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The co-leader of the far-right nationalist Alternative for Germany party (AfD) came under fire for dismissing the Nazi era as a "speck of bird poop in more than 1,000 years of successful German history".

Alexander Gauland told the party's youth movement on Saturday that Germans must take responsibility for 12 years of rule by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party, but claimed it is only a small part of Germany's history.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the secretary general of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party, responded on Twitter that "50 million victims of war, the Holocaust and total war are just bird poop" for Mr Gauland and his party.

She said Mr Gauland's comments reveal the true nature of a party hiding behind middle-class respectability.

Katrin Göring-Eckardt of the Greens party called Gauland's comments a "slap in the face" to Holocaust survivors and their descendants.

"Those who say they understand the concerns of AfD voters haven't understood anything," she said.

Marco Buschmann of the Free Democratic Party said politicians who "systematically play down the Nazi dictatorship and the Holocaust show how bleak their vision for Germany's future is".

Gauland’s comments were further panned on social media, with one person saying: “Well, that must have been some pretty massive bird with a rather upset stomach.”

Additional reporting by the Press Association