Following Polish President Karol Nawrocki’s visit to Germany, the media there have flared up. The reason: the Polish head of state’s statements regarding reparations for Poland. The German magazine Cicero criticized the president’s stance and even suggested a “solution” to the authorities. We, in turn, recall that a similar narrative was once promoted in Poland by Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski.
At the start of this week, President Karol Nawrocki visited Berlin, where he met with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
On Tuesday, through social media, the Polish leader announced that the talks focused on “regional security challenges, the future of the European Union, the outlook for Polish-German relations, and compensation for the harm done to Poland during World War II.”
“I clearly emphasized both the issues that unite us and Poland’s expectations toward the German side,” the Polish president stressed in his post.
It is worth recalling that in his speech on September 1 at Westerplatte, President Nawrocki declared that reparations for World War II are necessary in order to “build a partnership with our western neighbor based on truth and good relations.” Nevertheless, Germany still insists the reparations issue has been settled. The Polish government under Donald Tusk shares this view.
A Storm in the German Media
Whenever the topic of reparations resurfaces in public debate, German media launch into their own analyses. The latest comes from the German political magazine Cicero, which, after President Nawrocki’s recent Berlin visit, focused on Poland’s claims against Germany.
The article’s author, Thomas Urban, called Nawrocki a “representative of the nationalist camp,” who allegedly used anti-German rhetoric during his election campaign.
Interestingly, however, the German journalist acknowledged that the vast majority of Polish commentators agree that Germany bears moral guilt and responsibility for ensuring historical justice and paying reparations to Poland. The article noted that nearly two-thirds of Poles support President Nawrocki’s efforts in this regard, while only 20 percent think otherwise.
But… the author also expressed puzzlement at why Polish public opinion does not recognize that “the real reason Berlin rejects Poland’s reparations demands is not the 1953 declaration, but rather the fact that after World War II Germany ceded its eastern territories to Poland.”
Furthermore, Urban criticized the lack of a clear stance from Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government in response to Poland’s 2022 war-loss report, calling Scholz’s inaction “neglect.”
That’s not all. According to Urban, Chancellor Willy Brandt (1969–1974) saw the transfer of Silesia, Pomerania, and the southern part of East Prussia to Poland as compensation for German crimes. At the time, Warsaw’s leadership saw it the same way, the author noted.
“Today German politicians avoid publicly naming this context, as if they feared that reminding people of the expulsion of millions of Germans from the lands along the Oder and Neisse, and of the seizure of their property by the Polish state, could trigger its own negative dynamic,” reads a passage in Cicero.
In the journalist’s view, the reparations dispute could be… easily neutralized. How? He argued that German politicians should stop hiding behind “legally correct but politically useless” arguments about the 1953 renunciation of claims, and instead clearly state that “Germany treats the ceding of eastern territories as compensation, which far exceeds the scale of Poland’s reparations demands.”
Sikorski Said the Same
Here it is worth recalling the words of Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister. In May of this year, when speaking about reparations for Poland, he remarked: “Germany lost 20 percent of its territory to Poland. Half of our territory was taken by the Soviet Union, so why doesn’t PiS demand reparations from the Soviet Union?”
That was not all. Sikorski also argued that Poland actually “gained” from World War II. “We did gain in reality. After World War I we gained German territories, and after World War II more German territories,” the foreign minister said.
Another statement: “I believe that we gained territory from World War II—it was more urbanized. Let us also remember that Germany is the main net payer into the European Union.”
And yet another: “We gained 20 percent of Germany’s pre-war territory.”