Merkel ally resigns after war slur against Poland

Erika Steinbach, a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in a party meeting on Wednesday that Poland mobilised its troops months before nazi Germany invaded the country on September 1 1939.

"Poland started the mobilisation of her troops first - Poland mobilised as early as March 1939," Ms Steinbach declared.

Hitler used the pretext of Polish troop movements in 1939 to attack and invade Poland on September 1 at Westerplatte.

Polish historian Tomasz Szarota warned that Ms Steinbach was attempting "to shift partial blame for the start of World War II onto Poland."

Ms Steinbach's words were an "adoption of Hitler's argument," Mr Szarota said, adding that her historical revisionism was "dangerous for Germany's image in the world."

Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who recently defended the targeted killing of resistance leaders in Afghanistan, agreed.

"Ambiguous statements that place Germany's grave responsibility in the outbreak of World War II in question are unacceptable," he said.

In 1998, when Ms Steinbach was appointed head of the federation of German citizens displaced after the end of the second world war, she suggested that German people were as much victims of the war as Jews, Poles and other peoples subjected to nazi war crimes and occupation.