Nazi shock for Donald Trump as image of SS soldiers found in presidential campaign tweet

Updated

Controversial American billionaire businessman Donald Trump, who is running for US president in the 2016 election, has again caused controversy via Twitter.

His official account tweeted a campaign poster featuring the American flag superimposed over images depicting Nazi Waffen-SS soldiers marching below the White House.

The words, "Make America Great Again", Trump's campaign motto, were along the bottom.

Trump has been lampooned for being unable to spot the difference between American soldiers and Nazis, who were responsible for the death of 6 million Jews during WWII.

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign blamed the mistake on an intern.

"A young intern created and posted the image and did not see the very faded figures within the flag of the stock photo," she said in a statement.

"The intern apologised and immediately deleted the tweet."

This could happen to anybody ... when you have social media interns who don't know anything about history and who are clearly not doing any research. John Schindler, former national security affairs professor

John Schindler, a former national security affairs professor at the US Army War College, was one of the first to notice something odd about the image.

"These guys are dressed as late (1944-45) WWII Waffen-SS infantry. Nothing to debate here. Way to go, Trump!" he tweeted.

Dr Schindler said the camouflage uniform and eagle insignia on the left arm were only worn by Waffen-SS.

"If you know your German uniforms it's very obvious," he said.

He remained charitable towards the Trump team — up to a point.

"This could happen to anybody ... when you have social media interns who don't know anything about history and who are clearly not doing any research," he said.

The original photo can be found on photo site iStock.

It was taken by British photographer George Cairns at a WWII recreating event and uploaded in July 2006.



On Tuesday Trump was sitting at the top of a long list of Republican presidential candidates for the second week in a row, according to a US poll.

He is in the lead with 17 per cent of support among the party faithful and independents and is ahead of Jeb Bush, son and brother of two previous US presidents.

The latest controversy comes on top of Trump's recent attack on Mexican immigrants, who he labelled as "rapists".

However, he remains confident of winning the Latino vote in a country whose unofficial second language is Spanish and where almost 17 per cent of the population is Latino.

AFP/ABC

Topics: world-politics, social-media, information-and-communication, photography, united-states

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