Did an advertising banner in Berlin show how the Germans feel about tank deliveries? A corresponding clip goes viral. But if you look closely, you will see that the clip has been manipulated. A fact check.
Germany will send modern main battle tanks to Ukraine for its fight against Russia’s war of aggression. Opponents of such plans try to make a connection to the Second World War. At that time, tanks of the German Reich drove towards Moscow in a war of annihilation. Now there is said to have been criticism of German military aid for Kyiv on an advertising banner in Berlin.
Claim: A video showing German tanks from 1943 and 2022 was broadcast on a giant billboard at a busy intersection in the capital. Based on the sentence “Never again war” the question is raised: “Maybe not again?”
Rating: The video is manipulated.
Facts: The alleged video on the advertising banner spread on the internet after the federal government’s decision at the end of January to supply Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine.
The photo shows the Kurfürstendamm intersection at the corner of Joachimsthaler Straße near the Memorial Church. The LED billboard is attached to the Ku’damm Eck commercial building. Tank models are said to have flickered across the giant interactive banner, which usually advertises commercial items and attractions.
Distributed clip is manipulated
But that’s not true. The clip distributed on social media is manipulated. The template for the fake is a video originally uploaded to the internet by banner operator Limes, which shows exactly the same street scene – with the same vehicles and passers-by. What is different, however, is that the original version does not show tanks, but a comic book by British-Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara.
If you look closely at the manipulated video, you can also see that the light reflection on the asphalt of the street does not match the alleged color gradient on the display board.
The Limes company informed the research network Correctiv that a clip with the tank models had not been shown on any of its billboards. The video is fake.
Limes uploaded the original scene to the YouTube video platform on April 7, 2022. The federal government only decided to supply tanks ten months later.
All information on the dpa fact checks Contact page for the dpa fact check team
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
