Some Clarification on Governor's Tank References
There was some head-scratching among academics and scholars of military minutia and even some Internet chatter about something Arnold Schwarzenegger said in his inaugural address: "
At the state Republican convention in September, Schwarzenegger had put it this way: "Growing up, I saw Communism with my own eyes. When I was a boy, the Soviets occupied Austria, I saw their tanks in the streets."
This was perplexing because Schwarzenegger's home province of Styria was in the British zone of Austrian occupation, from 1945, before Schwarzenegger was born, until the Allied occupation ended in 1955, when Schwarzenegger was about 8 years old.
Schwarzenegger's hometown of Thal, as a suburb of Graz, was at the heart of the British zone.
"It is very, very unlikely he saw Soviet tanks rolling in the British zone where he lived," said historian James Jay Carafano, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., and author of the recent book "Waltzing into the Cold War: The Struggle for Occupied Austria."
"In all likelihood, he saw British or American tanks."
A governor's spokesman tried to ask Schwarzenegger to clarify last week, but found him too busy in the first days of his administration.
USC professor Cornelius Schnauber, who said he knew Schwarzenegger some years ago, said the tank reference "puzzled me as well." It would have been possible to see Soviet tanks, the scholars agreed, if the Schwarzeneggers had gone into the Soviet-occupied zone up in northern Austria, or around Vienna.
But that trip might have been difficult, given British and Soviet antipathy during the occupation, according to a book on the occupation by William Bader, who has held posts with the U.S. Information Agency, the foreign service, the Defense Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the U.S. Navy.
Schnauber speculated that when the Soviets left Austria in 1955, some of their tanks might have taken a longer route or detour and passed through Graz, but Schnauber said he doesn't think it likely.
Carafano pointed out that Soviet tanks were indeed on Austrian streets -- but being driven by Austrian soldiers. The Soviets, like the Americans, left some of their tanks behind for the use of the new Austrian army when the occupation ended in 1955. Austrian soldiers operated the Soviet T34 and American M4 Sherman tanks for years, Carafano said; Schwarzenegger himself drove an American M47 during his brief service in the Austrian army in the 1960s -- a tank he has since acquired and donated to Motts Military Museum in Ohio.
