GERMANS voted yesterday in a national election roiled by tension with the United States after an indirect comparison between U.S. President George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler tainted the finale of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s campaign for a second term.

　　Even with the White House conflict and attacks by conservative challenger Edmund Stoiber, Schroeder’s emphatic stand against threatening war to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has fallen on fertile ground among the more than 61 million voters.

　　The Schwaebisches Tagblatt reported Thursday that Justice Minister Daeubler-Gmelin told a labor union meeting: ``Bush wants to distract attention from his domesticproblems. That’s a popular method. Even Hitler did that.’’

　　In comments published Saturday in The Financial Times newspaper,Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was quoted as saying that the alleged remark created a “poisoned’’ atmosphere.

　　The unusually harsh rhetoric is credited with helping him claw back into the race with the Bavarian governor. Polls showed the race between Schroeder’s Social Democrats and Stoiber’s conservatives is one of postwar Germany’s tightest.

　　Voters across the country began casting ballots at 8 o’clock (0600 GMT) yesterday, as 80,000 polling stations opened under mostly gray or rainy skies.

　　Schroeder, 58, has governed with the environmentally oriented Greens since unseating Helmut Kohl in 1998 and ending 16 years of conservative rule. He says he wants another four years with the party, headlined by Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer — Germany’s most popular politician.

　　Stoiber, 60, has embraced the Free Democrats as he ran for national office after governing Bavaria for nine years. But the pro-business party has refused to rule out a coalition with either party in hopes of replacing the Greens as third-strongest force.

　　(SD-Agencies)