US REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE Rich Iott has been criticised after photographs of him in Nazi uniform at WWII re-enactments appeared online.

Iott, who is running for Congress in Ohio and is described by The Atlantic as a Tea Party favourite, was photographed in the uniform of deadly Nazi militant group the Waffen SS.

The BBC reports the several senior Republican Party members, including the party whip, have been distancing themselves from Iott in the wake of the photographs surfacing.

Iott has admitted being a member of a historical re-enactment group called Wikings, which described itself as a “non-profit, nonpolitical organization dedicated to the preservation of the history of WW II and the lifestyle of the German combat soldier (specifically Waffen-SS foreign volunteers)”.

A disclaimer on the website says Wikings is in “no way affiliated with real, radical political organisations”.

In a statement published on his website, Iott says his interest in the re-enactments is purely historical:

Never, in any of my re-enacting of military history, have I meant any disrespect to anyone who served in our military or anyone who has been affected by the tragedy of war, especially the Jewish Community.

I have immense respect for veterans who served our country valiantly, particularly those who fought to rid the world of tyranny and aggression by relegating Nazism to the trash heap of history.

However, historian Charles W Sydnor Jr, told The Atlantic that the Wikings group has a “sanitized, romanticised view of what occurred” and pointed out that donning an SS uniform in Germany or Austria is illegal.

A Downfall video parody of the Iott uniform scandal has already appeared on YouTube.

Iott says he hopes the photographs won’t deter his supporters come election day in early November. He is the second Tea Party-backed candidate to become the focus of controversy recently, after TV footage of Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell claiming to have dabbled in witchcraft emerged.