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One country is the biggest spender as a percentage of GDP on defense in Europe. The other is spending big to catch up. The former is one of Europe’s fastest growing major economies. The latter is the continent’s traditional economic powerhouse. Both acutely recognize the dangers posed by Russia, their adversary to the east.

Poland and Germany, in other words, have the basis for a new special relationship at the heart of Central Europe and a new motor for deeper European integration. Yet relations between Poland and Germany have rarely been as fraught as they are now.

One country is the biggest spender as a percentage of GDP on defense in Europe. The other is spending big to catch up. The former is one of Europe’s fastest growing major economies. The latter is the continent’s traditional economic powerhouse. Both acutely recognize the dangers posed by Russia, their adversary to the east.

Poland and Germany, in other words, have the basis for a new special relationship at the heart of Central Europe and a new motor for deeper European integration. Yet relations between Poland and Germany have rarely been as fraught as they are now.

The two countries should be working hand in glove, particularly when it comes to protecting Europe from the East. Poland has suffered more hybrid attacks on its airspace from Russian drones, alongside disinformation and other malign interference than any other major European Union country. Germany is contributing a small contingent of forces and equipment to Poland’s East Shield project to strengthen its border with Belarus. Military cooperation is just one of several areas where cooperation does take place, but it is stuttering, and everyone suffers as a consequence.

Even if parts of the two governments would like to go further, the atmospherics often get in the way. The iciness is the consequence of the present and past. In deeply divided Poland, history is instrumentalized.

With parliamentary elections due next fall, there are few votes in being seen to be too friendly to the Germans. It has been more than half a century since German Chancellor Willy Brandt made his historic gesture of reconciliation in 1970, dropping to his knees in front of the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto to beg forgiveness........

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