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“The purpose was to gather all the material available so that the political leaders can check the data,” he said.

The Greek foreign ministry said the report would be sent to the State Legal Service to assess and set the “claims of the Greek State”.

The report was first leaked to a Greek newspaper at the weekend in a story entitled “What Germany Owes Us”.

The panel concluded that Athens had legitimate grounds to press claims. “Greece never received any compensation, either for the loans it was forced to provide to Germany or for the damages it suffered during the war,” it said.

The newspaper said the issue has “detonated like a bomb” at a critical juncture when Greece is under intense pressure from creditors. “The government should publish all the findings and determine its position on this sensitive issue,” it said.

There has long been a vociferous lobby calling for war reparations from Germany, with the so-called “National Council” calling for as much as euros 500bn to cover stolen art work and the loss of 50pc of economic output over almost four years. Some 300,000 Greeks died under the Axis occupation, mostly from starvation.

But the new report is very different because it is an official document of the finance ministry. It is unclear, however, what Athens hopes to gain by stirring up a highly emotional issue.

The report is certain to be viewed by German officials as a form of moral blackmail as tough talks continue over each stage of Greece’s EU-IMF-ECB Troika programme. Sources in Greece say the document was prepared as a bargaining chip to be put away in a draw and used only in extremis.