A serious accident last night during the shooting of a Tom Cruise film about the 1944 plot to kill Hitler has stoked fresh controversy about the movie and its revival of Nazi-era images on the streets of Berlin.

Eleven actors, dressed as soldiers, were thrown from a German army lorry as it skidded around a corner in the city centre, injuring one person seriously and causing head injuries to others, despite their wearing Wehrmacht coal-scuttle helmets. The state prosecutor’s office said today that it was investigating the accident to see whether it should press charges.

So far most protests against Valkyrie have been aimed against its star. Cruise, a champion of Scientology, is playing the main role of Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, the officer who placed a briefcase full of explosives next to Hitler and who is regarded as one of the few publicly acknowledged German war heroes.

Now, however, opposition to the film has shifted to the use of Berlin — once the nerve-centre of the Third Reich — as a backdrop for productions about the Hitler years.

The German Finance Ministry – once Hermann Goering’s air force ministry, boasting a flat roof long and smooth enough to land aircraft — has become a film-set. Inside, civil servants prepared the latest budget-balancing proposals to be presented at a special out-of-town cabinet session on Thursday.

Outside, four swastika banners — the display of which would normally be punishable with a prison sentence — blocked out the light and huge polystyrene eagles were propped up next to the gate and the air was being rent with shouts of: “Heil Hitler!”

Some 300 extras have been hired to strut around in German army uniforms and usual traffic has been barred to allow dispatch riders on Wehrmacht motorbikes to buzz around the streets. “It’s very shocking,” said Waltraud Lehmann, a 54-year-old bank worker, as she listened to the guttural commands. “This shouldn’t be happening here.”

Bernd Mertens, a 40-year-old teacher, agreed. “This is going too far — old people will be horrified,” he said. Around the corner from the film set is the former Prinz-Albrecht strasse where the Gestapo secret police had its headquarters. “Now they are walking around, dressed up like Gestapo men.” He pointed to leather-coated extras, drinking while waiting for their walk-on role.

The fundamental fear is that if Nazi uniforms become a familiar sight on Berlin streets, there will be a creeping glorification of the bad old days.

A comedy film about Hitler, directed by Dani Levi, was shot recently in Berlin and while there was shock at the sight of SS stormtroopers, there was also some open admiration of their stylish uniforms among younger bystanders.

The production team of Valkyrie (which also has the working title of "Rubicon") had hoped originally to film in the courtyard of the Defence Ministry where Stauffenberg was shot after the failure of the assassination plot in July 1944. But the Government made clear that this would be considered sacrilege and the Finance Ministry has been offered as a substitute.

To reassure Berliners that the Nazis have not returned to power, one extra — Henry Strasen — has been scooting around the streets of Berlin in his Wehrmacht armoured car, calling out to baffled passers-by: “We’re fighting terrorism.” Or, more accurately: “Don’t worry, it’s only a film.”

Mr Strasen, who has been wearing a uniform marked “Guard Regiment Greater Germany” for the duration of the film — enough, usually, to be arrested by the police — owns a petrol station in real life.

Now the accident has given flanking support to the critics who say that Nazi films should be filmed on specially made sets outside Berlin. The lorry has been impounded by the police, who suspect that a screw came loose in one of the side flaps, and shooting was suspended for the day. Cruise was not present at the time of the accident.

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