Tackling upon the Polish-German relations is a mine field trip edged with rooted fluctuation of status: enmity, occupation, concentration camps, mass expulsion, frozen diplomatic ties and finally alliance where the former Premier intimately kissing the Chancellor! Acknowledging such risk, this essay will scan through three major rifts that mark the affairs between these awkward neighbors: a flashback in the history of the Polish-German relations, analyzing the present diagram of them, and, hence, foreshadowing the potential embryo they may womb.

Survival of the Fittest    

In the near past, both neighbors signed a Non-Aggression Pact on January 1934 with Poland is trying to avoid an imminent evil. It took the Germans only five years to breach that Treaty and the emerging NAZI power targeted the weak eastern flank igniting the deadliest conflict in human known history, the Second World War. For the Poles, who enjoyed only 21 years of independence after the Prussian Empire collapsed in 1918 and 123 years of Poland’s complete disappearance from the map, that war couldn’t be more catastrophic in all terms. The Nazi expansive rabies tended to swallow the whole world, but Poland suffered the heaviest share of that human tragedy: around 5.7 million were killed either directly or due to war-related famines and diseases.

It was only in 1989 that the Soviets admitted the existence of a secret protocol in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that Poland’s right and left neighbors will attack her. The Germans occupied Poland mutually with the Soviets at the beginning and solely alone after 1941 rooting themselves as the new ruthless Vikings in the very subconscious of both public and formal Poland.

Post WW ll, the Polish-German relations were marked with the catastrophic result of this war on both of them: a nearly complete devastation for them with one major difference; Poland was liberated by the allies who won that war. Since then, the world has learned the lesson and made sure to castrate the untamed bull: Germany was denied any right to obtain a nuclear bomb or to be a permanent Security Council member. The world used the carrot and stick policy with the Third Reich heirs by tempting them once and threatening them another. The ultimate end was to contain the German’s chronic national tendencies hence offering the Germans the biggest share of the European industrial cake. Yet for Poland, Germany was not even existed for few coming decades due to the latter’s committed atrocities.

The Serene River!

With the famous brave gesture attributed by the West German Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1970 when he genuflected before the monument of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising victims, a new era of excruciating normalization between the two neighbors has begun. At the same visit, Brandt signed the Treaty of Warsaw with the Polish Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz where Germany finally accepted the Oder-Neisse line as a formal border one- controversial till today.

Two years and one month were enough to produce three milestones that changed the Polish-German relations for ever:

• the Fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9,
• 1989 synchronizing the end of Communism in Poland- a de facto aftermath of the Gdańsk Agreement,
• the Collapse of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991.

The almost surreal events have ended the traditional division between the Western capitalist sphere of Europe with West Germany in, and the Eastern sphere with both East Germany and Poland in. The latter dusted off the heavy 44 years of communist history and marched with brave and proud steps to reconcile with the past aggressors. Germany, as a founding member state of the EU, unified its powers and political will and began its cathartic path.

Today, the relations between Poland and Germany are far from typical ones due to unresolved issues:

• the heated dispute over the Iraqi War and the role of the EU in 2003,
• the Russo-German Nord Stream pipeline Project –which then Polish defense minister Radosław Sikorski compared to the infamous 1939 Soviet-Nazi Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact,
• the debate over the EU’s institutional reforms which took place in 2007,
• the assigning of the controversial Erika Steinbach the president of the Association of Expellees in Germany,
• suspended war-related issues.

Yet, at the grassroots level, people in both countries, especially the younger generations, have marched huge steps in the reconciliation path trying to turn the past’s page.

New Era of Victories

The future of Polish-German relation is defined by political and economic criteria that mark such path. In an optimistic scenario, the Polish economy may witness radical prosperity that leads to a de facto changing of the political and social matrix of relations. The recent subordination towards Germany could disappear from the Polish subconscious with Poland leads the European tigers economies.

Hence, the pilgrimage to Germany –the ultimate destination for the Poles due to the difference in standard of living, will stop, and Warsaw can substitute Berlin as Europe’s Promised Land; the Polish victory over Germany in many athletic championships can be the seed of such Renaissance.

Moreover, as much as the European Union Member States achieve more coherence and structural cooperation, as much as the individual differences between MSs will automatically disappear. Yet, in a rather pessimistic version, the German economic superiority will remain intact polarizing more Poles to work, study in, and emigrate to. Such gloomy perspective will extend to cover the cultural and political spheres keeping Germany on top and Poland struggling to catch up. Moreover, the New Nazis are cancering in Germany conjuring the past’s ghosts of radicalism, intolerance, and fake supremacy. Some of their parties are claiming some Polish bordering territories back with regrowing tendencies of superiority. If formal German doesn’t take decisive procedure against such bigotry, Neo-Nazis can form a malignant cell again.

January 27 marked the 70th anniversary of liberating Auschwitz Concentration Camp at the hands of the Red Army. Such an occasion can be a chance to reignite sorrows and bitterness, but forgiveness and tolerance as well. The relationship between Poland and Germany can survive and anchor to normal only beyond those above mentioned committed atrocities: a new European generation that believes in the strength of unity.

By: Assef Salloom