It has been exactly a year since Poland showed the bill of war reparatiions to its German neighbour. For the past 12 months, the Polish government has been pressuring Germany to obtain war reparations for the damages caused by the Third Reich to Poland during WWII.

On 1 September 2022, “The report on the losses suffered by Poland as a result of the German aggression and occupation during the Second World War, 1939-1945” was published. The latter was prepared by the Parliamentary Team for Estimating the Amount of Compensation Due to Poland from Germany for Damages Caused During World War II, led by the Law and Justice MP Arkadiusz Mularczyk. A group of 30 scientists, including historians, economists, property appraisers, and reviewers contributed to the large document. The abridged version of The War Report in English is available here.

The report provides detailed information on the scale of German crimes and destruction perpetrated on Polish soil between 1939 and 1945. Its aim was to serve as a starting point to engage in talks about war reparations based on the evidence it contains. However, Berlin repeatedly refused to discuss the matter, claiming that the topic was settled long ago. German officials acknowledge and strongly condemn German brutality during WWII. But when it comes to paying the bill, they insist that “the topic is closed”.

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Berlin considers that the reparations issue was settled 70 years ago, in August 1953, when the government of the People’s Republic of Poland declared its willingness to resign from war reparations from Germany. On the other hand, many on the Polish side emphasise that in the 1950s Poland wasn’t sovereign and that such a decision had been taken in Moscow without the consultation of Poles.

In the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles, certain territories which had been forcibly integrated into the German state as a result of the Partitions returned within the Polish borders, namely almost the whole region of Greater Poland, part of Eastern Pomerania and a piece of Upper Silesia. This geographical shift was perceived by most Germans as a humiliation, which nourished their hate toward Poles during the interwar period. In 1939, Adolf Hitler offered his people the possibility of revenge by launching WWII.

On 22 August 1939, the German leader issued a speech to the nation in which he made his intention crystal clear.

“I have issued the command – and I’ll have anybody who utters, but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy,” continued the Führer […] Accordingly, I have placed my death’s-head formation in readiness […] with orders to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women and children of Polish derivation and language” – he said, as reported by Der Spiegel’s journalist Norman Domeier.

The following day, in Moscow, a non-aggression pact was signed between the Soviet Union and the German Reich, which was extended to include a secret protocol. Hitler and Stalin prepared together for Europe and the whole world a hecatomb of war of unprecedented proportions. The first victim of their cooperation was Poland, attacked by Germany on the 1st of September and by the Soviet Union on the 17th of September.

In Poland alone, about 6 million people were killed, and thousands more were deported to hard labour where they were treated worse than animals. 200,000 Polish children were deported to the Reich Germanised by force. Nearly a quarter of the country’s priests were assassinated, as well as virtually all the rabbis. Hundreds of cities and thousands of villages were destroyed and looted, as well as countless monuments (churches, palaces, libraries, etc.) were burned to the ground.

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The tweet above says: Including 150,000 fallen soldiers, the „Report on losses suffered by Poland as a result of German aggression and occupation during World War II 1939-1945” estimates the loss of population at 5,219,053 people. Each dot below represents the genocide we suffered.

In the capital, Warsaw, 90% of the industrial plant was destroyed as well as almost 100% of the old town. The civilian population was humiliated, terrorised, sometimes tortured, and often deported to the notorious German concentration and extermination camps. Countless works of art were also stolen without ever being returned. The material losses inflicted on Poland between 1939 and 1945 are estimated at nearly 1.3 trillion euros.

It is worth emphasising that only a tiny fraction of the German criminals of this dark era faced the consequences of their acts after the war. Not only were heavy sentences rare, but they were also rarely carried through. It was common for individuals with the blood of thousands of people on their hands to be released from prison after just a few years, allegedly for health reasons.

Following the Potsdam Conference, more than 3 million Germans had to leave the territories that had come under Polish jurisdiction (Silesia, Pomerania, Masuria, etc.) between 1945 and the end of 1950. The German-Polish border was moved to the West on the Oder-Neisse line. However, West Germany did not recognise Poland’s western border until December 1970. What’s more, the ratification of the border agreement between Poland and Germany only took place around half a century after the end of the war, in December 1991. The decision of the German parliament became final and effective one month later, on 16 January 1992. That was just over three decades ago.

A Social Changes poll conducted in early June revealed that more than one in two Poles (54%) are in favour of further efforts aimed at obtaining war reparations from Germany. Such support for this issue makes it all the more political given Poland’s upcoming parliamentary elections. For the above-mentioned Deputy Foreign Minister Arkadiusz Mularczyk, Berlin “is doing whatever it takes to close the topic of war reparations”. In the German capital, it’s believed that the Law and Justice party is using the reparations issue as a slogan for the ongoing political campaign.

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For over a year now, Mularczyk has been meeting with several officials from other countries to gain support from foreign partners in his quest. He held talks among others with politicians from Israel, who successfully settled this issue long ago, the US, as a potentially powerful leverage maker, and other countries that also request war reparations from Germany such as Greece and Namibia. Back in 2021, Germany agreed to pay Namibia €1.1bn (£940m) as it officially recognised the Herero-Nama genocide which took place in the early 20th century.

Will Poland be able to negotiate its due? That remains far from sure, given Berlin’s hard stance according to which the subject is outdated. The German government informed that it would rather discuss the matter after Poland’s autumn elections.

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No matter the result of Poland’s legislative elections to be held on 15 October, we seem to be heading towards additional years of complicated dialogue around the sensitive issue of war reparations between Berlin and Warsaw.

Image: British Poles

 Author: Sébastien Meuwissen