German Forces

Conference at Podgorica.

Waffen SS Obergruppenfuhrer Artur Phleps (with briefcase) confers with Italian and German officers, May 1943. The tall German officer at second from left is Austrian-born Oberleutnant Kurt Waldheim, who at this time was serving as Ordnance Officer and Interpreter/Liaison Officer (primarily with Italian forces) for German Army Group E, commanded by his fellow Austrian, Luftwaffe Generaloberst Alexander Lohr. Army Group E was held responsible for the reprisal killing of a fair number of civilians in this period, which led to Lohr being convicted of war crimes and executed by the Yugoslavs in 1947. Waldheim was luckier; he surrendered to the British (with whom he seems to have been negotiating on Lohr's behalf), and went on to a glittering diplomatic career, serving for 10 years as Secretary General of the United Nations, and 6 years as President of Austria. Waldheim attempted to hide his service between 1942 and 1945 (he had been invalided from the Eastern Front following a wound in 1941, and claimed to have been permanently discharged) and, when the beans were spilled (by the declassification of CIA files and Holocaust investigators), claimed to have had no knowledge of any massacres or illegal killings. This was quite possibly true; in any event, as a mere Oberleutant, there was little he could have done about them. In any case, the revelations - attended by much media exaggeration as to Waldheim's alleged role in war crimes - effectively ruined his Austrian Presidency, and cast what was, perhaps, an unfairly bad reflection on his period of service as UN Secretary General. Best regards, JR.