Statistics on War destruction in Poland up to 1945?

[Cerdic]

Hello,

There are statistics available for war destruction in Germany, the USSR and the UK. But I've never come across overall statistics relating to destruction [of properties (homes), cultural wealth, infrastructure industry etc.] in Poland. Was it lesser or worse than the damage Germany and the USSR endured? And how was Poland rebuilt after 1945?

The destruction to Warsaw is well known, but I also saw this video showing Gdansk at the end of the war which made me ask this question.



Could anyone supply such figures if they do exist?

Thanks in advance.

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

Mateusz Gniazdowski provides such data, when it comes to destruction inflicted by Germany - text is in English:

Gniazdowski 2007.pdf

(154.38 KiB) Downloaded 66 times

When it comes to destruction inflicted by the Soviet Union, we would need to check some other publications.

[gebhk]

Hi Cerdic

I think this problem is vastly complicated by a number of factors.

Firstly are w talking about Poland in it's pre-war or post-war boundaries? Secondly the destruction of Poland's cultural wealth and to some extent its infrastructure arguably continued for many years after the War had formally ended. Thirdly statistics garnered to the best available standards contemporaneously would be the best data for the construction of a global statistic such as you seek. In Poland's case this data is hopelessly obfuscated by contemporaneous political expediency. German 'crimes' were habitually inflated while the Soviet contribution had to be hidden. As the Soviet and German contributions to the total were not balanced - the Germans having caused a greater proportion of the population losses while the Soviets having caused proportionally more damage to the infrastructure - this is bound to cause imbalances which are probably impossible to reconcile reliably after nearly 70 years.

With the exception of the UK, the statistics you quote for the other nations are also bedeviled by some or all of these problems. Thus any figures that are estimated can only be regarded as indicative in my view.

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

Firstly are w talking about Poland in it's pre-war or post-war boundaries?

Gniazdowski writes - IIRC - about Poland in pre-war boundaries but excluding territories lost to the Soviet Union.

So basically he also writes about Poland in post-war boundaries, but excluding the Regained Lands (lost by Germany).

And he only writes about German-inflicted destruction. For Soviet-inflicted robbery we need other publications.

With the exception of the UK, the statistics you quote for the other nations are also bedeviled by some or all of these problems. Thus any figures that are estimated can only be regarded as indicative in my view.

Indeed - Poland's huge territorial shift (loss of eastern territories, gaining of western ones) is a considerable problem for researchers who tried to estimate wartime destruction in Poland. Most of Communist post-1945 research did not count destruction of Polish territories lost to the USSR as "Polish" - they counted that damage as destruction of Soviet territory.

Was it lesser or worse than the damage Germany and the USSR endured?

Destruction of Poland was worse than of any other country of the Anti-Axis coalition - including the USSR.

However, it is possible that some of Axis states suffered worse damage than Poland.

And how was Poland rebuilt after 1945?

By great effort of entire society in period 1945 - 1950, during which vast majority of wartime destruction was rebuilt.

Period 1945 - 1950 was also period of the most dynamic economic growth, while after 1950s limitations imposed by obsolete centrally planned Communist economy (as opposed to western Capitalist economies) slowed down the speed of growth.

Of course Poland was still developing fast after 1950s - but the gap in GDP per capita levels of Western Europe and Poland was increasing after that decade, because Western Europe was developing even faster than the Communist Bloc.

[Cerdic]

Peter K,

Thankyou for the download link. Do you have or know of any English-language texts discussing this?:

By great effort of entire society in period 1945 - 1950, during which vast majority of wartime destruction was rebuilt.