The bilateral relations between Poland and Germany have been marked by an extensive and complicated history.[1] Currently, the relations between the two countries are friendly, with the two being allies within NATO and the European Union.
In the 10th century, the West Slavic Polan tribes under the Piast prince Mieszko I about 960 were able to establish a sovereign state around Poznań and Gniezno in an area later called Greater Poland. Mieszko's territory included Masovia beyond the Vistula river, Silesia and in 962/63 he first met with the Saxon forces of Margrave Gero, ruler of the Marca Geronis between the Saale and Bóbr rivers established in 937 by King Otto I of Germany. During the fight with Germanic duchies Mieszko I in 963 recognized Otto I as Emperor[3] In return for tribute to the newly crowned Emperor, Otto I recognized Mieszko I as amicus imperatoris ("Friend of the Emperor") and stated that he is dux Poloniae ("Duke of Poland"). As he could not prevail against Gero, Mieszko I resorted to consolidate his realm: he strengthened the relations with the Bohemian duke Boleslaus I by marrying his daughter Dobrawa and converted to Christianity in 966. The next year however, he once again entangled with the troops of the Saxon renegade Wichmann the Younger, fighting over the island of Wolin on the Baltic coast. He also had to defend the Polish border on the lower Oder river against the forces of Margrave Odo I of Lusatia at the 972 Battle of Cedynia.
Children of Głogów Monument in Głogów, commemorating the successful Polish Defense of Głogów during the German invasion of 1109
Meanwhile, Poland had to face the claims to universal power raised by Otto I when he had conquered the Kingdom of Italy and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope John XII in 962. According to the idea of the translatio imperii, the Emperor would continue the tradition of the Roman and Carolingian Empire as guardian of the Catholic Church superior to all secular and ecclesiastical rulers. Mieszko sought to improve the relations with Otto I: he appeared as amicus imperatoris at the Imperial Diet of Quedlinburg in 973 and in 978 secondly married Oda, the daughter of Dietrich of Haldensleben, margrave of the Northern March. In 984 Mieszko's son Bolesław I the Brave was married to a daughter of Margrave Rikdag of Meissen. However, in the same year the Polish ruler, instigated by Duke Boleslaus II of Bohemia, interfered in the conflict between minor King Otto III of Germany and the deposed Bavarian duke Henry the Wrangler. He timely switched sides, when he realized that Otto's mother Theophanu would gain the upper hand and in turn sparked a long-term conflict with the Bohemian dukes over Silesia and Lesser Poland. Mieszko backed the German forces several times against the revolting Lutici (Veleti) tribes (though to no avail) and until his death in 992 remained a loyal supporter of the Emperor. Nevertheless, Mieszko precautionally had the Dagome iudex document drawn up, whereby he put his realm called Civitas Schinesghe under the auspices of the Holy See.
A major German–Polish War was fought between 1003 and 1018. In 1109, Poland defeated the invading German forces at Głogów.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the Germans expanded eastwards from modern western and central Germany into the less populated regions, east of Elbe and Saale rivers, which were inhabited by Baltic, Finnic and Slavic peoples, including Poles. The area of German settlement roughly stretched from Slovenia to Estonia, and southwards into Transylvania. The phenomenon, known as "Ostsiedlung" ("east settlement", "settlement in the east") followed the territorial expansion of the Holy Roman Empire and the Teutonic Order. At various times, Germans were also encouraged by Polish rulers of the Piast dynasty to settle in Poland. Ethnic conflicts erupted between the newly arrived settlers and local populations.[4]
In the 13th century, Poland was suffering from the attacks of Pagan tribes. In response, Konrad I of Masovia hired an army of unemployed crusaders - the Teutonic Order. After the failure of converting the Old Prussians to Christianity, the Order fell into a series of conflicts with the Polish state. The Teutonic Knights invaded the Polish coastal region of Gdańsk Pomerania with the country's main port city of Gdańsk,[5] and therefore took the control of the nearly entire southeastern Baltic Sea coast. The Teutonic Knights continued to occupy the region despite papal verdicts.[5] They remained powerful until 1410, when a combined Polish-Lithuanian army was able to win a decisive victory over the Teutonic Order at Grunwald. As a result, Poland emerged as a major power in Central Europe.[6] Already in the 15th century, German theologian and writer John of Falkenberg proposed and advocated the genocide of Poles.[7] After the Battle of Grunwald, he suggested that the Polish nation, including the King, should either be enslaved or exterminated, either in its entirety, or in its majority.[7] After Poland challenged his works at the Council of Constance, his views were condemned by Pope Martin V in 1424.[7] He is considered the first writer to formulate the argument in justification of genocide of another nation.[7] During the Thirteen Years' War (1454–1466), Poland regained the territories previously annexed by the Teutonic Knights, and the remainder of the State of the Teutonic Order also became a part of the Kingdom of Poland as a fief.[8]
Under Prussian rule in areas where the Polish population lived alongside Germans a virtual apartheid existed, with bans on the Polish language and religious discrimination, besides attempts to colonize the areas with Germans.[9]Germanisation policies were pursued by Prussia and, since 1871, Germany.
The Polish November Uprising in the Russian Partition of Poland of 1830–31 triggered enthusiasm for the Polish cause among German liberals, mocked by conservatives as Polish gushing (Polenschwärmerei[de]). These German liberals however felt that their political ideals for Germany corresponded to the Polish hopes. Throughout the German lands a network of organizations devoted to supporting the Poles appeared,[10] and over 70 German doctors went to Poland to provide relief to Polish insurgents.[11] The restoration of independent Poland was advocated at the Hambach Festival of 1832 with Poles in attendance.[11] In 1832, Prussian soldiers committed massacres of interned Polish insurgents in Fiszewo and Elbląg, killing over a dozen people.[12]
Several Polish uprisings broke out, with the largest one being the Greater Poland uprising of 1848. The antagonism between the Polish and German populations dates from the Revolutions of 1848, triggered both by the Poles' desire to regain their independence and the Germans' desire to incorporate the Prussian Partition of Poland into a planned German Reich.[13] Prussian leader and founder of modern Germany, Otto von Bismarck, in regards to Poles, wrote: Hit the Poles so hard that they despair of their life; I have full sympathy with their condition, but if we want to survive, we can only exterminate them; the wolf, too, cannot help having been created by God as he is, but people shoot him for it if they can.[14] In 1863, Prussian troops pacified a protest of the Polish population in the village of Bredynki, killing more than a dozen people, fearing the outbreak of a Polish uprising.[15] Germany also carried out expulsions of Poles, and since the late 19th century, the Lebensraum concept was proliferated in Germany, and it also pertained to annexed ancient Polish territories.
Between 1870 and 1914, some 3.5 million Poles have emigrated to Germany, including 1.2 million in internal migration from Polish territories under German rule, 1.2 million from the Russian Partition of Poland and 1.1 million from the Austrian Partition of Poland,[16] including 500,000 Poles migrating to work in the industrialized Ruhr region in western Germany and forming a vibrant Polish community known as the Ruhrpolen.[17] The Ruhrpolen were also subjected to anti-Polish and Germanisation policies. Bernhard von Bülow, who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1900 to 1909, called the Polish victory over the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 the Germans' most portentous national disaster.[18]
20th and 21st century
Around 1900, the Polish national movement was organized in the Narodowa Demokracja. The geopolitical ideology of this movement was the Piast Concept, which viewed the German-Polish borderlands as the cradle of the Polish state. Its founder and principal ideologue Roman Dmowski even claimed the industrialized Prussian east as the bedrock of the Polish nation to regain independence. [19]
During World War I, Germany invaded and occupied vast areas of the Russian Partition of Poland, and in August 1914, the German Army carried out the destruction of Kalisz, one of Poland's oldest historical cities. During the war, the Polish Legions led by Józef Piłsudski initially fought on the side of Austria-Hungary and Germany against Russia, in hope of defeating at least one of the partitioning powers and restoring independent Poland at least in the former Russian Partition. Moreover, just before the outbreak of the war, some 40,000 Poles served in the Imperial German Army, and during the war the number of such conscripts rose to 850,000.[20] Conscripted Poles were often sent to the Western Front and were killed in battles there, as Germany feared potential desertions by Poles fighting on Polish soil on the Eastern Front.[21] Polish military units were also formed in Russia (Polish Armed Forces in the East) and France (Blue Army), enemies of Germany. Germany ran special prisoner-of-war camps for captured ethnic Poles from the Russian Army, with the aim of subjecting them to propaganda and conscripting them into a planned German-controlled Polish army to fight against Russia.[22] Faced with the mass reluctance and distrust from the Polish POWs, the plan failed and was abandoned.[23]
The 1914 Septemberprogramm authorized by German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg proposed the creation of a Central European Economic Union, comprising a number of European countries, including Germany and Poland, in which, as the Chancellor secretly stressed, there was to be a semblance of equality among the member states, but in fact it was to be under German leadership to stabilize Germany's economic predominance in Central Europe, with co-author Kurt Riezler admitting that the union would be a veiled form of German domination in Europe (see also: Mitteleuropa).[24][25]
German internment camp for Polish legionnaires in Łomża in 1918
Per the Act of 5th November, Germany and Austria-Hungary proclaimed the Regency Kingdom of Poland, a German-controlled puppet state. It was formed in the western part of the former Russian Partition and did not include the more north-eastern German-occupied areas of the Russian Partition, which were instead administered by the Germans as the Ober Ost. Moreover, Germany still planned the annexation of the so-called "Polish Border Strip" and expulsion of up to 3 million of its Polish inhabitants (including Polish Jews) to make room for German colonization in accordance with the Lebensraum policy.[citation needed]
Following the Oath crisis, in July 1917, the Germans arrested Józef Piłsudski and his close associate Kazimierz Sosnkowski and then imprisoned them in Magdeburg.[26] Near the end of the war, the Germans offered to release them in exchange for Piłsudski's declaration of loyalty to Germany, but Piłsudski declined.[26] Nevertheless, Piłsudski and Sosnkowski were eventually released on November 8, 1918, after the outbreak of the German Revolution of 1918–1919.[26] Three days later, Germany signed the Armistice of 11 November 1918 with the Allies, and Piłsudski proclaimed the independence of Poland. That day, during his speech in Warsaw, he declared that the Polish nation did not want revenge against the Germans for past wrongdoings.[26]
After Poland regained independence in 1918, it sought to regain its former western regions, and the Polish Greater Poland uprising of 1918–19 and Silesian Uprisings against Germany broke out in the disputed regions of Greater Poland and Upper Silesia. Eventually, Poland regained the majority of the lands lost to Prussia in the Partitions of Poland, and parts of the territories lost even earlier, including the industrialized part of Upper Silesia in 1922. Germany remained hostile to Poland and refused to regard the German-Polish border as permanent nor even Poland's independence itself. Already in 1922, Chief of the German Army Hans von Seeckt stated: Poland's existence is intolerable and incompatible with the essential conditions of Germany's life. Poland must go and will go - as a result of her internal weakness and of action by Russia - with our aid.[27]
In the late 1930s, before the German-Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II, discrimination and persecution of the Polish minority in Germany, including the indigenous Poles in the territories that remained within Germany in the interbellum, intensified.[29] Germany carried out mass arrests, expulsions, deportations to concentration camps and assassinations of local Polish leaders, activists and prominent individuals.[29] There were numerous cases of attacks on Polish property, schools, printing houses, many Polish organizations were seized, Polish press and culture centers were closed down, Polish church services were banned.[29][30] Germany carried out extensive anti-Polish propaganda, and increased censorship and confiscations of Polish press and publications.
In October 1938 Germany expelled about 17,000 Polish Jews to Poland in the Polenaktion.
On August 23, 1939, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed by Germany and the Soviet Union, which included the Secret Protocol, which divided Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland, between the two invaders. In the following days, there were several German provocations at the Polish-German border,[31] and on August 25–26, 1939 the German Abwehr attacked a Polish train station near the Polish-Slovak border, but it was repelled by the Polish Army (see Jabłonków incident). On August 28, 1939, a German saboteur carried out a train station bombing in Tarnów in southern Poland, killing 20 people and wounding 35 others. On August 31, 1939, Germany staged the Gleiwitz incident, a false flag attack which was to serve as a casus belli to justify the invasion of Poland, which started the next morning,[31] without a declaration of war.
In September 1939 Nazi Germanyinvaded Poland and partitioned the country together with the Soviet Union, and then occupied its western half. The western and northern portions of this territory were directly annexed to Germany, while in the remainder, the General Government was formed.
Nazi Germany's Directive No. 1306 stated that Polishness equals subhumanity. Poles, Jews and gypsies are on the same inferior level,[32] and the Polish population was subjected to extensive genocidal policies, including large massacres, mass expulsions, roundups, arrests, incarceration, kidnapping of Polish children, kidnapping of Polish girls and women for sexual slavery, pacification actions, extermination of mentally ill people and deportations to forced labour and concentration camps, some of which were established in occupied Polish territory (including Auschwitz, Soldau, Majdanek). The Intelligenzaktion, which was launched instantly during the invasion of Poland, was the first genocidal campaign carried out by Nazi Germany.[33] It targeted the Polish intelligentsia and Poles engaged in various activities,[33] who were considered capable of organising or leading a Polish resistance movement, which was formed and was active throughout the war regardless. The campaign was then continued from 1940 as the AB-Aktion. Over 2.8 million Poles, including women and children, were deported to slave labour, and Poles accounted for 60% of all foreign slave workers in Germany.[34] In March 1940, Germany issued the racist and repressive Polish decrees, which regulated the working and living conditions of Polish slave workers.[35][36] Polish slave workers were obliged to wear "P" badges and were subjected to strict segregation policies, with certain activities, such as sexual intercourse with German people, being punishable by deportation to concentration camps or death.[35][37] Germany also extensively looted Poland of its cultural and industrial possession and vandalized its heritage. The Catholic Church in Poland was brutally persecuted. Countless prisons and forced labour camps and several major prisoner-of-war camps were established and operated by Germany in occupied Poland, also for Allied POWs of various nationalities. In 1941 Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, attacking the Soviet Union, after which Germany also occupied the eastern half of Poland, in which it continued the extermination of Poles, with prime examples including the massacre of Lwów professors, Ponary massacre and Czarny Las massacre. Polish Jews were among the primary victims of the German-perpetrated Holocaust, and rescuing and helping Jews by Poles were both punishable by death, not only for the rescuers, but also for their entire families. In all of German-occupied Europe, such extreme measures were only imposed in Poland.
Following Operation Barbarossa, the Germans and German-held Polish forced laborers discovered the mass graves of over 4,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia who were murdered in the Katyn Forest by the Soviet Union in 1940. In April 1943, Germany exposed the crime, now known as the Katyn massacre, to the world. The Germans allowed the International Red Cross and Polish Red Cross to the site, and formed the International Katyn Commission to investigate the massacre.
At the Tehran Conference which was held in 1943, Stalin demanded that the post-war territory of Germany and Poland be redrawn further west as a buffer between the Soviet Union and Germany.
Nazi Germany killed nearly 6 million Polish citizens,[41][42] including Polish academics, doctors, lawyers, nobles, priests and others. Poland was subjected to the largest amount of destruction among all German-occupied countries during World War II.[40]
Following the defeat of Germany in 1945, anti-German sentiment was widespread among the oppressed Poles, a sentiment which was triggered by the policy which the Germans implemented during their occupation of Poland, this sentiment was reflected in the expulsion of Germans from the territories which were assigned to Poland.
During the Cold War, East Germany shared the fate of Poland, which fell into the Soviet sphere of influence, and both countries had Soviet-installed communist regimes, and therefore enjoyed good relations. In 1950, both countries signed the Treaty of Zgorzelec, which officially confirmed and recognized the Polish-East German border.
However, while the Poles were still insisting 20 years after the end of the war that the 1945 Potsdam Agreement had created favorable and just borders encompassing the entire historical territory of Poland, the GDR saw the loss of the old German East as a reparation for the Nazi crimes against the Polish nation. The FRG of the time did not yet accept the Oder-Neisse boundary. During the early Cold War, Poland–West Germany relations were generally strained.
War, flight, and expulsion from west-shifted Poland had torn apart a great many of families who pressured the German authorities to support their relatives for leaving Poland. During 1950-55, difficult negotiations for family reunions were conducted between Poland and the GDR. The GDR was very cautious not to cause Polish anger but anything that went beyond the reunification of separated spouses, minor children with their parents was rejected by the Polish authorities.
Family reunions were handled more liberally by the Polish from 1956 on but the more generous exit policy for Germans from Poland was flanked by massive attempts by the Polish and GDR authorities to influence the Germans to stay in Poland or move to the GDR. In 1959/60, as was the case several times in the 1950s, family reunifications were declared complete by the Polish and in the 1960s family reunions were handled restrictively by the Polish.
The European policy of détente at the beginning of the 1970s, and in particular the signing of the Warsaw Treaty ushered in the next phase of family reunions and departures of Germans, preferably the "autochthonous" population, from Poland, especially to West Germany. Eventually, the Polish had to realize that their assimilation policy towards the German minority - the German citizens and the so-called "autochthons" who insisted on their German ethnicity - had failed.[44]
From 1972 to 1980, Poland and East Germany enjoyed visa-free travel. Due to large anti-communist protests and the emergence of the Solidarity movement in Poland, East Germany unilaterally terminated the visa-free travel agreement and closed the border.[citation needed]
From the fall of Communism to accession (1989–2004)
Helmut Kohl and Tadeusz Mazowiecki during meeting in Krzyżowa, 1989
After the fall of communism, Poland and the reunited Germany have had a somewhat positive, but occasionally strained relationship due to sensitive political issues. In March 1990, German chancellor Helmut Kohl caused a diplomatic firestorm when he suggested that a reunified Germany would not accept the Oder–Neisse line, and implied that the Federal Republic might wish to restore the frontier of 1937, by force if necessary.[46] After the statement caused a major international backlash that threatened to halt German reunification, Kohl retracted his comments after knuckling under international rebuke, and assured both the United States and the Soviet Union that a reunified Germany would accept the Oder–Neisse line as the final border between Poland and Germany.[47]
In the 1990s, Germany opposed Poland joining NATO, according to archived German Foreign Ministry files released in 2022.[48] Germany, pursuing a pro-Russian policy, tried to discourage Poland from joining NATO during confidential discussions, and tried to convince other member countries against Poland's NATO membership.[48] Poland eventually joined NATO in 1999.
Poland, Germany and France are part of the Weimar Triangle which was created in 1991 to strengthen cooperation between the three countries.[49]
On 1 September 2022, Poland's government headed by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki presented to the public a three volume report detailing war damages caused by the German occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1945. The report, which covered both human and material loses, placed the value of wartime damages caused by the German occupation at $1.3 trillion.[51] The report also addressed the issue of post-war reparations stating that apart from the 1953 non-binding resolution made by the then communist government led by Bolesław Bierut under pressure from the Soviet Union, no official diplomatic steps were made to settle the issue of wartime reparations, and no formal diplomatic note was ever presented to the East German government informing it of Poland's intentions to renounce its reparation rights.[52][53]
On 2 October 2022, the Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau signed a formal diplomatic note asking Germany to start an official negotiations process, and on 3 October 2022 presented the diplomatic note to the visiting German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.[51]
Earlier in December 2021, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected the idea of paying further World War II reparations to Poland.[54] According to the German government, there is no legal basis for further compensation payments.[55] The Polish government rejects this view, stating that the then Polish communist government was under the sway of the Soviet Union and that its 1954 refusal is non-binding.[56]
As a consequence of aggression by Nazi Germany, Poland lost about a fifth of its population and much of Poland was subjected to enormous destruction of its industry and infrastructure.[57][58]
However, as a consequence of the Potsdam Agreement, Poland obtained a quarter of originally Polish but Germanized territory in the borders of 1937 whose largely German-speaking population which was subjected to expulsion and Polonization. The Potsdam Agreement stipulated that Soviet reparations would be satisfied from the Soviet occupation zone in Germany and that the USSR would in turn satisfy the claims of the Polish People's Republic. On the one hand, the transfer of these considerable reparations payments was dependent on the Soviet leadership but on the other hand ended comparatively late compared to the western occupation zones due to a declaration by Moscow on August 22, 1953. [59] On August 16, 1945, a treaty on distribution of German reparations had been signed in Moscow. For the Polish, this treaty became a symbol of Soviet exploitation of Poland, even theugh Poland receive 15% of reparations from the Soviet Zone and 30% of reparations from West Germany. However, 6 billion dollars, which was seen to amount to the win Poland had gained by the border shift in the west, was subtracted from this amount.[60]
There is a consensus that the German eastern provinces gained by Poland were economically better developed than the lost Kresy. A recent proposal for a macroeconomic calculation of the economic consequences of the "westward shift" of Poland concluded that the German eastern provinces were valued 25,8 billion International Dollars, while the whole of the Kresy was valued 9,4 billion International Dollars.[61] Therefore, German authors point out that Poland was overcompensated for the loss of the Eastern Borderlands, yielding a net gain at the expense of Germany.[62]
In today's Germany, the loss of the former eastern territories is often forgotten, as they were originally Polish. The fixing of the Oder-Neisse border can only mark a renunciation of territory in favor of Poland in German-Polish relations.[63] Authors have pointed out that the Treaty of Zgorzelec is hence of utmost relevance in the context of reparations. Communist Poland acknowledged the GDR to act on behalf of Germany as a whole when recognizing the Oder-Neisse Line amounting to a loss of territory equal in size to the territory of the GDR.[64]
Corresponding to the conclusion of the Treaty of Zgorzelec seen as in the name of whole Germany, Poland renounced further reparations, which, according to scholars, must be seen as likewise applying to the whole of Germany.[65]
Following accession to the European Union (2004–present)
German–Polish relations are sometimes strained when topics like World War II and the postwar forced expulsion of the German citizens from the territories assigned to Poland are brought up.[66] Occasional xenophobic[citation needed] statements by politicians on both sides, most notably Erika Steinbach[citation needed][67] and Jarosław Kaczyński,[68][69][70] have slowed the improvement of the relations.[citation needed]
Polish firefighters helped in flood recovery in Germany during the 2002[71] and 2021 floods,[72] and helped extinguish wildfires in 2019.[73]
In 2007, Poland joined the Schengen Area, and passport-free and visa-free travel between Germany and Poland is allowed since.
On 24 September 2013 Lech Wałęsa suggested the creation of a political union between the Republic of Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany; his reason was that the borders in Europe don't matter anymore and in the future they will change anyway.[74]
Poland and Germany have held intergovernmental consultations to discuss the political and economic cooperation between the two countries on a number of occasions in the past. In 2018, Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz and his German counterpart Heiko Maas agreed a to pass a declaration specifying the strategic priorities for German-Polish cooperation which stated that "both countries support a multilateral, rules-based order and champion a united Europe".[75]
In 2020, Poland surpassed Italy to become Germany's fifth biggest trading partner[76] as well as the biggest one in East-Central Europe.[77]
On 15 September 2021, the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced a project to build a monument commemorating the Polish civilian victims of World War II in Berlin that would "honour their lives, their resistance and their courage". He also revealed plans to establish a forum for remembrance and exchange with Poland stating that "The future forum [...] could become a milestone for German-Polish reconciliation. For addressing the past is not something we only owe to the dead. For Germans and Poles it remains the basis of our common path towards the future".[78]
On 2 July 2024, the Polish-German intergovernmental consultations took place in Warsaw. Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressed the close relationship between the two countries and announced a joint action plan for a more intense cooperation between Poland and Germany in key areas including security and defence, support for Ukraine in the context of the ongoing Russian invasion, business relations, enlargement of the EU and questions regarding history.[80]
↑ Snyder, Timothy (5 October 2010). "The fatal fact of the Nazi-Soviet pact". The Guardian. When the Germans shot tens of thousands of Poles in 1944, with the intention of making sure that Warsaw would never rise again, that was also genocide. Far less dramatic measures, such as the kidnapping and Germanisation of Polish children, were also genocide, according to the legal definition of it
↑ Górski, Karol (1949). Związek Pruski i poddanie się Prus Polsce: zbiór tekstów źródłowych (in Polish and Latin). Poznań: Instytut Zachodni. pp.88–92, 96–97, 206–210, 214–215.
↑ A history of modern Germany, 1800-2000 Martin Kitchen Wiley-Blackwel 2006, page 130)
↑ Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel (2010). The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. p.73.
1 2 Kreutz, Wilhelm (2007). Hambach 1832. Deutsches Freiheitsfest und Vorbote des europäischen Völkerfrühlings (in German). Mainz: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Rheinland-Pfalz.
↑ Zawadzki, Wojciech (2011). "Zgony powstańców listopadowych na Żuławach i Powiślu 1831–1832". Studia Elbląskie (in Polish) (XII): 27.
↑ Osses, Dietmar (2024). "Ruhrpolen. Historie und Gegenwart einer "Minderheit" / Ruhrpolen. Polacy w Zagłębiu Ruhry. Historia i współczesność "mniejszości"". Polonus (in German and Polish). No.9. Ostritz. pp.47, 49. ISSN2701-6285.
↑ von Bülow, Bernhard (1914). Imperial Germany. Translated by Lewenz, Marie A. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. p.300.
↑ Stanek, Piotr (2017). "Niemieckie obozy jenieckie dla Polaków z armii rosyjskiej w latach I wojny światowej (1916–1918)". Łambinowicki rocznik muzealny (in Polish). 40. Opole: 43. ISSN0137-5199.
↑ Kosiarski, Jacek (2018). "Cesarstwo Niemieckie a odbudowa państwa polskiego". Stosunki Międzynarodowe – International Relations (in Polish). 54 (1): 178–179. ISSN0209-0961.
1 2 3 Cygański, Mirosław (1984). "Hitlerowskie prześladowania przywódców i aktywu Związków Polaków w Niemczech w latach 1939-1945". Przegląd Zachodni (in Polish) (4): 23.
↑ Wardzyńska, Maria (2003). ""Intelligenzaktion" na Warmii, Mazurach i północnym Mazowszu". Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej (in Polish). No.12-1 (35-36). IPN. p.39. ISSN1641-9561.
1 2 3 Wituska, Krystyna (2006). Tomaszewski, Irene (ed.). Inside a Gestapo Prison: The Letters of Krystyna Wituska, 1942–1944. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. p.xxi.
↑ Materski & Szarota (2009)Quote: Liczba Żydów i Polaków żydowskiego pochodzenia, obywateli II Rzeczypospolitej, zamordowanych przez Niemców sięga 2,7- 2,9 mln osób. Translation: The number of Jewish victims is estimated to be 2,9 million. This number represented about 90% of the 3.3 million Jews who lived in prewar Poland. Source: IPN.
↑ Materski & Szarota (2009)Quote: Łączne straty śmiertelne ludności polskiej pod okupacją niemiecką oblicza się obecnie na ok. 2 770 000. Translation: According to current estimates, roughly 2,770,000 Poles were killed during the German occupation of Poland. This number represented 11.3% of the 24.4 million ethnic Poles who lived in prewar Poland.
↑ Heike Amos (2009). "Deutsche in Polen: Auswirkungen auf das Verhältnis DDR – VR Polen". Die Vertriebenenpolitik der SED 1949 bis 1990. Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte. ISBN9783486591392.
↑ "Mularczyk: Nie ma dokumentu spełniającego formalne wymogi uchwały rządu z 1953 r. o zrzeczeniu się reparacji". Bankier.pl. 3 September 2022. Retrieved 20 October 2022. "There is no document that would meet the formal requirements of the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of 23 August 1953 on the renunciation of war reparations by the People's Republic of Poland – emphasized the PiS MP Arkadiusz Mularczyk, chairman of the council of the Jan Karski Institute of War Losses."
↑ Patrick Heinemann. "Es geht um Politik, nicht Recht". Legal Triune Online.: "Es ist allerdings nicht so, dass Deutschland an Polen keinerlei Reparationen geleistet hätte. Das zwischen den Westalliierten und der Sowjetunion geschlossene Potsdamer Abkommen vom 2. August 1945 sah vor, dass sowjetische Reparationsforderungen aus der sowjetischen Besatzungszone bedient werden und die UdSSR hieraus wiederum unter anderem Ansprüche der Volksrepublik Polen befriedigt. Die Weiterleitung dieser nicht unerheblichen Reparationsleistungen war somit einerseits zwar von der sowjetischen Führung abhängig. Andererseits endeten die von der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone und der DDR erfüllten Reparationsleistungen im Vergleich zu den westlichen Besatzungszonen vergleichsweise spät erst aufgrund einer Erklärung Moskaus vom 22. August 1953"
↑ Hartenstein, Michael A (2006). Die Geschichte der Oder-Neiße-Linie."Westverschiebung" und "Umsiedlung" - Kriegsziel der Alliierten oder Postulat polnischer Politik?. München: Olzog. p.129. „Polen hat mit der Oder -Neiße-Grenze somit wesentlich mehr als nur eine Kompensation für seine Verluste im Osten erhalten“
↑ Daniela Fuchs (13 September 2004). "Reparationen aus der DDR". Neues Deutschland. Berlin: nd.Genossenschaft.: "Die DDR und Polen schlossen am 6. Juli 1950 ein Abkommen über die Markierung der festgelegten Staatsgrenze an Oder und Lausitzer Neiße. Die Görlitzer Grenzformel hatte nicht nur für die DDR, sondern auch für das gesamte deutsch-polnische Verhältnis Bedeutung. Prof. Jerzy Sulek, einer der Architekten der 2+4- Verhandlungen von 1989, sah für die polnische Seite mit dem Abschluss des Abkommens folgenden Vorteil: 'Es war ganz gewiss kein Zufall, sondern eine klare Absicht, dass die DDR nicht als einer der beiden deutschen Teilstaaten, sondern als ganz Deutschland, als der einzig legitimierte Vertreter der ganzen deutschen Nation für das damalige kommunistische Polen galt.' Diese Tatsache hatte Auswirkungen auf die Reparationsfrage"
↑ Daniela Fuchs (13 September 2004). "Reparationen aus der DDR". Neues Deutschland. Berlin: nd.Genossenschaft.: "Drei Jahre später, am 23. August 1953 verzichtete Polen auf die noch verbliebenen Reparationsleistungen aus der DDR. Stichtag war hierbei der 1. Januar 1954. Prof. Sulek ist hier der festen Überzeugung, dass die DDR auch in diesem Kontext sowohl von der UdSSR als auch von Polen als Alleinvertreter von ganz Deutschland betrachtet wurde"
Korbel, Josef. Poland Between East and West: Soviet and German Diplomacy Toward Poland, 1919-1933 (Princeton UP, 2015).
Kulski, W.W. Germany and Poland: From War to Peaceful Relations (1976)
Lukowski, Jerzy. The partitions of Poland 1772, 1793, 1795 (Routledge, 2014).
Harold von Riekhoff, "German-Polish Relations, 1918-1933", Slavic Review, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 1972), pp.917–918
Reuter, Timothy, The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. III: c. 900-c. 1024, Cambridge University Press, 2000
Zaborowski, Marcin. Germany, Poland, and Europe: Conflict, Co-operation, and Europeanization (Manchester UP, 2004).
Primary sources
Great Britain. Foreign Office. The British War Blue Book: Miscellaneous No. 9 (1939) Documents concerning German-polish Relations and the Outbreak of Hostilities between Great Britain and Germany on September 3, 1939 (1939) online
The history of Poland spans over a thousand years, from medieval tribes, Christianization and monarchy; through Poland's Golden Age, expansionism and becoming one of the largest European powers; to its collapse and partitions, two world wars, communism, and the restoration of democracy.
The Curzon Line was a proposed demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union, two new states emerging after World War I. Based on a suggestion by Herbert James Paton, it was first proposed in 1919 by Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, to the Supreme War Council as a diplomatic basis for a future border agreement.
In the Battle of Cedynia or Zehden, an army of Mieszko I of Poland defeated forces of Hodo or Odo I of Lusatia on 24 June 972, near the Oder river. Whether or not the battle actually took place near the modern-day town of Cedynia is disputed in modern scholarship.
In present-day Germany, the former eastern territories of Germany refer to those territories east of the current eastern border of Germany, i.e. the Oder–Neisse line, which historically had been considered German and which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union after World War II. In contrast to the lands awarded to the restored Polish state by the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, the German territories lost with the post-World War II Potsdam Agreement were either almost exclusively inhabited by Germans before 1945, mixed German–Polish with a German majority, or mixed German–Czech with a German majority (Glatz). Virtually the entire German population of the territories that did not flee voluntarily in the face of the Red Army advance of 1945, was violently expelled to Germany, with their possessions being looted and stolen.
The Neumark, also known as the New March or as East Brandenburg, was a region of the Margraviate of Brandenburg and its successors located east of the Oder River in territory which became part of Poland in 1945 except some villages of former districts of Königsberg in the New March and Weststenberg remained in Germany.
At the end of World War II, Poland underwent major changes to the location of its international border. In 1945, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Oder–Neisse line became its western border, resulting in gaining the Recovered Territories from Germany. The Curzon Line became its eastern border, resulting in the loss of the Eastern Borderlands to the Soviet Union.
Poles in Germany are the second largest Polish diaspora (Polonia) in the world and the biggest in Europe. Estimates of the number of Poles living in Germany vary from 2 million to about 3 million people living that might be of Polish descent. Their number has quickly decreased over the years, and according to the latest census, there are approximately 866,690 Poles in Germany. The main Polonia organisations in Germany are the Union of Poles in Germany and Congress of Polonia in Germany. Polish surnames are relatively common in Germany, especially in the Ruhr area.
The registered German minority in Poland is a group of German people that inhabit Poland, being the largest minority of the country. As of 2021, it had the population of 144,177.
Kostrzyn nad Odrą is a town in Gorzów County, Lubusz Voivodeship in western Poland, on the border with Germany.
The territorial evolution of Germany in this article include all changes in the modern territory of Germany from its unification making it a country on 1 January 1871 to the present although the history of "Germany" as a territorial polity concept and the history of the ethnic Germans are much longer and much more complex. Modern Germany was formed when the Kingdom of Prussia unified most of the German states, with the exception of multi-ethnic Austria, into the German Empire. After the First World War, on 10 January 1920, Germany lost about 13% of its territory to its neighbours, and the Weimar Republic was formed two days before this war was over. This republic included territories to the east of today's German borders.
Poland is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres (120,726 sq mi), making it the 69th largest country in the world and the ninth largest in Europe.
The flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland was the largest of a series of flights and expulsions of Germans in Europe during and after World War II. The German population fled or was expelled from all regions which are currently within the territorial boundaries of Poland: including the former eastern territories of Germany annexed by Poland after the war and parts of pre-war Poland; despite acquiring territories from Germany, the Poles themselves were also expelled from the former eastern territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union. West German government figures of those evacuated, migrated, or expelled by 1950 totaled 8,030,000. Research by the West German government put the figure of Germans emigrating from Poland from 1951 to 1982 at 894,000; they are also considered expellees under German Federal Expellee Law.
Poland and Lithuania established diplomatic relations from the 13th century, after the Grand Duchy of Lithuania under king Mindaugas acquired some of the territory of Rus' and thus established a border with the then-fragmented Kingdom of Poland. Polish–Lithuanian relations subsequently improved, ultimately leading to a personal union between the two states. From the mid-16th to the late-18th century Poland and Lithuania merged to form the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a state that was dissolved following their partition by Austria, Prussia and Russia. After the two states regained independence following the First World War, Polish–Lithuanian relations steadily worsened due to rising nationalist sentiments. Competing claims to the Vilnius region led to armed conflict and deteriorating relations in the interwar period. During the Second World War Polish and Lithuanian territories were occupied by both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but relations between Poles and Lithuanians remained hostile. Following the end of World War II, both Poland and Lithuania found themselves in the Eastern Bloc, Poland as a Soviet satellite state, Lithuania as a Soviet republic. With the fall of communism relations between the two countries were reestablished. Since then relations have been friendly and akin to strategic partnership in defence and security.
The German–Polish Border Treaty of 1990 finally settled the issue of the Polish–German border, which in terms of international law had been pending since 1945. It was signed by the foreign ministers of Poland and Germany, Krzysztof Skubiszewski and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, on 14 November 1990 in Warsaw, ratified by the Polish Sejm on 26 November 1991 and the German Bundestag on 16 December 1991, and entered into force with the exchange of the instruments of ratification on 16 January 1992.
Poland–Russia relations have a long and often turbulent history, dating to the late Middle Ages. Over centuries, there have been several Polish–Russian Wars, with Poland once occupying Moscow and later Russia controlling much of Poland in the 19th as well as in the 20th century, leading to strained relations and multiple Polish attempts at re-acquiring independence. Polish–Russian relations entered a new phase following the fall of communism, with relations warming under Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and later Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Relations began worsening considerably as a result of the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, and later the 2014 annexation of Crimea and especially the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Relations between the Polish and Russian governments have become extremely unfriendly, and according to a 2022 poll, only 2% of Poles view Russia positively, the lowest number in the world among countries polled.
Austria–Poland relations are foreign relations between Austria and Poland. The two nations have a very long historical relationship dating back several centuries, which has been complicated throughout most of their history.
The Recovered Territories or Regained Lands, also known as the Western Borderlands, and previously as the Western and Northern Territories, Postulated Territories and Returning Territories, are the former eastern territories of Germany and the Free City of Danzig that became part of Poland after World War II, at which time most of their German inhabitants were forcibly deported.
The Oder–Neisse line is an unofficial term for the modern border between Germany and Poland. The line generally follows the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers, meeting the Baltic Sea in the north. A small portion of Polish territory does fall west of the line, including the cities of Szczecin and Świnoujście.
After World War II, both the Federal Republic and Democratic Republic of Germany were obliged to pay war reparations to the Allied governments, according to the Potsdam Conference. Other Axis nations were obliged to pay war reparations according to the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947. Austria was not included in any of these treaties.
The Germany–Poland border is the state border between Poland and Germany, mostly along the Oder–Neisse line, with a total length of 467 km (290 mi). It stretches from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Czech Republic in the south.
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