The story about German- Polish reconciliation

The cynic in me takes that as meaning we, the taxpayers, will get f**ked.
Seriously though


It's all good.

Do Merkel and Tusk have to actually consummate the relationship as representatives of the government or does President Komorowski have to do it with 72 year old President Joachim Gauck?

Either way, I hope they don't televise it.

LOL........just the thought....Hahaha

We know how it all ended - The Berlin Wall came down and Germans began the reunification of two German states.

Polish politicians who ruled Poland at the time didn`t oppose the idea. They said: Poles, who fought for independence for so long, cannot deprive others of the right of self-government.

dw.de/dw/article/0,,6070413,00.html

After that, one of the most important Polish-German acts took place.

In the village of Krzyżowa, Polish Prime Minister and German Chancellor embraced each other and declared Polish German friendship for ever.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krzyżowa,_Świdnica_County

Von Moltke`s Palace





What was the main motive of two politicians` meeting in Krzyżowa?

Preparation to signing important treaties between two countries.

Article from 1989:


articles.latimes.com/1990-11-09/news/mn-4133_1_polish-prime-minister

A year later, Nov 1990, Poland and Germany signed a border treaty.



In 1991 Poland and Germany signed a friendship treaty:



The guys met 20 years later

PEACE!!! At last... :):):):)

So,did they pay us war reparations or am I missing something?Anyway, as soon we will have Polish government without volksdeutch at the helm this "friendship" will be over unless they pay $1Trilion for what they stole and destroyed during the last war.

You had plenty of chances prior to 2007 to demand such repatriations, so why now?

Keep on dreaming.

Yes and no.


Yes.


I hope not.

I live in Poland, you live in US.

Why do you meddle into Polish German affairs? ?????

Silesia, Pomerania, East Prussia and East Brandenburg (Lubusz) and the territory of the Free City of Danzig should be considered as reparations.

Poles don`t consider these territories as reparations but merely a compensation for the lands lost in the East on behalf of the Soviet Union. Untouched Polish cities in the East like Lvov and Wilno were traded for destroyed Gdańsk and Wrocław.

And the myth of better developed ex-German lands doesn`t hold water here as Poles know that most ex-German cities were destroyed and required extensive rebuilding, and the facilities and industries were not only heavily damaged or destroyed but also stolen/robbed by the Red Army. Even ex-German railway tracks were removed and transported to the USSR.

Poles had to start from the scratch, so called.

Correct me if I am too opinionated on it. :):):):)

From a Polish point of view it seems to make perfect sense to see the "northern and western territories" as a compensation, because the Russians or Soviets only returned Podlachia with Białystok to Poland in 1945 and kept the rest of their share from the "4th Polish partition" for the Soviet Union and their successor states.

From a German point of view the loss of all territories east of Oder-Neisse surely is seen a reparation to Poland. Of course this does not necessarliy mean we are even regarding Nazi Germany's crimes towards the Polish society. Most Germans therefore don't expect Poles to say "thank you" for these territories, I just wanted to write something because Grubas' statement that Poland received nothing from Germany as a compensation is simply not true.

It is not that the Polish state only received the territory but also the private property (or what was left of it admittedly) from all of its 7 million former inhabitants. Yes, most cities were destroyed and plundered.

I don't want to sound cynical now, but looking at the experiences West Germans made in rebuilding their destroyed cities, it seems to be much easier to rebuild an almost completely destroyed city than to build a new city on the field. Look how my homecity of Frankfurt looked in May 1945:



Only 10 years later Frankfurt was one most important business locations of Western Europe. The reason is much of the infrastructure is still there, like streets, canalisation, foundations and so on.

Don't get me wrong, my Polish friends. I've been to Poland for the first time in 2010. I spent ten days in your country. First in Poznan, then Torun, then Gdansk, and after Gdansk we took a trip along the Baltic See over Ustka, then Kolobreg until Miedzyzdroje and then over Szczecin back to Germany.

I enjoyed it very much. The way you rebuild Torun und Gdansk is just stunning. I also liked the city center of Szczecin. I was a bit disappointed from Kolobrzeg, but it does not look uglier than medium sized cities in Eastern Germany. I have great respect for the Polish reconstruction efforts. My respect even gets bigger if I imagine that you rebuild those cities without receiving hundreds of millions of Marshall plan Dollars from the Americans, as West Germans did from 1947 to 1955.

So does it sound right to you if I write Poland got a halfway compensation from Germany in the form of the Oder-Neisse territories while the Russians so far returned nothing to you?

True.Reparations from Uncle Joe (Soviets) for land lost in the East and we are still roughly 80000 sq km in red.


Really?Then since you are so generous ,we the Poles will give you part of Netherlands as a token of good will.

The size of a country is not important but what is on that territory. Otherwise Russia, Canada and Denmark (with Greenland) would be the world's major powers. Germany now is 40 percent smaller as it was in 1912 but it's economic importance is bigger than ever.


You are getting cynical, Grubas.

Yes, Germany did not volonteer to transfer her territories east of Oder-Neisse to Poland in 1945, but Germany has accepted it. And the former German inhabitants of those territories have it, too! Germany and Austria did everything to integrate the 12 million German refugees, so now they don't cause any harm or trouble, unlike the Palestinians that were expelled from what is now Israel in 1948. Many of them still live in refugee camps, still possess the keys to houses that no longer exist for over 60 years, and some of them still fire rockets on Israelian territory because their primary goal is to destroy the state of Israel in order to return "home".

I can accept that. Poland need to regain their eastern lands stolen from her by Stalin.

Did you know that Kurt Schumacher, the first opposition leader of the Federal Republic of Germany was a huge friend of the Polish people?

As leader of the Social Democrats (SPD) he was the opponent of Konrad Adenauer, the Christian Conservative (CDU) first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Born in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian city Chełmno, in German times called "Kulm in Westpreußen", a city that had two thirds Polish an one third German inhabitants around 1900, most of his classmates and later friends were Poles. Like most members of the German minority in Chelmno his family lived there for centuries alongside the Polish citizens. One of his closest friends was Franciszek Raszeja, who later became a well known Polish Professor for medizine [wiki] and got killed by the Nazis in 1942 while he tried to save the life of a Jew. Their friendship even went so far that Raszeja introduced him to the forbidden Polish Philomath Society where Schumacher spent a lot of time discussing with Polish students about politics. Schumacher learned Polish from his friends and spoke it fluently.

As a convinced Social Democrat the Nazis send him to various concentration camps Schumacher only survived as a very sick man. Nevertheless after the war he succeded in the re-establishment of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. His strict anti-communism saved the Social Democrats of West Germany to become instrumentalized by East German communists.

Due to lack of communication between communist Poland and West Germany in the late 1940s and early 1950s he could not regain contacts to those of this Polish friends that survived WWII, which he always lamented about. As a sick man he died in 1952.

One of our resident brownshirts has a wet dream again... :)

What a paradox, isn`t it?


They were reasonable people so they knew that any attempt to regain their lost old land acquisitions would mean another war with Poland.


I don`t want to sound cynical but Polish cities were destroyed more thoroughly by Nazi Germans than German cities by AngloSaxon/Soviet allies:

Frankfurt



Warsaw:

From here: skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=187906&page=18


Get lost, agent of foreign influence. :):):):)


Yes, my German friend. :):):):) As for now, I don`t demand any reparations from Germany for WW2 losses.:):):):)

The final acts of official reconciliation took place in mid 1990s and early 2000s. Poland joined NATO and European Union, in both cases with substantial German support.

Today the official relations are so good that Polish Foreign Minister openly calls for Germany to be more active in Europe. It is probably caused by the fact that Obama`s US has been slowly losing interest in this part of Europe.

To achieve that, Poland needs Germany to play a much more active role in Brussels in promoting both a strong defense policy and a more creative foreign policy approach towards the EU's eastern neighbors.

carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=show&id=47677


Why not?

History shows that Poles and Germans weren`t natural born enemies, but were able to live and work together, eventually mixing into one nation.

I wrote about German settlers in Poland in this thread

I think when talking about Poland and Germany we should use the proper names Polska and Deutschland as not to offend anyone. Because some people on this forum are a little fanatic.

Why? We use English and use Poland and Germany (or the Republic of Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany, if you must) in this language.

Just like we use Polska and Niemcy in Polish.

Because the English people are Germanic and also we don't want to offend Polish people here because English is a west German dialect.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language

no, German is an east English dialect! ffs

that's actually a good joke ill definitively use that one :) thank you

not even close (so you're really an instigator, right?)

This is the most ridiculous statement I have seen in a long time.

happy to have amused you...;0)

Did your mother let you play on the internet today?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_language

English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic invaders and/or settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the Netherlands. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Britain. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_people

Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, Germanic peoples who migrated to Great Britain after the fifth century AD.

The conventional view of English origins is that the English are primarily descended from the Anglo-Saxons, Germanic tribes that migrated to Great Britain following the end of the Roman occupation of Britain, with assimilation of later migrants such as the Vikings and Normans.

eupedia.com/europe/european_y-dna_haplogroups.shtml

you should know the origins of your language...welcome

when on holiday in the mountains, every day i observe kids (boys and girls from 5 to 10) from our guesthouse whose fav game is playing war. the game starts with distributing roles: poles against germans. hihihhi.

what is unusual though, the kids labelled as "germans" have nothing against. it was impossible in my childhood - nobody wanted to be german. in result, we fought against the invisible enemy that we imagined was there in front of us. hihihi

a side remark - fighting, war, seem inborn characterisitc of a human being. curious.

When I was a kid in Bavaria/West Germany, around 1980, we played "Americans against Russians", and nobody from us wanted to be the Russian.

Funny that we never thought about being German soldiers fighting for Germany. Although we still were too young to care about history and politics we already learned that there is something very odd about German soldiers.

This is extremely interesting info.

In 1980 I had to learn German at private lessons because my mother forced me to. She claimed that only people who can speak German would be safe during the 3rd World War. She spoke from her own experience - she was a little girl during WW2. So our parents spent a lot of money on private tutors for us and I had to learn German since I was 6! Can you imagine it?

Can you speak it, is it the question?