A German language teacher has been suspended in France after suggesting that panzers should invade the country again so as 'subdue unruly pupils'.

The Frenchwoman also used her classes to defend Adolf Hitler's domestic record, and his plans for overseas expansion.

'He was a good man who built motorways and liked music,' she is alleged to have said, before being suspended from the Auguste Remoir college in Limoges, west-central France.

The German language teacher suggested that tanks (pictured is a panzer during the Second World War) should be used to invade France again to subdue unruly pupils

Hundreds of German tanks rolled into the country in May 1940 as their Blitzkrieg led to France becoming part of the Third Reich.

Yet, according to complaining parents who passed on the comment to other teachers, the woman said she hoped 'German tanks come to Renoir to subdue unruly pupils'.

Seventeen of the 20 pupils in her class signed a petition against the teacher, and it was quickly acted on by the authorities.

Parent teacher association president, Maurice Sourdioux, said: 'In my experience, this kind of procedure is extremely rare in national education. I have never seen it anywhere else.'

She has since been suspended from the Auguste Remoir college in Limoges, west-central France (pictured)

The teacher, who has been at the school since September, has denied any wrong doing, saying she was 'very shocked by the extent of the case'.

References to the Second World War are particularly sensitive in France, where a collaborationist government worked with the Nazis.

State institutions including the SNCF railway company and police in major cities such as Paris assisted in the Holocaust too.

Despite this, there are regular cases of far right sympathisers expressing support for the kind of racism and anti-Semitism championed by the Nazis.

Last month, a music teacher in Berlin was questioned by police after forcing pupils to march up and down singing a Nazi song.