Arnold Schwarzenegger's stern warning to Trump supporters

By Mirror | 3yrs ago | 4 min read

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone [Photo: Courtesy]

Arnold Schwarzenegger has good reason to feel passionately about the invasion of Capitol Hill by Trump extremists... for him it is personal. His accusation that the US President “sought a coup by misleading people with lies” came from the heart because his very own father was a signed-up member of the Nazi party.

In a seven-minute address, the Terminator star and former California Governor also likened last week’s riot to 1938’s infamous Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, where mobs rampaged against Jews. Arnie was born in Thal, Austria, two years after the Second World War and gained a chilling insight into the evils of fascism as he grew up.

“I was surrounded by broken men drinking away the guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history,” he said. “I’ve never shared this so publicly because it is a painful memory. But my father would come home drunk once or twice a week and scream and hit us and scare my mother. I did not hold him totally responsible because our neighbour was doing the same thing to his family, and, so was the next neighbour over. They were in physical pain from shrapnel and in emotional pain from what they saw or did. It all started with lies and lies and intolerance.”

Arnie only learned the full story after Gustav died of a heart attack in 1972 aged 65. Gustav never told his son what he did in the war, and Arnie knew little until the 1990s when he asked friend Rabbi Marvin Hier, of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center, to investigate.

Supporters of US President Donald Trump protest outside the US Capitol [Photo: Getty]

The Jewish human rights organisation discovered Gustav had served in the Austrian Army from 1930 until becoming a police officer in 1937. Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, but the records showed Gustav had already applied to join the Nazi party. In November 1939 he enlisted and became a Hauptfeldwebel, or Master Sergeant, of the Feldgendarmerie, the feared military police known as the “chained dogs”.

Their role was wide – from normal police work in occupied areas, to Jew-hunting, seeking out and executing partisans, and later, hunting down suspected deserters. Gustav, 32 when the war began, was in the Feldgendarmerie-Abteilung 521, part of Panzergruppe 4, which would have seen action in Poland, France, North Africa, Lithuania and Russia, including the Battles of Moscow and Stalingrad, now Volgograd.

He was wounded in Leningrad, now St Petersburg, in 1942 and spent two years in a Polish hospital. He finally left service with an Iron Cross First and Second Class for bravery, and the Eastern Front Medal, for efforts during the bitter Russian winter of 1941/42. In Thal, Gustav became a policeman and married war widow Aurelia, who would later give birth to Arnie and his brother Meinhard.

But the shadow of the war never left the family home. Arnie, now 73, wrote about his father’s beatings in his 2012 autobiography Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story. “It took years to understand that behind [it] was bitterness and fear,” he said. “We were growing up among men who felt like losers. Their generation had started World War II and lost.” He added: “In 1942 [my father] barely escaped being captured at Leningrad, the bloodiest battle of the war. The building he was in was blown up by the Russians. His back was broken, and he had shrapnel in both legs.”

But it was the mental scars which Arnie believed lasted longest. “Who knows how long it took his psychic wounds to heal, given all that he had witnessed? I heard them talk about it when they were drunk,” he said. “They were angry. They tried to suppress the rage and humiliation, but the disappointment was in their bones. “Think about it: you are promised you will be a citizen of a great new empire. Every family will have the latest conveniences. Instead, you come home to a land in ruins, there’s very little money, food is scarce, everything needs to be rebuilt. How could you cope with that unbelievable trauma when no one was supposed to talk about it?”

Arnie’s views have always been staunchly opposed to his father’s. Thanks to bodybuilding, he left Austria for America via London as a teen. He made his breakthrough as an actor in the Conan films and spent years estranged from Gustav, while supporting Jewish organisations. Initial enquiries showed Gustav was a Nazi but a mid-ranking sergeant, not linked with war crimes or ordered to carry out any atrocities. “It’s not a proud moment when you learn your father was a member of the Nazi Party,” Rabbi Hier said. “But Arnold is not his father, and Arnold has to be judged for who he is.”