Schwarzenegger criticized for Austrian history gaffes

[Beaverhausen]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/03/schwarzenegger.ap/index.html

Schwarzenegger criticized for Austrian history gaffes
Friday, September 3, 2004 Posted: 10:58 AM EDT (1458 GMT)


VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Austrian historians are ridiculing California Gov. 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 World War II, Schwarzenegger told the convention on Tuesday: "I saw tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes."

No way, historians say, challenging Schwarzenegger's knowledge of postwar history -- if not his enduring popularity among Austrians who admire him for rising from a penniless immigrant to the highest official in America's most populous state.

"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.

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More at the link

[A_Possum]

1. HAHAHAHA

Good, they caught him out. I thought that sounded odd.

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Schwarzenegger "confuses a free country with a Socialist one," said Polaschek, referring to East European Communist officials' routine descriptions of their countries as Socialist.

Polaschek saw the moderate Republican governor's recollections at the convention as a tactical move. Schwarzenegger, he said, was "using the old Communist enemy image for Bush's election campaign."

"He did not speak as a historian, after all, but as a politician," Polaschek said.

Norbert Darabos, a ranking official of Austria's opposition Social Democratic Party, sharply criticized Schwarzenegger's "disdain for his former homeland."

"The Terminator is constructing a rather bizarre Austria image," he said.

[TrueAmerican]

2. So in reallity the Soviets helped free his country from the Nazi's

thus his father lossed his job.

[Caution]

3. HOw about for US History gaffes?

How could he possibly remember the "debates" between Humphrey and Nixon when no such debates occurred.

[wrongtaxbracket]

4. Arnie also said

that after hearing Nixon speak he wanted to be a Republican. And Hitler was a good little Nazi.