The Polish government is rallying European countries occupied by Nazi Germany to its cause as Polish officials demanded €1.3 trillion in WWII reparations at an international conference hosted by the Polish Foreign Ministry in Athens this week.
Poland is joined by Greece, which itself is demanding an additional €285 billion from Berlin. The Deputy Polish Foreign Minister Arkadiusz Mularczyk flew into Athens to press the case for reparations alongside academics from Italy and Serbia.
Poland was occupied by Germany for almost the entirety of WWII as approximately six million (or a fifth of the Polish population) perished. Two million Poles were used as slave labour.
WWII-era reparations are a minefield for European diplomacy and increasingly a major foreign policy point for the Polish government in recent years.
This week’s Athens conference was organised by the Greek-based European Public Law Organization (EPLO) in conjunction with the Polish government and was titled “Post-conflict Justice: Opening Legal Paths.”
Former Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos was the most high-profile speaker addressing the Athenian conference. He directly blamed Germany not just for his country’s occupation but for post-war division caused by Greece’s wartime experience.
“Of course, Germany has apologised for its actions, acting with integrity … that is commendable but it does not negate the claims for compensation,” Pavlopoulos said speaking to attendees. Greece was occupied between 1941 and 1944 by German and Italian forces and erupted into a brutal civil war subsequently between communist and nationalist partisans.
The German government has flatly refused to pay reparations—amounting to roughly a third of its annual GDP—as Warsaw likened the German invasion to contemporary Russian aggression in Ukraine.
In a statement to The European Conservative, a spokesman for the Polish Foreign Ministry compared the issue to similar legal causes taken by South Korean ‘comfort women’ sexually enslaved by the Japanese army and payouts to victims of Nazi atrocities in Greece and Italy. The spokesman also added that any redress model created could be replicated against Russia for its recent invasion of Ukraine.
Greece revived its claim against Germany in 2019, as representatives from towns where Nazi atrocities transpired attended the Athens conference. The German ambassador to Poland warned of a “Pandora’s box” caused by raising the matter of wartime reparations, saying that Warsaw should move on.
Unlikely to impact the likelihood of reparations, the conference comes at an interesting time in European geopolitics and an apparent decline in German international prestige caused by poor energy policy and the war in Ukraine. Poland has come to the fore of European politics in assisting Ukraine with its brazen demands for reparations, a testament to its growing strength over Berlin even if the money is unlikely to be paid.
