Schwarzenegger bashed for flubbing Austrian history at Republican convention

Austrian historians are ridiculing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for telling the U.S. Republican convention 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 Soviets once occupied part of Austria in the aftermath of the Second World War, Schwarzenegger told the convention on Tuesday: “I saw tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes.”

No way, historians say, challenging Schwarzenegger’s knowledge of postwar history – if not his enduring popularity among Austrians who admire him for rising from a penniless immigrant to the highest official in America’s most populous state.