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NEW YORK (AP) - Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone says the furor over his reported comment that Adolf Hitler got "things done" is a misunderstanding.

 

The German daily newspaper Bild quoted Ecclestone in a story published Monday as saying that "this was all a big misunderstanding."

The World Jewish Congress had called for Ecclestone to resign after his comments appeared in The Times of London on Saturday.

The flap comes ahead of the German Grand Prix at the Nuerburgring circuit on Sunday.

"I did not put Hitler forward as a positive example, but simply noted that, before his appalling crimes, he acted successfully against unemployment and the economic crisis," Ecclestone was quoted as saying in the Bild article, which noted that Hitler created jobs through rearmament.

Ecclestone said that it was never his intention to "hurt the feelings of a community," the Bild reported. "Many of my closest friends are Jews."

The Times quoted Ecclestone as saying: "In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done."

But "in the end he got lost, so he wasn't a very good dictator."

In the interview with London's The Times newspa... >>>