Gustav Schwarzenegger
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Gustav Schwarzenegger (August 17, 1907 – December 1, 1972) was an Austrian police chief (Gendarmeriekommandant), postal inspector, a senior non-commissioned military police officer and a member of both the Sturmabteilung (SA) and National Socialist German Workers Party (also known by its German initials as the NSDAP or simply as the Nazi Party.) He is also the father of Hollywood star and Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Gustav Schwarzenegger, the son of Karl Schwarzenegger, married war widow Aurelia Jadrny (July 2, 1922 – August 2, 1998) on October 5, 1945, in Mursteg, Steiermark, Austria. He died in Weiz, Steiermark, Austria at the age of 65, where he had been transferred as a policeman. He is buried in Weiz Cemetery, Weiz, Steiermark, Austria. Aurelia Jadrny Schwarzenegger died of a heart attack at the age of 76 while visiting Weiz Cemetery in 1998 and she is buried next to her husband.
His son, Arnold Schwarzenegger, stated in the film Pumping Iron that he did not attend his father's funeral, but later retracted this, explaining that it was a story he had appropriated from a boxer to make it appear as though he could prevent his personal life from interfering with his athletic training.[1] News reports about Gustav's Nazi links first surfaced in 1990, at which time Arnold asked the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization he had long supported, to research his father's past. The Center found Gustav's army records and Nazi party membership, but did not uncover any connection to notorious paramilitary organizations such as the Schutzstaffel (SS) or Sturmabteilung (SA).[2] Media interest resurfaced when Arnold ran for Governor in the 2003 recall election.
[edit] Nazi Party and SA membership
According to documents obtained in 2003 from the Austrian State Archives by the Los Angeles Times, which was after the expiration of a 30-year seal of his records under Austrian privacy law, Gustav Schwarzenegger voluntarily joined the NSDAP in 1938, and also voluntarily applied to become a member of the Nazi Party's paramilitary wing SA on May 1, 1939.[2] Austria became part of the German Reich through the Anschluss on March 12, 1938.
Schwarzenegger remained in the SA until the end of the war, but records of his activities, if any, were not discovered by the State Archives.[2]
[edit] Military career
Schwarzenegger was a Company Seargant Major with Batallion 521 of the Feldgendarmerie, a military police unit specifically used to suppress civilian populations in the wake of the advancing German army. He appears to have received much medical attention and may have contracted malaria during his term of service; he was discharged in 1943.[2]
Ursula Schwarz, a historian at Vienna's Documentation Center for Austrian Resistance, has said that Schwarzenegger's career was fairly typical for his generation[1], and no evidence has emerged that would directly link him with participation in war crimes or abuses against civilians. At the same time, his unit appears to have participated in theatres of operation (in particular, the invasions of Poland, France, and Russia) where some of the bloodiest fighting occured and atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht were common.
In any case, Schwarzenegger was probed for and cleared of suspicions of participation in war crimes and allowed to resume his duties as a policeman in 1947.
[edit] References
- "Records: Arnold's father was member of Nazi storm troops", AP wire services via USA Today 8/24/2003 [2]
- "Spotlight Thrown on Nazi Past of Schwarzenegger's Father", Agence France Press 8/23/2003 [3]
- ^ Nick Gillespie (July 31, 2003). Hasta la Vista, Arnold: How Schwarzenegger could have liberated U.S. politics. Retrieved on 2006-11-13.
- ^ a b c d Tracy Wilkinson and Matt Lait. "Austrian Archives Reveal Nazi Military Role of Actor's Father", Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2003. Retrieved on 2006-11-14.
