Oliver Stone apologises for claim Hitler was a 'scapegoat' in World War Two 'who did more damage to Russia than Jews'



Director Oliver Stone has been forced to make a grovelling apology over an anti-Semitic outburst.

The double Academy Award winner claimed that the Russians suffered more during the Second World War and that there was a Jewish 'domination of the media'.

Stone also said that Jews had '****ed up' U.S. foreign policy for years and suggested the British supported Hitler.

Hollywood director Oliver Stone (right) with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the Caracas premiere of South Of The Border

The comments brought swift condemnation from Jewish bodies in the U.S. and Israel and forced the 63-year-old to make a contrite apology.

He said: 'In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret.

'Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry,' he said, adding that the Holocaust was an 'atrocity'.



Mein Fuhrer: In an interview in January Stone claimed Hitler was 'an easy scapegoat'



Stone made the comments during an interview with the Sunday Times last weekend to promote his forthcoming Secret History of America documentaries, which challenge received versions of events.

Stone said the ten-part series will address Stalin and Hitler 'in context' and added: 'Hitler was a Frankenstein but there was also a Dr Frankenstein.

'German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a taillot of support.'

In a misguided attempt to put the Holocaust into context, he said: 'Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30million.'

Stone with his wife Sun-jung Jung and their daughter Tara at the London premiere of the new documentary about South American politics

Asked why he focused so much on the Holocaust, Stone said: 'The Jewish domination of the media.

'There's a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers.

'They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has ****ed up U.S. foreign policy for years.'

American Jewish Committee director David Harris said: 'By invoking this grotesque, toxic stereotype, Oliver Stone has outed himself as an anti-Semite.

'For all of Stone's progressive pretensions, his remark is no different from one of the drunken, Jew-hating rants of his fellow Hollywood celebrity Mel Gibson.'

Stone has courted controversy before. In January he sparked fury when he said Hitler was an 'easy scapegoat'.

He was among 34 celebrities who in 1997 compared treatment of those who follow Scientology in Germany with persecution by the Nazis in the 1930s.

And he also provoked criticism with his 1994 film Natural Born Killers, which glamorised two mass murderers.