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Thread 9281

Thread ID: 9281 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2003-08-26

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madrussian [OP]

2003-08-26 00:46 | User Profile

Sun Aug 24, 4:05 PM ET

By SUSANNA LOOF, Associated Press Writer

VIENNA, Austria - It's just a tiny typewritten line tucked away in an immense archive, but it sheds further light on the Nazi past of Arnold Schwarzenegger's father.

The brief entry in one of millions of documents stored at the Austrian State Archives shows that Gustav Schwarzenegger, the late father of the film star now running for governor of California, was a volunteer member of the Sturmabteilung, or SA — the notorious Nazi storm troopers also known as brownshirts.

The father's Nazi Party membership and combat record in the German army are not new, and his son's dismay about it is well known. The revelations of SA membership that emerged a week ago add another strand to the murky story.

The "SA 1.5.1939" listing shows that the elder Schwarzenegger joined May 1, 1939, the year after Germany annexed Austria and six months after the brownshirts played a crucial role in the bloody Kristallnacht riots.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which in 1990 investigated Gustav Schwarzenegger's wartime past at his son's request, plans to conduct new research before the Oct. 7 California recall election to establish what the father's unit did, said Rabbi Marvin Hier.

Whatever it finds out, "We will give it to Arnold, then to the public," Hier told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from the center's Los Angeles headquarters. "Whatever the record shows, so may it show. Should that record have any bearing on Arnold Schwarzenegger himself? In my opinion, absolutely not."

Schwarzenegger campaign spokesman Sean Walsh said Sunday he does not believe the actions of the actor's father will influence voters in the recall election.

"His record regarding stamping out intolerance is absolutely rock-solid and he will continue to work closely with the Simon Wiesenthal Center to ensure that the attitudes and actions that occurred in the Nazi era never happen again," Walsh said.

The Wiesenthal Center didn't find the storm trooper reference in its 1990 investigation because that record was sealed until last year, 30 years after Gustav Schwarzenegger's death in 1972.

The new information was "negative," though SA membership is not considered a crime in itself, as membership in the Gestapo or the paramilitary SS would be, Hier said.

"We know what the SA and the Nazi Party stood for," he said. "Arnold knows this, and he's not proud of the fact that his father was a member of the Nazi Party and that his father was a member of the SA. This is a matter of deep embarrassment, but Arnold cannot be judged by his father."

Arnold Schwarzenegger has donated nearly $750,000 to the center, raised millions more, and helped the organization fight anti-Semitism. Born two years after World War II ended, he long ago distanced himself from his late father's views and in 1991 he received the Wiesenthal Center's National Leadership Award.

Schwarzenegger successfully sued a British tabloid in 1989 and a journalist in 1993 for suggesting he held Nazi and anti-Semitic opinions. He won undisclosed libel damages.

The storm troopers, a paramilitary organization tied to the Nazi Party, played a crucial role in expanding Adolf Hitler's power.

They were part of the 1938 Kristallnacht rampage, during which more than 1,000 synagogues were destroyed. In its aftermath, about 30,000 Jewish men were dragged to Nazi concentration camps and several hundred people were killed or committed suicide.

Gustav Schwarzenegger became a member the following year, at a time when SA membership was declining. The troops had 900,000 members in 1940, down from 4.2 million in 1934, according to the "Encyclopedia of the Holocaust," published in Germany and Switzerland.

Austrian State Archives don't have details about the elder Schwarzenegger's SA activities, and don't provide enough information to determine whether he was any worse than most Nazis, said Ursula Schwarz, a researcher at the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance.

"You cannot judge that from these documents. You would need a whole lot more," she said.

There's no doubt that Schwarzenegger's father was a convinced Nazi; Austrian records indicate he joined the party on March 1, 1938, two weeks before the country was annexed. A separate record obtained by the Wiesenthal Center indicates he sought membership before the annexation but was only accepted in 1941.

But his past raises few eyebrows in Austria, where many have relatives who were Nazis.

Austrian newspapers, in stories proudly describing their native son's successes in a U.S. state much larger than his home country, mention Gustav Schwarzenegger's Nazi ties only in passing, if at all.

The Vienna daily Der Standard, in a recent story headlined "Arnie steps in: A man makes himself a legend," wrote that "Gustav, a high-ranking Nazi, brought up the bespectacled, rather frail boy with an iron fist and quite a few slaps in the face."

The archive records also include the elder Schwarzenegger's tattered ID booklet, with a photo of him sporting slicked back hair and a Hitler-style mustache. It lists injuries, hospital stays and medals. Another document says he saw action in Poland, France, Lithuania and in Russia, where he was wounded.

A health registry document describes him as a "calm and reliable person, not particularly outstanding" and assesses his intellect as "average."

Austrian authorities in 1947 determined that the elder Schwarzenegger could work as a police officer despite his Nazi past because there was no evidence he had committed war crimes.

Campion Moore Boru

2003-08-26 01:11 | User Profile

Ahnold pre-emptively pays extortion $. Unfortunately, that ticket was good for Hollywood only.

If you ever see the Schwarzie vehicle "Pumping Iron," you'll notice something very weird was going on between him and his dad. Arnold said his pop's death did not affect him at all, and did not attend the funeral.

Appropriate poem from Messr. Kipling to the spineless and the dupes:

**IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,     To call upon a neighbour and to say:— “We invaded you last night—we are quite prepared to fight,     Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,     And the people who ask it explain That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld     And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,     To puff and look important and to say:— “Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.     We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;     But we’ve proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld     You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,     For fear they should succumb and go astray, So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,     You will find it better policy to says:—

“We never pay any one Dane-geld,     No matter how trifling the cost, For the end of that game is oppression and shame,     And the nation that plays it is lost!” **

Howard Campbell, Jr.

2003-08-26 03:36 | User Profile

Will Arnold betray his own father to placate Vampire Abe--in the same manner that Buckley Jr. backstabbed Buckley Sr. in the infamous In Search Of... NR?

Wasn't the SA pretty toothless after the Thermidorean "Long Knives" thang?

Sisyfos

2003-08-26 03:57 | User Profile

Ahnold pre-emptively pays extortion $. Unfortunately, that ticket was good for Hollywood only.

I guess when the Simon enquiry makes its findings known we’ll know whether the money was well spent. As for Hollywood, there was a recent article, on OD I think, which made plain the anti-Arnold sentiment of mainstream (liberal) Hollywood performers. Fortunately for the man that “eats Green Berets for breakfast” the political opinion of the likes of Hanks, Spielberg, Streissand, and Sheen is something that few pay attention to. On the other hand, when Soros speaks the bagmen listen, and others at least pretend to.

Arnold has one other guardian angel of the requisite race that is seldom talked about: Joe Weider, the man that had a hand in bringing Arnold to America and who contributed to his early stardom via the ever-so-obviously rigged bodybuilding contests that Arnold entered in his later years. By all accounts they had a near father-son relationship and Arnold has repaid Joe’s earlier attention with continued business dealings after he conquered Hollywood.

The relationship slipped my mind until a short article buried in a metropolitan daily rag reminded me of it. The story noted that Joe has recently sold his interest in his muscle magazines to bigger fish, the owners of “The Star” and “The Enquirer.” Prior to the sale it was reported that Joe was upset over the blows (Arnold's womanizing, Neanderthal behaviour, etc.) that “his boy” had taken, courtesy of his fellow tribesmen, the new owners of the muscle rags. There was some question as to whether it was a condition of the sale that the buyers will henceforth go easy on Arnold. They said no, and that they’ll “continue to publish the kind of stories that our readers want,” but did acknowledged that Joe brought it up. No doubt it will be business as usual, i.e., more sleaze, but it remains to be seen whether it’s the kind that hurts politically where Arnold is concerned.

Regarding the recall campaign overall, I think the “Maguire” article on VNN is most helpful. The combination of Mestizo influx and White flight spells doom for California, no matter who sits in the Governor’s office. Arnold’s chief function, should he win, will be to keep the game going a little longer, i.e., keep the whites befuddled and prevent/diminish as best as he’s able their exodus for Colorado and other more white-friendly states. He has been certified Kosher by the players that matter.

For optimal result, and to avoid prolonging the agony, I’d go with the Mestizo candidate. :gun:

If you ever see the Schwarzie vehicle "Pumping Iron," you'll notice something very weird was going on between him and his dad. Arnold said his pop's death did not affect him at all, and did not attend the funeral.

Interesting. Its been a long, long time since I saw this documentary so I don’t recall Arnold’s methods of coping with his pop’s death. Actually, the flick made a small impression on me so the only thing that stuck is something about Arnold having “spaghetti arms,” and the scene where Lou Ferrigno, in the course training for Mr. O, is doing incline presses with ludicrously small weights, even for a neophyte (I should know), while screaming at the top of his lungs “Arno-o-o-old! Arno-o-o-old!” Hilarious, itz! :y