Rolf Nikel, former ambassador in Warsaw, explains precisely why the relationship between Germans and Poles is not the best. It is due to different values and often also to ignorance.
Since the fall of communism in 1989, official German-Polish relations have never been as bad as they are today. Rolf Nikel came to this conclusion in his attempt to describe the politics of Germany’s second-largest neighboring country, which, in view of the Russian-Ukrainian war, has moved from being on the fringes of the western alliance to the center of events. Nikel was able to take a personal look at the Warsaw scenes, because from 2014 to 2020 he was the German ambassador on the Vistula. At the Foreign Office, he belonged to the ranks of highly qualified experts on Eastern Europe – but their advice was not heard enough.