The German Occupation of Poland as Reflected in Recent Official Documents on the Politics of History in the Federal Republic of Germany

This article examines the transformation of German politics of history concerning the occupation of Poland during the Second World War. Over the past decade, initiatives such as Władysław Bartoszewski’s proposal for a Berlin monument to Polish victims, Bundestag resolutions, and the establishment of the German-Polish House and the Documentation Centre on the Second World War and German Occupation in Europe have sought to address longstanding gaps in Germany’s collective memory. These projects acknowledge Poland as the first victim of German aggression and highlight the exceptional brutality of Nazi occupation policies, yet significant conceptual challenges persist. The analysis traces the evolution of official discourse, revealing a reluctance to categorize German crimes against Poles as genocide, despite well-documented evidence and established Polish historiography to the contrary. Additionally, contemporary narratives increasingly emphasize notions of local complicity or co-perpetration, which risk relativizing the ideological and structural drivers of Nazi atrocities. The article critiques these tendencies by situating German occupation policy within Hitler’s racial-utopian program for Eastern Europe, manifested in early mass killings, Aktion Reinhardt, Aktion Zamość, and the annihilation of Warsaw. It argues that without fully confronting the genocidal logic underpinning German war aims, federal commemorative initiatives risk fragmenting perpetrator responsibility and obscuring the historical uniqueness of Nazi crimes in Poland. The study concludes that meaningful reconciliation and historically accurate remembrance require explicit recognition of genocide and a clearer delineation of victimhood and perpetration in public memory.