BERLIN, Jan 14: The European press on Friday excoriated Britain's Prince Harry for wearing a Nazi uniform to a costume party, saying even apologies were not enough to remove the taint of this latest gaffe by the third in line to one of Europe's most visible thrones.

Papers in Germany, where any display of the swastika is a criminal offense, were stunned, depicting the 20-year-old son of Prince Charles as an unfeeling party boy with little respect for history.

"This is a scandal, not a slip by an insensitive prince who, as is well known, is not exactly regarded as an intellectual giant of his generation," Die Welt broad sheet said.

The blunder was seen as even more astonishing two weeks from the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp on Jan 27, which Harry's grandmother, Britain's Queen Elizabeth, is due to attend.

"Perhaps he is part of that half of the British population who, according to the latest polls, have never heard of Auschwitz," said Die Welt. Papers were quick to recall a dark memory British royals would rather forget, particularly now - the infamous meeting of Harry's great uncle, the Duke of Windsor who, after abdicating as King Edward VIII, met Hitler in Nazi Germany in 1937 and was shown around a concentration camp.

"Until now, he (Edward) was seen as the most stupid member of the family," the Financial Times Deutsch land reflected. The Hamburger Abendblatt rebuked the prince for using "the symbol of one of the crue lest and most barbarous moments in history" as a "fashion accessory". "Harry's gone too far," wrote the mass market Bild, evoking his much-loved late mother: "What would Diana have said?" -AFP