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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.
According to the Yalta Conference, no reparations to Allied countries would be paid in money (though that rule was not followed in later agreements). Instead, much of the value transferred consisted of German industrial assets as well as forced labour to the Allies. [1] The Allied demands were further outlined during the Potsdam Conference. Reparations were to be directly paid to the four victor powers (France, United Kingdom, United States, and the Soviet Union); for the countries in the Soviet sphere of influence, the Soviet Union would determine its distribution. To coordinate the distribution of the reparations between the victor powers, the Allied Control Council was established. [2] [3]
The Allies finally agreed for German reparations to be paid in the following forms: [2]
To oversee the extraction and distribution of the German reparations in their control zone, the Western Allies established the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency (IARA). The distribution of the reparations from Germany was to be allotted by a pre-determined percentage to which the victor powers agreed to. German reparations were to be classified into two categories: A (all forms of German reparations except those included in Category B) and B (industrial and capital equipment, merchant ships, and inland water transports). [3] [4] [2]
The following nations received reparations as part of the proceedings of the IARA:
| Country | % of Category A reparations | % of Category B reparations |
|---|---|---|
 Albania | 0.05 | 0.35 |
 Australia | 0.70 | 0.95 |
 Belgium | 2.70 | 4.50 |
 Czechoslovakia | 3.00 | 4.30 |
 Canada | 3.50 | 1.50 |
 Denmark | 0.25 | 0.35 |
 Egypt | 0.05 | 0.20 |
 France | 16.00 | 22.80 |
 Greece | 2.70 | 3.35 |
 India | 2.00 | 2.90 |
 Luxembourg | 0.15 | 0.40 |
 Norway | 1.30 | 1.90 |
 New Zealand | 0.40 | 0.60 |
 Netherlands | 3.90 | 5.60 |
 Union of South Africa | 0.70 | 0.10 |
 United Kingdom | 28.00 | 27.80 |
 United States of America | 28.00 | 11.80 |
 Yugoslavia | 6.60 | 9.60 |
Poland was to be excluded from the proceedings of the IARA by demand from the Soviet Union. The Allies agreed as part of the Potsdam Agreement, that the Soviet Union collects and distributes the Polish share of reparations. Furthermore, the Soviet Union would extract its share of reparations mostly from the territory in its own occupation zone. [2] [3] The Provisional Polish Government concluded the Polish-Soviet Reparation Treaty on 16 August 1945. The treaty allocated Poland's share of confiscated German machinery, goods and raw materials. Furthermore Poland received 15% of the German merchant fleet acquired by the Soviet Union. Deliveries were overseen by a joint Polish-Soviet commission and lasted until 1953. [7] [8]
The Soviet Union annexed the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse, leading to the expulsion of 12 million Germans (from East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia). These territories were incorporated into communist Poland and the Soviet Union respectively and resettled with citizens of these countries, pending a final peace conference with Germany. Since a peace conference never took place, the areas were effectively ceded by Germany. [10] In the case of Poland, the acquired territory was a compensation for the Polish Eastern Borderlands (Kresy), which were annexed by the Soviet Union. [9]
France occupied the Saar protectorate from 1947 to 1956, with the intention of using its coal and steel industrial output to boost the French economy as reparations for the war. France sought to ultimately annex the Saar as well as the entire Ruhr region into France proper, but was denied so by the rest of the Allies. Following the results of a plebiscite, France had to relinquish its control of the Saar region on 1 January 1957. [11]
The Netherlands sought to annex large parts of Western Germany as reparations for WWII. These efforts were mostly thwarted by the Western Allies and ultimately only approximately 69 square kilometres (27 sq mi) of German territory was annexed in 1949. Nearly all of these territories were returned to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957. Under the Dutch-German treaty made in The Hague on 8 April 1960, West Germany agreed to pay to The Netherlands the sum of 280 million German marks in compensation for the return. [12] [13]
Belgium and Luxembourg also sought to annex German territory as reparations for WWII. However, only small areas were occupied and then returned after German compensation payments. [12] [13]
At the beginning of the occupation, the Allies dismantled the remnants of German industries. Plants and machinery were dismantled, the railroad system deconstructed and everything was transported to the Allies. The German merchant fleet and all other ships were handed over. Foreign stocks of about 2.5 billion dollars were confiscated. The remaining German industries had to give up a share of their production to the Allies. Large shipments of steel, coal, but also other industrial products were seized and transported out of the country. [14] Later the Western Allies softened their stance in favour of the Marshall Plan, while Eastern Germany continued to deliver industrial goods and raw materials to the Soviet Union until 1953. [15]
In the Soviet Zone of Occupation (later the German Democratic Republic) virtually all double tracked rail lines were reduced to a single track with the material being taken to the Soviet Union. [16] [17] [18] Similarly the (relatively limited) railway electrification was also dismantled with the notable exception of most of the Berlin S-Bahn which retained its third rail infrastructure for the most part.
Similarly, in the French Occupation Zone, key rail lines were dismantled to single track. [19]
The Allies confiscated large amounts of German patents, copyrights and trademarks worth about 10 billion (1948) dollars. [14] [20]
Millions of Germans were pressed into forced labour for several years to work for the Allies in camps, mining, harvesting or industry.
After World War II ended, the main four Allied powers – Great Britain, The United States, France, and the Soviet Union – jointly occupied Germany, with the Allied occupation officially ending in the 1950s. During this time, Germany was held accountable for the Allied occupation's expenses, amounting to over several billion dollars. [21]
Germany concluded a variety of treaties with Western and Eastern countries as well as the Jewish Claims Conference and the World Jewish Congress to compensate the victims of the Holocaust. Until 2005 about 63 billion euros (equivalent to approximately 87.9 billion euros in 2022) have been paid to individuals. Additional payments by German companies which exploited forced workers have been made. [22]
On 23 August 1953, the People's Republic of Poland, under pressure from the Soviet Union which wanted to free East Germany from any liabilities, [23] announced it would waive its right to further war reparations from East Germany on 1 January 1954. [24] [25] In a United Nations note, dated 24 November 1969, the communist government of Poland demanded action from the organization not only to punish war criminals and those who have committed crimes against humanity but also to establish procedures and divisibility of compensation for war crimes and damages committed by Germany during World War II. [26] In 1970, the 1953 renunciation of reparation rights was confirmed by the Polish Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Józef Winiewicz during the course of the negotiations leading to the normalization treaty of November 1970, [27] in which West Germany recognized the Oder-Neisse as the final border between Poland and East Germany. [28] [24] [27] [29] [30] [31]
On 10 September 2004, the Polish parliament ( Sejm ) passed a resolution stating that: "The Sejm of the Republic of Poland, aware of the role of historical truth and elementary justice in Polish-German relations states that Poland has not yet received adequate financial compensation and war reparations for the enormous destruction and material losses caused by German aggression, occupation and genocide." [32] A month later, on 19 October 2004 the Polish Council of Ministers put out a statement stating: "The Declaration of 23 August 1953 was adopted in accordance with the constitutional order of the time, in compliance with international law laid down in the UN Charter." [33] [25] In August 2017, this position was again confirmed in a statement by Deputy Foreign Minister Marek Magierowski, [33] [25] stating that "(...) the 1953 declaration constitutes a binding unilateral legal act of the Polish state – a subject of international law." [34] [35] According to law professor at the University of Warsaw, Władysłav Czapliński, the reparation question has been closed with the conclusion of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, negotiated in 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, and the Four Powers (United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and France), to which Poland voiced no protest. [36] The German government takes the same position. [37]
In the meantime, Poland and Germany concluded several treaties and agreements to compensate Polish persons who were victims of German aggression. In 1972, West Germany paid compensation to Poles that had survived pseudo-medical experiments during their imprisonment in various Nazi camps during the Second World War. [38] In 1975, the Gierek-Schmidt agreement was signed in Warsaw. It stipulated that 1.3 billion DM was to be paid to Poles who, during Nazi occupation, had paid into the German social security system but received no pension. [39] In 1992, the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation was founded by the Polish and German governments, and as a result, Germany paid Polish sufferers approximately zl 4.7 billion (equivalent to zl 37.8 billion or US$7.97 billion in 2022[ citation needed ]). Between 1992 and 2006, Germany and Austria jointly paid compensation to surviving Polish, non-Jewish victims of slave labour in Nazi Germany and also to Polish orphans and children who had been subject to forced labour. [40] The Swiss Fund for the Victims of the Holocaust (which had obtained settlement money from banks in Switzerland) used some of its funds to pay compensation between 1998 and 2002 to Polish Jews and Romani who were victims of Nazi Germany. [40]
The reparation issue arose again in late 2017 with comments made by Polish government officials from the ruling Law and Justice. Since then, the Polish government has taken the position that Poland's 1953 refusal is non-binding because the country was under the sway of the Soviet Union. [25] [41] Przemysław Sobolewski, head of the Bureau of Research of the Sejm, said that the political decision of 1953 was made by the Polish Council of Ministers, even though under the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic, which came into force in 1952, it was the Polish Council of State, which had the sole authority to undertake such a decision. [42] According to Józef Menes from the Council of the Polish War Loss Institute, no diplomatic note was presented to the East German government and that "Probably the meeting of the Council of Ministers of August 23, 1953 did not take place at all" - citing relation of Kazimierz Mijal (head of the office of the Council of Ministers from 21 November 1952 to 1 February 1956). [43]
On the 83rd anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, on September 1, 2022, a Polish government report on Poland's war losses and damages between 1939 and 1945 was presented at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. [44] The three volume report also covered the legal issues regarding the 1953 renunciation of reparation rights by Poland, and according to the report findings: "the alleged unilateral statement of the Council of Ministers of 23 August 1953 on the renunciation of war reparations by the People's Republic of Poland violated the constitution of 22 July 1952 in force at that time, because the matters of ratification and termination of international agreements belonged to the competence of the Council of State, not the Council of Ministers". Also, the report noted that according to the minutes of the Council of Ministers of 19 August 1953, the renunciation concerned only the German Democratic Republic not the Federal Republic, and that no diplomatic note was ever sent to the East German government officially informing it of Poland's decision. [45] On September 14, 2022, the Sejm passed (418 for, 4 against, 15 abstentions) a resolution stating that: "The Polish state has never renounced its claims against the German state; the Sejm of the Republic of Poland calls on the German government to assume political, historical, legal, and financial responsibility for all the effects caused by the unleashing of World War II." [46]
On 2 October 2022, the Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau signed a diplomatic note asking the German government to undertake an official negotiation process between Poland and Germany, and on 3 October presented the diplomatic note to the visiting German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. [47] [48] According to the German government, there is no legal basis for further compensation payments. [49] On 4 January 2023 the deputy minister of foreign affairs of Poland Arkadiusz Mularczyk stated that "We do not recognize this German position, we reject it in its entirety as absolutely unfounded and erroneous." and "the German state cannot close a case that has never (yet) been opened". [50]
As a result of the Nazi German occupation, much of Greece was subjected to enormous destruction of its industry (80% of which was destroyed), infrastructure (28% destroyed), ports, roads, railways and bridges (90%), forests and other natural resources (25%) [51] [52] [53] [ better source needed ] and loss of civilian life (7.02–11.17% of its citizens). [54] [55] Other sources put the total number of deaths resulting from the Axis occupation at 273,000 to 747,000 Greeks, or 3.7-10.2% of the prewar population.[ citation needed ] The occupying Nazi regime forced Greece to pay the cost of the occupation in the country and requisite raw materials and food for the occupation forces, creating the conditions for the Great Famine. Furthermore, in 1942, the Greek Central Bank was forced by the occupying Nazi regime to lend 476 million Reichsmarks at 0% interest to Nazi Germany. [56]
After the war, Greece received its share of the reparations paid by Germany to the Allies as part of the proceedings of the Paris Reparation Treaty of 1946 which the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency enforced. 7.181 billion dollars were initially slated for Greece. This sum rose significantly due to the growing size of the reparations seized by the Allies and Greece ultimately received compensations in the form of money and industrial goods with a worth of about 25 million dollars. [57]
Greece received an additional share of reparations from other Axis powers as a result of the Paris Peace Treaties from 1947.
Greece was a signatory of the London Agreement on German External Debts in 1953. The signatories agreed to postpone additional German debts until a final peace treaty with Germany would be made. [57] In 1960, Germany concluded a treaty with the Greek government to compensate Greek victims of Nazi German terror which amounted to 115 Million German mark. [58] These payments were explicitly marked as payments to the victims and were not supposed to be a general reparation treaty.[ citation needed ] Later Greek governments insist that this was only a down payment and further payments need to be made. [57] [59]
In 1990, West Germany and East Germany signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany ('Two Plus Four Agreement') with the former Allied countries of the United States, United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union. This treaty was supposed to close all open questions regarding Germany and the aftermath of WWII and paved the way for German reunification. Germany considers this treaty as the final regulation which concludes the question of open reparations which had been made in previous treaties such as the London Debt Agreement. [57] Greece rejects this notion and on 8 February 2015, the then-Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras demanded that Germany pay the "complete" reparations to Greece. In April 2015, Greece evaluated the war reparations to be the equivalent of 278.7 billion euros (equivalent to 389 billion euros in 2022). [60] [58] While more German politicians and members of the Bundestag are calling on the federal government to compensate Greece financially for the effects of the Nazi occupation, [61] [62] the German government replied that the stipulations of the Two Plus Four treaty still stand and the issue was resolved in 1990. [63]
West Germany paid reparations to Israel for confiscated Jewish property under Nuremberg laws, forced labour and persecution. Payments to Israel until 1987 amounted to about 14 billion dollars, [64] equivalent to $36.5 billion in 2022.[ citation needed ]
Immediately after the end of the war, the Netherlands demanded 25 billion Guilders as compensation for among other things the Dutch winter famine of 1944–1945. But shortly later pursued a policy of radical redrawing of the longstanding Dutch-German border and the transfer of a large part of German territory to the Dutch as reparations. In its most ambitious form, this plan included the annexation of the cities and surroundings of Cologne, Aachen, Münster and Osnabrück. Subsequently, the Dutch government seized and annexed 69 square kilometres (27 sq mi) of border territory from Allied occupied Germany in 1949, almost all of which was returned to West Germany in 1963 in exchange for 280 million Deutschmarks paid by the Federal German government to the Dutch.
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia received a value of US$36 billion, in industrial equipment from the dismantled German factories. West Germany also paid 8 million German marks as reparations for forced human experimentation on Yugoslav citizens.
The Soviet Union received compensation under the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947 from four Axis allied powers, in addition to the large reparations paid to the Soviet Union by the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany and the eventual German Democratic Republic in the form of machinery (entire factories were dismantled and shipped to the Soviet Union) as well as food, industrial products, and consumer goods. The USSR was owed $100 million from Italy, $300 million from Finland, $200 million from Hungary, and $300 million from Romania, [65] amounting to approximately $12 billion in total in 2022.
Italian reparation payments amounted to about 366 million USD and were paid to the Soviet Union, as well as Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Ethiopia. Finland, Romania and Bulgaria had to pay reparations worth about 300 million USD each, mostly paid in natural goods. Bulgaria had to pay reparations worth about 70 million USD. Most of these reparations were not paid in full by the countries which later fell under the umbrella of the Soviet Union, because the Soviet Union officially cancelled them. [66]
Japan paid its reparations similar to Germany through dismantling of industrial equipment, delivery of raw materials and confiscation of industrial output. Only minor payments were made to other Asian countries, specifically to Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, and Thailand. Overall Japanese reparations amounted to about 1.5 billion US dollars which was about 4% of its GDP. [67]
The Potsdam Conference was held at Potsdam in the Soviet occupation zone from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace, while avoiding the mistakes of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They were represented respectively by General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman. They gathered to decide how to administer Germany, which had agreed to an unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier. The goals of the conference also included establishing the postwar order, solving issues on the peace treaty, and countering the effects of the war.
The Potsdam Agreement was the agreement among three of the Allies of World War II: the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union after the war ended in Europe on 1 August 1945 and it was published the next day. A product of the Potsdam Conference, it concerned the military occupation and reconstruction of Germany, its border, and the entire European Theatre of War territory. It also addressed Germany's demilitarisation, reparations, the prosecution of war criminals and the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from various parts of Europe. France was not invited to the conference but formally remained one of the powers occupying Germany.
Following their defeat in World War I, the Central Powers agreed to pay war reparations to the Allied Powers. Each defeated power was required to make payments in either cash or kind. Because of the financial situation in Austria, Hungary, and Turkey after the war, few to no reparations were paid and the requirements for reparations were cancelled. Bulgaria, having paid only a fraction of what was required, saw its reparation figure reduced and then cancelled. Historians have recognized the German requirement to pay reparations as the "chief battleground of the post-war era" and "the focus of the power struggle between France and Germany over whether the Versailles Treaty was to be enforced or revised."
The Yalta Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union to discuss the postwar reorganization of Germany and Europe. The three states were represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Secretary Joseph Stalin. The conference was held near Yalta in Crimea, Soviet Union, within the Livadia, Yusupov, and Vorontsov palaces.
The Paris Peace Treaties were signed on 10 February 1947 following the end of World War II in 1945. The Paris Peace Conference lasted from 29 July until 15 October 1946. The victorious wartime Allied powers negotiated the details of peace treaties with those former Axis allies, namely Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland, which had switched sides and declared war on Germany during the war. They were allowed to fully resume their responsibilities as sovereign states in international affairs and to qualify for membership in the United Nations. Nevertheless, the Paris Peace Treaties avoided taking into consideration the consequences of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially known as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, whose secret clauses included the division of Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the occupation of the Baltic States, and the annexation of parts of Finland and Romania. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact changed the borders agreed after the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920), and was signed on August 23, 1939. One week later, World War II started with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland, followed three weeks later by the Soviet invasion of Poland, which was completely erased from the map. In the following years, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union changed the borders established by the peace treaties at the end of World War I.
The Treaty of San Francisco, also called the Treaty of Peace with Japan, re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers on behalf of the United Nations by ending the legal state of war, military occupation and providing for redress for hostile actions up to and including World War II. It was signed by 49 nations on 8 September 1951, in San Francisco, California, at the War Memorial Opera House. Italy and China were not invited, the latter due to disagreements on whether the Republic of China or the People's Republic of China represented the Chinese people. Korea was also not invited due to a similar disagreement on whether South Korea or North Korea represented the Korean people.
The Treaty of Rapallo was an agreement signed on 16 April 1922 between the German Reich and Soviet Russia under which both renounced all territorial and financial claims against each other and opened friendly diplomatic relations. The treaty was negotiated by Russian Foreign Minister Georgi Chicherin and German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau. It was a major victory for Russia especially and also Germany, and a major disappointment to France and the United Kingdom. The term "spirit of Rapallo" was used for an improvement in friendly relations between Germany and Russia.
War reparations are compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other. They are intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war. War reparations can take the form of hard currency, precious metals, natural resources, industrial assets, or intellectual properties. Loss of territory in a peace settlement is usually considered to be distinct from war reparations.
Events in the year 1921 in Germany.
The Dawes Plan temporarily resolved the issue of the reparations that Germany owed to the Allies of World War I. Enacted in 1924, it ended the crisis in European diplomacy that occurred after French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr in response to Germany's failure to meet its reparations obligations.
The Young Plan was a 1929 attempt to settle issues surrounding the World War I reparations obligations that Germany owed under the terms of Treaty of Versailles. Developed to replace the 1924 Dawes Plan, the Young Plan was negotiated in Paris from February to June 1929 by a committee of international financial experts under the leadership of American businessman and economist Owen D. Young. Representatives of the affected governments then finalised and approved the plan at The Hague conference of 1929/30. Reparations were set at 36 billion Reichsmarks payable through 1988. Including interest, the total came to 112 billion Reichsmarks. The average annual payment was approximately two billion Reichsmarks. The plan came into effect on 17 May 1930, retroactive to 1 September 1929.
The Austrian State Treaty or Austrian Independence Treaty established Austria as a sovereign state. It was signed on 15 May 1955 in Vienna, at the Schloss Belvedere among the Allied occupying powers and the Austrian government. The neighbouring Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia acceded to the treaty subsequently. It officially came into force on 27 July 1955.
The causes of World War II have been given considerable attention by historians. The immediate precipitating event was the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, and the subsequent declarations of war on Germany made by Britain and France, but many other prior events have been suggested as ultimate causes. Primary themes in historical analysis of the war's origins include the political takeover of Germany in 1933 by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party; Japanese militarism against China, which led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Second Sino-Japanese War; Italian aggression against Ethiopia, which led to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War; Soviet Union desire to reconquer old territory of Russian Empire, which led to the Soviet invasion of Poland, the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, the occupation of the Baltic states and the Winter War.
The Reparations Agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany was signed on September 10, 1952, and entered in force on March 27, 1953. According to the Agreement, West Germany was to pay Israel for the costs of "resettling so great a number of uprooted and destitute Jewish refugees" after the war, and to compensate individual Jews, via the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, for losses in Jewish livelihood and property resulting from Nazi persecution.
Article 231, often known as the "War Guilt" clause, was the opening article of the reparations section of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War between the German Empire and the Allied and Associated Powers. The article did not use the word guilt but it served as a legal basis under which Germany was to pay reparations for damages caused during the war.
The occupation of the Ruhr was the period from 11 January 1923 to 25 August 1925 when French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr region of Weimar Republic Germany.
The Allies, formally referred to as the United Nations from 1942, were an international military coalition formed during World War II (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers. Its principal members by the end of 1941 were the "Big Four" – the United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, and China.
The Berlin Declaration of 5 June 1945 or the Declaration regarding the defeat of Germany, had the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France, acting on behalf of the Allies of World War II, jointly assume de jure "supreme authority" over Germany after its military defeat and asserted the legitimacy of their joint determination of issues regarding its administration and boundaries prior to the forthcoming Potsdam Conference.
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.
The bilateral relations between Poland and Germany have been marked by an extensive and complicated history. Currently, the relations between the two countries are friendly, with the two being allies within NATO and the European Union.
At their first summit, held in Tehran in November 1943, the three powers had agreed in principle to fall back on the Curzon Line when determining Poland's border. [...]In return for using this line, Poland was to be entitled to the Oder as its new Western Border.
In 1953 Poland's then-communist rulers relinquished all claims to war reparations under pressure from the Soviet Union, which wanted to free East Germany, also a Soviet satellite, from any liabilities.
When the Warsaw Treaty was signed, Poland and the Soviet Union had waived all claims for reparations against Germany as a whole by a declaration of August 23, 1953. This waiver was based upon the agreement at the Potsdam Conference that Polish claims for reparations were to be satisfied by the Soviet share for reparation payments. The declaration by the Polish Government stated that Germany had already paid substantial reparations and that the Polish Government therefore renounced all claims, in order to contribute to a peaceful solution of the German question. The waiver was explicitly confirmed in the negotiations between the two states on the Warsaw Treaty.
On 19 October 2004, the Polish Council of Ministers issued a statement clarifying: "The Government of the Republic of Poland recognises as obligatory the declaration of the Government of the People's Republic of Poland on 19 October to abandon Polish reparations payments (...). The Declaration of 23 August 1953 was adopted in accordance with the constitutional order of the time, in compliance with international law laid down in the UN Charter.
It seems that even if the binding force of the 1953 declaration were to be questioned, it would be difficult to support the thesis that Poland has a rightful claim to reparations from Germany. The renunciation of such claims was confirmed by the Polish deputy minister of foreign affairs, J. Winiewicz, during the course of the negotiations leading to the normalization treaty of November 1970.
The fall 2004 Sejm call for war reparations elicted firm opposition from the two governments. Polish foreign minister Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz labelled the resolution "unreasonable" and Germany's foreign ministry "reject[ed] all demands concerning compensation." The Polish government shared the German government's view that Poland had renounced reparations claims in a 1953 agreement with the GDR that was repeated vis-a-vis West Germany at the time of the 1970 Treaty.
To achieve clarification on this point, the West German government asked for a confirmation of Poland's 1953 renunciation of reparations claims, which the Polish government granted in 1970 before signing the Warsaw Treaty in December 1970.
In 1970, Poland and West Germany normalised their relationship in the Treaty of Warsaw. The Polish government confirmed the renouncement of reparations, while West Germany confirmed the Polish western border.
Then, in December 1970, Poland reaffirmed its renunciation of reparations claims under a new agreement with West Germany, which recognized the Polish border on the Oder and Neisse Rivers – in what had been pre-war Germany.
The Polish government clarified in a statement on October 19, 2004: "The Declaration of 23 August 1953 was adopted in accordance with the constitutional order of the time, in compliance with international law established in the UN Charter", a position that was confirmed in a written statement in August 2017 by then Deputy Foreign Minister Marek Magierowski in response to a parliamentary inquiry from the Sejm.
(...) the 1953 Declaration constitutes a binding, unilateral legal act of the Polish state - a subject of international law.
The rights of the four powers with regard to Germany were relinquished - the parties to the agreement recognized the effects of the Second World War as finally closed. Logically speaking, this also presupposes that the powers (including the USSR) have recognized that Germany has met its reparations obligations. Poland voiced no claims nor did it protest the treaty. In keeping with the rule of estoppel, it would seem that such claims can not be raised after the entry into force of this treaty.
The Constitution of the People's Republic of Poland of 1952 reserved issues concerning the conclusion and ratification of international agreements for the Council of State (a collegiate body performing the functions of the head of state), and not for the Council of Ministers.
there is no diplomatic note to the government of the GDR, [and] there is no return note
"The report states that 'the alleged unilateral statement of the Council of Ministers of 23 August 1953 on the renunciation of war reparations by the People's Republic of Poland violated the constitution of 22 July 1952 in force at that time, because the matters of ratification and termination of international agreements belonged to the competence of the Council of State, not the Council of Ministers.'" and "In addition, the report notes that this statement was forced on the government of the Polish People's Republic by the USSR; moreover, according to the minutes of the Council of Ministers of 19 August 1953, the renunciation concerned only the German Democratic Republic."
"The diplomatic note that I have just initialled will be forwarded to the Foreign Ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany," Rau said. - It expresses the conviction of the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs that the parties should take immediate action aimed at a permanent, comprehensive and final, legal and material settlement of the issue of the consequences of the Aggression and German Occupation during the years 1939-1945."
[A] Special Report published by the Bank of Greece in 1962 ... specified the amount outstanding to be ... more than tenfold the sum dispensed by Germany.
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