Perhaps he wasn’t guilty of war crimes. But there’s no way he should have ever been UN Secretary General or President of Austria.
I only know a bit having traveled to Austria when he was President. I heard that the knowledge of his past, made him MORE popular, not less, to Austrians.
From Wiki:
The World Jewish Congress alleged that Waldheim had lied about his service as an officer in the mounted corps of the SA, and his time as an ordnance officer for Army Group E in Saloniki, Greece, from 1942 to 1943 based on files from the United Nations War Crimes Commission. Waldheim called the allegations “pure lies and malicious acts”.
Nevertheless, he admitted that he had known about German reprisals against partisans: “Yes, I knew. I was horrified. But what could I do? I had either to continue to serve or be executed.” He said that he had never fired a shot or even seen a partisan. His former immediate superior at the time stated that Waldheim had “remained confined to a desk”. Former Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky, of Jewish origin, denounced the actions of the World Jewish Congress as an “extraordinary infamy”, adding that Austrians would not “allow the Jews abroad to ... tell us who should be our President.”
I don’t think that there was much of a choice for able bodied men or youth not to join the Nazi party in Germany and Austria. Join up or you become the enemy and their target. There were mass arrests of those trying to leave as well. We all remember Captain Von Trapp and his escape with Maria and the singing kids. All based in truth.- Edelweiss.
Why not? You’d struggle to find any man of his generation who didn’t serve in the German military of that period.