For what the Germans owe Poland one trillion U.S. dollars?

Probably, Polish-German relations are better now than at almost any time heretofore:-)

I am genuinely pleased that this is the case, maybe my view has been Poisoned by the press I have been exposed to.

Again I am conservative but no JK fan, his outbursts worry me.

no, it pops up because that issue is real and because German state inverter much too much into internal Polish affairs trying not only to influence a political scene in Poland but to be a back seat driver.

Polish national interest and German national interest are not exactly aligned. Germany should agnoladge it and we could work out our differences in as much amicable manner as possible or you can continue your stance i.e. our way or no way.

If you do the answer will be obviously - no way. If you believe that PiS is a problem you're fooling yourself.


That got to be illegal and to me sound menacing. Prompting up PO with the German (secret services) money is not exactly a sign of friendship.

Germans seem to collectively suffer from the OSD.


Really? IF Poland would screwed up their own judicial system it is an internal Polish affair, no need for you to butt your nose into it. However your pet project the north stream and the north stream II are both set to undermining a security of Poland (and other eastern European countries) . In fact Germany is guilty of breaking of so called EU solidarity (possibly its go against a spirit if not the letter of some EU treaties too)

Ironside, do you then believe that there's any hope for Polish-German relations or is it otherwise doomed to failure?

Germans respect power. Poland ain't that powerful right now. Germans have their own national interest which goes against the Polish national interest. Could that be mended in the future. Yes, I believe there is hope for the future Polish-German relations provided that Germany will not stubborn refuse to adjust to the change. Instead of dealing with a post-commie Poland they'll have to deal with Poland.

Sounds to me at any rate that a lot of "fence-mending" is needed on both sides of the Oder-Neisse Line.
Thanks, Ironside.

act of kneeling before the Monument of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising which is different - and Germany has payed almost zilch to Poland in reparations

The 1/4 of its former territory that the Soviets handed over to Poland doesn't count?

That was supposed compensation for Polish land stolen by the Soviets in the east , very poor compensation considering I had to buy land in Silesia when my family used to own 20 times as much in the east, before it was stolen and they were sent to Siberia.

So no it does not account for what was stolen, or the half of my family that died of starvation and sickness in Siberia.

But I dont want a penny, what I do want is a new generation of Poles,German's and Jews that can move forward together and build a better future for all.

Germany has been made to feel of late as though she owes EVERYBODY something!! Merkel has already appointed some type of "Special Arbiter" (Sonderbeauftragter) to handle the issue of funds the German government allegedly should (or shouldn't!) pay out to, among others, Poland, Israel, Holocaust survivors world wide, Italy for WWII, Lord knows whom else:-)

Small wonder therefore that on top of everything, such as the entire migrant business, that Germans are becoming even more emotionally strapped and pushed to the limit than they already have been now for several decades!

that is an own goal and they cannot blame anyone but Merkel (and themselves for standing by her)


Southern Europe dealing with crippling debt and massive youth unemployment (largely due to having to share a pretend currency with Germany) is probably not too sympathetic.

Every discussion on here gets round to that subject. Almost obsessively.

Can one be blamed for that, jon?

@Maf, you're right. Then again, the Germans have also been blamed for their very economic boom following the War, much of that success having been built squarely on the backs of foreign (as well as Jewish) slave labor!!

Quite an irony, isn't it?

Yes a hot potato, But i do not think the subject or reperations would have been raised by Poland if her merkel has not tried to twist the knife into Poland over accepting her excess migrant hordes for whom she opened the door.

Call it tit for tat or countersuit, Poland is having nothing of her little maxist,trotsky (EU), commie, lefty globalist ideology

She didn't; the countries requesting help are the ones where the migrants are arriving, i.e. the ones in the south. Saying that she did is as inaccurate as saying that Germans owe Poland one trillion dollars.


She didn't open the door, she simply said that Germany would meet its legal obligations. Saying that she did open the door is as inaccurate as saying that Germans owe Poland one trillion dollars.


I see we can add Marxist and Trotskyite (assuming those were the words you were trying to write) and communist to the list of words you use but don't know the meaning of. Your use of those words is as inaccurate as saying that Germans owe Poland one trillion dollars or saying that you personally did not benefit from one country's decision to do what Poland now refuses to do.

One that perennially distracts from the main issues.


This is very true.


Sadly yes. Emotion rather than precision.

I roundly concur with that last post:-)

I contemplated on this topic a lot of. One trillion isn`t enough. I repeat, it isn`t enough.

Go buzz off, crow!

You disagree? Man, that what Germans did to Poles is final crime, disgusting genocide and ethnocide. Germans simple don`t have enough money to repay that

The Germans always get the brunt of everybody's discontents, don't they? Perhaps, this may be their "eternal punishment" for being deemed forever guilty:-)

Pity.

Yes It is a pity, also its sad that in your eyes Poland will always have to be punished in the same way.

@Lyzko

Yes sure, Czarnybog now stabbing his penis into the Germany.

Quite the contrary, dolno. Poland was merely a pawn in Germany's hands. They were definitely NOT the instigators of mass murder. No, that had to come from a technologically more advanced society:-)

Polish government moves to quell demands for German reparations

lmtonline.com/news/article/Polish-government-moves-to-quell-demands-for-11859187.php

To be honest, I am surprised that the treaties of 1990 and 1991 between Germany and Poland don't get more attention, probably because they are damning for the Polish case. To clarify, back the Polish government intented a final recognition of the Oder-Neisse-line by the German government, which the German government granted, with the addition that the issues of reparations also had to be permanently settled (this was discussed between Helmut Kohl and Tadeusz Mazowieck). Germany agreed that it would pay several bns in reparation via funds, and the Polish government readily accepted, knowing that there was no way Bonn could be expected to pay more than that, and also having received the pledge by Kohl that he would offer Poland cheap credits and do everything he could in helping Poland enter the EU as soon as possible. It was in total a very good deal for Poland back then under the circumstances (if Warsaw had not been so paranoid about the Oder-Neisse-line and focused more on other issues, they might even have received more, but that is on them).

No, it doesn't.


I disagree, it was a very good deal for Germany. Not so good for Poland but I can't blame it on Germany. It was the fault of post-commies, those ill prepared fools haven't been able to get it right. Still is was better than nothing.

However contrary to your claim there is no settlement regarding reparations. As there is no this alleged agreement from 1953 you claimed settled the issue. The only info about that mythical agreement from 1953 is a one article in a newspaper (a German newspaper).

The some with those Kohl-Mazowiecki talks. It just smokescreen. Sure they were talking but nit about reparations.

Because the Soviets took Polish territory in the east? Then Poland should talk to Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania about compensation; not Germany.

Everything was already settled with the Potsdam Agreement, I don't know why people even bother going to 1953.

loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-ust000003-1207.pdf

Section III of the above-linked protocol of proceedings approved on August 2, 1945 at the Berlin (Potsdam) Conference, titled "Reparations from Germany", begins by addressing the very subject of this thread:

"1. Reparation claims of the U.S.S.R. shall be met by removals from the zone of Germany occuppied by the U.S.S.R., and from appropriate German external assets.

2. The U.S.S.R. undertakes to settle the reparation claims of Poland from its own share of reparations."

Later, the Soviet occupied portion of Germany became the GDR, which officially announced a status of non-succession. However, this did not prevent the USSR and Poland from extracting further reparations from the GDR between 1949 and 1953. On August 22nd, Moscow announced it was waiving its claims to any further reparations from the GDR, and on the next day Warsaw did the same.

Finally, in 1990 the Final Settlement was signed, where the FRG accepted upon itself the obligations of the former GDR, and the next year Germany and Poland signed their own agreement. Case closed.

Though the agreements of 1945 should be enough to make this a mute discussion, the agreements from 1953, 1990, and 1991 surely seal this matter.

For those interested there is a whole book on the matter of state succession to international responsibility that also specifically discusses Polish reparations as a case study:

books.google.com/books/about/State_Succession_to_International_Respon.html?id=52kd9sU-Pf4C

Unfortunately it is a limited preview and the full book is $250

Mind you, it would be wrong to lay all the blame on a single group of actors. If there was anything all the political actors in Poland could agree on back then, it was the demand of the final recognition of the Western Polish border (which was never in question in Germany, but Kohl insisted that such a binding legal agreement could only be made after German reunification, not before).


I thought PiS called the agreement of 1953 invalid, thus admitting that such an agreement indeed happened. The treaty itself received little attention until PiS brought it up, because the Warsaw treaty in 1970 and the treaties of 1990 and 1991 are deemed more important overall and have settled the issue conclusively.


The issue of reparations (and minority rights for Germans in Poland) was intensely discussed between Kohl and Mazowiecki. This is easily verifiable in any decent historical book about the German reunification. Both sides agreed that any large claims against Germany would be harmful for Polish interests because a) the issue had been largely settled with the treaties of 1953 and 1970 b) it would in return cause Germans expelled from Western Poland seek reparations c) Poland had no way to enforce those claims and no German government could agree to them and survive d) Poland recognized that it would need German support to win access to the EU and that there were huge opportunities for economic cooperation.

@Bobko Thanks for the link, my university library has full digital access to the book, so I might be reading in once I have more time in a few weeks.

Just wanted to add to my previous post, by saying that it would be pretty ironic if Poland brought a non-succession argument to international courts to void the previous agreements (a odious debt-type argument, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odious_debt) after completely ignoring the GDR's identical argument in 1949 in relation to the Third Reich.

@Tacitus

That's great regarding the library access. I miss mine so much... Make use of it!

The good news for the non-students, is that it seems the free preview shows the Polish-related pages. I'll try to link it here:

books.google.com/books?id=P-mwCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA166&lpg=PA166&dq=poland+gdr+reparations&source=bl&ots=RxFtoThIsI&sig=qiCvL73alyifUCrfjFZtH8C9cI8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUjcmTvevVAhUCmoMKHRHkA1IQ6AEINjAC#v=onepage&q=poland%20gdr%20reparations&f=false