In public debates about reparations to Poland by Germany for war damages, the following argument is often made for the Odra River: since reconciliation has taken place between our nations, there is no point in making claims of the past. Sometimes reference is even made in this regard to the famous 1965 letter from Polish bishops to German bishops with the remembered words “We forgive and ask for forgiveness”, as if the episcopate waived any compensation on behalf of the Polish state.
This is a classic confusion of two perspectives: moral and legal-political – as if symbolic gestures cancel financial obligations. This kind of confusion is characteristic of German politics, as the Czechs painfully learned. It is worth recalling their example, as it can be an important lesson for others.
“Nonpolitical Politics” by Václav Havel
After the Velvet Revolution and the overthrow of communism, Václav Havel became the president of Czechoslovakia, who decided to bring about reconciliation with Germany. This was partly because of his belief that the road to the West passed through West Germany, and partly because of the deeply moral perspective he applied to political realities. No wonder that on his first visit abroad, on January 2, 1990, during a meeting in Bonn with President Richard von Weizsäcker, he condemned the principle of collective responsibility and the violence experienced by the Sudeten Germans during the expulsions from Czechoslovakia in 1945 on the basis of the Beneš decrees.
Václav Havel treated his words as a generous gesture of goodwill that opened the way to reconciliation. He wanted to seek permission through a symbolic act that, in his view, warranted historical justice. The Germans, however, saw it as a sign of weakness and proof of the validity of the claims of their countrymen’s associations. Thus they drew political consequences from the moral act and, citing Havel’s words, began to demand the return of their estates left in Czechoslovakia.
At the same time, they completely ignored the reasons why the Germans were expelled from the Czech Sudetes after the war. Well, they created a fifth column in the interwar period, which, obeying Hitler’s orders, contributed to the liquidation of the Czechoslovak state. Prague did not want a similar situation to be repeated in the future.
Pragmatic Realpolitik by Helmut Kohl
German claims to the Czech Republic became a bone of contention between the two countries over the next several years. The team of Helmut Kohl and Hans-Dietrich Genscher firmly refused to sign a Czech-German treaty on good neighborly relations if it contained a provision about legal guarantees of post-German property for the Czechs. Berlin’s stubborn attitude dragged the negotiations on, but Prague was more stubborn and eventually got its way. The aforementioned document was only signed in 1996 (for comparison, a similar treaty was signed between Poland and Germany in 1991).
The attitude of the Germans was Havel’s greatest disappointment in his foreign policy. What was the moral gesture of an idealist and a romantic they reduced to cold and ruthless Realpolitik. Now we see a similar behavior from Berlin regarding reparations to Poland: the aforementioned letter from bishops or the joint embrace of Kohl and Mazowiecki in Krzyżowa bring it back to the financial dimension, as if symbolic gestures negate the compensation due.
Source: wPolityce