Were Polish troops in Nazi's military traitors or victims?

Anyone entering the first room of the exhibition "Our Boys" in the Main Town Hall branch of the Museum of Gdansk is greeted by dozens of photos showing young men in the uniform of the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany.

Some of the men in the photos are smiling; some look extremely serious; some look sad.

At first glance, these photos are nothing out of the ordinary, considering that a total of 17 million men were called up to fight in the Nazi army between 1939 and 1945.

But these photos are unusual because they show citizens of Nazi-occupied Poland wearing the military uniform of the hated enemy's army.

'Our boys' exhibition about Poles in Hitler's army

The name of the exhibition, "Our Boys," was taken from the title of a similar exhibition in Luxembourg.

The Gdansk exhibition addresses the subject of Polish citizens who served in Adolf Hitler's army — a matter that was long considered taboo in Poland and was for decades not spoken about, and even concealed.

"These were people from here: our boys, in other words. Their families still live here to this day," explains the museum.

Opposition to the exhibition

Right-wing conservatives in Poland reacted to the opening of the exhibition in mid-July with hostility and indignation.

Poland's then president, Andrzej Duda, posted on X that to portray soldiers of the Third Reich as "ours" was both a "historical falsehood" and a "moral provocation."

"As a nation, the Poles were victims of German occupation and German terror, not perpetrators or participants," said Duda.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, also responded, calling the exhibition a "blow to the Polish reason of state" and saying that it "called historic facts into question."

PiS politicians with a banner emblazoned with the word "traitors" demonstrated outside the museum on the day the exhibition opened.

Even Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, deputy prime minister and minister of national defense in the center-left government of Donald Tusk, noted that the "Our Boys" exhibition did not serve Poland's politics of remembrance.

The wave of online hate toward the exhibition's organizers was so great that security measures had to be stepped up.

Beyond a black-and-white view of history

"Poland's politics of remembrance are very black and white: There are heroes or traitors," Andrzej Gierszewski, press officer for the Museum of Gdansk and one of the exhibition's curators, told DW. "We wanted to show that there are nuances: the tragic fate of people who were put under brutal pressure in 1939."

After Nazi Germany occupied Poland in the fall of 1939, large parts of Polish territory were unlawfully integrated into the Third Reich, including the regions of Pomerania (where Gdansk is located), Western Poland (including the cities of Poznan and Lodz) and Upper Silesia.

Prominent members of Polish society in these annexed areas — politicians, clerics, civil servants and teachers — were either murdered or sent to concentration camps.

Tens of thousands of Polish men and women were killed in this first wave of terror.

The German People's List

In the course of the "Germanization" process, all sections of the population that were seen by the occupiers as "superfluous" were displaced.

People whom the German authorities considered "capable of being germanized" were added to the German People's List (Deutsche Volksliste).

Being on this list came with certain privileges — including German citizenship that was restricted to ten years — but also obligations, including above all compulsory military service.

The German authorities alone decided who was put on the German People's List.

Those who did not make it onto the list faced retaliatory measures or could even be sent to a concentration camp.

By the end of the war, 2.9 million people in occupied Poland were on the German People's List.

A grim choice

As the situation on the fronts deteriorated for the Wehrmacht — especially after the defeat at Stalingrad in early 1943 — more new "cannon fodder" was needed.

Those who were called up faced an appalling choice: They could refuse to serve and go into hiding — which would have caused horrific trouble for their families, including being sent to concentration camps — or they could accept their fate and serve.

Most deserters who were apprehended were guillotined.

Almost 90,000 Polish Wehrmacht soldiers defected to the British and American armed forces on the western front. They later fought in Allied Polish units against Nazi Germany.

Seen as collaborators and traitors

After the war, Poles whose names were on the German People's List were considered traitors. Some were convicted as collaborators.

This is why Poles who had served in the Wehrmacht did not speak about their past and hid or destroyed incriminating documentation. Family photos were altered to hide uniforms.

Many residents of Pomerania and Silesia lived with the trauma of being seen as second-class citizens.

The past as a political weapon

Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk experienced firsthand that the past can be dangerous — even decades after the fact.

When Tusk ran for president in 2005, supporters of his opponent, Lech Kaczynski, claimed that Tusk's grandfather had volunteered for the Wehrmacht.

In reality, Jozef Tusk was forcibly conscripted in 1944 and defected to the Western allies after just under four months.

Lively debate in Polish society

"Poland's historical memory is shaped and dominated by the center, Warsaw. The experience of people on the periphery — in places like Pomerania or Upper Silesia — is ignored," says historian Ryszard Kaczmarek.

In this way, he says, millions of people have been excluded from Poland's historical memory.

The lively debate about the exhibition within Polish society shows that a discussion of this subject is long overdue. Many people donated valuable documents and mementos to the exhibition's curators: photos, letters, uniforms and even iron crosses (a military decoration conferred by Nazi Germany for bravery during World War II) that had been kept hidden for decades.

After the first wave of protest against the exhibition, which was fueled by the political opposition, the situation calmed down. Visitors have the opportunity to write their opinion of the exhibition on pieces of paper in the final room.

The majority of comments are positive. "I read and saw — and am grateful," wrote one visitor.

This article was originally published in German and adapted by Aingeal Flanagan.