The Kreisky–Peter–Wiesenthal affair was a political and personal feud in the 1970s, fought between the then Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky and the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, arising from Kreisky's ministerial appointments and the SS past of Freedom Party leader Friedrich Peter, which had been revealed by Wiesenthal. Political development in Austria in the 1970s Bruno Kreisky's Socialist Party had been ruling Austria since 1970, with an absolute majority since the 1971 general election. In 1975, their re-election was quite unsure, so Kreisky secretly struck a deal with the right-wing Freedom Party´s leader Friedrich Peter on building a government together if the socialists failed to achieve an absolute majority of seats in the National Council. This however, proved unnecessary, when Kreisky's party managed to maintain its majority. Simon Wiesenthal, by contrast, was a well-known supporter of the conservative Austrian People's Party. Wiesenthal's accusations Kreisky, a Jew who had been persecuted by the Gestapo because of his political beliefs and Jewish birth and after that spent all of World War II in Sweden, formed his minority government after a close victory in the 1970 election. Wiesenthal soon pointed out that four of his appointed ministers had a Nazi past, , , and Otto Rösch. One of them, Minister for the Interior Otto Rösch, was even known for neo-Nazi activities after the war. Kreisky however, publicly defended his appointments claiming that because of his own past as refugee and political prisoner he could very well forgive former Nazis, if they were democrats now. Wiesenthal, on the contrary, stated that "the Nazis could live, the Nazis could die, but they should not govern us." In 1975, Wiesenthal showed his report to president Rudolf Kirchschläger, who urged him not to publish it before the election, because the Austrian people would see this as a foreign interference in their democracy. Wiesenthal agreed. Four days after the election, however, Wiesenthal revealed what he had found out about Peter's wartime years. His report showed that Peter had been an officer in the SS and had served as Obersturmführer at Infantry regiment 10 of the 1. SS infantry brigade. This unit was part of the Einsatzgruppen, which shot hundreds of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe in 1941. Peter, who never denied having been a member of the SS, however said that he didn't take part in any mass killings, claiming he was not on duty during the