GERMANY:A popular German historian has said actor Tom Cruise's performance in Scientology videos leaked on to the internet last week remind him of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
One of the videos shows the actor asking a crowd of Scientologists: "So what do you say, are we going to clean this place up?" The cheering crowd answers: "Yeah!"
"It could be that Cruise's way of speaking is common at revival meetings in the US," said Guido Knopp, a historian with German state television, to Bild am Sonntagnewspaper.
"But the scene where he asks whether Scientologists should clean up the world and all answer with 'yes!' inevitably reminds every German who is interested in history of the Goebbels Sportpalast speech."
In his notorious February 1943 speech at Berlin's "Sportpalast" arena, the Nazi worked the audience up into a frenzy before asking them: "Do you want total war?" "Yes!" the crowd shouted.
Scientology classifies itself as a church that can help cure drug addiction and rehabilitate criminals. Its critics call it a cult. The organisation, viewed by German authorities as a business, has courted controversy of late with a new headquarters in Berlin and increased street solicitation of potential new members.
Cruise, the organisation's most prominent member, was the centre of controversy last year in Germany after taking the leading role in a film about Count Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg and the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.
After months of heated discussion, the film-makers were allowed film the von Stauffenberg execution scene on the original site - today the federal defence ministry. The film Valkyrie- named after the 1944 plot's code name - will be released later this year.
Germany's leading cult expert Ursula Caberta told Bild am Sonntagthat the actor's role with Scientology was "to open doors". Mr Knopp suggested yesterday that the film was part of a "Scientology strategy to generate goodwill towards the organisation through the lead actor".
Mr Knopp produces historical documentaries for German state station ZDF. In recent years he has come under fire for a lengthy series of Third Reich films,described by a fellow historian as "historical pornography".