A furious backlash has prompted Amazon to pull ads for a television show that featured the Nazi German eagle and Imperial Japan's rising sun on the New York subway.

Local transportation authorities allowed the company to color seats on the Times Square shuttle with the symbols laid over the US flag to promote "The Man in the High Castle."

The show, which premiered last month, is set in the 1960s as if America had lost World War II - occupied by Nazi Germany in the east and the Empire of Japan in the west.

Based on the novel by Philip Dick, it portrays an America in which slavery is legal and Jews hide under assumed names.

An official told AFP that the ads - which had been originally scheduled to run until next month - were being pulled.

Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Mayor Bill de Blasio led calls for the ads to be removed, saying they were offensive.

New York is home to the world's second largest Jewish population after the Israeli capital of Tel Aviv.