Doctored Hitler photo shared in wake of Trump assassination attempt

A doctored photo of Hitler has been shared in social media posts with the suggestion it closely resembles a photo of Donald Trump after his attempted assassination.

The posts share a black and white collage showing a photo of Mr Trump moments after he was shot at alongside a photo of Hitler seemingly in almost exactly the same position. Some versions of the image are being shared amongst claims the assassination attempt was staged.

Both photos supposedly show the men flanked by a man and woman in similar positions, with the US and Nazi flags respectively in the backgrounds. 

Overlaid text on one post says “To see it in B&W is chilling. Both are exactly the same”.

However, the photo of Hitler has been edited in multiple ways to resemble a photo of Mr Trump captured by an Associated Press photographer and published widely following the shooting in which Mr Trump’s ear was injured.

A member of the public, Corey Comperatore, was killed during the incident and two others, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, were seriously injured. The shooter, who was identified as 20 year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot dead at the scene by a Secret Service sniper. 

The original photo of Hitler was taken in the 1930s (with some sources saying 1934 and others 1935) and shows him standing alone with no Nazi flag visible. While he does have one fist in the air, it is at a different angle in the edited version, and most of his body, except the fist, has been horizontally flipped. 

His fist also appears to have been cropped to give a straight edge where his knuckle is in the original image.

One of the people supposedly surrounding him is actually taken from a different photo of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, which according to Getty Images was taken in 1933. 

Full Fact has not been able to identify where the photo of the woman next to Hitler comes from. 

Claims that the assassination attempt was staged circulated widely on social media in the weeks after the shooting but as we wrote at the time, we have seen no evidence to support these theories. 

Misleading images are a common form of misinformation we see online—our guide shares tips for how you can spot them yourself.