Arnie's History Is Scorned In Austria

Austrian historians are ridiculing Arnold Schwarzenegger for telling the Republican convention in New York 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 Red Army once occupied part of Austria after the second world war, the California governor told delegates on Tuesday:"I saw tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes."

One historian, Stefan Karner, told the Vienna newspaper Kurier:"He could not have seen a Soviet tank in Styria."

Mr Schwarzenegger, admired by many Austrians for rising from a penniless immigrant to become a Hollywood star and now the governor of the most populous US state, was born in Styria in 1947. But the Russians left the province in 1945, said Mr Karner.

In his convention address, Mr Schwarzenegger also said:"As a kid, I saw the socialist country that Austria became after the Soviets left."

But Martin Polaschek, a law history scholar and vice-rector of Graz University, told Kurier that, between 1945 and 1970, all Austria's chancellors were conservatives - not socialists.

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