BERLIN (AFP) - Hertha Berlin, the German capital's premier football team, was not heavily linked to Adolf Hitler's Nazi party, according to a history expert's study.

Professor Daniel Koerfer, who works at Berlin's Freie University, has conducted a study into Hertha, who play at Berlin's Olympic Stadium, to assess how much influence the Nazis had on the team during the Third Reich era.

Koerfer's report shows the vast majority of players stayed away from the Nazi party and almost all the club's 400 members did not sympathise with the Third Reich regime.

But the report does conclude several leading figures at the club became party members and co-operated with the Nazis, often to protect the club.

Hertha president Bernd Schiphorst says the club is still often associated with the Nazi era because of their links to the stadium built by Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer.

"Many fans, even today, link us to that era because we have played at the Olympic Stadium since the Bundesliga began in 1963," said Schiphorst.

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

And one of Hertha's most famous players, Hanne Sobek, who helped the Berlin side Hertha to become German champions in 1930 and 1931, joined the Nazi party in 1940, but later distanced himself.

When the Nazis anti-semitic policy forced the closure of the stadium's Jewish stand, Sobek protested, according to Koerfer's study.