When Jarosław Kaczyński publicly announced in the summer of 2017 that Poland would return to the issue of reparations and compensation from Germany, it caused a wave of more or less hostile comments in the media of the Federal Republic. In just one issue of "Die Welt" from 14 September 2017, three articles on the subject were published. Among them was a historical commentary by Professor Michael Stürmer, who wrote with delight about the "masterpiece of German diplomacy" from 1990, when the issue of German reunification was at stake. At that time, Chancellor Kohl managed to sweep the issue of material compensation for victims under the carpet and ensure that the subject of reparations did not appear at all in the 2+4 treaty (which replaced the peace treaty and regulated the issue of German reunification).
For decades, successive governments of the Federal Republic of Germany considered it impossible to pay compensation to Polish victims of World War II and the German occupation of 1939-1945. The leading argument was the statement of the Polish People's Republic government led by Bolesław Bierut, which stated that it would forego German reparations. The document, dated August 23, 1953, was issued during the period of Poland's greatest dependence on the USSR. Two months after the bloodily suppressed uprising in East Berlin, the Soviet Union decided to change its policy towards Germany. Since the USSR was collecting the reparations it had been granted from East Germany, Moscow decided to end this in order to allow the GDR to get back on its feet a bit.
Several months earlier, a conference in London with the participation of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Western countries had concluded its deliberations. In the so-called London Agreement of January 1953, it was agreed that all claims related to World War II against the Federal Republic of Germany, which presented itself as the legal successor to the Reich, would be postponed until a peace treaty was signed. For many years, the basis of the Federal Republic of Germany's position was to emphasize that a peace conference should be convened, at which a peace treaty with Germany would be negotiated.
What is more, Bonn kept reminding that the London agreements of 1953 were in force. When the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Polish People's Republic (then Stefan Olszowski) visited Bonn in September 1972, he heard from West German diplomat Walter Scheel that "in the London Convention of 1953, to which the FRG is a party, the issue of reparations and compensation was postponed until the peace settlement in the case of Germany and it should be the subject of negotiations with the future all-German government". However, he added that "Poland voluntarily (sic! – S. Ż.) waived its reparation claims against Germany in 1953". Nevertheless, Minister Scheel repeated that the FRG "does not feel authorized to take up the issue of compensation before the peace conference – these matters should be postponed until such time as it is convened (…)".
Minister Olszowski's note summed up the position of the Federal Republic of Germany in the following words: "the problem of reparations could, in accordance with the provisions of the London Protocol of 1953, be discussed only with the all-German government and in the peace treaty with Germany."
The position of the Federal Republic of Germany did not change until the end of the eighties. In response to the extensive note of the Polish People's Republic government from December 1986 on compensation, the German government replied that in 1953 Poland had waived both reparations and compensation, and at the same time it was added that the London Agreement postponed the matter until the conclusion of a peace treaty. The Polish People's Republic government submitted another note on this matter in Bonn in October 1988, with a similar result.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl, before his historic visit to Poland in November 1989 (it was already at the time when Tadeusz Mazowiecki's government was in power) and during that visit, did everything to sweep the subject of compensation for the occupation period under the carpet. On the other hand, that same autumn the Chancellor reminded (among others on 8 November, during the debate in the Bundestag on the report on the state of the nation, and also during the aforementioned visit to Warsaw) that the basis of the West German so-called legal position is to point out the lack of a peace conference ending World War II and to emphasize the need to conclude a peace treaty.
Chancellor Kohl signs reparations. (Source: DlaPolonii.pl)
A few weeks later it turned out that the government of the Federal Republic of Germany had changed its position by 180 degrees, firmly rejecting the possibility of convening a peace conference and signing a peace treaty, and was taking intense action in favor of a different form of agreement. The reason was, among other things, the issue of reparations.
Kohl managed to convince the US President George Bush (senior) of this, first and foremost. Incidentally, during talks with Bush at Camp David (February 24-25, 1990), Kohl lied to the president, saying that the Federal Republic of Germany had paid a total of over 100 billion marks (DM, USD 59 billion) in reparations, of which Poland received "large sums" - in reality, West Germany sent only one per mille of these total payments to Poland.
The "masterpiece of German diplomacy" was that instead of a peace treaty, the so-called 2+4 treaty was signed on 12 September 1990, which was to legally close all the issues related to the consequences of World War II in relation to Germany. The words "reparations" or "compensation" did not appear in this document at all.
In the autumn of the following year, the reunited Germany achieved another success: the government of Jan Krzysztof Bielecki agreed to conclude an agreement with the Federal Republic of Germany, in which Poland was satisfied with the astonishingly low amount of 500 million DM (USD 294 million) as "humanitarian aid" for the surviving and only some victims of the German occupation. In this way, the whole issue of material compensation for the Poles was to be closed forever.
