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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Turning the page now. Yesterday on the show, if you were listening, you heard us take calls based on Arnold Schwarzenegger's video to the Russian people. We asked if you are Russian if you have ties to Russia, how are you getting messages back to your friends and family like Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to do, get messages over the head of Vladimir Putin directly to the Russian people about how they're being lied to about the war. Well, today we want to follow up by asking a different question, but also based on the Schwarzenegger video.

This question is, did you have family members who have ever fought on the widely acknowledged wrong side of history? How do you incorporate that knowledge into your day-to-day life in today's generations? How do you think about world affairs, human interactions, or humanity in general? Give us a call, 212 433, WNYC 212 433 9692. Why do we frame this as having people in the generations before you who are on the wrong side of history? Because Arnold Schwartzenegger said this.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: When my father arrived in Leningrad, he was all pumped up on the lies of his government. When he left Leningrad, he was broken physically and mentally. He lived the rest of his life in pain, pain from a broken back, pain from the shrapnel that always reminded him of this terrible years, and pain from the guilt that he felt. To the Russian soldiers, listening to this broadcast. You already know much of the truth that I've been speaking. You've seen it with your own eyes. I don't want you to be broken like my father.

Brian Lehrer: I don't want you, Russian soldiers, to be broken like my father. See, Arnold Schwarzenegger's father was a soldier for the Nazis. Schwartzenegger in his video to the Russian people, talked there about how his father had fought for the Nazis motivated by false Hitler, propaganda, and how, when he, the father, later learned the truth about the atrocities committed by the German army, Arnold's father lived with the guilt and pain of that for the rest of his life.

Arnold urged the Russian people in the video, this is part of what made it so powerful, not to believe Putin's lies and not to be quote broken like his father. In that little clip from the video that we just played, he was appealing directly to Russian soldiers. I don't know if whatever social media or anything else is going to reach Russian soldiers who are fighting in Ukraine right now or some who are still back in Russia. Whether that might lead them to defect or refuse the orders to fight and commit atrocities like we're seeing in Mariupol and other civilian areas of Ukraine.

Now we're going to open up the phones. Does that portion of Schwartzenegger's story resonate with you? Tell us a story of your family, 212 433 WNYC. Do you have family members who committed wartime atrocities because of propaganda stories, and did a fuller truer version of history emerge later after the fighting was done? 212 433 9692. If so, how did that person in your family, or maybe it was you, deal with it once you knew more about the real circumstances? Of course, the most clear-cut version of this story is Nazi Germany, where after the war or the Nuremberg trials and other war crimes trials, and other revelations set clear who the victims and villains were.

Do you have relatives who fought with the Nazis? Could you tell the same story as Arnold Schwartzenegger? It would be useful for the world to hear it if you do. Maybe even some of the Russian soldiers who stream this show, hahaha, but you never know. 212 433 WNYC, 433 9692. That's a very emotional thing just for Arnold Schwartzenegger on a personal level, on a family level, and for his father. How has any story like that been passed to you? How do you incorporate it into your family history? Have you been thinking about that at all in the past few weeks, watching Putin in the Russian military?

Schwarzenegger talks about how his father lived with the guilt and pain for the rest of his life. He's talked about how his father was abusive to him, how he drank excessively. Perhaps that treatment is one of the things that flows from the revelation that you committed war crimes by believing your country's propaganda. Germany, or anywhere else. 212 433 WNYC. We know any sort of intense military experience can lead to PTSD and lifelong pain. Bill de Blasio's father, for example, and de Blasio's been open about this, was also a drinker and later killed himself.

He too was in combat in World War II, even fighting for the US, or maybe relating this question to American wars you or your family fought in. No one would compare the Nazi genocide to US warfare, but the American government is also guilty of lying to citizens to get them to fight in wars. Did you enlist to fight in any of those yourself, however, you may want to define them? Call in, if you have any reaction to Arnold Schwarzenegger's video, whether it made you think of your own family's history of warfare, propaganda that any of your family members have been subject to anywhere in the world or humanity. 212 433 WNYC. We'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your calls. After the Arnold Schwartzenegger video, do you have family members who committed wartime atrocities because of propaganda stories, and did a fuller truer version of history emerge later after the fighting was done? Tucker in Chelsea, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in, Tucker. Hi.

Tucker: Oh, hi. My ancestors fought for the Confederacy. I don't know that any of them committed specific atrocities, except that, of course, the Confederacy was an atrocity, slavery was an atrocity.

Brian Lehrer: I guess the question is not even if they committed atrocities themselves, but if something about the Confederacy and fighting for the preservation of slavery sunk in, in a different way after the war, any family stories like that?

Tucker: Oh, to them? No. To me, yes. I don't know of any. Well, actually it's not [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Well, how do you deal with it? How do you deal with even knowing that you had an ancestor way back when who fought in the Confederacy?

Tucker: Well, it wasn't one, it was a lot of them.

Brian Lehrer: Even more so. What emotions does it--

Tucker: I become increasingly aware of my responsibility to understand, for example, I hate to use the phrase because it's become so politicized, but racial justice and so forth. These are very real things. We do need some form of revelation, I'm not enough of a scholar to know what form that should be.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, but having had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, informs your thinking. I get you, Tucker. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Tucker: They were, they were doing what they thought was right is the ironic thing. It makes me question that maybe I shouldn't be so sure about what's right today.

Brian Lehrer: Tucker, thank you very much. We really appreciate your call. We go next to John in Kiel, Germany. John, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

John: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hi, John. Hello from New York. Thank you for calling.

John: Hi, thank you very much for having me, great fan of the show. As I'm from Germany, Mr. Schwarzenegger's video resonated very much with me. I'm lucky enough to be of a younger generation. I'm 30 years old. My father, who is a bit older, was a child during the second world war and he got injured, interestingly, by American pilots as he told me, but the generation before that. My grandfather and many uncles and relatives were, and there's no word to say this in a different way, they were war criminals.

I'm sure you know the movie 'The Downfall' depicting Hitler's last days in the bunker. There's a scene where a doctor is in his villa in Berlin and commits suicide by detonating a hand grenade at the dining table. That doctor is a relative of mine. There are other people who were high-ranking officers in the SS, and this wasn't so much discussed in the family. I discovered this more or less on my own. My father is into genealogy, so the documentation is there, but it wasn't really communicated. Gradually scratching the surface here and there, I discovered, "Oh, this person was, well, to put it simply, bad. There's another person who served in either Wehrmacht or SS, and they were bad."

There are a lot of people in that background. I didn't meet a single person. They all died either during the war or before I was born. Yes, but to me, the consequence is to be very aware of history and of politics and to learn and to basically advocate for peace and understanding, whatever that might mean in detail, wherever I can.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that Germany at the national political level has become a country of Arnold Schwarzeneggers where there's very much this guilt and shame over what happened in previous generations with the Nazis and that affects how Germany approaches internal culture or world affairs today?

John: In general, I would say absolutely yes. One of the main reasons for Germany's much criticized reluctance to provide the Ukraine with war was the fact that, well, we were a few decades ago the Nazis and attacked many other countries, including Ukraine, so we shouldn't send any weapons. There is a vocal but small minority of right-wing people also here who have this idea of it's enough now. We shouldn't talk about the Nazis anymore, we shouldn't feel guilty anymore, but that's like 10%. The rest of the majority, as you said, is in the spirit of Mr. Schwarzenegger.

Brian Lehrer: John, thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it. We're going to go next to George in Manhattan. George, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

George: Thank you. This resonates with me. I'm a twice wounded permanently disabled Vietnam veteran. I quit high school after the 11th grade, joined the army and after a year in Germany, I volunteered to go to Vietnam. I was there at 18 and only was there five months after having been wounded twice. Spent a year in the hospital after that.

My point is, I never saw any atrocities. I, of course, know about My Lai. I was there in the very beginning of our large engagements there. I do go to the Manhattan VA PTSD group and some of my colleagues who are now septuagenarians, but they were teenagers then and they talk about regrets that they had. One person, I think, did commit a war crime, what would have been a war crime. I even talked to the therapist who runs a session and asked if he thought I should do anything about it even 50 years later. It's very upsetting. Anyway, we were all affected by it in my generation.

By the way, my maternal great-grandfather ran away from home and enlisted in the 61st New York Volunteers. He was on the Union side in the Civil War, wounded in the Battle of Petersburg in 1864 and I was wounded in Vietnam in 1965. Anyway, what I'm doing now, it's to try to make some use of this experience is I'm proposing legislation that no one who enlists in the military or if there's conscription if they're drafted, should be deployed to combat until at least 21.

We can't smoke, we can't buy tobacco, we can't drink, you can't buy a handgun according to federal law until 21, but they arm teenagers. We don't know what the hell we're doing at 17 or 18 or 19 or 20. I can't just use my own experience because I knew it was wrong from when I got back from Vietnam. I went to college, I got degrees and I learned all about how we've been lied to, the Pentagon Papers, et cetera. I know you can tell I'm emotional and it's hard not to be with this subject.

Brian Lehrer: No, it's good.

George: I just want to say that-

Brian Lehrer: It's good for you.

George: -what I'm doing is I'm proposing legislation as I mentioned. I'm depending on neuroscience, you see, with the advent of the functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, neuroscientists can now track the maturation of the brain dynamic instead of static.

Brian Lehrer: How young is too young to send somebody into war, armed with the weapons of war, based on developmental science? That's such a fascinating question that you ask.

George: Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, the professor at Cambridge University. It was her book that I read, which documents all these studies, and et cetera, that shows that the human brain regardless of gender doesn't complete, the frontal cortex where we do all our executive higher-order thinking, judgment, et cetera, doesn't complete maturation until at least the mid-20s, but I'm proposing 21 as a political compromise to try to get it through. I'm right now trying to get the--

Brian Lehrer: That's really interesting, George. Really interesting and obviously comes from your experience, and comes from your good heart. Thank you so much for your call. So far we've gotten calls relevant and along the same lines as Arnold Schwarzenegger talking in his video to the Russian people about his father having fought for the Nazis and then having regrets and it having affected him later in life, urging the Russian soldiers today, "Be real. See what's going on. Don't let this happen to you." We're inviting stories of anyone else who's had anything like this in your own life or a relative's life.

We've gotten two US examples so far having to do with the Confederacy in the Civil War and this caller, George, from his experience in the Vietnam War. This is WNYC-FM, HD and AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey Public Radio and streaming live at wnyc.org. We had that really interesting call from John in Kiel, Germany with some of the Nazi experience in his family and how it's come down. Let's take a few more calls. Chris in the Bronx. You're on WNYC. Hi, Chris. Thanks for calling in.

Chris: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I'm related to a fascist dictator from the Dominican Republic. His name was Rafael Trujillo. He ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961. He was first cousins with my grandmother. He renamed the capital from Santo Domingo to Ciudad Trujillo. He was a puppet dictator of the United States, which a lot of people might not know. Fascism was a very useful tool by the United States during the Cold War. They installed many fascist dictatorships all over Latin America. I grew up hearing justification for his actions.

He committed a genocide against Haitians and Black Dominicans. I came from an ultra-conservative family. I grew up hearing all sorts of justification for his actions. A lot of people that grew up in my situation with a full ultra-conservative family just grow up and become conservative, but something about me just questioned. "Are these people really telling the truth? There's something that feels wrong about what I'm being told." I went down, I guess you could say the rabbit hole about him and then studying the history of Latin America during the Cold War, all the other dictatorships.

Another one that some people might know is Augusto Pinochet in Chile and all the others. What it did for me was understand the role, not just of this ideology, and how dangerous it is, but also the role that the United States has taken in destabilizing the global south. What I do is I am an organizer in my community, I'm an activist, I've written articles that have been published like in online periodicals. When it's useful, I don't go around telling everyone this because there are some people I understand it can be shameful, but when it is useful, I tell people about my family history and I show people that you can change.

I was a registered Republican until I was 22 years old. I had, I guess you can call it an awakening. Now I am what you might call a far-left or a socialist, and I'm very proud of this change that I made in my life. It gave me hope that other people can do it.

Brian Lehrer: You think it came from the gradual realization that you came to about the dictator in the Dominican, who your grandmother was really related to, and then going down the rabbit hole of history, which you may not have gone down if you hadn't had that personal connection.

Chris: Yes, absolutely. That was the first seed that was planted.

Brian Lehrer: What about other people in your family? I don't know if your grandmother is still alive or was at any point still alive to hear how you are evolving?

Chris: My grandmother died at a hundred years old, a few years ago.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Chris: A lot of us, yes, and she was a great woman other than some of her political views but us grandkids were very different from her. We would always, my grandmother was a wonderful, very smart woman and we would debate her. Before she died, she voted for Obama, which was a shock to all of us because, for her, that was a huge change. She was also a thoughtful person and she wasn't sociopathic or hyper-individualistic the way some Conservatives might be. Sorry, I have very strong words for Conservatives.

Brian Lehrer: I hear. Chris, thank you so much for your call. It's very candid of you to reveal that much and with some of the history and some of the Latin American history in that call too. Thank you. All right, we have time for one more. Francesca in Parsippany. You are on WNYC. Hi, Francesca.

Francesca: Hi. Wow. My name is Francesca. I am an Italian American. I'm in my 20s. My grandfather, my nominal had fought in World War II for the Italians. It didn't really ever register until I had a show-and-tell project in fifth grade where we had to bring in something about our family history and my parents had-- My grandfather, I should say, passed away before I was born. He died relatively young. I'm not sure that's connected to his experiences or not, but so the show and tell project, my parents gave me, I guess, his little ID or his military ID and his so it had a black and white photo of my grandfather in his army uniform and it came a little booklet and I proudly brought it into class.

Brian Lehrer: Your parents gave you a show-and-tell item to bring to school from your grandfather from Mussolini's army.

Francesca: Yes. I don't really know what they were thinking, maybe they were desperate because I had to have something or they just didn't realize. My dad insists that my grandfather did not see much action. He was in some little island in the Mediterranean. Maybe that's why they thought it was okay, but I would never do this to my own, I don't have children, but in the future, I will be aware of this. I brought it in for show-and-tell, and my teacher handled it very well. I could tell that she was very uncomfortable and she shooed me off pretty quickly. Then that got me thinking about, "Oh, wait, is this something wrong? Did I do something wrong?" That got me [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Is that the beginning of your awareness of a bigger picture of that history? Did that spark a curiosity like our previous caller from the Dominican Republic?

Francesca: Absolutely. It definitely got me more curious. I was hesitant to ask, specifically, my father because these were his parents that were apparently fascists. It was hard to talk to my father about his father because he's still, after decades, is still reeling from his pretty sudden death. I would have to tiptoe around that to try to get information. My grandmother died a couple of years ago and we recovered a book about the history of Siracusa. Was it Siracusa? It was a small town in Sicily where she grew up and she had marked up that book very proudly. She put stars next to any mention of the fascist. Until so long after the war, she still seemed to be very interested or happy with the fascists in bringing glory to Italy and things like that. It's pretty [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: It's heavy to deal with, right?

Francesca: -uncomfortable. Yes, it is

Brian Lehrer: Did you hear the Schwarzenegger video over the last few days, and did that spark further reactions in you?

Francesca: I heard parts of it. I didn't hear the whole thing, but it definitely makes me very, it does connect. It really does. I spent a semester abroad studying in Italy. I'd never gone there before and being able to-- I tried to uncover or look for specifically museums and artifacts for Italy's role in world war II. Mussolini was the original fascist and then Hitler understood that idea and he ran with it with Nazism. I think part of the trauma of maybe being unable to deal with Italy's recent history with this atrocity.

I laugh, but that's just because I really don't know how else to respond. It's either that or crying. I think that maybe this also connects to a lack of awareness or maybe an overemphasis in Italian pride or Italian American pride on our side of the United States with the importance of Columbus and just Italian heritage day.

Brian Lehrer: Right, in that sense, I always think it's weird that Italian heritage gets so lumped in with Columbus as an individual. That's another show that we'll probably do again in October.

Francesca: Yes, exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Francesca, thank you. I get it about your laugh different kinds of laughter can convey all kinds of emotions. Don't worry about that. I think that was clear. Thank you for your call. We really appreciate it.

Francesca: I'm a big fan. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Thanks to all of you who called in this segment, relating the Arnold Schwartzenegger video stretch about his father who fought for the Nazis to things in your own family history.

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