"Hertha BSC was not infected by National-Socialism," said historian Daniel Koerfer of Berlin's Freie University, who had been hired by the Bundesliga club to investigate its past.

"There was no resistance against the regime, but also no deeply seated fanatical enthusiasm for the party and its leadership, aside from admiration for Hitler until far into the Second World War," Koerfer wrote in the 70-page study. "There was no strongly pronounced anti-Semitism either -- but there were also no attempts to really take a stand against the state-mandated racist delusion."

The overwhelming majority of Hertha's players did not join the Nazi party and most of the club's 400 members would not have sympathized with the Nazis, the study said.

However, the club's leadership, including Hans Pfeifer -- who was installed as president to insure Nazi ideology was adhered to -- were either already party members or eventually joined the party.

At home in "Red Wedding"

The club was rooted in the northern working class district of Wedding, where its stadium was.

"That may have protected us from being used more by the Nazis," said club president Bernd Schiphorst, the initiator of the study.

Also known as "Red Wedding" before World War II, three-quarters of the population of the district voted for the Communist party and the Social Democrats in the 1932 election.

The soccer club is often associated with the Nazi era because of its links to the stadium built by Hitler's chief architect, Albert Speer, Schiphorst pointed out.

Star player spoke up

The club's most successful historic player, Hanne Sobeck, with whom Hertha won its last two German league titles -- in 1930 and 1932 -- joined the Nazi party in 1940 but kept a distance to it.

"As in the course of ever-tightening anti-Semitic isolation policies, Jewish club members were supposed to be banned from the stands, Sobek protested," Koerfer wrote. "He also continued his contact to Jewish club members."

Hertha's Jewish team doctor was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943, where he was eventually murdered.