Treaty of Warsaw (1970)

The Treaty of Warsaw (German: Warschauer Vertrag, Polish: Układ PRL-RFN) was a treaty between West Germany and the People's Republic of Poland. It was signed by Chancellor Willy Brandt and Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz at the Presidential Palace on 7 December 1970, and it was ratified by the German Bundestag on 17 May 1972.

In the treaty, both sides committed themselves to nonviolence and accepted the existing border—the Oder-Neisse line, imposed on Germany by the Allied powers at the 1945 Potsdam Conference following the end of World War II. This had been a quite sensitive topic since then, as Poland was concerned that a German government might seek to reclaim some of the former eastern territories. From the Polish perspective, the transfer of these regions was considered to be a compensation for the former Polish territory east of the Curzon Line ("Kresy"), which had been annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939.

In West Germany, Brandt was heavily criticised by the conservative CDU/CSU opposition, who marked his policy as a betrayal of national interests. At the time the treaty was signed, it was not seen as the last word on the Polish border in West Germany, because Article IV of this treaty stated that previous treaties like the Potsdam Agreement were not superseded by this latest agreement, so the provisions of this treaty could be changed by a final peace treaty between Germany and the Allies of World War II—as provided for in the Potsdam Agreement.

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