A steamy new AIDS awareness advert showing an Adolf Hitler lookalike having sex is aimed at countering a fall in public awareness of the dangers of unprotected sex, its German makers say.

"We asked ourselves what face we could give to the virus, and it couldn't be a pretty face," Dirk Silz, creative director at the Das Commitee advertising agency behind the "AIDS is a mass murderer" campaign, told AFP on Sunday.

"The campaign is designed to shake people up, to bring the topic of AIDS back to centre stage, and to reverse the trend of unprotected sexual intercourse," the agency said.

The ad, due to be screened in Germany on television and in cinemas and available at www.aids-is-a-mass-murderer.com, shows blurred clips of a couple having sex but it is only at the end that the man is revealed as Hitler.

A tag line then reads: "AIDS is a mass murderer."