The San Francisco Chronicle runs a story wherein Austrian historians question the memories Schwarzeneggar used in his speech at the RNC, including Soviet troops and socialism:
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.
Yeah, a bunch of historians are going to directly challenge Arnold’s popularity by quibbling over rhetorical flourishes (socialism as an adjective versus a formal Socialist party) and whatnot.
Here’s the challenge to Arnold’s memory:
“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 neighboring 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.
The Soviets already had left Styria in July 1945, less than three months after the end of the war, Karner noted.
I don’t remember Arnold saying, “In Styria,” but then again, I am not going out of my way to challenge a popular leader.
James Joyner had the first rebuttal here.
