In a recent interview with the German news agency DPA, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced that Poland would continue to press for reparations for the suffering and damage caused by Nazi Germany’s war of aggression, occupation and genocide.
Morawiecki explained that against this background, he had initiated the establishment of a research institute to be named after the prominent Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski. He added that “the issue was never off the table because Poland was treated very badly and has not yet received any reparations”. The institute is to systematize various existing studies in this area and pursue claims against Germany. In particular, this involves the study by a parliamentary commission that was set up in 2017 to determine the war damage in the country that was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1939 and occupied until 1945. Although its chairman Arkadiusz Mularczyk declared the work to be completed in 2020, according to Morawiecki, the commission has been asked to add further information. According to Polish estimates, which are based on an inventory from 1946 plus interest, the damage amounts to at least 800 billion euros. Speaking to DPA, Morawiecki announced that no decision had yet been made on what exactly should happen with the report. “What is certain, however, is that we are currently preparing everything to present it to the world.” In 2019, a member of that very commission caused a stir when he said that the draft law could actually exceed 887 billion euros (1 trillion US dollars).
Warsaw is not alone in its efforts to obtain reparations. Greece has also recently renewed its demands to Berlin. A spokesperson for the foreign ministry in Athens confirmed that the “issue remains on the table”.
Long since done?
From a German perspective, the reparation claims against Germany that arose as a result of Nazi injustice during the Second World War have long since been settled. Although the so-called “London Debt Agreement” of 1953 stipulated that “further arrangements for German reparations payments should be governed by a formal peace treaty”, no such treaty was ever signed. At the end of the 1950s, Germany also agreed reparation agreements with twelve countries to compensate for Nazi injustice. At the time, Greece received 115 million Deutschmarks – taking inflation into account, almost 300 million euros in today’s value. With regard to the 1953 waiver of reparations, which was also signed by the People’s Republic of Poland and the German Democratic Republic, the Polish side claims that this only came about under duress from Moscow, as both nations were not sovereign at the time and were part of the Soviet Union’s Eastern Bloc. The German government considers any further claims to have been settled by the so-called “Two Plus Four Treaty” at the latest. However, this agreement, which was concluded in 1990 between the GDR, the Federal Republic of Germany and the four victorious powers – the USA, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain – for German reunification, does not explicitly address the issue of reparations and restitution. However, a 2017 paper by the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag states: “In the opinion of the Federal Government (…) the treaty nevertheless also regulates reparation claims. This is because the moratorium on any reparation claims provided for in the London Agreement of 1953 ‘expired’ with the ‘Two Plus Four’ treaty.”
In 2018, the leader of the Polish ruling Law and Justice party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, claimed that Poland had never given up its claim to reparations from Germany. In Poland, the shifting of the Polish border to the west after the end of the war in 1945 often goes unmentioned. Poland was awarded half of East Prussia, two thirds of Pomerania, 90 percent of Silesia and the Neumark by the Allies. The trauma of several partitions and exterminations
On the other hand, Poles – as a historian from the new Gdansk World War II Museum mentioned to the author in September, for example – immediately and passionately counter that these areas were originally Polish territories until the Polish trauma of the partitions of 1792 and 1795 and the disappearance of Poland. A brief historical digression is necessary here: After the Prussians defeated the uprising led by the Lithuanian cavalry general Tadeusz Kosciuszko (against the reality of the partition in 1792), they conquered Warsaw under General Alexander Suvorov on November 8, 1795 and caused a terrible bloodbath among the army and population there. Reports speak of 8,000 soldiers and 12,000 civilians killed. Russia, Austria and Prussia used the uprising as an opportunity for a total partition and the elimination of Polish statehood. Russia was awarded the territories east of the Bug and Njemen (Memelland), Courland and Lithuania and thus swallowed up the Ruthenian-Ukrainian parts of Poland, 62 percent of the country and 45 percent of the population. Austria received (as compensation for Belgium lost to France) the main part of Lesser Poland (Western Galicia), 18 percent of the country or around 84,000 square kilometers and 32 percent of the population (a total of 2.67 million people). This included the important cities of Krakow, Sandomir, Lublin and Radom. Prussia was left with the rest of Poland, 20 percent of the land and 23 percent of the population – Pomerania or New East Prussia and New Silesia, including Warsaw, which the other powers did not want because of its rebelliousness. Frederick II could especially feel like a winner, as he had obtained the land connection to East Prussia that the Hohenzollerns had been striving for for generations, whose predominantly ethnic German inhabitants were also easy to integrate. He also gained control over the lucrative Polish foreign trade via the Baltic Sea with the Vistula customs duties. In a supplementary treaty in 1797, the partitioning powers agreed to abolish the name “Poland”. The name thus disappeared from the maps until its re-establishment in 1918. Immediately afterwards, the new state – surprisingly also militarily victorious – had to assert itself against the Red Army of the equally new USSR until 1920. By 1939, however, Hitler and Stalin had already ended Poland’s existence.
Tales of suffering versus tales of heroism
You need to know all this if you want to understand the Poles – including today’s EU tensions. The aforementioned museum of the Second World War, which opened in 2017 at the Stara Stocznia (Old Shipyard) in Gdansk and is well worth a visit, is a great help in this respect, as it reflects the suffering of the Polish people from the invasion in 1939, through the cruel occupation, forced labor and deportation, to the underground war by the Polish “Home Army” – according to its original holistic didactic concept. The civilian experience of the war for all Poles should be shown, but also in a European context. As explained in a private tour, the project by star architect Daniel Liebeskind cost half a billion zlotys (more than 100 million euros) and is largely arranged underground around a central “trench” covering an area of 5,000 square meters. It is one of the largest historical museum exhibitions in the world. An outdoor exhibition with a nature trail connects the museum with the Westerplatte peninsula, the stretch of coast where the Second World War began with the shelling and landing of troops by the old German battleship “Schleswig-Holstein” on the morning of September 1, 1939. The famous “Polish Post Office”, from which resistance was put up against the Gdansk SS for 36 hours in the first hours of September 1 until it was fumigated, is also located just a few minutes’ walk inland. Incidentally, the SS used two Steyr ADGZ wheeled tanks, which the Germans had taken over in Austria the previous year (twelve were in service with the army at the time, six with the security guards and eight with the gendarmerie).
Back to the museum: the aggression, conquest and oppression of Poland by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union can be seen and felt right from the entrance area. A fierce domestic political debate is currently raging over the interpretive sovereignty of the museum. This is because the Second World War is the linchpin of national Polish historical politics in Poland and there is a constant battle over Poland’s role as a victim. And it is a tough one, and not just since the change of power in 2015 to the current ruling PiS party of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. The latter had accused the founder and first director of the museum, Pawel Machcewicz, of dividing the Polish people from the outset – also personally on the part of its “eminence grise” Jaroslaw Kaczynski. The chosen approach – which also includes, for example, Polish massacres of Jews with German approval – is “a blow to Poland’s exceptional position and Polish heroism”, according to Kaczynski. Instead, today’s political leadership wants the achievements of Polish troops, such as the Polish fighter pilots in the “Battle of Britain”, to be honored. Or the storming of Monte Cassino, which blocked the way to Rome for months, by Polish soldiers, the Polish airborne brigade near Arnhem, the war-decisive cracking of the German Einigma rotor key machine (which was kept secret for 30 years), first in Poland and then at Bletchley Park.
In spring 2017, shortly after the opening of the museum, the Minister of Culture fired Director Machcewicz and replaced his crew with a more approving team led by Karol Nawrocki. Since then, the show has also included the heroic deeds of Polish soldiers and a small animated film illustrates the country’s self-image – as a state crushed by two huge presses between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which helped the Western free world so much during the war and was then left behind the Iron Curtain anyway. Conclusion: The war only ended for Poland in 1989!
“Battle of Britain” – Poles scored the most kills!
Speaking of the “Battle of Britain”: It is probably little known in this country that during the highly critical phase of the air battles, Polish soldiers in exile were the most successful squadrons and pilots, shooting down the most German aircraft. After shooting down 43 German aircraft in Poland itself with their outdated PZL.11c (according to the Bajan Commission) and – after fleeing to Romania with 116 aircraft – another 50 aircraft in the battle for France on MS.406, the Poles, with 149 – in contrast to many British – well-trained fighter pilots in two squadrons, were the largest group of foreign pilots in the British day fighter in terms of numbers in the summer of 1940. Their squadron 303 (Polish 303 Dywizjon Myśliwski “Warszawski im. Tadeusza Kościuszki”), stationed in Northolt near London, was only allowed to take part in the fighting with their Hawker Hurricane late in the day after initial snobbish British mistrust and undoubtedly necessary language training – just at the time (August 31 to October 11, 1940) when the RAF began to show weakness in personnel in the decisive phase of the battle. The squadron scored 126 kills, by far the highest number of any British fighter squadron involved. Seven Poles and one Czech were killed in the air battles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMVkIpt_yZ8 Still legendary today and honored annually in Northolt (see also here and here) are aces such as Cumbach, Frantisek (actually a Czech), Glowacki, Urbanowicz or Paszkiewicz, all with between 15 and 17 air victories. The commander-in-chief of RAF Fighter Command, Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, had to admit afterwards: “Had it not been for the magnificent effort of the Polish squadrons and their unsurpassed bravery, I hesitate to say that the outcome of the battle would have been the same.”
