UK Schools obsessed with Hitler, claims report.

Schools are perpetuating damaging stereotypes of Germans because of their "obsession" with Hitler and the Second World War, it was claimed yesterday.

The vast numbers of pupils who choose to study the Nazi period in history is fuelling anti-German feeling, the Church of England said.

This undercurrent is reinforced by the large number of war films shown on television and the "drip feed" of anti-German comments in the media, a report said.

ts authors said that they had received letters from German Christians living in Britain who had experienced "shameful treatment".

"A teacher of German in a secondary school reported being repeatedly confronted with a 'Heil Hitler' and with swastikas on history books," said the report.

"The grandchild of another person found herself excluded, on a school trip to France, from visiting a British war cemetery 'as she was a Nazi' - this despite the fact that her grandfather came to Britain as a Jewish refugee."

It said that the role of Britain in defeating the Nazis had reinforced "a sense of moral righteousness" and inhibited "soul-searching" over our own history.

The Bishop of Croydon, the Rt Rev Nicholas Baines, said that the Church had written to the Department of Education urging schools to focus more on modern Germany.

"If you bring up children and their only images of Germany are of Fritz in a helmet, that is going to have an effect," he said.