Arnold history claim mocked

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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Dave Farber  +1 412 726 9889



...... Forwarded Message .......
From: John Adams <jadams01 () sprynet com>
To: dave () farber net
Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 07:50:12 -0400
Subj: For IP? Arnold history claim mocked

This came to me on another list--I don't know the paper, but this  
appears to be an AP wire story.

Arnold history claim mocked
AP    2004-09-04 04:18:07
   
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/News/2004/09/04/ 
615445.html

VIENNA -- Austrian historians challenged Arnold Schwarzenegger for  
telling the Republican national convention that he saw Soviet tanks in  
his homeland as a child and left a "Socialist" country when he moved  
away in 1968. Recalling that the Soviets once occupied part of Austria  
in the aftermath of Second World War, the California governor told the  
convention on Tuesday: "I saw tanks in the streets. I saw communism  
with my own eyes."

No way, say historians, challenging Schwarzenegger's knowledge of  
postwar history, if not his enduring popularity among Austrians.

"It's a fact -- as a child he could not have seen a Soviet tank in  
Styria," the southeastern province where Schwarzenegger was born and  
raised, historian Stefan Karner told the Vienna newspaper Kurier.

Schwarzenegger, now a naturalized U.S. citizen, was born on July 30,  
1947, when Styria and the neighbouring province of Carinthia belonged  
to the British zone.

At the time, postwar Austria was occupied by the four wartime allies,  
which also included the United States, the Soviet Union and France.

"When I was a boy, the Soviets occupied part of Austria. I saw their  
tanks in the streets," Schwarzenegger told the Republican convention.

The Soviets already had left Styria in July 1945, less than three  
months after the end of the war, Karner noted.

"Let me tell you this: As a boy, I lived for many years across the  
street from where the Russians were based in Vienna, and honestly, I  
never saw a Russian tank there," retiree Franz Nitsch said yesterday.  
"He said it all on purpose -- and that's bad."

In his convention address, Schwarzenegger also said: "As a kid, I saw  
the Socialist country that Austria became after the Soviets left" in  
1955 and Austria regained its independence.

But Martin Polaschek, a law history scholar and vice rector of Graz  
University, said Austria was governed by coalition governments,  
including the conservative People's party and the Social Democratic  
party. Between 1945 and 1970, all Austria's chancellors were  
conservatives, not Socialists.

Also, when Schwarzenegger left in 1968, Austria was run by a  
conservative government headed by People's party chancellor Josef  
Klaus, a staunch Roman Catholic.


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