Beneath the surface of Polish-German alignment within NATO lies an unresolved problem with growing strategic weight: Almost 70 percent of the Polish public believes that Germany has not made amends for the destruction it wrought on Poland during World War II. As a U.S.-Chinese great power rivalry intensifies, American engagement in Europe becomes less assured, and Berlin aspires to lead on European security, this unfinished ledger is no longer a purely historical or legal matter. It increasingly conditions how German leadership is perceived in Warsaw and across the region. If German rearmament proceeds without a corresponding architecture of trust, doubts about Berlin’s role will harden just as Europe needs cohesion most. Finding a political and strategic solution is therefore urgent. One plausible avenue is to convert historical responsibility into long-term German financing of Poland’s defense capabilities. Several opportunities to move in this direction have already been missed. Those that remain should not be.
Historical Context
For centuries, the grand strategy of Prussia — and later Germany — toward Poland was shaped less by partnership and cooperation than by coercion. When coercion failed, force swiftly followed. German eastward expansion (Drang nach Osten) repeatedly encountered Polish resistance, reinforcing in Berlin the conviction that Polish statehood complicated Germany’s long-term strategic consolidation in Europe.
This outlook was articulated with unusual bluntness by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who compared Poles to wolves — creatures to be shot not out of hatred, but because circumstances required it. Whether that remark was calculated rhetoric or an expression of deeper strategic instinct, the premise was unmistakable: An independent Poland did not fit comfortably within German strategic design. In the late 18th century, Prussia, Austria, and Russia acted accordingly, dismantling the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and wiping it off the map of Europe for 123 years.
Poland’s reemergence in 1918 — made possible in large measure by U.S. intervention in World War I — disturbed deeply rooted geopolitical assumptions in Berlin. The restored Polish state was not widely seen as a neutral correction of history: It was regarded as a strategic loss. Thus, from the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 onward, Germany and Bolshevik Russia cooperated in ways that eroded the Versailles order and directly targeted Polish independence. A decade before Hitler came to power, German Chancellor Joseph Wirth expressed the prevailing sentiment with disarming clarity: “Poland must be finished off (Polen muß erledigt werden). That goal defines my policy.”
Thus, the events of 1939 were not an aberration but an escalation of a traditional pattern. Adolf Hitler’s directives on the eve of invasion radicalized earlier assumptions: At the Obersalzberg briefing for senior Wehrmacht commanders on Aug. 22, 1939, he ordered that the war against Poland be conducted without mercy — explicitly extending this to women and children — and called for the annihilation of the Polish population as the only way to secure living space (Lebensraum) for Germany. The tradition of German racism toward Poles, traceable from Bismarck’s policies to Hitler’s ideology, reached its apogee in the genocidal practices of World War II. The joint attack on Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact aimed at dismantling Polish sovereignty and partitioning its territory. For Poles, this is not distant history. It forms part of the strategic memory through which contemporary events are interpreted. When Polish policymakers assess changes in German power today, they do so against this background.
A War of Destruction and Its Aftermath
World War II devastated Poland to a degree that remains difficult to convey in abstract numbers. Approximately five million Polish citizens perished, including around three million Polish Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Political elites were executed. Intellectual life was shattered. Industrial infrastructure was ruined. Cultural treasures were looted on an industrial scale.
Warsaw stands as the most visible symbol of this destruction. After the failure of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, Hitler ordered the systematic demolition of the city. This was not collateral damage from urban combat. It was deliberate punishment. Street by street, district by district, the capital was blown apart. Libraries were burned, archives destroyed, museums emptied, schools and hospitals flattened. By early 1945, roughly 85 percent of Warsaw lay in ruins.
Under classical understandings of international order, aggression on this scale carries consequences. Compensation is not an act of generosity. Instead, it is tied to the principle that those who inflict destruction bear responsibility for its repair. Yet the geopolitical settlement of 1945 did not produce a comprehensive Polish-German reckoning.
Poland emerged from the war nominally among the victors but strategically constrained. The Iron Curtain insulated West Germany from a full settlement with Poland. Under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Bonn became a pillar of Western containment policy. Polish claims did not disappear, but they were subordinated to Cold War priorities.
It is often argued in Berlin that territorial adjustments resolved the issue. That interpretation overlooks how those adjustments occurred. At Yalta and Potsdam, Poland lost nearly half of its prewar territory to the Soviet Union. Stalin shifted Poland westward at Germany’s expense. This was not restitution negotiated between Warsaw and Berlin. It was a strategic decision imposed by the victorious powers.
The arrangement served Moscow’s strategic interests. Polish-German antagonism anchored Poland within the Soviet sphere and justified a lasting military presence. West Germany benefited from a geopolitical environment in which integration into NATO in 1955 outweighed unresolved historical obligations toward Poland. Over time, legal arguments about waivers replaced political debate about responsibility. The matter did not disappear — it was deferred. What the Cold War froze, the collapse of the Soviet bloc suddenly thawed: a Polish-German relationship transformed by new security institutions but still shadowed by an incomplete reckoning.
The Strategic Breakthrough After 1989
The end of the Cold War altered Europe’s geopolitical landscape. The U.S.-led vision to build a Europe whole, free, and at peace integrated former Warsaw Pact adversaries within a shared institutional framework. Poland, admitted to NATO in the alliance’s first post-Cold War enlargement in 1999, became both a beneficiary and a contributor to this new order, later supporting the United States in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. NATO enlargement and European integration thus replaced rivalry with interdependence. Trade between Poland and Germany now exceeds $195 billion annually. Supply chains intertwine. Military cooperation is routine.
For the first time in modern history, Polish and German security interests align structurally. This alignment did not arise spontaneously. It depended on sustained U.S. engagement. The United States functioned not simply as a security guarantor over the horizon but as a European power in its own right, balancing forces and dampening asymmetries. American presence reassured Warsaw while limiting the strategic implications of Germany’s economic weight.
The result was an equilibrium that made reconciliation viable. In Polish strategic thinking, NATO membership and the U.S. security guarantee were not abstract endorsements of the West. They were concrete mechanisms ensuring that no major European power — not even a democratic one — could unilaterally shape Poland’s fate. Conversely, Germany could pursue normalization with Poland in the confidence that the trans-Atlantic alliance framework would prevent its neighbors from treating German recovery as a zero-sum threat. But equilibrium constructed under specific conditions requires maintenance. It was built on three pillars: U.S. predominance, German military restraint, and an expanding European project. All three are now under stress.
Rearmament in a Changed Environment
Europe again faces a period defined by hard security realities. Russian aggression has overturned assumptions about the permanence of post-Cold War peace. Germany has responded with a historic expansion of defense spending. After decades of military restraint, Berlin is rebuilding capabilities at scale under the banner of Zeitenwende.
From a strategic standpoint, this shift is necessary: A capable Germany strengthens European deterrence and shares burdens more equitably within NATO. But power does not operate in a vacuum. In Poland, German rearmament is assessed through two lenses: contemporary necessity and historical experience.
The concern in Warsaw is not that Germany should remain weak. For a frontline state confronting Russian revisionism, a militarily capable Germany is an asset. The problem is that Germany’s growing strength intersects with an unresolved historical ledger. Most of Polish society continues to believe that Germany did not fully settle its obligations stemming from the destruction of 1939 to 1945. Compensation mechanisms were partial and constrained. Postwar Germany did not rebuild Warsaw. Many looted works of art remain unrecovered. Entire communities destroyed during the occupation never saw meaningful restitution.
Perception matters in alliance politics. Trust is cumulative and fragile. When Germany increases its military capabilities while the memory of unfinished obligations persists, strategic interpretation becomes layered. The same budget line in Berlin — a new tank company, a fighter squadron, a missile defense investment — can look like reassurance in Washington and ambivalence in Paris, yet in Warsaw it is read through the prism of historical experience. The growth of German military power can reawaken long-conditioned instincts and quietly erode trust in Germany as an ally if it is not clearly embedded in a shared deterrence architecture. This does not invalidate cooperation: It complicates it. It creates a disjunction between formal alliance solidarity and underlying public sentiment, which political actors on both sides can exploit in times of stress.
From Legal Finality to Political Calibration
Berlin often insists that the issue is legally closed. But alliances are not sustained by legal logic: They are sustained by political resilience under pressure. If a significant part of public opinion in an allied state believes that a major injustice remains unaddressed, that belief becomes an opening an adversary will try to exploit. In an era of cognitive warfare, the crucial question is not whether a claim is legally airtight, but whether it can be weaponized to erode trust. We are already seeing this dynamic in Polish–Ukrainian relations, where Russia systematically invokes unresolved historical grievances to complicate Warsaw’s support for Kyiv.
In Polish-German relations, a similar attempt is only a matter of time. For Moscow, driving wedges between frontline allies is a standing operational objective. That is why the trust deficit cannot be left to be tested for the first time in the middle of a crisis. It should be preempted by political and strategic means. This logic is increasingly recognized: During his first visit to the German capital, Polish President Karol Nawrocki proposed opening discussions on converting Germany’s outstanding reparations liability toward Poland into long-term German investments in Polish defense capabilities. Prime Minister Donald Tusk also underlined to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz that the German reparation to Poland issue remains unsolved. A few weeks ago, Wolfgang Ischinger, a longtime chairman of the Munich Security Conference and one of the most influential figures in Germany’s strategic community, signaled support for a similar approach in an interview with Die Welt. The space for such a solution exists. The real question is whether it will be used before the next crisis forces decisions under pressure.
Embedding Power Through Structure
Several years ago, I suggested that Germany could address part of the unresolved historical issue by contributing directly to Poland’s defense modernization. At that time, Poland was beginning an ambitious buildup. It required tanks, artillery, naval assets, and air defense systems. Berlin’s participation would have had both operational value and symbolic significance, signaling that German power was now being used to underwrite Polish security rather than to threaten it.
That moment has passed. Poland now fields one of the largest and most modern armored forces in Europe. It plans to equip six heavy divisions with some of the most advanced tanks in NATO, including K2 Black Panther and M1A1/M1A2 Abrams variants. The goal is to procure approximately 1,100 modern main battle tanks by 2030. Poland has approved the acquisition of 486 M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers from the United States and 288 K239 Chunmoo multiple launch rocket systems from South Korea, bringing its planned inventory of long-range rocket artillery to roughly 800 systems. This will give Poland one of the largest rocket artillery arsenals in Europe, with precision strike capability at ranges exceeding 70–300 kilometers depending on the munition type. This dramatically expands its deep fires capacity, enabling operational-level strike options previously limited to only a few European allies. Poland is also building a layered air and missile defense architecture designed for integration with NATO networks, while fielding fifth-generation F-35 aircraft and AH-64E Apache attack helicopters. Its force structure trajectory has moved beyond basic recapitalization toward qualitative enhancement, replacing legacy Soviet-era equipment with high precision, network-enabled systems that enhance deterrence, survivability, and interoperability. A recent RAND report concluded:
If these goals are mostly met, Poland’s military will dramatically increase in capability and capacity to defend its national territory and contribute to the defense of NATO’s eastern flank more broadly. The Polish Land Forces, in particular, are programmed to grow over the next ten to fifteen years into a large modern combined-arms force. This plan is supported across Poland’s political spectrum. In 2025, Poland will spend approximately 4.7 percent of its GDP on national defense, a considerable share of which goes to the United States in arms contracts. Many of these contracts are already being fulfilled.
But the logic behind the earlier compensation proposal remains relevant. The issue is no longer filling gaps. It is shaping perception and embedding capability within a shared framework. One practical approach would be the creation of a long-term, transparent German-funded mechanism dedicated to supporting specific elements of Poland’s evolving force structure.
Airpower provides the clearest example. Poland has already ordered 32 F‑35A aircraft and is reorganizing its air force around fifth-generation capabilities, while simultaneously planning the modernization and life extension of its existing fleet of 48 F‑16C/Ds. Germany, for its part, has decided to procure 35 F‑35As to replace its aging Tornado fleet and integrate more closely with NATO’s high-end strike and deterrence missions. Warsaw is now considering a second tranche of up to 32 additional F‑35s,
If Warsaw proceeds with that purchase, Poland — together with Finland, Denmark, and Norway — would field one of the most formidable concentrations of fifth-generation airpower on NATO’s eastern flank. This would significantly enhance the alliance’s ability to contest — and, if necessary, secure — air superiority in a high-intensity conflict with Russia.
As Nawrocki suggested, “On the one hand, Germany could begin to pay reparations by building up the strength of the Polish army and its military potential, while at the same time strengthening what we all care about, namely NATO’s eastern flank.” One practical example of such an approach would be the prospective second tranche of F-35s: Berlin could choose to finance — in whole or in part — Poland’s additional aircraft, thereby linking its own rearmament spending and industrial commitments to a tangible enhancement of Polish and NATO frontline airpower.
In Eastern Europe, control of the air determines the survivability of ground formations, the effectiveness of precision fires, and the resilience of critical infrastructure. A German-financed second Polish F‑35 tranche would be one powerful signal, but it is not the only one. Berlin still has opportunities to convert historical liability into shared capability across several other pillars of Poland’s modernization effort: long‑range strike (for example, Taurus missiles and other precision systems), aerial refueling and strategic airlift, satellite reconnaissance and secure communications, integrated air and missile defense enablers, electronic warfare and cyber defenses, as well as logistics, maintenance, and high‑end munitions production.
A dedicated, multi-decade German fund could be structured to co‑finance these specific categories of capabilities — each selected because they simultaneously strengthen Poland’s national defense and NATO’s ability to fight as a coherent force on the eastern flank. Rather than micromanaging Polish procurement, Berlin would underwrite agreed enabler baskets that plug directly into allied plans and command structures. Oversight shared with NATO or the European Union would ensure transparency and avoid any perception of bilateral dependency.
Done this way, German participation in Poland’s modernization would not be a symbolic add‑on. It would hard‑wire German power into the frontline defensive architecture of the alliance. Over time, that shift — from abstract remembrance to visible, jointly owned capabilities — would change how German rearmament is read in Warsaw: less as a national resurgence to be watched, more as a structural contribution to collective defense that makes historical repetition materially harder.
The Polish-German relationship sits at the center of Europe’s security — and at the edge of its fault lines. German rearmament is indispensable, but rearmament without political anchoring may eventually collide with the unfinished business of World War II. The choice before Berlin is stark: let its growing power rest on legal arguments and fragile trust or convert its historical debt into concrete investments in Poland’s defense and NATO’s eastern flank. Only the second path turns memory from a liability into a strategic asset.
There will, of course, be voices on both sides content to keep this issue simmering — a cause that reliably commands headlines, rallies public sentiment, and sustains political relevance, even if it never quite reaches resolution. Yet political questions with strategic consequences demand political action and vision. No one should expect to persuade 70 percent of the skeptics. But persuading even a half of that number may be enough to ensure that history no longer lies buried like a mine beneath Polish-German relations.
Sławomir Dębski, Ph.D., is a visiting professor of strategy at the College of Europe in Natolin. He served as director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs from 2007 to 2010, 2016 to 2021, and 2021 to 2024.
Image: Mikołaj Bujak via Office of the President of the Republic of Poland
