Mercedes Angry at Hitler Run-Over Video

Mercedes is less than pleased with a student-filmed phony advertisement depicting a young Hitler getting run over by a C-Class luxury sedan.
The video, filmed and released by German film school students for a competition sponsored in part by Mercedes-Benz, shows the car meandering around an Austrian village — Hitler’s hometown. We see the car break for two little blond girls who scatter out of the way before the engine revs up again, and the vehicle plows into young Adolf playing further down the road.
The image of adult Hitler (what could have been) flashes for a split-second upon impact, while the boy’s mother screams his name. “Detects dangers before they come up,” the end tag declares.
According to the Huffington Post, Mercedes spokesman Tobias Mueller, called the content “inappropriate,” and added that the company’s lawyers ordered the students to include a disclaimer noting that their video has absolutely no relation to their brand.
Asked about their project by the Independent, film students Tobias Haase, Jan Mettler, Lydia Lohse and Gun Aydemir replied: “Mercedes sells its cars on smart technology which prevents accidents. We wanted to pose the question of what might happen if technology had a soul.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
-
Opinion The profound Yom HaShoah lesson we desperately need to remember under Trump
-
Opinion How Trump’s attacks on the university target what has made America great for Jews
-
Culture This Jewish New Yorker survived the Holocaust and the Hungarian Revolution, and is still helping others today
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.