Schwarzenegger Denies Admiring Hitler
Thu October 2, 2003 08:28 PM ET

By Jill Serjeant

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Arnold Schwarzenegger was forced on Thursday to deny comments he made 25 years ago that he admired Adolf Hitler and wished he too could enjoy a stadium full of screaming fans.

The Austrian-born actor, who is the leading candidate in California's gubernatorial recall race, was quoted as making the comments in a 1975 transcript of an interview while filming the documentary "Pumping Iron" that made him famous.

ABC News, which broadcast the remarks on Thursday, said they were contained in an unpublished book proposal with quotes from what it calls a "verbatim transcript" of the interview.

Asked about his heroes, the young Schwarzenegger was quoted as saying; "I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it."

The actor was quoted as saying he wished he could experience being .."like Hitler in the Nuremberg stadium and have all those people scream at you and just being total agreement whatever you say."

Asked by ABC News to comment on the old remarks, Schwarzenegger said: "I cannot remember any of these. All I can tell you is that I despise everything Hitler stood for. I despise everything the Nazis stood for ... everything the Third Reich stood for."

The revelations were the second damaging bombshell to hit Schwarzenegger in a day, coming hours after the Los Angeles Times published detailed allegations by six women over three decades accusing the actor of groping and sexual harassment.

Schwarzenegger issued a swift apology on Thursday, admitting he had been "playful" in the past and was sorry if he had offended any women.

He later said he had been warned to be prepared for such personal attacks. "At the beginning of this week a lot of political leaders came up to me and said, Arnold beware, this is the week they are going to unload everything on you ... this is what happens to every politician, This is trash politics," he told MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews.

The actor has been attacked in the past over his father's connections with the Nazi regime. An investigation by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, instigated by Schwarzenegger in 1990, revealed that his late father had applied and been accepted as a Nazi Party member after Anschluss in 1938.

The Center said there were no records implicating Gustav Schwarzenegger in any war crimes.

Schwarzenegger has been a supporter of the Wiesenthal Center since 1984, donating large sums of money and lending his support to anti-Nazi campaigns.