'Hitler' stars in explicit new AIDS awareness ad

"We asked ourselves what face we could give to the virus, and it couldn't be a pretty face," Dirk Silz, creative director at the Das Commitee advertising agency behind the "AIDS is a mass murderer" campaign, told AFP.

"The campaign is designed to shake people up, to bring the topic of AIDS back to centre stage, and to reverse the trend of unprotected sexual intercourse," the agency said.

The ad, due to be screened in Germany on television and in cinemas and available at www.aids-is-a-mass-murderer.com, shows blurred clips of a couple having sex but it is only at the end that the man is revealed as Hitler.

A tag line then reads: "AIDS is a mass murderer."

The campaign, which also features posters of Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein lookalikes en flagrante, was organised with AIDS awareness group Regenbogen e.V. ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1.