WI: Germany says "No!" To German-Polish Border Treaty?

Tbh, I'm dubious about your latter two points.
Sure the victorious powers indeed had leverage over the recently unified Germany, but I highly doubt any of them (Especially the USSR as Germany was a NATO member) would do anything meaningful about it.
Sanctions? maybe (and that's a big maybe considering how France and the UK's economic strength was inexorably tied to FRG's economic performance in the 90s

Force? ASB

To your second point about the Warsaw and Moscow treaties, the fact that both were signed between FRG and two then-defunct governments (USSR which was disintegrating and the One-Party state of the Polish Workers Party) I don't think it's impossible, nor implausible for Kohl to argue that those treaties were no longer in effect.

Hell, if the Warsaw Pact Treaties became a scraps of paper in 90-91, why not the other treaties brokered by the USSR during the Cold War?

1. Well, force my be ASB, but so is it for Germany to claim 100% Polish territory. European borders were stable after the detente and Brandt's Ostpolitik, no state in Europe had any interest whatsoever in an enlarged Germany at Poland's expense. And that includes Germany too.

2. The Warsaw pact was arguably a scrap of paper after the violent conflict in Romania, but it was formally disestablished in 1991 by its members. Treaties signed by USSR remained in effect after the fall of USSR, for example START I, which was signed in 1991, but entered in effect 1994, after the fall of USSR.

But the Peoples Republic of Poland became defunct once the Polish Workers Party fell to Solidarity early in 90 hence the need (at least in my estimation) to reaffirm your quoted treaty once Re-Unification happened.

While government changed in Poland, and the constitution was modified in December 1989 and for some years forward (a real new constitution was implemented in 1997), the third Polish Republic was in all legal matters a direct heir to the Polish People's Republic. Treaties continue to be binding after a government changed, unless dismissed by either party.

This probably throws Britain out of Europe - the British tabloids will be screaming about the "untrustworthy Hun" (almost certainly using those words - maybe warmongering comes out too) as a way to achieve their owners desire to get out of any kind of EU. Relations between The UK and Germany will be frosty at best, and relations with the US will also be hindered - because it's the US who allowed this to happen. I'm not sure about the French reaction, but it won't be happy either. While I agree force is out of the question, the German ambassadors to both Paris and the Court of St James will be invited to interviews without coffee...

Frosty, dead cold might be more like it. The stabilization of Europe's border was (and still is) viewed as a key to peace in Europe. That Germany of all states should disregard one of the most important tenets of European security policy would be viewed as an extremely hostile action.

Further, GH, how do you think Kohl would do this, what would make Poland accept any changes, rather than scream "Foul!" and be supported by, well most of Europe.


edit: I re-read your OP, and it seems that you just want Germany to say no to discussions with Poland about re-affirming the treaty of 1970. I will try to give an example of what would happen.

Poland asks why? Do Germany raise claims to Poland, after relinquishing them in 1970? Either:

  1. Germany says no, we have no claims, and Poland answers, lets put that on paper once again, to which Germany has no good answer, and complies.
  2. Germany says yes, and Europe becomes very angry at Germany for disrespecting prior treaties and the post Cold War Europe is off to a very bad start.

Further, here is the important article of the German-Polish Border treaty (1990) in which it states clearly that it as an reaffirmation of prior treaties between West Germany and Poland, and East Germany and Poland, my emphasis:

Article 1​

The Contracting Parties reaffirm the frontier between them, whose course is defined in the Agreement between the Polish Republic and the German Democratic Republic concerning the demarcation of the established and existing Polish-German State frontier of 6 July 1950 and agreements concluded with a view to implementing and supplementing the Agreement (Instrument confirming the demarcation of the State frontier between Poland and Germany of 27 January 1951; Agreement between the Polish People's Republic and the German Democratic Republic regarding the delimitation of the sea areas in the Oder Bay of 22 May 1989), as well as the Agreement between the Polish People's Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany concerning the basis for normalization of their mutual relations of 7 December 1970
 
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How were private property claims settled OTL? We could, instead of the German state demanding its territories back as above, have German citizens en masse demand the return of their houses and lands (in Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia and other countries), and have them be strongly supported by the German government.
 
How were private property claims settled OTL? We could, instead of the German state demanding its territories back as above, have German citizens en masse demand the return of their houses and lands (in Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia and other countries), and have them be strongly supported by the German government.

This is a much more likely avenue.

The twentieth anniversary of the German‐polish border treaty of 1990: International treaties and the imagining of Poland's post‐1945 western border by Tomasz Kamusella:
The two German-Polish treaties did not regulate the ownership status of land and real estate that, before 1945, had belonged to the German population in Poland’s share of the former German territories. Nor did these treaties attempt to regulate ownership questions in regard to the Aussiedlers’ property in Poland, of which they were (apparently illegally) stripped before being allowed to leave for West Germany. (The practice was terminated in the mid-1980s.) This added to the fears of Polish property owners who had settled in the former German territories after 1945. Since the end of World War II, they have lived with the apprehension that it was not Polish land, and that, sooner or later, they might have to relinquish it to the rightful German owners. Beginning in the late 1990s, radical groupings of Polish ethnonationalists made use of this feeling in their usually anti-German political programs. During communist times, Warsaw allowed the Polish settlers to own land and real estate in the former German territories only on 99-year-long leases (Berlińska 1999, 404; Mach 1998). Typically, land and mortgage registers, now deposited in Polish law courts, were not updated, so German expellees and Aussielders are still recorded there as owners (not only of houses and farms, but even of roads, railway stations and entire industrial factories). Hence, Warsaw negotiated longer derogation periods on the purchase of agricultural land by non-Polish EU citizens in the former German territories than elsewhere in Poland. Non-Polish EU farmers who decide to settle in Poland and start their own farms have to lease the land for three years before being permitted to buy it. In the former German territories the length of this required pre-purchase lease is seven years (Polska w Unii Europejskiej 2003, 26).

I have not studied the question that much, but there seems to be an avenue for diplomatic conflict. The sheer messiness of it, makes it very hard to solve though, which is why, I guess, Germany let it be. Monetary compensation is very hard to implement, given the finances of Poland, and a direct transfer of ownership would, well, leave a large amount of impoverished Poles without any livelihood or homes.

A possible compromise is to not compensate for people deported around 1945, but for the quite numerous Germans leaving Poland later on, the so-called Aussiedlers.
 
How were private property claims settled OTL? We could, instead of the German state demanding its territories back as above, have German citizens en masse demand the return of their houses and lands (in Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia and other countries), and have them be strongly supported by the German government.
I dont think it is possible in regards to those who had left during the war or immediately afterwards, and iirc Germany was supposed to cover their losses.

Those who left later are different matter, because the communist state (in Poland at least) didnt bothered itself with doing proper legal paperwork which leads to legal troubles from time to time (basically former german owners are still written as owners in the register books, which results with current inhabitants or land users loosing the houses or lands their thought was theirs).

Edit: Ninja'd
 
I dont think it is possible in regards to those who had left during the war or immediately afterwards, and iirc Germany was supposed to cover their losses.

Those who left later are different matter, because the communist state (in Poland at least) didnt bothered itself with doing proper legal paperwork which leads to legal troubles from time to time (basically former german owners are still written as owners in the register books, which results with current inhabitants or land users loosing the houses or lands their thought was theirs).

Indeed. Does anyone know why Germany did not press the issue (or, maybe they did, but it will take some time before the records are released...)? I would guess, that it would simply be too much problem for very little gain. Plus it could easily turn into a PR problem for Germany, when Polish settlers, who had been living there for 40 years, were forced from their homes.
 
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