A screenshot from the film. Photo: Screenshot.

A short advertisement depicting the death of a young Adolf Hitler at the hands -or the car hood, more literally – of a Mercedes-Benz, has been watched nearly a million times online, and the German car maker is “not amused.”

Made by a group of students at southern Germany’s Ludwigsburg Film Academy, the 80 second clip shows a driver-less Mercedes-Benz sedan entering a small Austrian village, stopping to avoid some children before encountering and running over the boy Hitler.

The theme revolves around the company’s Collision Prevention Assist program, which helps reduce accidents, and a graphic reading “detect dangers before they come up” flashes across the screen at the end of the film.

According to the UK’s The Independent, Mercedes-Benz said they were “not amused” when the film was brought to their attention, and forced the filmmakers to add a disclaimer stating that the film was unauthorized. “There exists no  current or past affiliation with Mercedes/Daimler AG” say subtitles at the start and end of the clip.”

Tobias Haase, the video’s director, who made the film as a school project with fellow students Lydia Lohse, Jan Mettler and Gun Aydemir, told The Independent: “Mercedes sells its cars on smart technology which prevents accidents – we wanted to pose the question of what might happen if technology had a soul.”

Watch a video of the spoof Mercedes advertisement below.