Source:
https://codoh.com/library/document/does-poland-deserve-war-reparations-from-germany/
by
John Wear, Germar Rudolf
July 10, 2025
The
November/December 2022 issue of The Barnes Review mentions that the
Polish government has formally demanded $1.2 trillion from Germany “for the
damages from the Nazi invasion and occupation during World War II.”
[1] This article examines whether Poland deserves to receive such
reparations from Germany.
Polish Report
Poland
released a report on September 1, 2022, titled “The Report on the Losses
Sustained by Poland as a Result of German Aggression and Occupation During the
Second World War, 1939–1945.” [2] The Foreword to this
report states that it “is Poland’s first and indispensable step on the road to
obtain the reparations and due compensation which the Polish State has the right
to claim for the devastation and injuries it suffered during the Second World
War.”
The
introduction to this report states that: [3]
“
[It] is the outcome of a project carried out by the Parliamentary Group for
the Estimation of the Amount of Compensation due to Poland from Germany for
Damage Caused during the Second World War. The Group was established by the
Polish Sejm in its 8th term, on 29 September 2017, and consists of members of
parliament and a team of experts.”
The
introduction further states: [4]
“During the Second World War, Poland sustained the largest human and material
losses of all European countries in relation to its total population and
national assets. These losses were caused not only by German military
operations, but above all, by a German policy of occupation motivated by the
conviction of racial inferiority of the Polish population. The Germans
exterminated people in the occupied territories in a deliberate and organized
manner, and intensively exploited Polish society, both through forced labor and
the willful devastation of property, including the complete destruction of
Warsaw, Poland’s capital city, along with thousands of Polish cities, towns, and
villages.”
Of
course, the authors state that “the present report is undoubtedly an
underestimate in all the areas it addresses, with its underlying principles
rooted in the most conservative estimates possible.” [5]
The authors make it clear that Poland deserves far more compensation from
Germany than they are requesting in this report.
The
report also clearly states that German aggression was the sole cause of the war:
[6]
“Poland was the first country to resist the territorial and political demands of
the Third Reich, refusing to grant concessions to Germany which would have
resulted in the loss of independence on the international arena and
subordination to Berlin. Hitler decided to resolve the conflict which he himself
had caused, by military means, and on 1 September 1939 the Wehrmacht invaded
Poland without declaring war.”
Thus,
German military aggression is the primary reason why Poles in this report state
that Germany owes reparations to Poland. We will examine why Germany attacked
Poland on September 1, 1939.
Poland’s Provocations
Polish
Foreign Minister Józef Beck accepted an offer from Great Britain on March 30,
1939, that gave an unconditional unilateral guarantee of Poland’s independence.
The British Empire agreed to go to war as an ally of Poland if the Poles decided
that war was necessary. In words drafted by British Foreign Secretary Lord
Halifax, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain spoke in the House of
Commons on March 31, 1939: [7]
“I
now have to inform the House […] that, in the event of any action which
clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish government
accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His
Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish
government all support in their power. They have given the Polish government an
assurance to that effect.”
Great
Britain’s unprecedented “blank check” to Poland led to increasing violence and
atrocities against the German minority in Poland. The book Polish Acts of
Atrocity against the German Minority in Poland answers the question why the
Polish government allowed such atrocities to happen: [8]
“The
guarantee of assistance given Poland by the British government was the agent
which lent impetus to Britain’s policy of encirclement. It was designed to
exploit the problem of Danzig and the Corridor to begin a war, desired and
long-prepared by England, for the annihilation of Greater Germany. In Warsaw,
moderation was no longer considered necessary, and the opinion held was that
matters could be safely brought to a head. England was backing this diabolical
game, having guaranteed the ‘integrity’ of the Polish state. The British
assurance of assistance meant that Poland was to be the battering ram of
Germany’s enemies. Henceforth, Poland neglected no form of provocation of
Germany and, in its blindness, dreamt of ‘victorious battle at Berlin’s gates.’
Had it not been for the encouragement of the English war clique, which was
stiffening Poland’s attitude toward the Reich and whose promises led Warsaw to
feel safe, the Polish government would hardly have let matters develop to the
point where Polish soldiers and civilians would eventually interpret the slogan
to extirpate all German influence as an incitement to the murder and bestial
mutilation of human beings.”
American
historian David Hoggan wrote that German-Polish relationships became strained by
the increasing harshness with which the Polish authorities handled its German
minority. More than 1 million ethnic Germans resided in Poland, and these
Germans were the principal victims of the German-Polish crisis in the coming
weeks. The Germans in Poland were subjected to increasing doses of violence from
the dominant Poles. Ultimately, many thousands of Germans in Poland paid for
this crisis with their lives. They were among the first victims of Britain’s war
policy against Germany. [9]
On
August 14, 1939, the Polish authorities in East Upper Silesia launched a
campaign of mass arrests against the German minority. The Poles then proceeded
to close and confiscate the remaining German businesses, clubs, and welfare
installations. The arrested Germans were forced to march toward the interior of
Poland in prisoner columns. The various German groups in Poland were frantic by
this time, and they feared that the Poles would attempt the total extermination
of the German minority in the event of war. Thousands of Germans were seeking to
escape arrest by crossing the border into Germany. Some of the worst recent
Polish atrocities included the mutilation of several Germans. The Poles were
warned not to regard their German minority as helpless hostages who could be
butchered with impunity. [10]
William
Lindsay White, an American journalist, recalled that there was no doubt among
well-informed people that, by August 1939, horrible atrocities were being
inflicted every day on the ethnic German minority of Poland. White said that a
letter from the Polish government claiming that no persecution of the Germans in
Poland was taking place had about as much validity as the civil liberties
guaranteed by the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union.
[11]
Donald
Day, a well-known Chicago Tribune correspondent, reported on the
atrocious treatment the Poles had meted out to the ethnic Germans in Poland:
[12]
“I
traveled up to the Polish Corridor where the German authorities permitted me to
interview the German refugees from many Polish cities and towns. The story was
the same. Mass arrests and long marches along roads toward the interior of
Poland. The railroads were crowded with troop movements. Those who fell by the
wayside were shot. The Polish authorities seemed to have gone mad. I have been
questioning people all my life, and I think I know how to make deductions from
the exaggerated stories told by people who have passed through harrowing
personal experiences. But even with generous allowance, the situation was plenty
bad. To me the war seemed only a question of hours.”
David
Hoggan wrote that the leaders of the German minority in Poland repeatedly
appealed to the Polish government for mercy during this period, but to no avail.
More than 80,000 German refugees had been forced to leave Poland by August 20,
1939, and virtually all other ethnic Germans in Poland were clamoring to leave
to escape Polish atrocities. [13]
British
Ambassador Nevile Henderson in Berlin was concentrating on obtaining recognition
from Halifax of the cruel fate of the German minority in Poland. Henderson
emphatically warned Halifax on August 24, 1939, that German complaints about the
treatment of the German minority in Poland were fully supported by the facts.
Henderson knew that the Germans were prepared to negotiate, and he stated to
Halifax that war between Poland and Germany was inevitable unless negotiations
were resumed between the two countries. Henderson pleaded with Halifax that it
would be contrary to Polish interests to attempt a full military occupation of
Danzig, and he added a scathingly effective denunciation of Polish policy. What
Henderson failed to realize is that Halifax was pursuing war for its own sake as
an instrument of policy. Halifax desired the complete destruction of Germany.
[14]
On
August 25, 1939, Ambassador Henderson reported to Halifax the latest Polish
atrocity at Bielitz, Upper Silesia. Henderson never relied on official German
statements concerning these incidents, but instead based his reports on
information he had received from neutral sources. The Poles continued to
forcibly deport the Germans of that area, and compelled them to march into the
interior of Poland. Eight Germans were murdered and many more were injured
during one of these actions. Henderson deplored the failure of the British
government to exercise restraint over the Polish authorities.
[15]
Hoggan
wrote that Hitler was faced with a terrible dilemma. If Hitler did nothing, the
Germans of Poland and Danzig would be abandoned to the cruelty and violence of a
hostile Poland. If Hitler took effective action against the Poles, the British
and French might declare war against Germany. Henderson feared that the Bielitz
atrocity would be the final straw to prompt Hitler to invade Poland. Henderson,
who strongly desired peace with Germany, deplored the failure of the British
government to exercise restraint over the Polish authorities.
[16]
Dutch
historian Louis de Jong wrote that, by mid-August 1939, the Poles proceeded to
arrest hundreds of ethnic Germans. German printing shops and trade union offices
were closed, and numerous house-to-house searches took place. Eight ethnic
Germans who had been arrested in Upper Silesia were shot to death on August 24
during their transport to an internment camp. [17]
Hitler
invaded Poland to end these atrocities against the German minority in Poland.
American historian Harry Elmer Barnes agreed with Hoggan’s analysis. Barnes
wrote: [18]
“The
primary responsibility for the outbreak of the German-Polish War was that of
Poland and Britain, while for the transformation of the German-Polish conflict
into a European War, Britain, guided by Halifax, was almost exclusively
responsible.”
The
Germans in Poland continued to experience an atmosphere of terror in the early
part of September 1939. Throughout the country, the Germans had been told:
[19]
“If
war comes to Poland, you will all be hanged.”
This
prophecy was later fulfilled in many cases.
Hitler
had planned to offer to restore sovereignty to the Czech state and to western
Poland as part of a peace proposal with Great Britain and France. German
Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop informed Soviet leaders Josef
Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov of Hitler’s intention in a note on September 15,
1939. Stalin and Molotov, however, sought to stifle any action that might bring
Germany and the Allies to the conference table. The Soviet leaders told
Ribbentrop that they did not approve of the resurrection of the Polish state.
Aware of Germany’s dependency on Soviet trade, Hitler abandoned his plan to
reestablish Polish statehood. [20]
Hitler’s
invasion of Poland was forced by the Polish government’s intolerable treatment
of its German population. Germany did not invade Poland for Lebensraum
or any other malicious reason. Thus, the Polish government’s report claiming
that “Hitler decided to resolve the conflict which he himself had caused”
ignores the numerous provocations and violence against the German minority in
Poland that led to Germany’s invasion of Poland.
Polish Expulsions of Germans
The
Polish report states that Poland has not received fair compensation from
Germany: [21]
“Following the Potsdam Conference, it was decided that Germany will ‘be
compelled to compensate to the greatest possible extent for the loss and
suffering that she has caused to the United Nations and for which the German
people cannot escape responsibility.’ This provision has not been implemented to
this day in respect of Poland. After the Potsdam Conference, the Paris Peace
Treaties were signed in 1946. It concerned reparations for the countries of
Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa, but it did not include the Polish
state.”
The
Polish report fails to mention that, at the conclusion of the Potsdam Conference
on August 2, 1945, the Western allies agreed to “the transfer to Germany of
German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland”. Since the Allied
victors had defined “Germany” in their various agreements as territories
belonging to this country as of December 31, 1937, this “transfer agreement”
should have concerned exclusively Germans living within the 1937 boundaries of
Poland. Hence, it should not have included the Germans who had lived
for centuries in southern East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. The potential
transfer of these territories to Poland was supposed to be done during a peace
treaty, which never came to pass. In the meantime, those territories were merely
put under temporary Polish administration (and Soviet administration for
northern East Prussia).
Yet
still, the Poles simply pretended that this “transfer agreement” also included
Germany’s eastern provinces. In fact, they didn’t even wait for a decision by
the victorious powers to be made in this regard. For more than three months
prior to the Potsdam Agreement, the Polish government was already expelling
German citizens from what it then called the “Recovered Territories.” That term
itself is highly misleading. In fact, Poland had no historical claim whatsoever
to two of the three Prussian provinces it took over after World War II:
(southern) East Prussia and Silesia.
While
Polish noblemen ruled Silesia since the late 900s, they slowly lost control of
it due to peaceful and very successful German settlement activities on both
sides of the Oder River since the 12th century. As a result, in the Treaty of
Trentschin of 1335, the Polish king relinquished Silesia “for all eternity” to
the Bohemian King. Silesia thus became part of the Holy Roman Empire of German
Nation. It became a Prussian Province in 1763, after Fredrick the Great’s
successful war of conquest against the Habsburg monarchy, which had ruled the
Holy Roman Empire since 1438.
Prussia
and the Baltic territories north of it, hence today’s Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania, were conquered starting in the early 13th Century by the Teutonic
Knights as a result of a request to the Pope by a Polish nobleman,
Konrad of Masovia, who had unsuccessfully tried to conquer, subjugate and
Christianize the Prussian heathens for decades. The State of the Teutonic Order
deteriorated in the 15th Century, and became a secularized, yet Lutheran dutchy
in 1525. It was inherited in 1618 by the Hohenzollern of Brandenburg, who
renamed their country the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701 (because the other German
kings wouldn’t allow Brandenburg to become a Kingdom).
The
history of Pomerania is a mix of various conquests by the Teutonic Order,
Poland, Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia, which had little effect on the ethnic
composition, which was always mixed German and Slavic/Polish.
But
whatever the deep history of these provinces may have been, population
transfers, a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, which is genocide in today’s
understanding of the term, requires the affected population’s consent to be
legal. It goes without saying that such a consent was never requested in this
case, nor could it have happened. If every country in the world conquered
territories of adjacent countries and transferred populations because they can
claim that they, in some more or less distant past, controlled certain parts of
a neighboring country, then all hell would break loose all over the planet.
History can make us understand the world we live in, but it cannot be a
justification for ethnic cleansing and genocide.
While
the expulsions of the Germans from their ancestral homes in East Germany and
Poland were crude and disorganized, they were neither spontaneous nor
accidental. Instead, the expulsions were carried out according to a premeditated
strategy devised by the Polish government well before the end of the war.
[22] The extreme suffering, death and confiscation of property inflicted on
ethnic Germans expelled from Poland and East Germany and the east German
provinces after World War II is not mentioned in the Polish report. These German
expellees have never been compensated for their suffering and loss of property.
Poland
relied almost exclusively on the use of terror to transport the indigenous
German population from their homelands westward across the Oder-Neisse line,
which was to become Germany’s new eastern border. Except in a very few
instances, deportations as a result of mob actions did not cause the German
expulsions. Rather, the so-called “wild expulsions” were carried out primarily
by troops, police and militia acting under orders and policies originating at
the highest levels of the Polish government. So chaotic was the process of
expelling the German majority from their homeland in East Germany that many
foreign observers, and even many people from the expelling countries themselves,
mistook the violent events of the late spring and summer of 1945 as a
spontaneous process from below. The expelling Polish government was more than
happy to allow the myth of the “wild expulsions” to grow, since this myth
enabled it to disclaim responsibility for the atrocities that were essential
components of the expulsions. [23]
The
worst of the violence in East Germany occurred between mid-June and mid-July
1945, particularly in the districts bordering the Oder-Neisse demarcation line,
which were designated by the Polish Army Command as a military settlement area.
The commander of the Polish Second Army expressed on June 24, 1945, the Polish
position on the rapid transfer of the Germans: [24]
“We
are transferring the Germans out of Polish territory [meaning East Germany]
and we are acting thereby in accordance with directives from Moscow. We are
behaving with the Germans as they behaved with us. Many already have forgotten
how they treated our children, women, and old people. The Czechs knew how to act
so that the Germans fled from their territory of their own volition.
One
must perform one’s tasks in such a harsh and decisive manner that the Germanic
vermin do not hide in their houses but rather will flee from us of their own
volition and then [once] in their own land will thank God that they
were lucky enough to save their heads. We do not forget Germans always will be
Germans.”
The
Germans who were forced to resettle were usually allowed to take only 20
kilograms of baggage with them, and were escorted to the demarcation line by
squads of Polish soldiers. In late June 1945, at least 40,000 Germans were
expelled within a few days. One commentator describes what this meant to the
Germans living near the Oder-Neisse line: [25]
“The
evacuation of individual localities usually began in the early morning hours.
The population, torn from their sleep, had scarcely 15 to 20 minutes to snatch
the most necessary belongings, or else they were driven directly onto the street
without any ceremony. Smaller localities and villages were evacuated at gunpoint
by small numbers of soldiers, frequently only a squad or a platoon. Due to the
proximity of the border, for the sake of simplicity the Germans were marched on
foot to the nearest bridge over the river, driven over to the Soviet side [i.e.,
into the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany] and there left to their own
fate.”
The
German expellees were frequently robbed by members of the Polish militia and
military units that carried out the expulsions. Food supply became an acute
problem, and the uprooted Germans were often destitute and exhausted when they
arrived in the Soviet Occupation Zone. The German expellees became easy prey for
Soviet occupation troops, who often stole the few belongings the Germans had
brought with them. Some Germans were beaten and raped, forced to perform
humiliating acts, and some were randomly killed. [26]
The
traffic of Germans across the Oder-Neisse line was not all in a single
direction. At the end of the war, many hundreds of thousands of Germans from
East Germany who had fled the Red Army’s advance to the west now returned to
their homes. The returning Germans did not understand that there was not going
to be a return home. The alarming spectacle of the terrorized and uprooted
population in East Germany increased in the weeks after V-E Day, and was one of
the factors spurring newly installed local Polish authorities to quickly proceed
with “wild expulsions” of the German natives. Polish soldiers and government
officials used aggressive and often violent measures to prevent the unwanted
Germans from returning to their homes. [27]
However
great the hazards and miseries of life on the road were for the German
expellees, they were usually preferable to the expulsion trains the Polish
authorities began to operate. Taking up to two weeks to reach Berlin, the trains
were typically not provisioned, and lacked the most basic amenities. As a
result, the death rate on the trains soared. One passenger wrote:
[28]
“In
our freight wagon there were about 98 people, and it is no exaggeration to say
that we were squeezed against each other like sardines in a can. When we reached
Allenstein, people started to die, and had to be deposited along the side of the
rails. One or more dead bodies greeted us every morning of our journey after
that; they just had to be abandoned on the embankments. There must have been
many, many bodies left lying along the track. […]
The
train spent more time stopping than moving. It took us more than 14 days to
reach the Russian occupation zone. We rarely traveled at night. […]
After a few days, we had no more to eat. Sometimes, by begging the Polish
driver, we were able to get a little warm water drawn from the engine. […]
The nights were unbearable because of the overcrowding. We could neither keep
upright nor sit down, much less lie down. We were so tightly squeezed together
that it was impossible not to jostle each other occasionally. Recriminations and
quarrels erupted, even attempts to exchange blows in the middle of this human
scrum. The very sick suffered the worst. Typhus was widespread throughout the
entire transport, and the number of deaths grew with each passing day. You can
well imagine the state of hygiene that prevailed in the wagon.”
A German
priest who witnessed the arrival of German expellees at the border described
what he saw: [29]
“The
people – men, women, and children all mixed together – were tightly packed in
the railway cars, these cattle wagons themselves being locked from the outside.
For days on end, the people were transported like this, and in Görlitz, the
wagons were opened for the first time. I have seen with my own eyes that out of
one wagon alone 10 corpses were taken and thrown into coffins which had been
kept on hand. I noted further that several persons had become deranged. […]
The people were covered in excrement, which led me to believe that they were
squeezed together so tightly that there was no longer any possibility for them
to relieve themselves at a designated place.”
Several
observers compared the fate of the German expellees to the victims of the German
concentration camps. Major Stephen Terrell of the Parachute Regiment stated:
[30]
“Even
a cursory visit to the hospitals in Berlin, where some of these people have
dragged themselves, is an experience which would make the sights in the
Concentration Camps appear normal.”
Adrian
Kanaar, a British military doctor working in a Berlin medical facility, reported
on an expellee train from Poland in which 75 had died on the journey due to
overcrowding. Although Kanaar had just completed a stint as a medical officer at
the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, what he witnessed of the expellees’ plight
so distressed him that he declared his willingness to face a court martial if
necessary for making the facts known to the press. Kanaar declared that he had
not “spent six years in the army to see a tyranny established which is as bad as
the Nazis.” [31]
However,
while the conditions reigning at Bergen-Belsen and other camps at war’s end were
a result of force majeure, of the inevitable collapse of Germany at
war’s end, the scenes unfolding in East Germany were created deliberately.
Gerald
Gardiner, later to become Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, had been a member of
a volunteer ambulance unit working with concentration camp survivors. Gardiner
stated regarding the expellee trains arriving in the late summer and autumn of
1945 from East Germany: [32]
“The
removal of the dead in carts from the railway stations was a grim reminder of
what I saw in early days in Belsen.”
An
eyewitness report of the arrival in Berlin of a train which had left East
Germany with 1,000 German expellees aboard reads: [33]
“Nine
hundred and nine men, women, and children dragged themselves and their luggage
from a Russian railway train at Leherte station today, after 11 days traveling
in boxcars from Poland.
Red
Army soldiers lifted 91 corpses from the train, while relatives shrieked and
sobbed as their bodies were piled in American lend-lease trucks and driven off
for internment in a pit near a concentration camp.
The
refugee train was like a macabre Noah’s ark. Every car was jammed with Germans.
[…] the families carry all their earthly belongings in sacks, bags and tin
trucks. […] Nursing infants suffer the most, as their mothers are
unable to feed them, and frequently go insane as they watch their offspring
slowly die before their eyes. Today four screaming, violently insane mothers
were bound with rope to prevent them from clawing other passengers.
‘Many
women try to carry off their dead babies with them,’ a Russian railway official
said. ‘We search the bundles whenever we discover a weeping woman, to make sure
she is not carrying an infant corpse with her.’”
Conditions for Germans after the war were so bad in East Germany and Poland that
many Germans saw no other option than to leave these areas. Food ration cards
were progressively withdrawn from the entire German population in East Germany
after the war. Like their parents, German children found that they were entitled
to no rations at all. The head of the Commissariat of Stettin-Stolzenhagen, then
renamed to Szczecin-Stołczyn by the new Polish authorities. proudly reported
that, since the end of November 1945, even German children under the age of two
had their milk allocation withdrawn from them.
Polish
laws designed to protect German children were typically never enforced. For
example, a directive issued in April 1945 by the Polish Ministry of Public
Security specifying that nobody under the age of 13 was to be detained was never
followed. More than two years later, the Polish Ministry of Labor and Social
Welfare was complaining that the regulations against imprisoning children in
camps continued to be “completely ignored.” German children were illegally
detained in Polish internment camps as late as August 1949.
[34]
Polish-Run Camps
Many of
the Germans in East Germany and Poland were also sent to the former German
concentration camps. In March 1945, the Polish military command declared that
the entire German people shared the blame for starting World War II. Over
105,000 Germans were sent to labor camps before their expulsion from East
Germany. The Polish authorities soon converted concentration camps such as
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Lamsdorf (then renamed to Łambinowice by the Poles) and
others into internment and labor camps. In fact, the liberation of the last
surviving Jewish inmates of the Auschwitz Main Camp and the arrival of the first
ethnic Germans were separated by less than two weeks.
When the
camps in Poland were finally closed, it is estimated that as many as 50% of the
inmates, mostly women and children, had died from ill-treatment, malnutrition
and diseases. [35]
Many
Germans were also tortured prior to entering the Polish-run camps. For example,
Tuviah Friedman was a Polish Jew who survived the German concentration camps.
Friedman by his own admission beat up to 20 German prisoners a day to obtain
confessions and weed out SS officers. Friedman stated: [36]
“It
gave me satisfaction. I wanted to see if they would cry or beg for mercy.”
In a
confidential report concerning the Polish concentration camps filed with the
Foreign Office, R.W. F. Bashford wrote: [37]
“[T]he
concentration camps were not dismantled, but rather taken over by new owners.
Mostly they are run by Polish militia. In Świętochłowice, prisoners who are not
starved or whipped to death are made to stand, night after night, in cold water
up to their necks, until they perish. In Breslau there are cellars from which,
day and night, the screams of victims can be heard.”
Lamsdorf
in Upper Silesia was initially built by Germany to house Allied prisoners of
war. This camp’s postwar population of 8,064 Germans was decimated through
starvation, disease, hard labor and physical mistreatment. A surviving German
doctor at Lamsdorf recorded the deaths of 6,488 German inmates in the camp after
the war, including 628 children. [38]
A report
submitted to the U.S. Senate dated August 28, 1945, reads:
[39]
“In
‘Y’ [code for a camp, from the original document], Upper Silesia, an
evacuation camp has been prepared which holds at present 1,000 people. […]
A great part of the people are suffering from symptoms of starvation; there are
cases of tuberculosis and always new cases of typhoid. […] Two people
seriously ill with syphilis have been dealt with in a very simple way: They were
shot. […] Yesterday a woman from ‘K’ [another camp] was shot
and a child wounded.”
Zgoda,
which had been a satellite camp of Auschwitz during the war, was reopened by the
Polish Security Service as a punishment and labor camp. Thousands of Germans in
Poland were arrested and sent to Zgoda for labor duties. The prisoners were
denied adequate food and medical care, the overcrowded barrack buildings were
crawling with lice, and beatings were a common occurrence. The camp director,
Salomon Morel, told the prisoners at the gate that he would show them what
Auschwitz had meant. A man named Günther Wollny, who had the misfortune of being
an inmate in both Auschwitz and Zgoda, later stated: [40]
“I’d
rather be 10 years in a German camp than one day in a Polish one.”
A
notable element of the postwar Polish camp system was the prevalence of sexual
assault as well as ritualized sexual humiliation and punishment suffered by the
female inmates. The practice at Jaworzno, as reported by Antoni Białecki of the
local Office of Public Security, was to “take ethnically German women at
gunpoint home at night and rape them.” The camp functioned as a sexual
supermarket for its 170-strong militia guard contingent.
The
sexual humiliation of female prisoners in the Polish camp at Potulice had become
an institutional practice by the end of 1945. Many of the women were sexually
abused and beaten, and some of the punishments resulted in horrific injuries.
The sexual exploitation of women in Polish-run camps contrasts to the experience
of women in German-run concentration camps. Rape or other forms of sexual
mistreatment was an extremely rare occurrence at German concentration camps and
severely punished by the authorities if detected. [41]
The
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) attempted to send a delegation
to investigate the atrocities reported in the Polish camps. It was not until
July 17, 1947, when most Germans had either died or had been expelled from the
camps, that ICRC officials were finally allowed to inspect a Polish camp. Yet
even at this late date there were still a few camps the ICRC was not allowed to
investigate. [42]
Jewish
journalist John Sack confirmed the torture and murder of German prisoners in
postwar Polish camps operated by the Office of State Security. Most of the camps
were staffed and run by Jews, with help from Poles, Czechs, Russians and
concentration camp survivors. Virtually the entire personnel at these camps were
eager to take revenge on the defeated Germans. In three years after the war,
Sack estimates that from 60,000 to 80,000 Germans died in the Office’s camps.
[43]
Efforts
to bring perpetrators in Polish camps to justice were largely unsuccessful.
Czesław Gęborski, director of the camp at Lamsdorf, was indicted by Polish
authorities in 1956 for wanton brutality against the German prisoners. Gęborski
admitted at his trial that his only goal in taking the job was “to exact
revenge” on the Germans. On October 4, 1945, Gęborski ordered his guards to
shoot down anyone trying to escape a fire that engulfed one of the barracks
buildings; a minimum of 48 prisoners were killed that day. The guards at
Lamsdorf also routinely beat the German prisoners and stole from them. German
prisoners in Lamsdorf died of hunger and diseases in droves; guards recalled
scenes of children begging for scraps of food and crusts of bread. Gęborski was
found not guilty despite strong evidence of his criminal acts.
[44]
Poland’s Stunted Development
The
Polish report on losses sustained due to German aggression during World War II
states: [45]
“Poland and its people are still suffering from the negative effects of the
Second World War on the country’s population, economy, infrastructure, and the
progress it has been able to make in scholarship, education, and culture.
[…] Today, Poland’s status in terms of civilizational growth in Europe and
worldwide would have been completely different, had it not been for the Second
World War and its aftereffects. For several generations following their wartime
decimation, the people of Poland have been forced to undertake a huge effort to
raise their country from ruins and restore it in the aftermath of the war.”
The
Polish report is correct that Poland has faced stunted economic growth and
development after World War II. However, most of this has been caused by the
Soviet Union’s control of Poland after World War II. Had Poland decided after
World War One to live in peaceful cooperation with Germany rather than on a war
footing trying to conquer as much German territory as possible, that cooperation
would have led to a very prosperous and happy Poland. This failed policy of
genocidal enmity toward Germany is the root cause of Poland’s stunted
development.
World
War II was supposedly fought to stop fascist aggression and to create democratic
institutions in the liberated nations of Europe. However, within a remarkably
short period after the end of the war, the Soviet Union ruthlessly subjected
Poland and other Eastern European nations to its totalitarian control. The Red
Army brought Moscow-trained secret policemen into every Soviet occupied country,
put local communists in control of the national media, and dismantled youth
groups and other civic organizations. The Soviets also brutally arrested,
murdered and deported people whom they believed to be anti-Soviet, and enforced
a policy of ethnic cleansing. [46]
On March
5, 1946, less than 10 months after the defeat of Germany, Winston Churchill made
his dramatic Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri. Churchill stated in this
speech:46
“A
shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory.
[…] The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern
states of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their
numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control.”
Churchill thus acknowledged that the Soviet Union was obtaining control of
Poland and other Eastern European nations. A war allegedly fought for democracy
and freedom for Poland had turned into a nightmare for the people of the Eastern
European nations.
Like
other Eastern European countries, Poland faced major economic hardships and
arrested development after the Second World War. This was caused primarily by
the Soviet Union’s control of Poland after the war rather than by the
destruction of Poland during the war.
Poland
furthermore claims that Germany’s wartime policy led to the death of some five
to six million Poles. That is an outrageous lie based on a statistical trick
that tallies the population losses on the territories today controlled by
Poland. However, the massive loss of population in that territory was the result
of Poland’s ethnic cleansing of the indigenous GERMAN population from East
Germany, which now forms the western part of Poland. [47]
Germany’s Stunted Development
If
German politicians had some gumption, they could turn the Polish argument of
“stunted development” against Poland. Fact is that Poland controls some 25% of
what used to be indisputably German territories. They could and did exploit all
its natural riches, and took control of the highly developed and industrialized
province of Silesia, which was moreover Germany’s breadbasket.
Germany,
on the other hand, has been deprived since 1946 of 25% of its GPD, which used to
be contributed to the total German economy by East Germany. If we were to tally
the losses which Germany suffered due to Poland taking control of 25% of
Germany’s territories and GDP-producing lands and industries, then the situation
would look as follows:
·
Let us assume that Germany was deprived of 25% of its annual GDP due to the loss
of 25% of its territories that Poland took.
·
This means that the German GDP could and should have been a third higher than
what it actually is. In fact, prior to the reunification of West and Central
Germany, West-German GDP data were produced on only 50% of Germany’s original
territory. Hence, the GDP figures of that era could have been 50% higher, had
Germany controlled its former eastern territories. Hence, Germany had the
following losses of GDP due to Poland’s occupation and exclusive usage of
Germany’s Eastern Territories: [48]
German Economic Losses Due to Inability of Using 25% of Its Territories
(Settlement, Forestry, Raw Materials, Agriculture, Industry)
|
Year |
(West) Germany GDP
[Trillion USD] |
fraction owed |
Owed
[Trillion USD] |
|
2024 |
4.660 |
1/3 |
1.553 |
|
2023 |
4.526 |
1/3 |
1.509 |
|
2022 |
4.164 |
1/3 |
1.388 |
|
2021 |
4.348 |
1/3 |
1.449 |
|
2020 |
3.940 |
1/3 |
1.313 |
|
2019 |
3.957 |
1/3 |
1.319 |
|
2018 |
4.052 |
1/3 |
1.351 |
|
2017 |
3.763 |
1/3 |
1.254 |
|
2016 |
3.538 |
1/3 |
1.179 |
|
2015 |
3.424 |
1/3 |
1.141 |
|
2014 |
3.966 |
1/3 |
1.322 |
|
2013 |
3.808 |
1/3 |
1.269 |
|
2012 |
3.598 |
1/3 |
1.199 |
|
2011 |
3.825 |
1/3 |
1.275 |
|
2010 |
3.468 |
1/3 |
1.156 |
|
2009 |
3.480 |
1/3 |
1.160 |
|
2008 |
3.809 |
1/3 |
1.270 |
|
2007 |
3.484 |
1/3 |
1.161 |
|
2006 |
3.046 |
1/3 |
1.015 |
|
2005 |
2.893 |
1/3 |
0.964 |
|
2004 |
2.852 |
1/3 |
0.951 |
|
2003 |
2.535 |
1/3 |
0.845 |
|
2002 |
2.102 |
1/3 |
0.701 |
|
2001 |
1.966 |
1/3 |
0.655 |
|
2000 |
1.967 |
1/3 |
0.656 |
|
1999 |
2.214 |
1/3 |
0.738 |
|
1998 |
2.248 |
1/3 |
0.749 |
|
1997 |
2.219 |
1/3 |
0.740 |
|
1996 |
2.507 |
1/3 |
0.836 |
|
1995 |
2.593 |
1/3 |
0.864 |
|
1994 |
2.215 |
1/3 |
0.738 |
|
1993 |
2.079 |
1/3 |
0.693 |
|
1992 |
2.141 |
1/3 |
0.714 |
|
1991 |
1.876 |
1/3 |
0.625 |
|
1990 |
1.778 |
1/3 |
0.593 |
|
1989 |
1.404 |
1/2 |
0.702 |
|
1988 |
1.406 |
1/2 |
0.703 |
|
1987 |
1.303 |
1/2 |
0.652 |
|
1986 |
1.050 |
1/2 |
0.525 |
|
1985 |
0.735 |
1/2 |
0.368 |
|
1984 |
0.728 |
1/2 |
0.364 |
|
1983 |
0.774 |
1/2 |
0.387 |
|
1982 |
0.779 |
1/2 |
0.390 |
|
1981 |
0.803 |
1/2 |
0.402 |
|
1980 |
0.954 |
1/2 |
0.477 |
|
1979 |
0.885 |
1/2 |
0.442 |
|
1978 |
0.743 |
1/2 |
0.372 |
|
1977 |
0.603 |
1/2 |
0.301 |
|
1976 |
0.522 |
1/2 |
0.261 |
|
1975 |
0.492 |
1/2 |
0.246 |
|
1974 |
0.447 |
1/2 |
0.223 |
|
1973 |
0.400 |
1/2 |
0.200 |
|
1972 |
0.301 |
1/2 |
0.150 |
|
1971 |
0.251 |
1/2 |
0.125 |
|
1970 |
0.217 |
1/2 |
0.108 |
|
1969 |
0.178 |
1/2 |
0.089 |
|
1968 |
0.157 |
1/2 |
0.078 |
|
1967 |
0.145 |
1/2 |
0.073 |
|
1966 |
0.143 |
1/2 |
0.072 |
|
1965 |
0.135 |
1/2 |
0.067 |
|
1964 |
0.123 |
1/2 |
0.062 |
|
1963 |
0.112 |
1/2 |
0.056 |
|
1962 |
0.106 |
1/2 |
0.053 |
|
1961 |
0.097 |
1/2 |
0.048 |
|
1960 |
0.085 |
1/2 |
0.042 |
|
1959 |
0.078 |
1/2 |
0.039 |
|
1958 |
0.073 |
1/2 |
0.036 |
|
1957 |
0.067 |
1/2 |
0.034 |
|
1956 |
0.062 |
1/2 |
0.031 |
|
1955 |
0.058 |
1/2 |
0.029 |
|
1954 |
0.053 |
1/2 |
0.027 |
|
1953 |
0.049 |
1/2 |
0.025 |
|
1952 |
0.046 |
1/2 |
0.023 |
|
1951 |
0.042 |
1/2 |
0.021 |
|
1950 |
0.039 |
1/2 |
0.020 |
|
Total |
125.685 |
|
44.669 |
Hence,
the argument could be made that Poland owes Germany some 44 trillion US dollars
for their continued use and exploitation of German territory, and that clock
keeps on ticking. Of course, it can be argued that additional territories do not
automatically equate additional GDP, as much depends on the human capital
available. In that case, one should consider the 2.1 million victims of the
expulsion of Germans from their ancestral homelands, most of them from East
Germany. Hence, most of them died as a result of Polish postwar policies.
Either
way, we don’t think that Poland would come out winning in case of a total and
honest accounting of who owes whom how much.
And this
does not even take into account the unfathomable economic and psychological
damage done to Germany and the German people due to postwar Holocaust
propaganda, much of which was created and spread in its current form by Polish
authorities in the immediate postwar years. [49]
Conclusion
Poland
does not have a legitimate claim for reparations from Germany. The Polish report
published in 2022 states that Germany was solely responsible for starting World
War II. In reality, Poland in 1939 committed numerous acts of violence against
its ethnic German minority, causing Germany to invade Poland to end these
atrocities.
If
Poland has a legitimate claim to reparations for the death and destruction that
occurred in Poland during World War II, then Germans who were expelled from
Poland and East Germany also have legitimate claims for the deaths of their
family members after the war. German expellees from Poland and East Germany also
had their real estate and most of their personal property either stolen or
destroyed by the Allies. German expellees have never been compensated for these
losses. Instead, they were forced to live in abject poverty in the rest of
Germany, while paying reparations to Jewish survivors of the so-called
Holocaust. Moreover, the entire German nation was deprived of some of its
potential economic prosperity due to the loss of a quarter of its territories.
Most of these German losses were Poland’s gain.
For the
sake of peace and understanding, Germans and Poles should let these matters rest
for eternity and try to live together from now on peacefully, respectfully and
cooperatively as good neighbors.
Notes
A
version of this article was originally published in the March/April 2024 issue
of The Barnes Review
[1] The
Barnes Review, Vol. XXVIII, No. 6., Nov./Dec. 2022, p. 44.
[2]
www.instytutstratwojennych.pl.
[3]
Ibid., p. 17.
[4]
Ibid., pp. 17f.
[5]
Ibid., p. 25.
[6]
Ibid., p. 63.
[7]
Barnett, Correlli, The Collapse of British Power, New York: William Morrow,
1972, p. 560; see also Taylor, A.J.P., The Origins of the Second World War, New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1961, p. 211.
[8]
Shadewaldt, Hans, Polish Acts of Atrocity Against the German Minority in Poland,
Berlin, and New York: German Library of Information, 2nd edition, 1940, pp. 75f.
[9]
Hoggan, David L., The Forced War: When Peaceful Revision Failed, Costa Mesa,
Cal.: Institute for Historical Review, 1989, pp. 260-262, 387.
[10]
Ibid., pp. 452f.
[11]
Ibid., p. 554.
[12]
Day, Donald, Onward Christian Soldiers, Newport Beach, Cal.: The Noontide Press,
2002, p. 56.
[13]
Hoggan, David L., op. cit., pp. 358, 382, 388, 391f., 479.
[14]
Ibid., pp. 500f., 550.
[15]
Ibid., pp. 509f.
[16]
Ibid., p. 509
[17] De
Jong, Louis, The German Fifth Column in the Second World War, New York: Howard
Fertig, 1973, p. 37.
[18]
Barnes, Harry Elmer, Barnes against the Blackout, Costa Mesa, Cal.: The
Institute for Historical Review, 1991, p. 222.
[19]
Hoggan, David L., op. cit., p. 390.
[20]
Tedor, Richard, Hitler’s Revolution, Chicago: 2013, pp. 160-161.
[21]
www.instytutstratwojennych.pl., p. 503.
[22]
Douglas, R. M., Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the
Second World War, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2012, p. 93.
[23]
Ibid., pp. 94-95.
[24]
Bessel, Richard, Germany 1945: From War to Peace, London: Harper Perennial,
2010, pp. 214-215.
[25]
Ibid., p. 215.
[26]
Ibid., pp. 216-217.
[27]
Douglas, R. M., op. cit., p. 103.
[28]
Ibid., pp. 109-110.
[29]
Davies, Norman and Moorhouse, Roger, Microcosm, London: Pimlico, 2003, p. 422.
[30]
Douglas, R. M., op. cit., p. 117.
[31]
Ibid., pp. 117f.
[32]
Ibid., p. 118.
[33]
Wales, Henry, Chicago Tribune Press Service, Nov. 18, 1945.
[34]
Douglas, R. M., op. cit., pp. 233f., 236.
[35]
Merten, Ulrich, Forgotten Voices: The Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern
Europe after World War II, New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers,
2012, pp. 9, 65.
[36]
Stover, Eric, Peskin, Victor, and Koenig, Alexa, Hiding in Plain Sight: The
Pursuit of War Criminals from Nuremberg to the War on Terror, Oakland, Cal.:
University of California Press, 2016, pp. 70-71.
[37]
Public Record Office, FO 371/46990.
[38] De
Zayas, Alfred-Maurice, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion
of the Germans, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977, pp. 125-126.
[39]
“Evacuation and Concentration Camps in Silesia” in Congressional Record, Senate,
Aug. 2, 1945, Annex A-4778/79.
[40]
Lowe, Keith, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II, New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012, pp. 135-137.
[41]
Douglas, R. M., op. cit., pp. 141f.
[42]
International Committee of the Red Cross, Report of its Activities During the
Second World War, Geneva: 1948, Vol. 1, pp. 334 et seq.
[43]
Sack, John, An Eye for an Eye, 4th edition, New York: Basic Books, 2000, p. 114.
[44]
Naimark, Norman M., Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century
Europe, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001, p. 130.
[45]
www.instytutstratwojennych.pl, p. 19.
[46]
Applebaum, Anne, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, New York:
Doubleday, 2012, pp. 192-193.
[47]
Müller, Otward, “Polish Population Losses during World War Two,” The
Revisionist, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2003, pp. 151-156;
https://codoh.com/library/document/polish-population-losses-during-world-war-two/.
[48]
German GDP Data 1960-2023:
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/deu/germany/gdp-gross-domestic-product;
German GDP Data 2024 from Google AI; West German GDP data for the 1950s:
calculated backward with 8% annual growth during this decade acc. to Google AI.
[49] On
this, see Rudolf, Germar, Nazi Gas Chambers: The Roots of the Story, 2nd ed.,
Armreg, London, 2025.
