Gustav Schwarzenegger

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Gustav Schwarzenegger
Gustav Schwarzenegger in a ID photo from the Austrian State Archives
Born August 17, 1907
Flag of Austria Austria
Died December 1, 1972 (age 65)
Flag of Austria Steiermark, Austria

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 was 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 Hauptfeldwebel (about the equivalent of a Company Sergeant Major)[3] with Battalion 521[4] of the Feldgendarmerie, which were military police units attached to regular army units for traffic control, to enforce military law, and battlefield security, only being used to control civilian populations in the combat zone of the German army.[5] Late in the war, such units were also used to impose draconian measures against both "defeatist" German civilians and military personnel alike. Schwarzenegger 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 [6], and no evidence has emerged that has directly linked 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 the Soviet Union) where some of the bloodiest fighting occurred 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] Notes and references

  1. ^ Nick Gillespie (July 31, 2003). Hasta la Vista, Arnold: How Schwarzenegger could have liberated U.S. politics. Retrieved on 2006-11-13.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ Neither Robert E. Witter's Chain Dogs: The German Army Military Police of World War II,Pictorial Histories Pub. Co., Missoula, MT, ISBN 0-929521-86-2 nor the US Army's G-2 report on the German Police, April 1945 list Hauptfeldwebel as a rank. Hauptfeldwebel is a company-level administrative appointment denoting the senior non-commissioned officer of the unit, and can be held by either of the two highest Feldwebel ranks. Perhaps the confusion is that the -civil [ordnungspolizei]- police rank equivalent to a US Army sargeant major is "hauptwachtmeister", while the -military- police rank equivalent is "stabsfeldwebel", I is what is believe Schwarzenegger's actual rank was.
  4. ^ Feldgendarmerie abteilung 521 was formed in Vienna, and served in Poland, France, and with 4th Panzer Army in the USSR, 1941-44.
  5. ^ This is not meant to imply that feldgendarmerie troops or units were never involved in atrocities or war crimes, simply that such was not their function, unlike their SS, SD, Gestapo compatriots.
  6. ^ http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0825-06.htm
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