President Karol Nawrocki spectacularly unblocked transatlantic relations, but the issue of war reparations from Germany—as much suggests—will have to wait until Donald Tusk’s government is gone for good. German diplomats say off the record that if PiS had won the last parliamentary elections, the payouts would already have begun—this is what emerges from the conversations I have conducted. Even before President Nawrocki’s visit to Washington, Radosław Sikorski publicly suggested that “it will be good” if only there is no reduction in the U.S. military presence in Poland. Meanwhile, Nawrocki achieved far more: President Donald Trump announced an increase in U.S. forces stationed in our country. At roughly the same time, Sikorski also declared that “the issue of reparations is hopeless.” Perhaps that is the case for the government, but it does not necessarily have to be so in practice.
My interlocutor, who cooperates with German diplomacy and wishes to remain anonymous, states outright that when the negotiations conducted by PiS MP Arkadiusz Mularczyk entered a decisive phase in 2023, the German side was essentially ready to start paying Poland. One condition was set, and quite openly: PiS must win the next elections. This shows that Berlin had assumed in advance the hardline conditions formulated by a PiS government, while expecting a more cautious approach from any coalition led by the Civic Platform.
At that stage, no concrete sums were deliberately mentioned, which allowed the talks to remain flexible and avoided politically “cementing” figures before a payment structure and legal instruments were developed. This was the situation two years ago, when the window of opportunity—although narrow—remained ajar.
The Alleged 2024 Offer and Its Fate
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government realized that sooner or later the issue would have to be resolved diplomatically. According to my sources, in January 2024 a package worth around €6 billion appeared on the table. A modest sum compared to the nearly €1.3 trillion in war damages reported by Mularczyk’s expert team, but nevertheless a starting point for further arrangements. The package had a mixed structure: it envisaged transferring two or more submarines to Poland, co-financing the reconstruction of the Saxon Palace, and benefits for the last surviving victims and witnesses of the occupation. After Olaf Scholz’s visit to Warsaw in July 2024, Witold Jurasz—a former diplomat and Onet columnist known for criticizing PiS-era diplomacy—suggested that Donald Tusk had rejected the proposal as too modest. Indeed, at some point the Polish MFA signaled that the offer did not meet Poland’s minimal expectations, but no consistent, detailed counterproposal was put forward at the same time—a standard in diplomacy that helps keep talks alive and gradually shift boundaries.
The biggest problem turned out to be Warsaw’s subsequent passivity. Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Minister Radosław Sikorski adopted a rule that could be summed up as: “we won’t go begging,” and simply waited for another offer from Berlin. Such a tactic—call it “anti-diplomacy”—had to end the way it did: negotiations froze, and the Germans quietly began withdrawing elements of the preliminary arrangements. As a result, nothing remained, and on the German side the conviction solidified that as long as the current team governs in Warsaw, the matter requires no urgent moves. A country that generates no pressure, builds no leverage, and conducts no consistent variant dialogue naturally loses influence, even if its historical and moral arguments are strong.
There Was Pressure, but It Ended After the Change of Power
Under PiS, pressure regarding reparations was incomparably greater and systemic. Warsaw tied the issue of compensation to the security and strategic cooperation agenda, mobilized allies in the U.S., engaged influential Jewish circles in America, and fed the Anglo-Saxon front with English-language publications and legal expertise. Such actions created leverage that Berlin could not ignore, because the political cost of dismissing Polish demands was rising not only in Europe but also across the Atlantic. The difference between that approach and the current one lies not so much in rhetoric, but in operational consistency: pressure was a daily practice, not a series of press conferences.
German diplomacy and services understand that theoretically—even through nervous rescue moves—the Tusk government could also “reheat” the reparations issue if it were cornered in domestic politics. Warning signals are already appearing. In German public space, the theme of alleged “Polish co-responsibility” for the Holocaust is increasingly emphasized, which in practice serves to blur German responsibility and neutralize Polish demands. In Poland, these narratives find sympathetic reception in circles critical of traditional memory policy, leading to disputes over institutions, research directions, and the language used to describe the occupation.
Peter Oliver Loew from the German Institute for Polish Affairs in Darmstadt and Stefan Locke, the Polish correspondent of FAZ, have recently begun writing and speaking about alleged Polish complicity. The issue has also been taken up by circles in Poland linked to Germany. At the same time, the Polish Pilecki Institute—dealing, among other things, with Polish memory culture in Germany—was quickly neutralized by Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, a longtime German grant recipient, described in the Polish press as a person with questionable connections that the Internal Security Agency should investigate.
A Realistic Path of Pressure
If Warsaw wants to seriously re-enter the game—after a possible change of government—it must pursue a very active policy, legally refined and embedded in a broader allied ecosystem. It is not enough to wait for Berlin’s move—coherent packages must be formulated, in which memory, compensation, and current security interests are interwoven in a way that is clear to Germany and politically costly to reject.
In practice, this means linking reparations talks to defense and industrial projects, tightening transatlantic cooperation, building regional coalitions with countries with similar occupation experiences (Greece, Namibia, etc.), and investing in English-language expert infrastructure—from publications and congressional seminars to legal actions. For the latter, updating expertise on the effects of the 1953 declaration, the status of post-war legal architecture, and the FRG’s compensation practices after 1990 is especially key. Hard legal instruments and historical facts must go hand in hand, because without documented microhistories—names, places, dates, source materials—even morally obvious claims dissolve in narrative disputes. Other important elements include cooperation with the diaspora and consistent presence in Anglo-Saxon media, where part of the memory and legitimacy disputes are decided.
As long as Tusk’s government does not abandon its strategy of passivity and move from “anti-diplomacy” to real negotiations, however, the issue will wither, and Berlin will feel no compulsion to reopen it. The presidential office alone will not be able to carry the matter as easily as it turned the government’s disastrous transatlantic policy into a success. Let us not forget that on the other side stands a state that has been playing the memory and legal game to perfection for decades.
Even if the current coalition loses power, the next government—if it chooses to move forward on reparations—must be prepared for a true narrative and diplomatic war. It will have to respond to attempts to portray Poles as “Hitler’s accomplices” not with outrage, but with scholarship: factually documented evidence, long-term work in the West, and consistency in formulating and enforcing its own proposals. If we do this with a plan and with Washington’s support, Germany will eventually yield—not because it changes its mind, but because it changes its cost calculation.