West Germany’s stance on the imposition of martial law in Poland

The news of martial law having been declared in Poland reached the West German Chancellor during his official visit to the GDR. By a strange turn of history, on that very day on December 13, 1981, Helmut Schmidt, accompanied by the head of the East German Communist Party Erich Honecker, was fielding questions from journalists at a press conference. During the event, the Chancellor expressed his understanding for General Wojciech Jaruzelski’s decision. While Bonn’s position would later grow more critical of the Polish authorities, it still differed markedly from that of many other countries, particularly the United States. However, Germany was by no means the odd one out in Europe as a similar stance on the Polish events was taken by the authorities of France, Italy, Austria and Greece.