Immediately after the July 2024 attempted assassination of U.S. President Donald Trump, a photograph showing him responding to the gunfire with his fist raised spread rapidly online. Soon, social media users compared that scene to an image supposedly showing Adolf Hitler posing in the same way.
"Is this pose of Trump staged or just a coincidence?" one X user asked (archived).
Over the course of months, numerous social media users shared the real image of Trump alongside the separate, alleged photo of Hitler. For instance, one X user claimed in mid-July that Trump posed "like his idol," the ex-chancellor of Nazi Germany, suggesting both photographs were real.
Another example of the two images being shared together appeared on X later in July 2024, with a Community Note attached claiming the photo of Hitler was generated by artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
(X user @SandraHarney1)
However, in short, although the Trump image was authentic, the alleged photo of Hitler was not. We concluded it was not AI-generated, but it was, in fact, a composite image created using elements from several different photographs, including a flipped and altered image of Hitler; a photograph of chief propagandist of the Nazi Party Joseph Goebbels; an unidentified woman; and a Nazi flag. Because of this, we rated the image of Hitler as fake.
On Aug. 5, 2024, Hany Farid — a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specialized in digital forensics and image analysis — discussed the Hitler photo on LinkedIn.
Farid said he analyzed the image "with our GetReal Labs model trained to distinguish real from AI-generated images and found no evidence of AI-generation or manipulation." However, he did conclude that the image had tell-tale signs of photo manipulation and was "most likely" created using "an old-school Photoshop manipulation":
Shown below, however, is a visualization of the image/sensor noise in the historical photo. In an ideal imaging device, the pixel values of the digital image would accurately reflect the amount of light recorded by each photo detector. Real devices have imperfections, however, and these imperfections introduce noise in the image. The resulting noise pattern is typically random, fluctuating from image to image but generally uniform across the image.
Below you can see a much larger noise pattern (brighter regions) for three main parts of the image (the two people and the flag). This would not happen naturally and is a tell-tale sign of photo manipulation. While I can't say exactly how this image was created, it is most likely that this is an old-school Photoshop manipulation in which several photos were composited together.
(Hany Farid LinkedIn user)
Snopes analyzed all elements of the manipulated Hitler image and found that its primary component, the photograph of Hitler, had been horizontally flipped. Additionally, Hitler's arm had been cropped and repositioned to the opposite side of his body. Below, you can see a comparison between the edited image on the left, and an authentic photograph of Hitler on the right that was published by Getty Images (with the latter flipped horizontally for ease of comparison).
(X user @JaneotN, Getty Images)
The original photograph of Hitler was also available on Alamy, a stock photo website, with a caption reading:
Adolf Hitler speech, leader of the Nazi Party and Fuhrer of Germany making an impassioned speech with his fist clenched, wearing military uniform with Iron Cross and Swastika armband. The day on which he became commander in chief of Nazi Germanys armed forces. Nazi Germany 1934
(Alarmy.com)
The second element in the edited photo was Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler's closest associates.
(X user @JaneotN, Getty Images)
Below you can see the original photograph of Goebbels that we also accessed via Getty Images:
(Getty Images)
The third figure in the composite image is a woman whose original photograph remains unidentified.
Other rumors Snopes has investigated involving Trump and Hitler include: