Turmoil in Poland.

On the morning of 10 April a Polish plane carrying the Polish President and a high ranking team of politicians and military men, due to land in Smolensk, crashed killing all those on board. The event marks the end of an estrangement between Poland and Russia which can be traced to the outbreak of the Second World War. It also might become the beginning of what most hope will be a period of constructive co-existence which will be marked by realpolitik rather than nationalist posturing

Współpraca Polski i Niemiec w obszarze bezpieczeństwa: dwadzieścia pięć lat wspólnych doświadczeń

When in December 1970 Willie Brand, the Chancellor of the German Federal Republic and Józef Cyrankiewicz the Prime Minister of the Polish People’ signed a normalisation treaty, the one which came to be known as the Treaty of Warsaw, this represented Gomułka’s life time achievement. In his role as First Secretary of the United Polish Worker’s Party (Zjednoczona Polska Partia Robotnicza – PZPR) since October 1956 he had consistently tried to obtain guarantees of Poland’s western border. The signing of the treaty confirmed that the Oder-Neisse line was henceforth Poland’s internationally recognised border and, at the same time, a confirmation that the GFR would not challenge the post war territorial changes. To Gomułka this meant that Poland’s territorial security was guaranteed for the first time since the war. The achievement had a personal and a political dimension