Waldheim by Robert Edwin Herzstein

Waldheim (Signed Waldheim Card with Authenticating Letter)

The Controversial Biography of Austria's Wartime Officer and President, with a Signed Card from Kurt Waldheim Himself

Bibliographic Specifications

• Title: Waldheim: The Missing Years
• Author: Robert Edwin Herzstein
• Publisher: Grafton Books, London
• Publication Date: 1988
• ISBN-13: 9780246133816
• ISBN-10: 0246133813
• Edition Details: Grafton Books, London edition, 1988. Accompanied by a signed index card from Kurt Waldheim and a covering letter from his Vienna office.
• Binding: Publisher's hardcover with blue cloth spine and grey paper-covered boards, with illustrated dust jacket.
• Physical Format: Octavo-sized hardcover, 303 pages.
• Language: English

Official Condition Report

• The Book: Very Good Plus (VG+)
• Exterior / Boards: The grey paper-covered boards and blue cloth spine are clean, with sharp corners and no visible bumping. The binding presents square and tidy.
• Interior: The text pages are clean and cream-coloured, with no foxing, staining or marking visible. The binding is tight. A small pen tick appears near a chapter heading in the notes section.
• Provenance: A signed index card from Kurt Waldheim is laid in at the front, together with a typed letter from his Vienna office dated May 2002, addressed to Mr. Julian Kritzinger of Worcester and signed by a secretary on his behalf.
• The Dust Jacket: Present. The black jacket with gold lettering is clean across the front, spine and back, with the flap intact, carrying the author's biography and photograph. A small price and ISBN barcode label is part of the jacket. It is protected in a durable archival-type plastic cover.

Synopsis & Historical Value

Waldheim: The Missing Years, published in London by Grafton Books in 1988, examines the wartime record of Kurt Waldheim, the former United Nations Secretary-General who became President of Austria. It appeared during the international controversy of 1986 to 1988 over his service in the German forces in the Balkans and the long silence about that period of his life.

Robert Edwin Herzstein traces Waldheim's early life, his wartime postings and the way his past remained hidden until it came to light. His research was commissioned by the World Jewish Congress. A reference account describes the book as a readable, well-documented study of Waldheim's activities from 1942 to the end of the war, portraying him as a bureaucratic facilitator rather than directly responsible for Balkan war crimes. The international Commission of Historians convened in 1988 could not reach a final answer on his involvement.

This copy carries a signed index card from Waldheim himself, accompanied by a covering letter from his Vienna office dated May 2002. It makes an unusual association piece for collectors of twentieth-century political history and Second World War scholarship.

Author Profile: Robert Edwin Herzstein

Robert Edwin Herzstein (1940-2015) was an American historian who taught history at the University of South Carolina. He died in Columbia, South Carolina, aged 74.

He is best known for his books on the Nazi era, including Roosevelt and Hitler: Prelude to War, The War That Hitler Won and Adolf Hitler and the German Trauma. He also wrote two biographies of the publisher Henry R. Luce.