[5] Watzlawik (original Czech spelling Václavík) changed his name to "Waldheim" that year as the Habsburg monarchy collapsed and eventually rose to become superintendent of schools for the Tulln District, attaining the rank of Regierungsrat (government councillor).

As a gymnasium student in Klosterneuburg, he excelled at languages and was a competent violinist in the school orchestra, also enjoying swimming, boating and tennis.

[8] In the autumn of 1937, now an army reservist, Waldheim entered the prestigious Consular Academy in Vienna on a scholarship, where he began his studies in law and diplomacy.

Along with his family, Waldheim opposed the German annexation of Austria in 1938, and while actively campaigning against it in Vienna was attacked and injured by Austrian Nazis.

In early 1941, Waldheim was drafted into the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany, specifically to the Heer (Army), and posted to the Eastern Front where he served as a squad leader.

In his 1985 autobiography, he claimed 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.

[14] 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.

[15] According to one post-war investigator, prisoners were routinely shot within only a few hundred metres (yards) of Waldheim's office,[16] and 35 kilometres (22 mi) away at the Jasenovac concentration camp.

[18] Waldheim denied that he knew war crimes were taking place in Bosnia at the height of the battles between the Nazis and Tito's partisans in 1943.

[19] According to Eli Rosenbaum, in 1944, Waldheim reviewed and approved a packet of antisemitic propaganda leaflets to be dropped behind Soviet lines, one of which ended: "Enough of the Jewish war, kill the Jews, come over.

"[20] In 1945, Waldheim surrendered to British forces in Carinthia, at which point he said he had fled his command post within Army Group E, where he was serving with General Alexander Löhr.

In the telegram, Amin "applauded the massacre of the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich and said Germany was the most appropriate locale for this because it was where Hitler burned more than six million Jews".

[27] Amin also called "to expel Israel from the United Nations and to send all the Israelis to Britain, which bore the guilt for creating the Jewish state".

"[28] After Operation Entebbe on 7 July 1976 – in which Israeli commandos freed more than 100 Israeli and Jewish passengers held captive in Entebbe Airport (Uganda's main airport) by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and German Revolutionary Cells fighters protected by forces of dictator Idi Amin, and where all the hijackers, three hostages, and 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed – Waldheim described the raid as a "serious violation of the national sovereignty of a United Nations member state".

[30] Outgoing Mexican President Luis Echeverría finally entered the race in October 1976, making Waldheim the only Secretary-General to face a contested re-selection campaign.

Near the end of his tenure as secretary-general, Waldheim and British popular musician Paul McCartney organized a series of concerts for the People of Kampuchea to help Cambodia recover from the damage done by Pol Pot.

Before the presidential elections, investigative journalist Alfred Worm revealed in the Austrian weekly news magazine Profil that Waldheim's recently published autobiography had several omissions about his life between 1938 and 1945.

"[39] A short time later, beginning on 4 March 1986, the World Jewish Congress alleged that Waldheim had lied about his service in the mounted corps of the SA and had concealed his service as a special missions staff officer (Ordonnanzoffizier) for Germany's Army Group E in Yugoslavia and Greece, from 1942 to 1944, based primarily on captured German wartime records held at the United States National Archives in Washington, DC, and in other archives.

[47] Information about Waldheim's wartime past was also previously published by a pro-German Austrian newspaper, Salzburger Volksblatt, during the 1971 presidential election campaign, including the claim of an SS membership, but the matter was supposedly regarded as unimportant or even advantageous for the candidate at that time.

[50] The International Committee in February 1988 concluded that Waldheim had been "in close proximity to some Nazi atrocities, knew they were going on and made no attempt to stop them".

[55] The report catalogues evidence that, the U.S. government concluded, proved that Waldheim had taken part in, among other actions: the transfer of civilian prisoners to the SS for exploitation as slave labor; the mass deportation of civilians—including Jews from Greek islands and the town of Banja Luka, Yugoslavia—to concentration and death camps; the utilization of antisemitic propaganda; the mistreatment and execution of Allied prisoners; and reprisal executions of hostages and other civilians.

The book also alleged that the Soviet Union was aware of Waldheim's alleged involvement in Nazi crimes and that, after vetoing other candidates in order to get Waldheim installed as U.N. Secretary General in 1972, used that information to extract concessions at the United Nations that facilitated KGB espionage in the United States, and that the CIA's failure to anticipate this possibility was a major failure for the intelligence agency.

[57] In a letter to the editor published in Foreign Affairs magazine two years after Rosenbaum's book was released, former Finnish ambassador to the U.N. Max Jakobson (one of the candidates whom the USSR had vetoed) wrote, "The Soviets knew everything about Waldheim.

[63] In his speech at the cathedral, Federal President Heinz Fischer called Waldheim "a great Austrian" who had been wrongfully accused of having committed war crimes.

[64] At Waldheim's own request, no foreign heads of states or governments were invited to attend his funeral except Hans-Adam II, the Prince of Liechtenstein.

[65] In a two-page letter, published posthumously by the Austrian Press Agency the day after he died, Waldheim admitted making "mistakes" ("but these were certainly not those of a follower let alone an accomplice of a criminal regime") and asked his critics for forgiveness.