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.