The Green Movement, And The Nazi In The UN

 

On April 1, 1938 Kurt Waldheim voluntarily joined the Nazi Student Federation. He volunteered for the brown-shirted SA but it is not clear when. His military file reads: “SA Member since November 18, 1938” but this date could be his application or admission. SA applicants had to prove themselves worthy during a six-month apprenticeship.  Kurt was either an apprentice or a member on Kristall Nacht. (November 9, 1938) – the SA rampage organized by Goebbels.

The SA in Vienna, where Kurt was living, distinguished themselves on Kristall Nacht. Forty-three of 44 synagogues were trashed and 20,000 Jews abducted. For days SA squads looted shops and houses of Jews in broad daylight. Jews, and opponents of Nazism, were forced to wash streets and walls with a skin-blistering solution. Many lost their jobs. Before Kristall Nacht there were 200,000 Jews living in Austria. By month’s end there were 150,000.

He trained as a commando near Berlin until October when he joined the 11th Cavalry Regiment in recently annexed Sudetenland. A month later he was back in Vienna, active in the SA. In 1939 he was transferred to the 45th Infantry Division with whom he occupied France, 1940-41. After a stint back home he rejoined the 45th as a lieutenant. The 45th was part of Army Group Center whose goal was capturing Moscow. Here Waldheim first witnessed “cleansing operations” – razing villages, machine gunning suspects, deporting women and children to slave camps. For bravery in the battle of Brest-Litovsk he was awarded the Iron Cross and promoted to commanding a cavalry squadron. His commander, General von Pannwitz, repeatedly praised him. (Von Pannwitz was hung as a war criminal.) Waldheim also received Assault Cavalry and Eastern Front medals. On December 14, 1941 he was wounded in his right thigh and shipped to an Austrian hospital.  On March 6, 1942 he rejoined the 1st Dragoon who transferred him to Yugoslavia to be a staff officer in the 12th Army’s Bader Combat Group.

Waldheim thus entered another atrocity-ridden theatre of war. In 1942 the multi-national Axis army enacted a system of reprisals for acts of resistance including punitive executions of suspects. SS units randomly lynched Serbs from Belgrade street-posts to meet quota. Worse atrocities were committed by the Axis puppet state of Croatia – a front for the genocidal Ustashe movement.  On March 19, 1942, after a spike in resistance, the German 12th Army decreed:

“The most minor case of rebellion, resistance or concealment of arms must be treated immediately by the strongest deterrent methods... It is better to liquidate 50 suspects than have one soldier killed.”  (more...)

The Green Movement, And The Nazi In The UN