Foreign Affairs
Related: About this forumPolish government demands war reparations from Germany
The Polish government of the Law and Justice party (PiS) announced earlier this month that it would demand reparations from Germany for the massive damage done to the country under the Nazi occupation in World War II. Just a few days earlier, the European Union had initiated legal proceedings against Poland which could result in the country losing its voting rights in the EU. The developing conflict is symptomatic of the renewed eruption of national conflicts in Europe, which led to two world wars in the 20th century.
During World War II, some six million Poles (about 20 percent of the population) lost their lives under Nazi occupation, including over three million Polish Jews. Over 200,000 Polish civilians were killed just during the destruction of Warsaw in the summer of 1944 by the German Wehrmacht. Millions of Polish workers were employed as forced laborers in the German war economy.
Polish vice prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki has stated tht it was clear that the historical accounts had not been settled. Our neighbors, especially the Germans, massacred Poland. I am not just talking about the six million Polish lives that were taken. Not even one percent of this was compensated.
For decades, Berlin has been rejecting demands for reparations from Poland as well as from numerous other European countries. The German governments vice press secretary Ulrike Demmer declared that the question of reparations to Poland had been settled, both legally and politically. Last year, former foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had similarly stated that any kind of reparation payments to Poland were out of the question.
Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/22/snyd-a22.html
gordianot
(15,238 posts)How about 500 years, 1000 years, 2000 years go back to the Roman Empire? Seems like the debts are endless.
secondwind
(16,903 posts)TexasTowelie
(112,202 posts)Trump's comments about NATO have stirred nationalistic fervor throughout Europe where each country is trying to safeguard their own sovereignty rather than act as a collective with mutual interests.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)The so-called "Two-Plus-Four"-Treaty was an international treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
It handled Germany's reunification and served effectively as a post-WWII peace-treaty despite officially not being a peace-treaty. The "Two-Plus-Four"-Treaty was negotiated with the full intention that it would make any additional post-WWII peace-treaty (INCLUDING THE QUESTION OF REPARATIONS) unnecessary.
With this treaty, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States freed Germany from any obligations to pay any further WWII-reparations. If Poland has a problem with that, they are welcome to litigate one of the most important international treaties of the Cold War.