Ads by Amazon Studios with Nazi-inspired imagery have been pulled from a busy subway line after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio intervened.
The ads for the film series 'The Man in the High Castle' had completely wrapped the seats, walls and ceilings of one train on the shuttle line that connects Times Square and Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan.
Adam Lisberg, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said the train was taken out of service after the evening rush hour so the ads could be removed. An Amazon spokesman said earlier that the company had not requested the ads be pulled, contradicting a transit official, who had said the company itself had asked for the removal.
Amazon’s new series 'The Man in the High Castle' imagines an alternate history in which Nazi Germany and its ally Japan have won World War II and in which America is divided under Japanese and German rule.
S-Train interiors were decorated half in Japanese rising-sun flags and half in Nazi eagles and iron crosses, a look that left some commuters feeling distressed.
In a statement on Monday, Mayor de Blasio called on Amazon to remove the shuttle train advertisements, calling them "irresponsible and offensive to World War II and Holocaust survivors, their families, and countless other New Yorkers."
The ads were originally scheduled to run until mid-December.
