Poland demands $1.3 trillion from Germany as WWII reparations

Europe, News September 4, 2022 , by IRIA No Comments

Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski demanded that Germany should pay the World War II reparations equivalent to some $1.3 trillion to Poland for WWII losses.

“The sum that was presented was adopted using the most limited, conservative method, it would be possible to increase it,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski, nd leader of the country’s nationalist ruling party the Law and Justice Party (PiS)said during a news conference on September 1, 2022.

A German Foreign Office spokesperson replied to Poland’s demand by stating that “The German government’s position is unchanged, the reparations question is closed. Poland renounced further reparations a long time ago, in 1953, and has since repeatedly confirmed this.”

After the end of World War II, communist-led Poland relinquished its WWII damages claims in 1953 as dictated by the Soviet Union. The agreement was an attempt to make allies with East Germany at that time.

Six million Poles including three million Polish Jews were killed during WWII while Warsaw and many other major cities were left in rubble after German forces raged a brutal attack on its neighbor in 1944.

The current ruling party of Poland says that the 1953 relinquishment agreement is void and invalid due to the fact that Poland was unable to negotiate at that time and the agreement was forged by the Soviet Union rather than the Polish people. Hence, it demands that Germany must pay all the damages and losses that Poland suffered due to the second war.

Poland is Germany’s largest trade partner as well as a fellow European Union and NATO member nation. The ruling party had estimated the country’s WWII damages to be $850 billion in 2019, a number which has now increased to $1.3 trillion.

^{Recreation of the devastation wrought on the city of Warsaw in WWII. In this image, 63,000 model buildings were created from 1,600 historical photos. (Image Credit: Warsaw Uprising Museum and Platige Image/AP)}

Poland’s nationalist ruling party has been demanding compensation from Germany since it came to power in 2015 but never made an official demand through its diplomatic channels. Germany claims that all war-related compensations have been settled.

The PiS party often uses the combative stance against Germany to gain political benefits in local politics and to mobilize support in domestic politics. However, such tactics have stained the relations between Warsaw and Berlin. The situation has intensified further especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022. Poland has increased its criticism of Germany for its dependence on Russian gas and its slow response to helping Ukraine.

Despite gathering a lot of international criticism for its ultra-nationalist narratives and over-the-top demands from the EU and NATO, Poland’s PiS party is still gathering a lot of internal public support as it leads in many of the opinion polls in the country. However, the party’s popularity has been damaged recently due to the increasing inflation and skyrocketing gas prices in the country as well as economic slowdown.