| I don't know much about my fathers past,’ RabbiMarvin Hier, founder of the Wiesenthal Center, recalledSchwarzenegger’s telling him. “ I dont know ít is goodor bad, and I'd like you to find out.’ Asking the Wiesenthal Center to handle the investigationwas a logical choice: The center, named after the famedNazi hunter, had the resources to conduct such a probe.And it was an institution that Schwarzenegger had financially backed over the years. 
"the governor of California"
Schwarzenegger has donated nearly $750,000 (€460,000) to the Center, raised millons more and helped the organisation fight anti-semitism. Born two years after the Second World War ended, he long ago distanced himself from his father's views and in 1991 he received the Wiesenthal Center's Leadership Award.After a two-month investigation, in which Simon Wiesenthal was involved, the verdict was in: Gustav Schwarzenegger was indeed a member of the Nazi party; he voluntarily applied for membership in 1938. But there was no evidence that he was a war criminal. Nor had the Wiesenthal Center found any evidence that the senior Schwarzenegger belonged to any of Germany’s notorious paramilitary units, such as the Sturmabteilungen (SA) or the Schutzstaffel (55), which were populated by some of Adolf Hitler’s most ardent supporters. But documents in the Austrian State Archives in Vienna,reviewed by The Times, show that Gustav Schwarzenegger had a deeper involvement in Hitler’s regime than the Wiesenthal Center had uncovered. Hier said the documents were unavailable to the center’s researchers when they investigated the matter. The newly found information was apparantly not public at that time because of a 30-year rule restriction on the documents. Since Gustav died in 1972 the documents became available in 2002, from which time on the Wiesenthal Center is investigating Gustav's role in Wehrmacht unit 521. 
"Member of the SA and NSDAP"
One document in particular shows that Gustav Schwarzenegger was indeed a member of the Sturmabteilungen, also known as the “storm troopers” or brownshirts.” He joined the SA on May 1, 1939 according to the entry in the archive file — about six months after the storm troopers helped launch Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, when Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues were attacked across Germany and Austria and thousands of Jews were hauled off to concentration camps.The records contain no other information about his activities with the SA.
This information is 'negative' though membership of the SA is no crime in itself, as is membership of the Gestapo or the SS. Arnold is not proud of the fact that his father was a member of the SA. According to Hier, Arnold should not be held responsible for the acts of his father.It is not possible to draw conclusions about what Gustav Schwarzenegger did with the SA, said Ursula Schwarz, a researcher with the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance. At the same time she noted, one had to apply to join the SA, unlike, say, the German army, which Austrian males were required to join after their country was annexed in 1938.The Austrian documents also show that Gustav Schwarzenegger served with German Army units that saw some of the most brutal bloodshed of World War II, including the invasions of Poland and France and the German rampage through Russia and the siege of Leningrad.
As a military policeman, he appears to have been in theaters of the war where atrocities were committed by the army. But there is no way to know from the documents whether he played a role. 
"Military papers of Gustav"
According to the records, Gustav Schwarzenegger received a great deal of medical attention, and may have been wounded. At some point he contracted malaria. He left the army in 1943.The Austrian archives also include the papers, part of a so-called de-Nazification process, that in 1947 determined he could work for the postwarstate because no specific war crimes had been attributed to him. He worked as a police officer in Austria until his death in 1972.
For years, Arnold Schwarzenegger has been dogged by his father’s past. And critics have seized on Schwarzenegger’s public association with Kurt Waldheim, the former president of Austria and former secretary general of the United Nations. Waldheim was accused of having covered up his involvement in Nazi atrocities committed during World War II.Schwarzenegger invited Waldheim to his 1986 wedding to Maria Shriver, then anchorwoman of the ‘CBS Morning News” and a niece of President Kennedy.The wedding was in April, a month after Waldheim had been publicly accused of lying about his wartime past. Waldheim did not attend the wedding, but sent a gift, prompting an emotional toast by Schwarzenegger, who lauded Waldheim, according to a wedding guest. 
"Lying on his involvement with the nazi's"
"It was so gratuitous and insulting, said the guest, who asked not to be named. “It stunned the crowd into silence.”A spokesman for Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial campaign said the actor has changed his views on Waldheim.
“Arnold has said If he knew than what he knows now about Waldheim’s past, he would not have offered the toast,” said spokesman Rob Stutzman. “Arnold has said it was a stupid thing to say”Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he never knew what his father did in the war. Austrians of his generation as a matter of course did not ask such questions.“In those days you didn’t ask your father,” An 53 year old Austrian said. “None of us talked much about the war.” And that brings me back to a legitimate question which any son should have asked his father. "Dad, what were you doing during the war?Why wouldn't you ask a question like that? Is it just possible you might be afraid of the answer? Sources:
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