economy recovered fast. We know of the German economic miracle, but this is really an Austrian economic miracle. Never forget Austrians are Germans. So they’re working hard and all the same reasons that in Germany there was an economic revival, so those reasons apply likewise to Austria. And of course it had tourism. But it had something else, which I want to share because I think this is important. It goes like this.
The pact between unions, business leaders, and political leaders produced rising living standards and an evermore elaborate welfare state. In 1955, a comprehensive social insurance law was passed. In 1959, a 45-hour working week was introduced. In 1964, a three-week holiday. So the coalition of centre left and centre right linked to prosperity in Austria meant that really things were going extremely well. And there was an agreement about how this country was moving forward, an agreement from all sides. This of course is in direct contrast to what was happening in Britain between unions, management, and politicians. They were beginning to find a cohesion in the 1950s or after 1955, early 60s. They were finding a cohesion that you could describe as an Austrian cohesion. The old Habsburg Empire was now a memory perhaps only for older people to have. It had gone in 1918. The younger generation, even though many had been complicit with Nazism, nevertheless are redefining what it is to be Austrian. And one of the things they’re redefining is prosperity and a social system which is supportive. It’s in many ways you could argue a model country of the period. But this leaves a lot unsaid. Why? Because they hadn’t really come to terms with 1938 to 45. Turn over the page, oh, let’s talk about it. This isn’t South Africa and the arrival of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu. No reconciliation, no coming to terms with the past, no acceptance of the past. Just turn the page over and don’t ask the question. What did your daddy do in the war is not a question a young lady would ask a young man who was dating her in the early 60s. Just put on another record. And all of this blows up 40, 40 years after the war. It blows up internationally 40 years after the war, and it blows up because of one Austrian figure, Kurt Waldheim.
Kurt Waldheim, as it happens, was born in the year that the Habsburg Empire collapsed. He was born in 1918. So those of you who always want to work out how old someone was, born in 1918. He became, well, the two top jobs he held before retirement. He was Secretary General of the United Nations between 1972 and 1981. So in 1972, what is he? He’s 54 years of age. 1972 to 1981, a very prestigious position, and it puts Austria, small, independent, new country, you might say, of Austria, this small alpine country firmly on the map. Austria had produced a Secretary General of the United Nations. You remember the same thing happened with Sweden and Dag Hammarskjold. And here is Austria’s turn to shine. Unfortunately, when Waldheim decided for a second time to stand as, first time he lost, to stand as president of the Republic of Austria in 1986, the proverbial hit the fan. His entire campaign and later his presidency of Austria was overshadowed by revelations that during the war, he’d served in the Wehrmacht as a Nazi intelligence officer in Greece and Yugoslavia and had a connection to Nazi atrocities in Greece and Yugoslavia. And this was big international news. So let’s go back to the beginning with Waldheim and see what happens. He’s a difficult figure to talk about in the sense he’s a very difficult figure to explain. He was born near Vienna to a school master, but his father was not Austrian. His father was a Czech. But then of course in 1918, it was still the multiethnic Habsburg Empire and no one thought of themselves as Austrians, but as Germans.
But this was a Czech. Now after the war and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, his father was left in this new rump state of Austria. So he changed his name. He Germanized his name to Waldheim. I’m not going to pronounce his earlier name because there are people I know listening who will be highly critical. I will spell it for you. W-A-T-Z, W-A-T-Z-L-A, L-A-W-I-K. W-A-T-Z-L-A-W-I-K. That doesn’t matter. What matters is they were Czechs and they changed their name to Germanize it so that they would be Austrian in the new Austria. They were devoutly Roman Catholic. Kurt Waldheim had a younger brother and a sister. He was a tall boy. He grew in his teenage years to be six foot four. His father had aspirations for him. He wanted him to study medicine, but Waldheim as a child was very clever. Father said, “Well, you should go into medicine.” And he said he wouldn’t because he didn’t like the sight of blood. Well, given his involvement with the Nazi regime, after 1943, it’s a bit ironic. Instead, he decided, and this is before the Anschluss of course, he decided he would study for the foreign service. But in March 1936, the Austrian government said, if you are going to be a civil servant, then you must do a period of military service first. And consequently, Waldheim served in the Austrian army and was enrolled on his 18th birthday. In 1937, he leaves the army, he’s done his time. He’s now an army reservist in the Austrian army. But he entered a very prestigious institution, the Consular Academy in Vienna on a scholarship to study law and diplomacy to become a diplomat. When the Anschluss came in 1938, his family were very anti the Nazis.
In fact, for a time, the Gestapo arrested his father, and he actively campaigned in Vienna against the Anschluss, that is, Kurt Waldheim did. His father was dismissed as a school teacher because he would not conform to Nazism. Waldheim’s scholarship to the Diplomatic Academy was simply cancelled. He managed to go on by teaching part-time Greek and Latin. And then comes this odd moment, then comes what really divides his life into two. He joined, well, he asked to join, applied to join the National Socialist German Students League, the Nazi Students Association. Just after that, he became a member of the SA, the Brown Shirts, the Storm Troopers, the Nazis’ paramilitary wing. One, is this division in his life merely expedient that he wouldn’t get anywhere like his father had been dismissed if he remained anti-Nazi? Or was it instead a commitment to Nazism? He’s a difficult man to read. Was it expedient or was it committed? And if it was expedient, did he subsequently become committed? Because he certainly did. You must make your own mind up. In 1941, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht, into the German army, and he was sent to the eastern front. By December 1941, having been wounded, he returned to Austria, but he went back into the army in 1942. This is where later he changes the story of his life. He wrote his own autobiography a year before the revelations came out publicly about his wartime, his wartime commitment to Nazism in Greece and Yugoslavia. He returned to the Wehrmacht in 1942 as an intelligence officer. He served right to the end until he surrendered to the British from 1942 to 45.
And it’s those years, 1942 to 45, that were the subject of an international review in 1985-1986 during his campaign to become president of Austria. He himself maintained in the autobiography written, well, published in 1985 that when he came back to Austria from having been wounded on the eastern front, he was discharged from the army, finished his degree at the University of Vienna and married his wife in 1944. But that was a complete lie, a complete lie. And this was a man about to stand as president of a republic, and he thinks nothing of putting this brazen lie into print. But he did. In 1986, Waldheim said, oh, I only served in the Wehrmacht as an interpreter and clerk and I knew nothing of what was going on. I knew nothing about the massacres in Yugoslavia. Then he changed his story and said, well, he did know about some of the things and had been horrified by them, but he could do nothing to stop them. Much of the research into his wartime activities centred on operation in 1942 called Operation Kozara, K-O-Z-A-R-A. And according to the investigation, prisoners were regularly shot within a few hundred yards of his office. And he said he knew nothing. He actually said, quote, “I did not know about the murder of civilians there.” They were being shot a hundred yards from his office and 22 miles away in vast numbers at the concentration camp. Really he knew nothing? The Wehrmacht German army published an honours list of those responsible for the military successful operation of Kozara and he’s mentioned. The Nazi puppet state, the horrendous puppet state of Croatia, awarded Waldheim the Medal of the Crown of King Zvonimir in silver with an oak branches cluster. He knew nothing really?
According to Eli Rosenbaum, the American-Jewish Nazi hunter working first in the American Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations into Nazis, according to Rosenbaum, in 1944 Waldheim reviewed and approved a packet of antisemitic propaganda leaflets, which were dropped behind Soviet lines, one of which read “enough of the Jewish War, kill the Jews, "come over to us,” dropped on the Russians. The idea that he knew nothing is unsustainable in my view and in the view I think of pretty, well, every contemporary historian today. You see post-war, he buried his Nazi service. As I’ve said in the book, he published the autobiography of 1985. He buried it. It was not inquired into. No one questioned it at the time. But his burial of it was actually the way that the Austrians dealt with 1938-45. They also buried it. As I said, don’t mention the war, turn the page. So what happened after the war? Well, Waldheim entered the Austrian diplomatic service in 1945, a decade before Austrian independence, why? Well, the Americans and the British don’t want to ask too many questions. They search out the worst of the Austrian Nazis, but I suppose the phrase that you have to use is turn a blind eye on others. Did they know about Waldheim? Perhaps not.
The Russians knew about Waldheim and that’s important. We know that for sure now. The Russians had dossiers on him. But he wasn’t there in the Russian part to be arrested, tried or not tried and shot. And in the allied party, they washed their hands. This is a young man who’s resuming his career. Yes, he served in the German army, but then so many people did. So he enters the Austrian diplomatic service in 1945, and in 1956 he became Austrian ambassador to Canada. In 1960, Waldheim became Austria’s permanent representative at the United Nations. In other words, his career is stellar. And then he returned to become Austrian foreign secretary. And finally in 1971, he stood as Austrian president and lost. After losing the presidential election, he ran instead for Secretary General of the United Nations in that same year of 1971. Now we come to the Russian involvement. Waldheim was supported by the Soviet Union in his bid to become Secretary General of the United Nations in 1971. But his position was opposed by China, the United Kingdom, and the United States. But he had an accidental victory in the third round of voting when China, UK, and US failed to coordinate their vetoes and abstained instead. Waldheim therefore succeeded U Thant to Secretary General in 1972. And then people began to wonder. Many of you will remember that in September 1972, Idi Amin is in charge of Uganda. And Idi Amin sent a telegram to Waldheim and the telegram was copied to Yasser Arafat and Golda Meir. In the telegram, Amin said, “I applaud the massacre "of the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich.”
And Amin went on to say, “Germany is the most appropriate locale for this "because it was where Hitler "burned more than six million Jews.” Amin further called upon Waldheim to expel Israel from the United Nations and send all the Israelis to Britain, which bears the guilt for creating the Jewish state. There was massive international protest of course from the West. The UN spokesperson said at a press conference, “It is not the Secretary General’s, i.e., Waldheim, "it is not the Secretary General’s practise "to comment on telegrams sent in by heads of government.” The spokesperson went on to say “the Secretary General "condemns any form of racial discrimination and genocide.” A bit pusillanimous you might say. Then came 1976 and Operation Entebbe, and you all remember that in which Israeli commando freed more than a hundred Israeli and Jewish passengers held captive at the airport in Entebbe by the popular front for the liberation of Palestine and by German revolutionary cells, all of whom had been protected by the horrendous Idi Amin. In Operation Entebbe, all the hijackers, three hostages, and 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed. Waldheim described the raid as, the raid as “a serious violation of the national sovereignty "of a United Nations member state.” Hardly, hardly the words of a democratic, little alpine state politician. It sounds like using his office to push basically a Nazi view. In 1976, Waldheim again ran for a second term as president of the United Nations. China was opposed to him and several third world countries and they sought another candidate. And the candidate they went for was the outgoing president of Mexico who was persuaded to stand against Waldheim.
It’s the only time that a sitting Secretary General has been challenged in a second bid to hold the job by an outsider. However, the Mexican was resoundly beaten, beat in the first round of voting. China cast a single symbolic vote or veto against Waldheim. But in the second ballot, China voted for him and he won by 14, he won with 14 to one of the 15 votes cast. So he has a second term despite, despite, well, there’s more criticisms of him than the ones I’ve picked out. He sought the limelight shall we say. And he was not a good administrator. He’s a forget if you can for a moment the antisemitism. He was a failure really as Secretary General. When his second term ended, he ran for an unprecedented third term as Secretary General in 1981. China was determined he wouldn’t get it then and they put up a very strong candidate in Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania. In the first round of voting, Waldheim lost by a single vote to the Tanzanian, but the Tanzanian was vetoed by the US, and Waldheim was vetoed by China. So there was an impasse, a deadlock that lasted six weeks. In the end, both China’s candidate, the Tanzanian, and America’s candidate, Waldheim withdrew, and Perez de Cuellar of Peru won the selection. And you probably remember the name. And because of Waldheim, now no Secretary General can hold that office for more than two, for more than two terms of office, a two-term limit. No longer can they stand for a third term. One of the things about Waldheim, he has a exaggerated sense of his own importance and of his own capabilities. And he decides although he’d lost back in the early 70s the presidential election for Austria, he decides to stand again as president of Austria and is elected in 1986 despite all that wartime record being exposed from 1985 onwards and the lie in his own autobiography. And all of that became known by the international press as the Waldheim affair.
On the 23rd of March 1986, full disclosure was made by the World Jewish Congress. The evidence being produced by Rosenbaum. And the World Jewish Congress said it had unearthed the fact that the United Nations War Crimes Commission concluded after the war that Waldheim was implicated in Nazi mass murder and should be arrested. And this changed the whole atmosphere. Some historians believe it was the most sensational of all post-war Nazi scandals. Waldheim began by calling the scandals pure lies and malicious acts. And then he admitted, and this is him speaking, “Yes, I knew about it. "I was horrified, but what could I do? "I’d either,” he said, “to continue to serve or be executed.” He went on to say that he’d never fired a shot or had even seen a party’s act in Yugoslavia. Indeed his former Nazi superior said that Waldheim had remained confined to a desk. There’s nothing so odd this folk, a former Austrian chancellor of Jewish origin, Bruno Kreisky, denounced the actions of the World Jewish Congress as a extraordinary infamy, adding that Austrians would not allow the Jews abroad to tell us who should be our president, and he himself was Jewish. And underlying all of this was the larger question that Austria still in 1986 had not come to terms with its Nazi past of 1938 to 45. It still hadn’t come to terms with it. Austria had refused to pay compensation to victims of Nazism, and from 1970 refused to investigate Austrian citizens who were senior Nazis. Stolen Jewish artwork remained the property of the Austrian government, a generation after the Waldheim affair. Austria remained somewhere in its DNA Nazi.
However, because of the international outcry when Waldheim became president, the Austrian government appointed an international committee of historians to examine Waldheim’s life between 1938 and 45. They found no evidence of any personal involvement in any crimes. The committee, however, said there was evidence that Waldheim must have known about war crimes. They concluded that Waldheim had been, quote, “in close proximity to some Nazi atrocities, "knew they were going on and made no attempt to stop them.” And they finished by saying he only had very minor possibilities to act against the injustices happening. Wow. Weasel words, bury it. It’s not important in 1986. It’s 40 years or more ago, bury it. But you don’t bury things like that. In 1987, the United States announced that the evidence amassed by its own Justice Department Office of Special Investigation, where Rosenbaum had worked, had established a prima facie case that Waldheim participated in Nazi-sponsored persecution during the war, and they banned his entry into the United States because he’d been banned under federal statute. This is a leader of a Western European country who cannot go to America because of his Nazi past, which he denied. Waldheim left office in 1992 and he died in Vienna in 2007. During his retirement, Pope John Paul II awarded him a papal knighthood and that opens a can of worms of the Catholic Church’s involvement with Nazism during the war. They awarded Waldheim after all of that evidence with a papal knighthood.
Wow. Talk about denial. Denial in the Vatican, denial in Vienna, denial throughout Austria. Whilst he was president, only the Arab world welcomed him as a head of state. Does that not say a great deal? In 1993, Rosenbaum produced his own book, and there he laid out the evidence that the Soviet Union was well aware of what Waldheim had done during the war and that’s why they had him installed as US, UN Secretary General in 1972. And they used that pressure on Waldheim to extract concessions that facilitated, says Rosenbaum, KGB espionage in the States. The CIA were totally blind to this and had been blindsided by the USSR. Two years after Rosenbaum’s book had been published, that is to say in 1995, a former Finnish ambassador to the United Nations, a man called Max Jakobson, wrote, “the Soviets knew everything about Waldheim "that is why they preferred him.” Never, never trust Moscow. We knew it then. The CIA ignored it. We know it now. And we ignored it when they took the Crimea. In a killing conclusion to the New York Times obituary of Waldheim, it reads this, “Waldheim was clearly not a psychopath "like Dr. Josef Mengele "nor a hate-filled racist like Adolf Hitler.” This obituary was written by a Jew. “He’s very ordinariness, in fact, "may be the most important thing about him, "for if history teaches us anything, "it is that the Hitlers and the Mengeles "could never have accomplished "their atrocious deeds by themselves. "It took hundreds of thousands of ordinary men, "well-meaning, but ambitious men like Kurt Waldheim "to make the Third Reich possible.” And I’ve written on my notes think on these things. It took hundreds of thousands of ordinary men, well-meaning, but ambitious men like Kurt Waldheim to make the Third Reich possible. You all remember the famous phrase of Simon Weisenthal, “For evil to flourish, "it only requires good men to do nothing.”
In this case, it’s a bad man who did something at a low pecking order, okay, but a bad man who did something, a man who’d been brought up Catholic, who, after all this came out and had retired as president of Austria, is given a papal knighthood. I told you this man and his life are complex, but he’s not an impressive man in any way. He held impressive jobs, but in himself, he was hollow I think. Now whether he first joined the Nazi party to ensure that his career would advance or whether he joined through commitment, I don’t know, but that he was implicated up to his neck and beyond is certain, and that he denied it and lied and lied and lied again is certain. I don’t like talking about him. Even Waldheim’s past and the past of Austria itself seemed hardly to put a dent, however, in the eyes of Western music, sorry, in the eyes of Western Europe, because the Sound of Music is how we view Austria. And this isn’t just the Sound of Music. It just isn’t trips to Salzburg. It isn’t trips to Vienna to see where the Habsburgs lived. It isn’t trips to eat Viennese cakes and drink Viennese coffee, because only two years after Waldheim ceased to be president, that is to say in 1995, Austria joined the European Union on the 1st of January 1995, backed by a referendum. It had made it as a European nation. And somehow or other having buried its Nazi past until Waldheim became president, it’s managed to bury it after he ceased to be president and everyone knew about it. Don’t mention the war. They joined the EU. An Austrian government site has said this, “Austria’s membership in the European Union "has had a decisive impact "on the country’s foreign and European policy.”
True. The Austrian government document goes on to say, “20 years after Austria’s accession to the European Union, "numerous studies provide impressive proof "that the Austrian economy profits significantly "from its involvement in the growing internal market, "which is also reflected in the creation of jobs. "As some 70% of Austria’s foreign trade is with EU members, "the internal market means significant savings "for the Austrian economy. "Since Austrian accession in 1995, exports have tripled "and 13,000 new jobs have been created per year. "There is no doubt that Austria’s economy "would not have been able to benefit "from the opportunities granted "by the enlargement without its membership in the EU "and without the accession to the monetary union "and that would also have been hit much harder "by the consequence of the economic and financial crisis.” And like many small countries, take Ireland, Austria has benefited enormously from the EU, but it is also benefited, it has also benefited in being able to bury its Nazi past. Now next week we will have to look at Neo-Nazism in Austria and what role Austria is playing within the EU. If dreams of empire had died in Vienna, next week we will find that dreams of empire have not died in the other half of the Habsburg Empire in Hungary, in Budapest. That’s next week’s story. I want to take one final sentence from this Austrian government statement about Austria joining the European Union. “Austria’s accession to the European Union "marked the completion of the process "of Austria’s integration efforts.” So not just about the economy, not just about the economy, about integrating into Western. Don’t mention the war.
In integrating into Western, oh, don’t mention the previous president. In integrating into Western Europe. Put on another show of the Sound of Music. Come to another Salzburg festival. Come to Vienna for Christmas. “Austria’s accession to the European Union "marked the completion of the process "of Austria’s integration efforts.” I got two last things, yes, just about time, two last things to say. First of all, in the British newspaper, The Guardian’s obituary of Kurt Waldheim, that ended by saying of Waldheim, “but the man who was the most exalted Austrian diplomat "since Prince Metternich turned out to have feet of clay. "He decided not to seek reelection as Austria’s president "in 1992 because one six-year term "as an international pariah had proved enough. "Yet he never gave any sign "that he understood why he’d been so shunned.” No regrets. No regrets for his wartime service. So what of Austria in 2022 as its imperial past now lies over a century back in time and even its Nazi past is now only remembered by the very old. And next week for my final talk about Habsburg in Austria, we shall look at how much these conflicting pasts, the glory of Habsburg Vienna and the horror of the Anschluss brackets, and Waldheim brackets, how both still haunt Austria in 2022. So please join me for the final roundup next week. Thank you very much for listening tonight and I’ve got some questions.
Q&A and Comments:
Q: Oh, Warren, I’m sorry. You take me totally by surprise, Warren, because I’m not talking about America, Western leadership, or Ukraine. You’ve asked, you have been critical of Biden and Western leadership. What do you think they should be doing that they’re not doing given your historical perspective?
A: We cannot risk a nuclear World War III. I can’t really answer that today. That requires a longer answer than I can do in two minutes anyhow. And you’ll forgive me if I move on. Ironic that postwar Austria, despite seeming antisemitism, had a Jewish prime minister.
Well, Stan, yeah. History and fact is always more surprising than fiction I find.
Estelle, I was made to feel uncomfortable in the northeast when I asked for directions to a kosher restaurant. Yep, I’m not Jewish and I’ve always felt uncomfortable in Germany. Well, not so much now, but earlier when you look at people and you think, yeah, you were an adult during the war, what the hell did you do? Peter, Peter, thank you. It was the skiing, the skiing and good food are much cheaper than Switzerland in the 1960s. Yes, yep, that’s absolutely true. And packaged holidays. Yes, all of that absolutely true.
Q: Today columnists and professors of great standing argue current war in Ukraine supported US NATO, which ignored Putin’s fear of their greater influence. Is there much truth in that argument?
A: Well, the truth is that we didn’t stand up to Putin when we should have done over the Crimea. Now the Crimea is difficult. And I will just say this, the Crimea was never historically part of Ukraine. It was put there by Khrushchev during the USSR linked to Ukraine when it was part of Russia, because Khrushchev was Ukrainian. There is madness in that.
Yes, Salzburg due to Mozart as well as Sound of Music is a popular tourist attraction and they don’t have to cash in on it. Mozart chocolates, Mozart whatever. Born 1819, not 1918. Did I say someone was born in 1918 and I should have said 1819? If you’re referring to Waldheim, he was born in 1918. I’m not sure what you’re, but you will be undoubtedly right.
Serena says, amazing to say please choose me as your chancellor because I know nothing and I won’t achieve anything. Simon Wiesenthal did not think Waldheim was guilty of war crimes. No, not everyone agrees with Rosenbaum’s assessment, but the assessment really based upon, he was, I nearly swore, he was extremely close to appalling atrocities. He said nothing then, he said nothing afterwards, and having left, in fact, he lied in his autobiography. Having left office, he never, ever, as it were, came clean.
Oh, Rachel, that’s good. I’ve just come to you, I agree with you. There are very few people that do, Rachel. Also most Germans knew nothing. It’s interesting, yep, yep. That’s amazing that the Russians arrested and killed Raoul Wallenberg but not Waldheim. Waldheim, they couldn’t get at, and anyhow they then saw Waldheim as someone they could use. Well, China dislikes anyone that was Western European. May I ask why did China dislike Waldheim?
Barbara says, many years ago, I attended opening night at the Samson Opera, Samson and Delilah in Austria. Waldheim was in the audience. The opera production took place in a concentration camp. The opening scene was a barbed wire and the prisoners pressed up against the barbed wire. Waldheim could not take it and left at the first interval. Wow, Barbara, that’s a really interesting point. You see when it’s contemporary history that we’ve lived through, sometimes we forget things because it’s sort of past us and we never can put things in the right order. But occasionally we are present at something which we ourselves have witnessed, which is not recorded. And I don’t think your story, well, I’ve never read your story, Barbara, anywhere. And that really is, you cannot deny what a person has seen. If Barbara saw that, then that happened. And that is, well, I think that’s a very, very interesting comment.
Yolanda says, “In my humble opinion, "the United Nations Youth Organisation "just pump up huge wastes of money.” Yeah, the former British foreign secretary, a former British foreign secretary has said, Douglas Hurd has said we’ve had three attempts at getting world peace, the Congress of Vienna, the League of Nations, and the United Nations. He would agree with you that it fails, but he goes on to say it’s the best we’ve got and so we’ve got to keep it. And think about other parts of the UN, which are very effective, on refugees, on health. There are other things it does. I’m with Hurd. It’s the best we’ve got. We got to stick with it. Kreisky’s brother lived in London.
Oh, everybody, Rosalyn, lives in London at some time or another. He probably went to the city there.
Q: Bernard says has Austria ever admitted its Nazi involved?
A: Not really, not really, it hasn’t.
I thought that John Paul II was very pro-Jewish and met with survivors. Yes, yes he did. But he made Waldheim a papal knight. The thing is if you were writing fiction, and I was your tutor, I would say, look, you can’t say he gave a knighthood to an anti-Semite, because in other parts of the novel, you’ve shown he was pro-Jewish. Doesn’t make sense. That’s what I would say if you were writing a novel. But this is history and history isn’t like a novel and it doesn’t tie up in a way that a novel should tie up. It does make, who is that?
Sorry. Aubrey. It does, he says it makes, sorry, Aubrey, it makes one think about what’s happening in Ukraine presently. Yes, it does. And it’s a question of leopards and spots. Russia is always Russia. Gerald, a comment made by a well-known Jewish theatre, an opera director, who worked in Vienna recently resists, and I think it sums up Austria, “antisemitism runs out of the water taps "when you turn them on.” I paraphrase. Well, we’ll see about that next week. I don’t disagree with that.
Vicky, or put differently, they suck antisemitism with their mother’s milk.
Peter says most revealing and disturbing to me. Thank you. But, well, most revealing and disturbing, yes, I think it is. And it means that we cannot, you see, I’m not talking about the Ukraine, but I’m sorry that everyone keeps mentioning it. You can’t ignore the elephant in the room. Ukraine is painted entirely white and Russia entirely black. Obviously we know that Russia has broken international law, has behaved in a most appalling way, but Ukraine’s hands are not clean. And as somebody said earlier in the question and answer, because they’ve got a Jewish president does not, should not blind us to what Ukrainians have done in the past. And I mentioned that Crimea should have been part of Russia from the very beginning. Oh, well, thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed me talking about Waldheim. I do find him difficult. I also, I really don’t like talking about people where I can find little good. Most of us are some sort of combination of good and bad, and we know it, but there are some people who are so, are bad and don’t ever acknowledge it. That’s my summary about Waldheim.
Yeah, Angela says sad that the truth of Waldheim and Austria being willingly denied.
Q: Michael says when did USA back Waldheim third time as Secretary General?
A: That’s more to do with the relationship between the US and Russia as it is about Waldheim, but basically the Americans were in denial about Waldheim or the information that the Americans had was not the information the Russians had about him. Yes, Austria isn’t in NATO.
Oh, ah, Anthony, very interesting. Just a bit more to add from my personal experience as a UK representative in Austrian company at the time of all this controversy, how interesting. I heard many of the Austrian employees utter similar comments to those you quoted from Bruno Kreisky, the ex, the ex-chancellor, the ex-president and the man with the Jewish background. When I explained to them that the Office of President of Austria was represented a country in an official capacity, why vote for a man who was persona non grata in most Western circles. Exactly. Yes, well, Kurt in Austria is another, yeah, yeah, well, whether acknowledgement, there are various ways of acknowledging. We’ll come to that next week.
Q: Have I visited Austria?
A: Yes. Did I not tell you the story earlier? Maybe Barbara and Kenya didn’t hear the story. I went on an adult education meeting in Austria near Bad Ischl to a very nice country house with a beautiful lake. It was organised by the Austrian government and it was a European meeting of adult educators. I thought it was a magnificent place. And over breakfast on the second day, I said to my host, this is from Vienna. I said this is a most lovely place. You’re very lucky to have such a place to be able to use for conferences. And his reply was, “I hate coming here.” And I said why? And he said, “Don’t you know the story?” And I said, no, I don’t. And he said, “Well, this house, "prior to the Second World War, "was owned by Jews who had owned it in the Habsburg Empire. "They fled to America. "During the war, the Nazis used it "as a maternity hospital to produce the master race. "When the war ended, the Jewish family simply, well, "couldn’t come back, didn’t want to come back or whatever, "and donated their property to the Austrian state "to be used in the cause of European peace.” And that’s why adult education was able to meet there.
Oh, oops, I’ve lost it, sorry, hang on, I lost that bit. Somebody was asking something quite interesting. I mustn’t lose it. I’ll get there, I’ll get there.
Oh, yes, Elliot. Thank you, sir. Oh, thank you. You have confirmed my suspicions on two items. A, the Austrians never, the Austrians never dealt with their antisemitic tendencies. I often thought the air in Vienna was antisemitic. And, B, to this day, the CIA, et cetera, are totally incompetent. We see that in the current Ukraine disaster and Afghanistan before that. Ellie, I’m assuming you’re American.
Nirmi from Toronto, “when we visited Vienna several years ago, "we noticed the marked difference "between how Berlin takes responsibility for "and commemorates the victims of World War II. "The monuments and museums in Berlin "tower over the very limited public display in Vienna. "Now I understand why.” It is different.
Q: Can you send us the quote from the New York Times?
A: If you look up Waldheim obituary New York Times on Google, you’ll find it.
Oh, well that’s nice. People seem to, I’m glad it was something that people wanted to listen to and you don’t have to agree with anything I say, but it may have introduced you to an aspect of a history that you’ve never sort of looked at. Pauline, Poland is now a member of the European Union, never faced up to its population’s wartime crimes against the Jewish population. It has never apologised for throwing out the remnants of Polish jury in 1968. I do not think that this is the time to talk about the part that a large number of the Ukrainians play in the extermination of Jews by the Nazi army in 1941. History’s mirror is crooked and distorted one. Well, yes it is, that’s true. But we need to talk about these things even if we disagree about them. I’m not happy that the Ukrainians are painted in white colours. For example, it has been reported in Britain that the generals, three Russian generals who’ve been shot were shot by a specialist neo-Nazi group. Now I don’t know whether that’s true or false, but everything is muddied. It’s interesting that Austria claimed Mozart as Austrian. He never was Austrian, more close to German. Yeah, well, yeah, well, we’re back to the Habsburgs. What is a German? What is an Austrian? The word Austrian is not relevant in the time of Mozart, William.
Oh, now somebody is saying thank you. Kreisky gave in to terrorists who hijacked a train of Russian refuseniks.
Gene says, I agree about feeling uncomfortable in Vienna. I found Berlin much more open. Julianne says quite a number of Anglo-Jewish families with Austrian parents or grandparents have been granted Austrian citizenship in a ceremony in London. This is very recent. Well, anyone, , they probably voted against Brexit and absolutely wanted an EU passport. My son-in-law had some Italian blood in his family from a long way back, tried to trace it to get an EU passport, but it was so far back, the Italians said they couldn’t, he couldn’t have one. A friend of mine who is entire, well, in fact, one of my vice principals in the past is entirely English, his family are entirely English, but his father happened to be working in Northern Ireland. He was born in Northern Ireland, stayed there about three months I think only, but was through Dublin even though it’s not Northern Ireland, he could claim an EU passport because you can claim an Irish passport from Northern Ireland, so he did. I think it’s it, so if people claimed Austrian passport, you need to ask why. No, I don’t know what happened to his children. Nothing very grand I don’t think.
Oh, crikey, Nicholas. I met Kreisky’s brother and played with his son when I was small. Wow.
Michael says Bruno was well-known as a self-hating Judean. When Golda Meir visited him, she said he didn’t even offer a glass of water. He was also the first prominent Judean to welcome Arafat at his office and at a great banquet afterwards, Kreisky had a brother in Israel who used to borrow money from Menachem Begin as his brother ignored him. Once Kreisky said, “I supposed the Jews think I’m a Nazi.” Well, I’m not getting involved in the problems of antisemitic Jews, but I’ve had lots of you over the years inform me about that and it’s, I say history is far different than fiction. You’ve never put it in fiction.
Susan says the US Justice Department, at the US Justice Department is the wonderful Neal Sher who went after Waldheim. Neal passed away this year, but he was a giant. Oh, people are just saying thank you. That’s well.
Oh, Lawrence, as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who obtained Austrian citizenship for my children and grandchildren, I could spend an hour talking about the hoops we had to go through. Oh, there’s one here.
Jean, in the Holocaust Museum in Berlin, I asked a group of young teachers how and why they were in that museum. They told me that the teachers programme, they get assigned to a museum, but only to this museum if they requested it. They wanted to know what happened in Germany during the war. And we need, we need, we need to study history. We need to be very clear about history. History doesn’t give us the answers, but it goes a long way to giving us explanations about Putin, about Ukraine, about NATO, about the European Union, about America as a world power post the Cold War. It gives us all sorts of questions. And I don’t have answers and you would expect me to.
But what I can do is raise questions as a historian and questions we should all attempt to answer in our own way as best we can. And all of us listening to this, whether it’s in Israel or Canada or wherever, live in democracies. And therefore it’s incumbent upon us to take a view about world affairs in which our own countries are involved and to come to a decision therefore in a democracy of who is the candidate most worthy of our vote. And for some of us, the present situation across the Western liberal democratic world is a difficult one. I’ve usually voted during my life in England as a conservative. I shall never vote conservative again because I was opposed to Brexit and because I believe the present government is not conservative, but neo-conservative. Other people would think that was a nonsense thing to say. But I don’t think I can ever bring myself to vote socialist, to vote labour. And some of you may think, well, that’s ridiculous, of course you should. I have voted liberal, but it’s like throwing my vote away. At least in America, you just have a binary choice. But you may feel like binary choice is difficult and you may feel that the presidential candidate doesn’t represent the values of the party that you support, whether Democrat or Republican. We live in a complicated world and I’m going to do one of those, where I’ll talk for 40 minutes and we’ll have 40 minutes of people saying you’re wrong. I’m going to do a session on the crisis in liberal democracy. And I hope that sort of fits in with some of the things I’ve been talking about.
Look, I really must stop. It’s gone 20 past six. I’ve run out of questions. Do stop me talking. I can go on forever, but I’m going to stop. And thank you very much for listening. I will be with you next week.