Producer Clarifies Quotes on Hitler

A documentary film producer said Friday that comments he had attributed to Arnold Schwarzenegger expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler were taken out of context, and that the actor actually disparaged the Nazi leader for using power “in the wrong way.”

The statement issued by George Butler, who produced the film “Pumping Iron” in 1977, appeared intended to correct the record and to defuse a potentially explosive issue in the California gubernatorial race. Several other people associated with the film also said Schwarzenegger never expressed Nazi sympathies but may have expressed admiration for Hitler’s charisma and rise to power.

Schwarzenegger himself said Friday that he “cannot imagine” having ever praised Hitler, and that the Nazi legacy in his native Austria had made him “very adamant to fight against prejudice. And to never let that happen again.... To be tolerant, to be inclusive.”

The controversy was sparked by purported comments about Hitler published in the New York Times on Friday and cited by ABC News late Thursday. According to the New York Times, they came from a proposal for a book on Schwarzenegger from Butler six years ago. In it, Butler quotes Schwarzenegger as saying he admired Hitler “for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it.”

The New York Times also said that in the book proposal and a subsequent interview, Butler said Schwarzenegger used to play “Nazi marching songs” and “frequently clicked his heels and pretended to be an SS officer.”

The reports sparked a furor. Some Jewish leaders and political figures strongly criticized Schwarzenegger, in some cases calling for him to drop out of the gubernatorial race.

Butler issued a statement Friday in which he said the quotation about Hitler was inaccurate. He provided what he said was a more accurate version of Schwarzenegger’s statement:

“I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker and his way of getting to the people and so on. But I didn’t admire him for what he did with it.

“It’s very hard to say who I admired and who are my heroes. And I admire basically people who are powerful people, like [President] Kennedy. Who people listened to and just wait until he comes out with telling them what to do. People like that I admire a lot.”

In his statement, Butler also said: “I have never witnessed or heard of Schwarzenegger making any remarks that might be offensive to anyone of the Jewish faith.”

Butler has known Schwarzenegger for more than 30 years, having met him in the early 1970s while he was gathering material for a book about bodybuilders. The book eventually led Butler to make the movie “Pumping Iron,” which explored the world of bodybuilding contests, focusing especially on Schwarzenegger.

In making the movie, the filmmakers shot hours of interviews with Schwarzenegger. Much of this material did not make it into the final cut. The statements about Hitler are from outtakes, Butler said. Schwarzenegger bought the outtakes in the early 1990s.

Late Friday, a Schwarzenegger campaign official gave the Los Angeles Times a copy of what he said was Butler’s transcript of the interviews for “Pumping Iron.” It includes the quotations cited by Butler.

A review of it shows that Schwarzenegger disparaged Nazi leaders but also said that in order to create a strong country, “you cannot let everybody be an individual.”

It also shows that one of the more controversial statements quoted in the New York Times -- in which Schwarzenegger says he wished he could experience the feeling Hitler had at his famous speech at Nuremberg -- came in response to a question from the interviewer who asked whether winning a bodybuilding contest was anything like Hitler felt “when the whole stadium at Nuremberg is chanting.”

Butler’s statement said his book proposal, which he eventually withdrew, “contained a prominent disclaimer” warning that the statements it quoted “should not be taken as fact until verified.” He added that the remarks he ascribed to Schwarzenegger may have been based on inaccurate notes.

Jim Roberts, national editor of the New York Times, declined to say whether the documents reviewed by the newspaper contained a disclaimer. “I will say that the stuff that we used in the paper was material we had either verified with Butler himself or others who were present at the filming,” he said.

After learning from Butler on Friday that the Hitler quotation was inaccurate, the New York Times amended its story on its Web site.

Butler did not return several phone calls to his offices in New York and New Hampshire on Friday.

Butler has given varying descriptions of Schwarzenegger over the years. He has been adamant that Schwarzenegger, whose father was a Nazi Party member, was not a Nazi sympathizer and had never expressed anti-Semitism. He wrote a statement in 1993 in support of Schwarzenegger’s lawsuit against a British newspaper that described the actor as having Nazi sympathies and saying he had insisted upon proclaiming “I admire Hitler” during the filming of “Pumping Iron.”

“Mr. Schwarzenegger did not insist on anything of the sort,” Butler said.

The actor won the lawsuit.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in mid-September, Butler denied that Schwarzenegger had praised Hitler, calling those rumors a “myth.”

Peter Davis, a consultant on the film who conducted the interview in which Schwarzenegger purportedly discussed Hitler, said Friday he remembered only one reference to the Nazi leader, in which Schwarzenegger said he idolized Hitler as a boy, but realized as a youth that it was wrong.

“He said, ‘Hitler was my first hero, but as soon as I came to my senses, my hero became John F. Kennedy,’ ” Davis recalled. Schwarzenegger would eventually marry Kennedy’s niece, Maria Shriver.

Davis added that he opposes Schwarzenegger’s campaign for governor, but that, “Of all the reasons why this guy shouldn’t be governor, this doesn’t seem to be one of them.”

Others associated with the film and with Schwarzenegger have also dismissed rumors tying him to Nazism.

In interviews last month and on Friday, two film editors from “Pumping Iron,” Lawrence Silk and Geof Bartz, said they could not recall Schwarzenegger praising Hitler. “He was about as far away from a Nazi as you could get: iconoclastic, libertarian and crazy,” Bartz said.

Silk, who is Jewish, said that if Schwarzenegger had praised Hitler and the Nazis, “I would have quit the film.”

Taken in context, the statements about Hitler appear to reflect the young Schwarzenegger’s fascination with power and those who have wielded it.

In outtakes from “Pumping Iron” broadcast on the television program “Inside Edition” on Friday, Schwarzenegger speaks about America’s need for a strong leader, saying that some people are “meant to be leaders, and to control, and another large amount, 95%, are followers. We have to tell what to do and how to keep in order, you know?”

In the film itself, Schwarzenegger expresses fascination with powerful people such as dictators and people remembered for thousands of years, “like Jesus.”

“Arnold is a true definition of a Nietzschean ‘man of will,’ ” said David Wyles, who worked as a line producer on “Pumping Iron.” “Arnold saw himself and sees himself as a superman, as a man superior to other beings.”

In remarks to reporters Friday, Schwarzenegger said that he learned very little about the Nazi period while in Austria.

“There was a certain denial in my country,” he said. “I have never heard my father talk about the war, never, ever. My mother would talk sometimes.... She would tell me little stories, but very, very little.” He said he learned more in the United States.

Schwarzenegger has ties with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, which was founded to hunt down Nazi war criminals, and has been a major contributor to the center and its Museum of Tolerance. The Wiesenthal Center said last month that it had investigated Schwarzenegger’s father, Gustav -- with the actor’s encouragement -- and determined that he had served as a Nazi storm trooper but had not been implicated in any war crimes.

Joe Weider, the 83-year-old bodybuilding promoter who brought Schwarzenegger to the U.S. in 1968, called reports of Schwarzenegger’s admiration for Nazis fabrications.

“I’m so mad,” Weider said. “Here I am, I’m Jewish. I’m a proud Jew.... My parents’ family was wiped out, everyone in the ... Holocaust, and they think I’m going to have Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Nazi lover, in my midst. It’d be crazy.”

Times staff writers Claudia Eller, Scott Glover, Matea Gold, Joe Mathews and Peter Nicholas contributed to this report.