Hacker News Reader

Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

Germany went through a similar phase after 1945 with a lot of guilt and reparations towards fixing all the problem cause during the war. It was very noticeable in behavior and attitude, through around 2000s it seems that the past is being put behind them.

We should not forget that world war 2 happens, but it also doesn't make much sense for Germans to continue self-flagellation forever. If anything, the lessons learned by the period between world war 1 and world war 2 is that lasting peace is not about trying to fix every past injustice by never ending reparations. It is not feasible to create a world as if world war 2 did not occur, and at some point people has to accept the past and work as a single group, like say a European union rather than Europe vs Germans.

View on HN

That's a bit revisionist.

Germany was definitely punished through occupation, partition, forced resettlement of its people, forced ceding of territories to other countries, reparation payments, exportation of its industry, and forced labor by its POWs.

But in terms of feeling national guilt, that wasn't much of a thing immediately post war. The national reckoning for the Holocaust and dismantling of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht and such didn't happen until decades later, the 68 movement was a major catalyst in this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_German_student_movement.

Germany paid reparations.

The West and east Germany split was a form of reparations, including conceding and dismantling of the German industry and railroad system.

The key however is that such reparations are not being continued, nor are they repaying the full cost of the damages cause to every person on the planet that was impacted by the war. No amount of reparations can make right the wrong of world war 2.

If we just look at the dollar amount, according to the britannica, the money cost to governments involved has been estimated at more than $1,000,000,000,000 (in 1945), which does not account for the human costs (the cost of slavery in Amercia is mostly about human cost). The reparations that Germany has paid is nowhere near those.

If we imagine them having a debt of $1,000,000,000,000, the inflation alone would be around the same as their GDP.

But not to Greece.

And not to Poland.

Germany has paid reparations to Polish individuals harmed by the second world war.

> In the meantime, Poland and Germany concluded several treaties and agreements to compensate Polish persons who were victims of German aggression. In 1972, West Germany paid compensation to Poles that had survived pseudo-medical experiments during their imprisonment in various Nazi camps during the Second World War.[35] In 1975, the Gierek-Schmidt agreement was signed in Warsaw. It stipulated that 1.3 billion DM was to be paid to Poles who, during Nazi occupation, had paid into the German social security system but received no pension.[36] In 1992, the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation was founded by the Polish and German governments, and as a result, Germany paid Polish sufferers approximately zl 4.7 billion (equivalent to zl 37.8 billion or US$7.97 billion in 2022[citation needed]). Between 1992 and 2006, Germany and Austria jointly paid compensation to surviving Polish, non-Jewish victims of slave labour in Nazi Germany and also to Polish orphans and children who had been subject to forced labour.[37] The Swiss Fund for the Victims of the Holocaust (which had obtained settlement money from banks in Switzerland) used some of its funds to pay compensation between 1998 and 2002 to Polish Jews and Romani who were victims of Nazi Germany.[37]

Germany also ceded around 20% of its pre-1938 territory to Poland. The ethnic Germans who lived in those territories were subsequently denied citizenship and expelled. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bierut_Decrees)

I'm not really sure that there's anything more to settle between the two countries in 2023.

Poland has fairly less wealth than Germany. Is it fair that Germany has so much wealth today when the countries they attacked do not?

The affirmative action discussed here are not about survivors of slavery. They are descendants and non-descendants. The Germany and Austria jointly paid compensation to surviving Polish. Not to every polish person who by being polish is today impacted by the historical events of world war 2.

To put the question in a different way, why is things settled between the polish people and the German people, while things are not settled between the white population in US and the black population?

Germany was also richer than Poland before WWII.

> To put the question in a different way, why is things settled between the polish people and the German people, while things are not settled between the white population in US and the black population?

I personally believe both things are settled.

And not to Ukraine

Reply on news.ycombinator.com