Party Like It's 1939: German Chancellor's Send-Off Compared to Nazi Rally

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's farewell ceremony has been compared to Nazi Fuhrer Adolf Hitler's torchlit rallies.

The "Grand Tattoo" for the outgoing leader of 16 years featured soldiers with distinctive WWII-style steel helmets, field-grey greatcoats, and Mauser rifles marching with flaming torches in their hands.

That drew inevitable comparisons between Friday night's ceremony and the Nuremberg rallies and modern neo-Nazi marches.

Twitter users from countries occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War were naturally more sensitive to the images.

"Goodbye to the guardian angel of the neonazis in Ukraine and the queen of NATO! A glorious and Nazi ritual farewell ceremony for Merkel", another posted.

Even Merkel's choice of music, the song Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen (You Forgot the Colour Film) by ageing punk rocker Nina Hagen, was seen as a dig at communist East Germany, where both Merkel and Hagen were born.

She also picked the song Für mich soll's rote Rosen regnen (It Shall Rain Red Roses For Me) by Hildegard Knef.

Knef was taken prisoner by the Soviet Red Army in 1945 after joining her lover Ewald von Demandowsky, a Nazi film producer and SS officer, in the Volkssturm militia defending Berlin.

Demandowsky fled Berlin, but was taken prisoner by free Polish forces. He was released and returned to West Berlin, where he was later arrested by US forces and extradited to the Soviet zone. He was tried for war crimes by a Soviet Military Tribunal and executed in the city by firing squad in October 1946.

Netizens also accused Merkel of fascist tendencies for her comments on Friday backing compulsory COVID-19 vaccinations for all Germans and restricting the freedoms of those who refuse.