The former Chancellor of West Germany Helmut Schmidt has died aged 96.

Mr Schmidt was West German Chancellor from 1974 until 1982 during the height of the Cold War.

His relationship with the Jewish community and possible ties to the Nazi party remained ambiguous during his life.

Interviews and books he wrote offer conflicting images. In one he said he was a “Nazi opponent” but in another he admitted he “came under the influence of the brown rulers”.

According to literary and legal historian Sabine Pamperrien, he spent many years as a leader in the Hitler Youth movement, and in one 1942 commendation in the Wehrmacht archives he is praised for his “irreproachable National Socialist behaviour”.

In September 1943, a note describes his “perfect Nazi attitude.”

However, it emerged in 1984 that he also has Jewish ancestry as his father was the illegitimate son of a German Jewish businessman.

In 2013, a report in French magazine LePoint quotes him as saying: “We are responsible, and uniquely us, for the death of more than six million Jews.”