FACT CHECK: Is this a soldier using a modern mobile phone during World War II? Check out the Truth...

A using a mobile phone during the second World War, when mobile phones were unheard of, seems too good to be true. But, a black and white image showing a soldier using mobile phone has surfaced on social media claiming that the image is of an ally soldier using a mobile during the second World War.

However, our fact-check revealed that the image of a soldier in Wehrmacht, German allegedly using a modern mobile phone is a hoax. It is not an 80-year-old image but a very recent one from Prague from a TV series filming.

Social Media Posts:

A Facebook page named Historical Photos carried a post with the below image, captioned “Apple iPhones were actually invented during WW2 to allow the allies to exchange battle commands by texting.” Over 750 Facebook users have shared this post.

Facebook

Archived Link

A number of users had made satirical comments on this post in the comments section while few other Facebook pages and groups shared this image.

But is this image indeed from the second world war era? Were mobile phones really invented by the Allied Forces for communication during the war? Let’s find out the truth.

Fact Check

We began our investigation by carrying out a Google reverse image search of the said image and came across an image uploaded to Flicker by Richard Tanton on 29 May 2016 with the following caption.

“From deep in the Czech photo archives, finally proof of the rumor that a few German soldiers were issued prototype iPhones in the last years of WWII. However, due to the limited number of repeating towers, "low bars" was a constant problem. Visit: (fakehistoryhunter.wordpress.com/2020/07/13/not-a-ww2-sold...) to read the rest of the story”

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The hashtags accompanying the images such as: #Filmset, #Podskalska and #Prague indicates that this image was taken on the set of a movie being filmed in Prague, the capital of Czech Republic. EXIF data accompanying this image taken from a Canon EOS 70D camera also reveals the same details.

As mentioned in the caption we inspected the link provided by Richard Tanton and noticed a very interesting report captioned “NOT a WW2 soldier with a mobile phone” by Fake History Hunter. Link | Archived

In this report, we noticed that Richard Tanton had submitted the unedited, original version of the photo along with few other photos of the film set taken by his wife. It clearly shows a van belonging to Ceske Televize, a public television broadcaster in the Czech Republic.

A Google search revealed that Ceske Televize was launched on 1^st January 1992 as the successor to Czechoslovak Television, which founded in 1953.

Even though the exact scene involving these two actors could not be found Fake History Hunter had narrowed the search down to the fifth episode of a six-part mini-series called Bohéma about the film industry in Czechoslovakia from 1938 to 1953 directed by Robert Sedláček.

An Italian website Open also carried a fact check on this image, along with location comparisons concluding that the image was taken from a film set from Prague in 2016.

Apple iPhone was launched by the late Steve Jobs on 29^th June 2007.

Conclusion

Our fact check reveals that the image of the German soldier in a World War II uniform, carrying a modern mobile phone was actually taken during the filming of a six-part mini-series called Bohéma about the film industry in Czechoslovakia from 1938 to 1953 in the year 2016.