World War II reparations
After World War II both West Germany and East Germany were obliged to pay war reparations to the Allied governments, according to the Potsdam Conference. Other Axis nations were obliged to pay war reparations according to the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947. Austria was not included in any of these treaties.
Recipients[edit]
Poland[edit]
On 23 August 1953, the People's Republic of Poland, under pressure from the Soviet Union which wanted to free East Germany from any liabilities,[23] announced it would waive its right to further war reparations from East Germany on 1 January 1954.[24][25] In a United Nations note, dated 24 November 1969, the communist government of Poland demanded action from the organization not only to punish war criminals and those who have committed crimes against humanity but also to establish procedures and divisibility of compensation for war crimes and damages committed by Germany during World War II.[26] In 1970, the 1953 renunciation of reparation rights was confirmed by the Polish Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Józef Winiewicz during the course of the negotiations leading to the normalization treaty of November 1970,[27] in which West Germany recognized the Oder-Neisse as the final border between Poland and East Germany.[28][24][27][29][30][31]
On 10 September 2004, the Polish parliament (Sejm) passed a resolution stating that: "The Sejm of the Republic of Poland, aware of the role of historical truth and elementary justice in Polish-German relations states that Poland has not yet received adequate financial compensation and war reparations for the enormous destruction and material losses caused by German aggression, occupation and genocide."[32] A month later, on 19 October 2004 the Polish Council of Ministers put out a statement stating: "The Declaration of 23 August 1953 was adopted in accordance with the constitutional order of the time, in compliance with international law laid down in the UN Charter."[33][25] In August 2017, this position was again confirmed in a statement by Deputy Foreign Minister Marek Magierowski,[33][25] stating that "(...) the 1953 declaration constitutes a binding unilateral legal act of the Polish state – a subject of international law."[34][35] According to law professor at the University of Warsaw, Władysłav Czapliński, the reparation question has been closed with the conclusion of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, negotiated in 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, and the Four Powers (United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and France), to which Poland voiced no protest.[36] The German government takes the same position.[37]
In the meantime, Poland and Germany concluded several treaties and agreements to compensate Polish persons who were victims of German aggression. In 1972, West Germany paid compensation to Poles that had survived pseudo-medical experiments during their imprisonment in various Nazi camps during the Second World War.[38] In 1975, the Gierek-Schmidt agreement was signed in Warsaw. It stipulated that 1.3 billion DM was to be paid to Poles who, during Nazi occupation, had paid into the German social security system but received no pension.[39] In 1992, the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation was founded by the Polish and German governments, and as a result, Germany paid Polish sufferers approximately zl 4.7 billion (equivalent to zl 37.8 billion or US$7.97 billion in 2022). Between 1992 and 2006, Germany and Austria jointly paid compensation to surviving Polish, non-Jewish victims of slave labour in Nazi Germany and also to Polish orphans and children who had been subject to forced labour.[40] The Swiss Fund for the Victims of the Holocaust (which had obtained settlement money from banks in Switzerland) used some of its funds to pay compensation between 1998 and 2002 to Polish Jews and Romani who were victims of Nazi Germany.[40]
The reparation issue arose again in late 2017 with comments made by Polish government officials from the ruling Law and Justice. Since then, the Polish government has taken the position that Poland's 1953 refusal is non-binding because the country was under the sway of the Soviet Union.[25][41] Przemysław Sobolewski, head of the Bureau of Research of the Sejm, said that the political decision of 1953 was made by the Polish Council of Ministers, even though under the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic, which came into force in 1952, it was the Polish Council of State, which had the sole authority to undertake such a decision.[42] According to Józef Menes from the Council of the Polish War Loss Institute, no diplomatic note was presented to the East German government and that "Probably the meeting of the Council of Ministers of August 23, 1953 did not take place at all" - citing relation of Kazimierz Mijal (head of the office of the Council of Ministers from 21 November 1952 to 1 February 1956).[43]
On the 83rd anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, on September 1, 2022, a Polish government report on Poland's war losses and damages between 1939 and 1945 was presented at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.[44] The three volume report also covered the legal issues regarding the 1953 renunciation of reparation rights by Poland, and according to the report findings: "the alleged unilateral statement of the Council of Ministers of 23 August 1953 on the renunciation of war reparations by the People's Republic of Poland violated the constitution of 22 July 1952 in force at that time, because the matters of ratification and termination of international agreements belonged to the competence of the Council of State, not the Council of Ministers". Also, the report noted that according to the minutes of the Council of Ministers of 19 August 1953, the renunciation concerned only the German Democratic Republic not the Federal Republic, and that no diplomatic note was ever sent to the East German government officially informing it of Poland's decision.[45] On September 14, 2022, the Sejm passed (418 for, 4 against, 15 abstentions) a resolution stating that: "The Polish state has never renounced its claims against the German state; the Sejm of the Republic of Poland calls on the German government to assume political, historical, legal, and financial responsibility for all the effects caused by the unleashing of World War II."[46]
On 2 October 2022, the Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau signed a diplomatic note asking the German government to undertake an official negotiation process between Poland and Germany, and on 3 October presented the diplomatic note to the visiting German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.[47][48] According to the German government, there is no legal basis for further compensation payments.[49] On 4 January 2023 the deputy minister of foreign affairs of Poland Arkadiusz Mularczyk stated that "We do not recognize this German position, we reject it in its entirety as absolutely unfounded and erroneous." and "the German state cannot close a case that has never (yet) been opened"[50]