The Polish ruling party is aiming one of its sharpest targets at neighboring Germany during its election campaign

The phone rings. The German ambassador in Warsaw is on the phone. With a heavy German accent, and a booming Wagner opera in the background, the ambassador asks Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the Polish ruling party PiS (Law and Justice), to raise the retirement age. “As it was under Prime Minister Tusk,” the ambassador adds. Kaczynski reacts unfazed and says that, unfortunately for Germany, the Poles will from now on make their own policy. Then he disconnects the connection.

It is a typical commercial that the ruling party PiS shared on social media, just before the Polish parliamentary elections of October 15. The PiS party is aiming one of its sharpest campaign arrows at neighboring Germany. Interpreted sympathetically, the PiS party’s message is that Germany should mind its own business. Less sympathetically interpreted is PiS’s message that Germany is about to take over Poland.

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The PiS party has been actively campaigning against Germany since its first term of government, between 2005 and 2007. It is an open secret that Jaroslaw Kaczynski, founder and leader of PiS, personally hates Germany with all his heart. But according to Agnieszka Lada-Konefal, head of the German Poland Institute, the fierce rhetoric also stems from tactical considerations: “A small part of PiS voters, the most right-wing conservative group, is very critical of Germany. By speaking out, PiS hopes to keep that voter group satisfied.” And throughout history it is easy to portray Germany as a bogeyman, says Lada-Konefal: “War rhetoric and Germany go well together.”

Border controls

Kaczynski also thinks so, as evidenced by his comment in 2021 that Germany is a “Fourth” member of the European Union. Reich” wants to make, referring to the Third Reich of Nazi Germany.

A number of concrete causes can be identified for Polish dissatisfaction with Germany. For example, Germany is considering tightening border controls at the Polish border, because many migrants find their way to Germany via Poland. Two weeks ago, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) caused a diplomatic row when he said at a party meeting that “Poland just waves people through.” Scholz hinted at the visa scandal that embarrasses the PiS party shortly before the elections, in which Polish officials are said to have handed out thousands of work visas in Africa and Asia in exchange for kickbacks.

German companies would flood the Polish market and benefit only themselves

Poland has also been demanding new reparations from Germany for years because of the suffering suffered in the Second World War. The PiS government demands 1,300 billion euros, about double Poland’s GDP. The German defense is that the ‘reparations’ chapter was already closed in 1953.

Moreover, there is still dismay in Poland that Germany largely ignored the Polish protest against the construction of Nord Stream 2. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Warsaw is therefore looking askance at Berlin to see whether the German government will not again opt for the soft approach towards Russia, at the expense of Ukraine.

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Enough euphemisms

But the PiS campaign commercials are not about these current issues. Poland is in danger, according to PiS rhetoric, of becoming a vassal state of Germany. German companies would flood the Polish market and benefit only themselves. Or, as the right-wing opinion site Polityce.pl headlined at the end of September: “Enough euphemisms: in 2023 Germany will wage a war against Poland, a modern version of Fall Weiss” – to the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, which started the Second World War.

In most videos, Donald Tusk, Prime Minister between 2007 and 2014 and President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019, plays an important role. The leader of the opposition party PO (Citizen Platform), who comes from Gdansk, is confronted daily by politicians and pro-government media. Herr Tusk mentioned, who would act not in Polish, but in German interests. If he were to come to power, “Polish children will be persecuted for wanting to pray in Polish,” according to one of the many allegations.

Window to the West

Poland looked up to Germany for years, says Piotr Buras, former Berlin correspondent for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and now the head of the think tank The European Council on Foreign Relations in Warsaw. “Under Soviet rule in Poland, West Germany was the enemy. After the fall of the Wall, this changed diametrically and Germany became our window to the West.” Without Germany’s help, Poland would not now be a member of the European Union and NATO, says Buras.

political scientistBastian Sendhart Germans may never have been creative or funny, but things worked, or so the impression was

Since PiS came to power in 2015, that positive outlook changed. The politics of memory became very important under PiS, says Buras. “And for a reason: Polish victimhood during the Second World War is not recognized nearly enough in Germany. It is known that Jews were exterminated en masse, but not how brutal the German occupation of Poland was,” says Buras. “But the way the narrative is now, that Tusk is a servant of the Germans, is insane. Yet it works for the right-wing electorate of PiS.”

The years of anti-German rhetoric are starting to have an effect, notes researcher Lada-Konefal. Not that Poles are downright negative about Germans. But according to a survey regularly conducted by the German Poland Institute, the group that has a neutral image of its western neighbors is growing, at the expense of the group that has a positive image of Germany.

Credibility undermined

A majority in Poland is dissatisfied with successive German governments. Among other things, the tenacity with which Germany pushed through the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany despite strong protests from Warsaw is causing resentment. Poland’s contribution was ignored by the German government, says Polish researcher Buras. “Poland warned early on that Nord Stream 2 is dangerous for Poland and for the whole of Europe, but those arguments were completely ignored.” That has undermined German credibility, says Buras. “Which has created a breeding ground for anti-German propaganda in Poland.”

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Workers in the Polish capital Warsaw. Construction is one of the sectors in which migrants who gained access to Poland under illegally obtained work visas find work under often dubious working conditions.” class=”dmt-article-suggestion__image” src=”https://images.nrc.nl/1ck6JaGPgrPWuz0YiA45TDHltGc=/160×96/smart/filters:no_upscale()/s3/static.nrc.nl/bvhw/files/2023/09/data105469185-10a19d.jpg”/>

According to political scientist Bastian Sendhardt, the incumbent government in Berlin is also a reason why anti-German rhetoric is being stepped up in this campaign. “The Russian attack on Ukraine has damaged the image of Germany in Poland. Okay, the Germans may never have been creative or funny, but things worked, or so the impression went. Now, German policy in the areas of energy supply, diplomacy and security has not proven to be very sound at all. And on these points the Polish government now receives a kind of substantive confirmation of their already black picture of Germany.”

Yet Buras sees that despite all the rhetoric, Poland cannot do without its neighbor. It is “sometimes a bit schizophrenic,” he says. “Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki insults Germany in his speeches in the most outrageous ways, then happily opens new factories of German car manufacturers, and then again evokes the fear that Poland is a colony of Germany. Two completely parallel messages.”

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