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POLISH-GERMAN RELATIONS: THE MIRACLE OF RECONCILIATION Jerzy J. Wiatr Toronto, CA: Barbara Budrich Publishers, 2014 110 pages, hardcover.
Professor emeritus Jerzy Wiatr's Polish-German Relations: The Miracle of Reconciliation (2014) presents a socio-historical accounting of antagonisms between Germany and Poland. This presentation addresses the events, starting in 1939, which include Nazi attacks, atrocities, and their occupation of Poland. The author presents events of World War II as having generated intense anti-German hostilities in Poland and the war's resolution including loss of territories and harms which promoted anti-Polish stereotypes amongst Germans. Wiatr credits German Chancellor Willy Brandt and Polish leader Wladyslaw Gomulka with moving the two countries past these positions and negative stereotypes, and with developing friendly relations; this miraculous reconciliation is the thesis presented. He starts: "If-I was saying-we have been able to overcome our tragic past, everybody can" and admits "[i]t is an attempt to combine my two life experiences-as political sociologist and as a political man-to explain the change that has taken place between former enemies" (pg.7).
The book develops the conclusion that Germany and Poland have undergone reconciliation in much detail. "Reconciliation between former enemies requires a change of attitudes and such change becomes possible only if they begin to see each other in a way different from the dominant stereotypes of the past" (pg. 78). To confirm this evolution Wiatr provides a number of qualitative and quantitative measures. As an example, "[o]ne of the most interesting elements of the evolution of Polish images of the Germans is the willingness to see them as better, at least in some aspect." He draws on statistics from a Public Affairs survey from 2013 including a long list of characteristics from "Germans were seen as more enterprising (73 percent compared to 60 percent for Poles)" to "better educated," and "more modest"...