In the early morning hours of September 1, 1939, Poland plunged into the chaotic abyss of modern war. From the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto to the establishment of the death factories of Sobibór and Auschwitz, the crimes perpetrated in Poland were so malignant, calculated, and cataclysmic that they came to represent one of the greatest moral failings in contemporary history. Seventy-eight years later, Warsaw, Krakow, and Lublin have been rebuilt. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Poland and its people are now free to determine their fate. The nation is rising as a preeminent force that is shaping both the economic and security architecture of Eastern Europe.
Earlier this fall, the Polish government created a vast three-volume report outlining the consequences of the war. In calculating the economic effects of the destruction of Polish infrastructure, cultural heritage, and 5.2 million lives, the government-sanctioned report asked Germany for 1.3 trillion dollars in reparations with a formal diplomatic notice to Germany sent thereafter. Are these demands justified?
Many arguments for reparations focus exclusively on the past. But herein lies the problem. The various wrongs of the past cannot be made right. They are wrongs etched into the fabric of history, tears that cannot be sewn back together by the graceless threads of dollar bills and euros. This article, in addition to analyzing the past, will take into account the future. Above all, what is needed is the creation of a model for reparations that is derived from and ultimately in line with our basic moral intuitions. In going above the legal call of duty by paying reparations to Poland, Germany has the critical opportunity to create international norms for decades to come.
I. Reparations: An Ethical or Legal Problem?
There are two lenses we can use to interpret Polish claims, one legal and the other ethical. While thinking about the issue of reparations through the prism of international law may be tempting for both sides of the argument, it is ultimately unproductive. International law, in addition to being far too nebulous, is only relevant insofar as its laws are binding. Without an international enforcement mechanism for these laws, its codes lack the power to actually shape international conduct. Instead, governments weaponize terms like “international law” as a talking point to either justify, sanitize, or condemn the policies of a nation. Likewise, global powers can force international legal agreements on smaller ones that are egregiously unethical.
Ultimately, while Germany does not have a legal obligation to pay reparations, that has no bearing on whether it should. As to the latter question, Germany conceded that it does. In the immediate aftermath of the war, East and West Germany paid massive reparations to Israel, France, and the Soviet Union. In the same vein, the consensus among German policymakers is that the nation already paid its dues to Poland.
The Soviet Union, having annexed the eastern portion of Poland after its invasion in 1939, decided to award German territories west of the Oder rivers to Poland after the end of the war. This land, home to nearly nine million Germans, had not been under Polish control since the Middle Ages, and its loss from Germany proper arguably contributed to an overall reduction in German GDP. In accepting this new border under the direct pressure of the Soviet Union, Poland waived its right to German war reparations in 1954. To cite this agreement to justify not paying reparations is to hold a nation responsible for a policy it signed under Stalinist duress. If we treat this agreement as nonbinding, the question of reparations remains open for further Polish claims and discussion.
II. Time, Politics, and Justice
With that being said, Poland’s colossal request for 1.3 trillion dollars is unreasonable. With no historical antecedent in previous reparations deals to Russia, France, or even Israel, it is less of a concrete proposal as it is political theater. While a significant portion of the Polish public desires some form of reparations from Germany, Poland’s Law and Justice Party, a conservative populist party at the helm of Polish politics, has led the most recent push for reparations amid an upcoming election and economic turmoil. Nevertheless–while politicians have a tendency to weaponize politically and historically charged issues for their own self-aggrandizement, we cannot dismiss an argument strictly on the basis of its origin. Politics aside, this dilemma only scratches the ethical surface.
For reparations, time is money. No one doubts that Nazi Germany was responsible for the crimes committed in Poland. Yet, is there not a meaningful difference between Hitler’s totalitarian regime and Scholz’s social democracy? At what point does the burden of this responsibility stop? Most of the men who ran Auschwitz and the pilots who bombed Krakow are no longer with us. And regardless of what standard one adopts for thinking about morality in general and national responsibility in particular, it seems obvious that a just international agreement would not hold a nation responsible for a crime that it did not commit.
III. A Solution for the Past, Present, and Future.
Nevertheless, this does not spell the end for Polish claims altogether. Recognizing this problem is the first step in constructing a new framework for twenty-first-century reparations. We can solve the temporal issue of reparations with the following principle: The amount owed should also be a function of the amount of time that has passed since the commission of the original crime. This principle explains why we do not debate reparations for historical events that have passed the theoretical statute of historical limitations. For instance, should Mongolia pay reparations to Poland because of its three devastating invasions of Poland in the thirteenth century? Intuitively, the answer is no, and asserting that answer does not at all deny the criminal invasion of thirteenth-century Mongolian wars of aggression. But it does support the notion that our relative distance from the crime committed has a substantial effect on whether or not a country requires reparations.
The answer to finding just norms for reparations lies in the deep uncertainty of the question. Norms do not just exist in the ether; the international community must create and enforce them. Geopolitically powerful nations like Germany are in the unique position to shape the international order, construct by construct. Because violating norms comes with dire consequences, their existence creates an incentive for nations to do the right thing. Consequently, a norm for reparations, like norms for nuclear weapons, could deter other nations from engaging in wars of aggression in the first place. As opposed to erasing a past wrong, renewed German payments that take into account time could mark the beginning of a new rules-based system in which crimes against humanity are atoned for immediately, not seventy-eight years after the fact.