Hitler is in the news again. This time, he’s been caught in bed. According to newswires, Das Comitee, a Hamburg advertising agency has come out with a 45-second AIDS commercial aired on German TV and in cinemas recently, for awareness group Regenbogen. It shows a couple having sex and as the ad progresses, the man’s face turns into Hitler’s as he looks straight into the camera. The tagline is ‘AIDS is a Mass Murderer’.

Organisations across Europe who represent people suffering with AIDS have condemned the ad, saying it only adds to the shame that people with AIDS already suffer from. And Hitler is not the only one who is shown in bed with the woman. In poster versions of the ad, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein have also been used.

Hitler has been used before to spread health awareness: an ad for Africa Directo showed Hitler’s face made up of thousands of mosquitoes. The line goes, “Nothing and no one, takes as many lives as malaria.” In Brazil, his face is made out of cigarettes for an anti-smoking ad.

Though history’s bad boys club has been used as a money spinner by many advertisers, Hitler tops the list. His egregious face has been used to sell anything from wine (Italian winery Alessandro Lunardelli, created a line of wines named after him as well as Napoleon, Winston Churchill, Che Guevara) and hotel suites to anti-stress tea (Turkish Rasayana anti-stress tea shows him in a floral shirt).

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