Poland’s incoming prime minister has vowed to repair strained relations with his nation’s neighbors Germany and Russia.

The current administration, run by twin politicians Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has a reputation for locking horns with other European leaders. The conservative president and prime minister have, according toDeutsche Welle, “revived the specter of World War ii to accuse Berlin of trying to dominate Europe.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the incoming PM, Donald Tusk, belongs to what he calls “the most pro-European party in Poland.”

Promising to repair relations with Germany, Tusk said he “would like relations to get back to the level that we saw in the early 1990s, when the treaties were signed and symbolic meetings took place.”

One specific point of contention between the Kaczynskis and the German government is Germany’s proposed documentation center, designed to draw attention to Germans expelled from Poland and other parts of Europe after World War ii. Chancellor Angela Merkel specifically said she wanted a “visible symbol” representing the fate of those Germans. The new administration has expressed openness to the idea. Tusk said a “reasonable commemoration of the expellees will have the approval of the government.”

The Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945 created the post-war borders between Poland, Russia and Germany. This involved a trade-off of territory, Poland being granted part of pre-World War ii East German territory in lieu of the loss of part of its own eastern territory to Soviet Russia. The agreement specifically demanded the removal of Germans from Polish and Czech territory. In other words, Germans—many of whom had aided Berlin’s conquest of the Poles—were expelled from the countries Germany invaded. The Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States, represented by their highest leaders, agreed on this principle in order eliminate ethnic tension between Poles and Germans within the Polish nation.

But in 2007, Berlin has successfully convinced one of its primary victims of World War ii that Germany was a victim of crimes committed by Poland in process of the removal of Germans from Polish territory.

The revisionist idea of portraying Germany as a victim of Poland is especially horrific: Poland was the first country invaded by Hitler as a result of the following order: “[Kill] without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need.” Five million, eight-hundred thousand Poles died in the war.

The Trumpet has discussed rising German national pride before—and specifically Chancellor Merkel’s desire to establish this center. Now we see the acceptance of German ambition by other European nations; Poland has accepted the European Union and the German leadership that comes with it. For more information about the historic relationship between Poland and Germany and where it is headed, read “Shades of Hitler” from the September/October 2002 Trumpet magazine.