An English-language Reuters report has picked up on the Alfred Gerstl interview that I referenced yesterday.
In addition, another of Arnold's friends from Graz, Austria, has provided collaboration for Gerstl's story in USA Today:
In an interview with The Associated Press, Schwarzenegger's former Austrian trainer, gym owner Kurt Marnul, described how the young bodybuilder in the 1960s had used his menacing muscular physique to help break up neo-Nazi rallies at least twice near his hometown of Graz.
Marnul, 74, said he had told Schwarzenegger how he had seen Hitler's soldiers kill three people during World War II. Schwarzenegger had reacted with shock and anger, he said.
"He was so outraged — so filled with rage against the Nazi regime," Marnul said.
One assumes this will help diffuse any negative effect of the 1975 Hitler quote on Tuesday's election. And about a million absentee ballots had already been sent in by Friday. Last-minute revelations don't have quite the impact they did 10 years ago because of heavier absentee voting.
In the biographical sense, though, this story still presents some interesting questions. If Arnold was involved in militant anti-Nazi activity like this, why not use that every time the issue has come up? One possibility is that, after the Waldheim controversy of 1976, Schwarzenegger decided to keep quiet about his "antifa" activities because he thought it might be seen as a negative thing by conservative Austrians.
That assumes the accounts of his old friends are accurate. Gerstl's account in particular was specific enough to be verified or debunked by reporters or researchers with the time to check.
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