Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki has suggested Germany could begin repaying for damages sustained by his country during the Second World War.
He said that could be done by Berlin financing the development of Poland’s defence industry and military capacity.
Nawrocki’s remarks to reporters today followed a visit to Berlin where he met President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Friedrich Merz. They discussed bilateral trade, European Union policy, and the issue of reparations.
“I am in favour of Germany paying reparations to Poland,” Nawrocki said. He added that he had suggested Berlin could help finance Polish defence as part of a long-term settlement.
“I suggested that we could accept financing the Polish arms industry, military capabilities, which would certainly be the beginning of a long process,” Nawrocki said.
Nawrocki added that he had introduced this topic for discussion with German counterparts. That was clearly signalled when, on September 1, the 86th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland that started the Second World War, Nawrocki said he wanted Poland to receive reparations for war damages from Germany.
“On the one hand, Germany could begin paying reparations by building the strength of the Polish military and its defence capabilities, while simultaneously reinforcing what we all care about, namely NATO’s eastern flank, which is a border region of the ongoing war, especially after the September 10 Russian drone incursion” he said.
Poland would welcome external support for its military spending since it has embarked on a defence spending spree in recent years. Its defence budget has risen to 4.5 per cent of its GDP this year and is planned to increase to 4.8 per cent in 2026.
Steinmeier’s spokeswoman Cerstin Gammelin confirmed that Nawrocki had raised the reparations issue when the two Presidents met but reiterated the longstanding German position that the matter was closed.
“In response to the demand by the Polish President for reparations, the federal President emphasised that, from a German perspective, this issue has been legally resolved once and for all,” wrote Gammelin.
“However, the promotion of remembrance and commemoration remains a shared concern,” she added. That was seen as an allusion to German proposals to pay more compensation to remaining individual victims of the war and initiatives such as a German-Polish centre and monument honouring the Poles who died at the hands of the Germans in the war.
Around 6 million Polish citizens, 17 per cent of the country’s pre-war population, were killed in the Second World War, a higher proportion than in any other country, with the occupiers destroying several cities and much of Polish cultural heritage.
Poland’s current centre-left government, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, disagrees with the PiS-aligned Nawrocki and believes the issue of reparations is now effectively hopeless given Berlin’s position and international law.
It has, though, suggested that Germany should find other ways of compensating Poland for historical wrongs. Talks with Germany in that regard have not as yet yielded any results the Polish Government was willing to endorse.
The Tusk government’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski slammed Nawrocki, accusing him of conducting his own foreign policy.
Sikorski told commercial broadcaster Polsat that the President was “breaching the Constitution” by failing to adhere to the government’s foreign policy, which has played down reparation claims.
Earlier, before the Nawrocki visit, Sikorski said he “wishes the President luck” with his pursuit of reparations. But he noted that Nawrocki’s predecessor, PiS-aligned Andrzej Duda, “failed for 10 years” to obtain them, as did the PiS when it was in government.
In fact, the reparations claim was made by the former PiS government just three years ago in 2022 when it presented Germany with a bill of around €1.4 trillion in 2022.
Germany responded by saying the matter had been settled in the 1950s when Germany paid reparations for territories to its east in a deal with the then-USSR that covered Poland.
Recent opinion polls indicated that most Poles support the reparations claim with one survey last year reporting 58 per cent agreeing with the statement “Poland should claim reparations from Germany for the Second World War”, and only 20 per cent disagreeing.
