Nazi

Did two Ukrainian soldiers driving a vehicle with a Ukrainian flag and a Nazi-style straight-armed cross on the tailgate stop a woman driving on a rural road and argue with her because she spoke Russian -- and then as she and her child became increasingly panicked and cried, did one of the soldiers fire a gun several times in her…

Is Hungary preparing to prosecute "lifelong Nazi" George Soros? No, that's not true: The claim, posted by a prolific publisher of fake news, is based on a single anonymous source. It repeats the oft-debunked claim that financier and philanthropist Soros was a Nazi. In fact, Soros, who is Jewish, lived through the Nazi occupation of Hungary in 1944-45, when he…

Did a Norwegian group of trans activists request that Aretha Franklin's song "Natural Woman" be removed from audio streaming services Spotify and Apple Music on January 20, 2023? No, that's not true: The account that started the thread on Twitter later added a disclaimer explaining that it does not represent any real-life trans rights advocacy group and only posts parody…

By Evgenia Prodaeva Did the Russian media outlet Komsomolskaya Pravda (Young Communist League Truth) report that Ukrainians used dead Russian soldiers to assemble a battlefield image of assassinated Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera in honor of Bandera's January 1 birthday? No, that's not true: The page administrator of the Ukrainian Facebook page TFN, which regularly mocks mainstream Russian media, confirmed…

Is former U.S. President Barack Obama the grandson of Nazi-era Germany's leader Adolf Hitler? No, that's not true: U.S. census data and Obama's birth certificate show that his mother, Ann Dunham, was born in Kansas in 1942 to American parents. She was not born in Germany to Hitler and his then-girlfriend, Eva Braun, as a social media post alleges. The…

Does a photograph on social media show a young Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, doing the Nazi salute? No, that's not true: The photo is cropped. The original photograph shows Ratzinger with both arms raised; not just his right one. The cropped image was included in a tweet (archived here) published on December 31, 2022, the date…

Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy bring a national flag with the "Nazi SS" symbol to Washington, D.C.? No, that's not true: The image circulating on social media was flipped to distort the original inscription. The claim appeared in a post published on Facebook on December 23, 2022. It contained an image showing U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President…

Was Adolf Hitler, the head of the Nazi Party and dictator of Germany, actually black and does this photo prove it? No, that's not true: This picture is a color photo converted into black and white from an episode of a TV sitcom called "Community." The claim appeared on Instagram on December 23, 2022. It said: The more you know…

Does a portrait of a familiar-looking historical figure actually show a CIA agent instead of German dictator Adolf Hitler? No, that's not true: The picture can be found in the National Archives Catalog and is described as a "Portrait of Adolf Hitler." The image is available for anyone to download. There is also no historical evidence of an American-backed doppelganger…

Is it impossible that Nazi Germany used a gaseous form of hydrogen cyanide, also known as Zyklon B, to commit mass murder in World War II concentration camps because the compound is "air soluble" and conditions in gas chambers "would not allow for sufficient concentrations of gas to form"? No, that's not true: A chemistry professor told Lead Stories that…