Germany methodically destroyed up to 90 per cent of buildings in Warsaw at the end of the war in which six million Poles died

Poland has dismissed Second World War reparations from Germany as minimal and unfair given the scale of its destruction by the Nazis.

“There are countries that lost many times less but received more compensation. Is that acceptable?”, Jacek Czaputowicz, the foreign minister, told the DPA news agency.

Poland suffered the most war-related deaths per capita of any country. Six million Poles, half of them Jews, died, wiping out 17 per cent of the population.

In Warsaw up to 90 per cent of buildings were methodically destroyed in the last stages of the war and cultural artefacts demolished or stolen.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president, will attend a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the invasion on September 1 in Wielun, the first Polish town