In Poland, she remains Germany's most hated living politician. Her unashamedly revanchist political views once prompted a Warsaw news magazine to portray her on its front cover clad in a swastika-covered SS uniform.

But this weekend, Erika Steinbach, probably the last surviving bête noire in German chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative government, took the first step towards bowing out of politics after starting an explosive row over who was to blame for starting World War II.

Steinbach, 67, announced her departure from the leadership of Merkel's Christian Democratic Party after enraging Germany's Central Council of Jews by suggesting Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939 was a response to Poland's military mobilisation earlier that year.

"I am beginning to get the impression that you can't say what you want in Germany anymore, even if one is talking about facts," is how Steinbach responded to criticism. A Polish government spokesman said her comments were identical to "Nazi propaganda".

Steinbach maintained her remarks were in support of her own organisation, Germany's Expellees' Association, which represents the 12.5 million Germans forced out of former German territories that now belong to Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic after 1945. Poland and the Czech Republic have been irked by the association's demand that they apologise for the post-war expulsions.

Steinbach maintains that "victor's justice" has prevailed on the expellee issue. In 2008, she said: "It is especially the wartime victor countries like Britain that have difficulty in accepting the plight of the German expellees."

This weekend members of Merkel's party interpreted the resignation as an important victory for Merkel, who has suffered Steinbach as an uncomfortable party bedfellow for the past decade.