Nawrocki Proposed A Creative Solution To The Polish-German Reparations Dispute
Germany could subsidize Poland’s military-industrial complex as a form of reparations.
Poland’s “Law & Justice” (PiS) party, which is its leading (but very imperfect) conservative-nationalist force, has in recent years revived the issue of German World War II reparations to Poland. This was unsuccessfully pushed with gusto back when they controlled the presidency and parliament, but nowadays they only retain hold of the first through Karol Nawrocki, their nominally independent ally. It was he who just brought this issue up once again during his trip to Germany in mid-September.
He creatively proposed that “Germany could start paying reparations by building the potential of the Polish arms industry and strengthening NATO’s eastern flank. This is not a whole recipe, but a beginning.” For background, Germany considers the issue closed after the “Polish People’s Republic” waived its right to reparations in 1953 in exchange for recognition of their new border, but PiS argues that this was illegitimate due to what post-communist Poland considers having been the Soviet occupation back then.
They also more compellingly point to German reparations to Holocaust survivors and Namibia (for the colonial-era genocide) as proof of a double standard that they hope will embarrass Germany enough to get it to finally pay reparations to Poland too. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, who represents the liberal-globalist “Civic Coalition”, lamented that “although morally Poland deserves redress for German crimes during World War Two, legally the matter is unfortunately hopeless.”
As a reminder, approximately 6 million Poles were killed by the Nazis during World War II, amounting to around 1/5 of the prewar population, the largest percentage of any country. Poles were also the first victims of the Nazis’ genocides, having been targeted for physical extermination even before the blitzkrieg of 1 September 1939 as proven by the Special Prosecution Book – Poland, which led to Operation Tannebnerg and the Intelligenzaktion. These predate the “Final Solution” for genociding Jews.
While some claim that Germany’s cession of what Poland considers to be the “Recovered Territories” was a form of reparations, this was actually agreed to by the Allies at Potsdam as compensation for Poland’s loss of what it considers having been the “Kresy”, or “Eastern Borderlands”. This half of interwar Poland was divided between the now-former Soviet Republics of Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. It was the homeland of many kings, military leaders, and cultural figures who shaped Poland’s civilization-state.
Returning to the present, Nawrocki’s creative solution to the Polish-German reparations dispute that his PiS allies revived in 2022 aims to have Germany redistribute to Poland some of the wealth that it earmarked for remilitarization, thus more quickly modernizing his country’s military-industrial complex. Referencing NATO’s eastern flank is meant to suggest that Germany has a shared military-strategic interest (at least as its elite see it) in strengthening Poland’s role as the bloc’s anti-Russian vanguard.
It now commands NATO’s third-largest army after its own militarization and spends more of its GDP on defense than any other member, but this could be financially burdensome to maintain, ergo the proposal for much wealthier Germany to subsidize this on reparations pretexts. Germany might still refuse for reasons of national prestige, but if Nawrocki convinces his ally Trump that Poland can lead Russia’s containment in Europe after the Ukrainian Conflict ends, then the US might coerce it into compliance.
The Russians liberated Poland from the nazis and returned them sovereignity in 1989.
The German population of Silesia - two million people - was expelled, and this rich region became a part of Poland. Generous EU-subsidies, mainly German money, helped Poland to become a relatively wealthy country after joining the EU.
You would think: this is the time to show some gratitude, or, at least, to let the past rest in peace, to start with a clean slate, and to cooperate. That's what we did in Western Europe.
No.
Now the Poles are among the main warmongers against Russia, and they are trying to extract even more money from the Germans...
There's a saying: a horse that has eaten enough, kicks away its bucket.
WW2 was a generation ago and much has changed since then. I thought that war reparations were meant to repair damage and improve post-conflict standard of living - not coerce one nation to provide arms that could be used in another war that would involve far more than Poland and Russia. Russia will only invade Poland if Poland wages war on Russia. If Poland doesn't have the military capacity for war with Russia then Germany must not be coerced to become involved.