This isn’t a picture of Angela Merkel and Adolf Hitler

22 March 2019

What was claimed

A photograph shows a young Angela Merkel posing with Adolf Hitler.

Our verdict

False. This picture shows Hitler with an anonymous girl. Mrs Merkel was born nine years after Hitler died.

A post shared on Facebook does not show a photograph of a young Angela Merkel, the current Chancellor of Germany, posing with Adolf Hitler.

Mrs Merkel was born in 1954. Hitler killed himself nine years earlier in 1945. And the photo purportedly showing the two together appears to come from a photo book published in 1937.

This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false.

Social media

Full Fact fights bad information

Bad information ruins lives. It promotes hate, damages people’s health, and hurts democracy. You deserve better.