Arnold Schwarzenegger called Republicans 'spineless' in a video comparing the attack on the US Capitol to the rise of Nazi Germany

• Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday called fellow Republicans "spineless" following the siege of the US Capitol last week.
• In a seven-minute video posted on Twitter, the actor who served as California's governor compared the insurrection in Washington, DC, to the rise of Nazi Germany, blasting Republicans who enabled Trump's baseless claims about the 2020 election.
• Schwarzenegger also described facing abuse as a child by his father and compared US democracy to the sword from this 1982 film "Conan the Barbarian."

In a seven-minute video shared to Twitter on Sunday, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor who served as a Republican governor of California, condemned members of his party as "spineless" and compared the insurrection at the US Capitol last week to the rise of Nazi Germany.

"I grew up in Austria very aware of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass," Schwarzenegger, 73, said. "It was a night of rampage against the Jews carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys."

Nearly 100 Jews were killed as scores of Jewish businesses, synagogues, schools, and homes were destroyed by Nazi supporters on Kristallnacht in November 1938.

The Proud Boys are a neofascist group whose members have been associated with acts of violence in recent years, including the riot at the Capitol. The group denies it is a white supremacist organization, though the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies it as a hate group and experts have said its ideologies align with white supremacy.

"Wednesday was the day of broken glass right here in the United States," said Schwarzenegger, who served as California governor from 2003 to 2011. "The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol, but the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. They shattered the ideas we took for granted."

—Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) January 10, 2021

At least five people died in connection to Wednesday's insurrection at the US Capitol. Trump supporters stormed the building while lawmakers were inside, overpowering police officers, after Trump spoke at a rally in which he repeated baseless claims about the 2020 election and urged supporters to protest at the Capitol.

'I was surrounded by broken men drinking away their guilt'

Schwarzenegger, known for films including 'The Terminator" and "Commando," opened up about growing up in postwar Austria, which he described as "the ruins of a country that lost its democracy."

"I was surrounded by broken men drinking away their guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history," he said, opening up about abuse he said he faced at the hands of his father as a child.

"My father would come home drunk once or twice a week, and he would scream and hit us and scare my mother," he said. "I didn't hold him totally responsible because our neighbor was doing the same thing to his family."

"I heard it with my own ears and saw it with my own eyes," he added. "They were in physical pain from the shrapnel in their bodies and in emotional pain from what they saw or did. It all started with lies, and lies, and lies, and intolerance."

Read more: Secret Service experts are speculating in group chats about how Trump might be hauled out of the White House if he won't budge on Inauguration Day

Schwarzenegger called Trump a "failed leader" and said the president would be remembered as the worst American president in history.

"President Trump sought to overturn the results of an election," he said, referring to Trump's months-long refusal to concede to Joe Biden and his failed attempts to overturn his loss. "And of a fair election. He sought a coup by misleading people with lies. My father and our neighbors were misled also with lies, and I know where such lies lead."

He also mentioned President John F. Kennedy's 1956 book "Profiles in Courage," in which Kennedy profiled eight US senators. Schwarzenegger said many of his "spineless" fellow Republicans could never land in such a book because of their continued support for Trump.

Several GOP senators - led by Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri - and more than 100 GOP House members participated in an effort to reject the certification of Biden's win over baseless allegations of widespread election fraud, even after Trump supporters mobbed the Capitol in response to such falsehoods.

"We need public servants that serve something larger than their own power or their own party," he said. "We need public servants who will serve higher ideals - the ideals in which this country was founded."

Toward the end of the nearly clip, Schwarzenegger brought out the sword from his 1983 movie "Conan the Barbarian" to serve as a metaphor for US democracy, saying that like a sword, Democracy only grew stronger as it was tempered.