NHS staff have been asked to rate how “cool” Adolf Hitler was and to compare him to their chief executive, in a "disturbing" survey about leadership.

The survey, entitled ‘Making Leadership Cool’ is part of a £10,000 project of NHS West Midlands Strategic Health Authority.

It was sent to 3,300 staff at the West Midlands Ambulance service, who were asked to compare Hitler’s “coolness” with Richard Branson, Gordon Brown, Fabio Capello and Winston Churchill.

They were then asked to compare Hitler with their own chief executive Ian Cumming.

A spokesman for the Ambulance Trust who commissioned the survey said: "Adolf Hitler's style galvanised a country into terrible things but it did galvanise a country. Perhaps in hindsight a better example could have been used."

Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust commented: "It is disturbing and in extremely poor taste that NHS staff should be asked to rate how ‘cool’ they consider Adolf Hitler, a dictator responsible for the deaths of millions of people.”