Kaczynski, Jaroslaw

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    Donald Tusk, a Man of Eclectic Identities, Returns to Power in Poland

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    The opposition leader was endorsed by Parliament as the country’s next prime minister, unseating the right-wing Law and Justice party that had long denounced him as unfit to rule.It was just minutes after Donald Tusk made his triumphant return as Poland’s leader that his archenemy stepped to the podium in Parliament to rain acid on his parade.“I don’t know who your grandfathers were but I know one thing: You are a German agent, just a German agent,” growled Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of Law and Justice, the right-wing party that, until Monday, had held all the reins of power.The accusation, one of many smears aimed at Mr. Tusk over a political career stretching back to the 1980s, came after Parliament endorsed Mr. Tusk as prime minister, stirring joy and relief among Polish liberals and pro-European centrists.The attack reflected the no-holds-barred approach to Polish politics after eight years of Law and Justice rule. But it also highlighted the difficulties for many in Poland of pinning down who their country’s next leader is and where he stands.In a country that has been largely mono-ethnic and monolingual since the end of World War II, Mr. Tusk stands out as a man of eclectic identities, interests and linguistic talents.As Parliament on Tuesday debated whether to endorse a cabinet proposed by Mr. Tusk, one of his most strident critics, the far-right legislator Grzegorz Braun, used a fire extinguisher to put out Hanukkah candles during an event with members of the Jewish community.The new government lineup later won a vote of confidence as expected.Mr. Tusk has described himself as having four parallel identities: a proud son of Gdansk, the formerly German port city of Danzig on the Baltic Sea; a Kashubian, an ethnic minority native to northern Poland with its own language and traditions; a Pole and a European.He speaks Polish, Kashubian, German and English, a language he barely knew when he took a break from Polish politics in 2014, to take a senior job in Brussels, but mastered quickly.Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s Law and Justice party, left the plenary hall of the Parliament as Mr. Tusk spoke on Tuesday.Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBeing Polish, Mr. Tusk said in 2014, when he became president of the European Council is “my main identity” but the others matter, too — a position that baffles Mr. Kaczynski and other Polish nationalists, who see allegiance to the Polish state as indivisible.Riina Kionka, a diplomat from Estonia who advised Mr. Tusk in Brussels, remembers him as both a “passionate European” and a “proud Pole determined to lead his country.”Mr. Tusk always had “his two feet firmly on the ground” and sought compromise rather than total victory, she said. “He always told us: ‘It is better to have part of something than all of nothing.’”This distaste for all-or-nothing dogmatism led some to question the convictions of a politician who began his career in a circle of radical free-market believers but who, in Poland’s recent campaign, promised to preserve a raft of welfare payments introduced by Law and Justice.Asked in 2013 whether he had changed his earlier views, he quoted the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, a former Marxist who, after leaving Poland, became a trenchant critic of communism and described himself as a “liberal conservative socialist.” That, Mr. Tusk said, described his own views.“He is a political cherry picker,” said Jarolaw Kuisz, the author of a recent book, “The New Politics of Poland.” He added, “He takes what he sees as the best bits from every part of the spectrum.”Active in politics for more than 40 years, Mr. Tusk started out as a youth activist and journalist with Solidarity in Gdansk. After communism’s collapse, he went on to win two consecutive terms as prime minister, though he cut short the second to take the Brussels position.Mr. Tusk, when he was president of the European Council, in Gdansk in 2019.Adam Warzawa/EPA, via ShutterstockThe job that perhaps prepared him best for his current role, juggling implacable hostility from Law and Justice and tensions within his diverse alliance of supporters, however, was one he took in the 1980s in Gdansk, after communist authorities imposed martial law.Unable to find regular work after being briefly arrested, he took a job scaling chimneys and high buildings with mountaineering gear so as to paint or repair them.This “high-altitude work,” Mr. Tusk later recalled, involved being a “crazy alpinist” and equipped him to calibrate results and risk, a useful political skill. Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, leader of the Polish Peasants Party and Mr. Tusk’s candidate for defense minister, praised him Monday for taking the risk of leaving Brussels to return to Polish politics in 2021, starting what seemed a long-shot effort to beat Law and Justice.“He showed courage when he abandoned a comfortable life,” he said. “He abandoned lucrative posts and came back here.”Mr. Tusk’s flexibility has alarmed some progressives. They loathe Law and Justice but complain that Mr. Tusk has not rallied more forcefully to their side on issues like abortion, on which the outgoing government imposed a near total ban and which Mr. Tusk did nothing to liberalize when he was prime minister.A pro-European Union demonstration following a ruling of the Constitutional Court against the primacy of E.U. law in Poland, in Warsaw on October. Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Tusk declared women’s rights the “No. 1 issue” in Poland this year but, ahead of the general election, removed from his party’s list of candidates an activist who called for allowing for abortion at any stage of pregnancy, a position that risked alienating voters.His party, Civic Coalition, wants to liberalize Poland’s harsh abortion law but only to allow termination up to the 12th week of pregnancy.Zuzanna Dąbrowska, a veteran political journalist, said Mr. Tusk deserved credit for addressing an issue that most politicians avoided. “The majority in Poland has the same opinion that policy on abortion should be more liberal. But politicians have done everything to avoid this reality.”To become prime minister, Mr. Tusk stitched together an array of diverse opposition parties that together won a clear majority of seats in Parliament, and joined forces on Monday to reject Law and Justice’s nominee as prime minister and select Mr. Tusk. They include a leftist grouping, the center-right Polish Peasants Party and hard-line free-market liberals.“To be a good prime minister you must be everything but sometimes you can’t combine water and fire,” said Bartosz Rydlinski, a political scientist at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw. “You cannot have low taxes and an effective welfare state. This is Tusk’s biggest challenge.”A fan of Miles Davis who studied history at university, Mr. Tusk has sometimes alienated potential voters, particularly more traditional-minded ones in small rural towns and villages.Mr. Tusk offended millions of Poles in 2005 by dismissing conservatives as a “mohair coalition” — a reference to the berets many older women wear to church. Mr. Tusk apologized but struggled for years to shake off an image of haughty contempt.The candidates Lech Kaczynski of Law and Justice and Mr. Tusk of Civic Platform during a TV debate three days ahead of the first round of presidential elections, in 2005.Tomasz Gzell/European Pressphoto AgencyHe has since talked about his youth in what he describes as “poverty” in Gdansk, particularly after his father, a carpenter, died when he was 14, and how he used to hang out with street toughs. His older sister, he says, helped set him straight.As a university student and then a journalist and youth activist with Solidarity, he embraced free-market economics. He helped found the Liberal Democratic Congress, a group of anti-communist free-marketeers. After the 1990 election of the Solidarity leader Lech Walesa as president, he was involved in managing the privatization of state assets.Widespread public discontent with economic “shock therapy” crushed his early political ambitions. His party’s defeat in a 1993 election dampened his faith in free-market orthodoxy.“He realized he had to follow political currents and adjust to reality,” said Ms. Dąbrowska. “He has been doing this ever since — adjusting his views and himself to political reality.”After retreating from politics for four years to write books, he won a seat in the Polish senate and then helped set up Civic Platform, a liberal party. He became prime minister after the party won a 2007 election, and served a second time after another victory in 2011.He boasted after his second triumph, “we have no one left to lose to” and, to the dismay of many supporters, decamped to Brussels before finishing his second term.A year after his departure, Law and Justice defeated his party in a parliamentary election and won an upset in a presidential race. “He was arrogant and misjudged the situation,” said Mr. Kuisz.But Law and Justice recently made the same mistake, misjudging Mr. Tusk’s ability to reach out to voters after seven years in Brussels.“He was presented as a lofty liberal and came back unsure of his success but determined to fight,” said Mr. Kuisz. “From Brussels he was suddenly everywhere in small towns and villages doing basic grass-roots politics.”Mr. Tusk addressing the Polish Parliament on Tuesday.Pawel Supernak/EPA, via Shutterstock More

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      Poland’s Ruling Party Casts Doubt on Election That Cost It Power

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      Loyalists of Poland’s Law and Justice party are questioning the legitimacy of the election won this month by an alliance of opposition parties.After eight years of pumping out vitriol against opponents of Poland’s governing party, state-controlled television has rallied to an unlikely new cause: a free media and fair play.Unsettled by the election this month of a new Parliament controlled by political forces it previously vilified, Poland’s main public broadcaster last week set up a telephone hotline as part of what it described as a “special campaign to defend media pluralism” and counter “increasingly frequent attacks on journalists.”The abrupt about face by a public broadcaster notorious for its often vicious, one-sided coverage reflected Poland’s febrile political atmosphere as loyalists of the defeated Law and Justice party scramble to keep their jobs by presenting themselves as victims of persecution and of a compromised election.That loyalists have much to lose as a result of the Oct. 15 vote was made clear last week when Gazeta Wyborcza, a liberal newspaper, published a long list of journalists and other Law and Justice supporters who “will have to say goodbye to their positions” in media, state corporations and other state-controlled entities. The list has since been expanded as readers send in the names of more people they want gone, too.Pleas for “media pluralism” by a public broadcasting system that for years froze out opposition voices and served as a propaganda bullhorn for Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of the nationalist governing party, have mostly been met with guffaws and cries of hypocrisy.But the effort pointed to the obstacles ahead for the election victors as the losing side digs in, fighting to hang on to jobs, and promotes often wild conspiracy theories to explain and, in some cases, deny Law and Justice’s defeat at the polls.The logo of TVP, Polish state television, is seen on the roof of the company’s building, in Warsaw, in September.Kacper Pempel/Reuters“They are trying to create the myth of a stolen victory,” said Jakub Majmurek a prominent commentator on Polish politics and culture. But, he added, “Kaczynski is not Donald Trump” and “I don’t think we are going to see scenes of January 6 in Poland.”Polish politics, he said, “are very unpredictable” and “very polarized” but are still even-tempered enough to make a replay of the storming of the Capitol highly unlikely in Warsaw. “It wouldn’t work. They would have to confront huge crowds on the streets and they don’t know how the police will react,” Mr. Majmurek said.More likely, most observers say, is a long drawn-out struggle by Law and Justice appointees — who are now in control of public broadcasting, the judiciary and other institutions — to resist being replaced by more neutral, or at least less brazenly partisan, figures.TVP Info, the public broadcaster’s news channel, this year gave 66 percent of its airtime to Law and Justice and just 10 percent to the main opposition party. This airtime gap was only 5 percent in favor of Poland’s previous governing party in 2014, the year before Law and Justice rose to power.Law and Justice won more votes than any other single party in the recent election but an alliance of its opponents won a clear majority in Parliament. They have proposed Donald Tusk, the leader of Civic Coalition, the biggest opposition party, as prime minister at the head of a new coalition government.But, more than two weeks after its victory, the opposition has still not been asked to form a government by Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, an ally of Law and Justice.The constitution gives Mr. Duda 30 days to make a decision, a long pause that diehard supporters of the defeated party are now using to try to delay and even derail the consequences of their electoral defeat.Daniel Milewski, a member of Parliament for the governing party, appealed to Mr. Duda “to prevent Donald Tusk from becoming prime minister” and vowed that Law and Justice “will do everything to stop this from happening.”Poland’s main opposition leader, Donald Tusk, is surrounded by journalists and supporters after leaving a voting station in Warsaw, in October.Petr David Josek/Associated PressAs well as veering close to Trump-like pleas to “stop the steal,” Law and Justice has insisted that foreign interference cost them the election, echoing the claims of Democrats in the United States stunned by Hillary Clinton’s upset defeat in 2016.“A question worth asking,” the party’s chairman, Mr. Kaczynski, told Gazeta Polska, a conservative magazine, is “to what extent is our public life autonomous from external forces?” Pointing a finger at Germany and Russia, he complained of “forces at work here all the time” to unfairly influence Polish voters.Antoni Macierewicz, a veteran Law and Justice legislator notorious for promoting apocalyptic conspiracy theories, on Monday accused the leader of Third Way, a centrist grouping allied with Mr. Tusk, of having ties to Russian intelligence and predicted that letting the opposition take power would risk World War III.Another senior Law and Justice legislator, Ryszard Terlecki, warned of dire consequences, including an upsurge in L.G.B.T.Q. activism that he described as a “rainbow flood,” if the opposition was allowed to form a government. But he assured supporters that “all is not lost” and “we still have hope” that right-wing forces might be able to form a coalition government “that will stop the catastrophe.”Particularly shocking to Law and Justice is that it lost the election despite having near total control of public broadcasting, a nationwide network of television and radio stations, and a firm grip on many regional newspapers that were purchased in 2021 by the state oil giant, PKN Orlen, which is itself headed by a former Law and Justice politician.A report on Poland’s election by observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the election had been tarnished by “distorted and openly partisan coverage by the public broadcaster.” This, the observers said, “provided a clear advantage to the ruling party, undermining the democratic separation of state and party.”Restoring that separation, however, will be difficult because of the lingering grip of Law and Justice on a raft of bodies it set up after it took power in 2015 and began remaking the system to try to ensure that, no matter the results of future elections, its supporters would remain deeply entrenched.TVP, the Polish state broadcaster, was a target of protesters at a pro-European Union demonstration in Gdansk, in 2021. Mateusz Slodkowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOne such body is the National Media Council, an organization that, controlled by Law and Justice appointees, was given the power to appoint and dismiss public broadcasting executives. In a statement released after the election, the council rejected any attempt by the opposition to break Law and Justice’s hold on public television and radio, vowing to “defend public media and their employees” against what it described as “illegal activities” by the new majority in Parliament.Getting rid of the council — and similar bodies set up by Law and Justice to control judicial appointments — would require new legislation, but any move by Parliament aimed at creating a more level playing field would likely be vetoed by President Duda. The opposition doesn’t have a large enough majority to override his veto.Law and Justice, said Mr. Majmurek, the commentator, “built a lot of traps into the system and did everything to make sure that it still controls many vital state institutions even after losing an election.”The task now faced by the opposition, he added, is “like dismantling a very complicated and potentially deadly bomb.”Anatol Magdziarz More

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      Poland’s Governing Party Looks Set to Be Ousted

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      An expected liberal coalition would probably reverse deeply conservative policies at home and diminish Poland’s role abroad as a beacon for right-wing groups.It boiled down to a choice between two different visions of the future: one dominated by nationalism, traditional Catholic norms and the defense of Polish sovereignty; the other by promises to “bring Poland back to Europe” and the liberal democratic values espoused by the European Union.In the end, after a long, vicious election campaign in a highly polarized country, opponents of the nationalist governing party won a clear majority of seats in a pivotal general election held on Sunday, according to final official results Tuesday.That victory opened the way for a potentially drastic shift away from Poland’s deeply conservative policies at home and its role abroad as a beacon for right-wing groups and politicians opposed to liberal values.The prospect of an end to years of testy relations between Warsaw and Brussels delighted Polish liberals and those elsewhere worried by what had, for a time, seemed like a rising tide of right-wing, and sometimes left-wing, populism in Poland and across Europe.The election, cast by both sides of the political divide as Poland’s most consequential vote since voters rejected communism in 1989, offered a multitude of parties from the far right to the progressive left.“These are absolutely historic moments,” Donald Tusk, Civic Coalition’s leader, told euphoric supporters in Warsaw on Tuesday. “The weather has changed,” he added before repeating a line from a popular song often used during the campaign: “It’s time for a happy Poland.”Held just two weeks after voters in neighboring Slovakia handed victory to a Russia-friendly party tainted by corruption, the Polish election was closely watched as a gauge of Europe’s direction.It was also seen as a measure of whether Hungary, increasingly authoritarian under Prime Minister Viktor Orban, would remain an idiosyncratic outlier or become the standard-bearer of a growing cause whose friends extend beyond ideological allies like the TV personality Tucker Carlson, a big fan of Mr. Orban, to include European governments.Hungary and Poland for a time were close partners, leading what they promoted as a European renaissance rooted in Christian values and national sovereignty, but they parted ways over the war in Ukraine. Mr. Orban tilted toward Moscow while Poland offered robust support for Ukraine, though that position wobbled somewhat during the election campaign.Official results confirming exit polls released on Sunday cast gloom over the governing party, Law and Justice, which had fought the election on promises to save Poland from European bureaucrats pushing “L.G.B.T. ideology” and what it denounced as Germany’s hegemonic aspirations.A final tally of votes released on Tuesday by the electoral commission gave Civic Coalition, the main opposition party, and two smaller groups also opposed to the Law and Justice party — Third Way and New Left — 248 seats in the 460-member Sejm, the more powerful lower house of Parliament.Together they won 53.7 percent of the vote after a record turnout of about 74 percent, compared with 35.4 percent of ballots cast for Law and Justice. That tally would most likely reduce Law and Justice’s presence in the Sejm by 33 seats.Arkadiusz Mularczyk, of the Law and Justice party, acknowledged defeat, saying that “we cannot be offended by democracy” and that, “after eight difficult years in government, perhaps it is time for the opposition.”Poland remains deeply divided by generation and geography, with Law and Justice sweeping poorer rural areas in the south and east while Civic Coalition, its main rival, strengthened its grip on urban centers like Warsaw and richer areas in the center and west.But, reversing a trend across Europe toward increased youth disenchantment with electoral politics of all ideological shades, Poles under 29 voted in larger numbers than voters over 60. That was despite the two main rival camps being led by veterans — Jaroslaw Kaczynski, 74, the Law and Justice chairman, and Mr. Tusk, 66, the leader of Civic Coalition, both former prime ministers.The opposition also won a large majority of seats in the 100-member Senate, the upper house, but its victory in both chambers of Poland’s Parliament, though a big symbolic boost for supporters of liberal democracy and European integration, will be crimped by its having to work with a Polish president loyal to Law and Justice.The president, Andrzej Duda, an outspoken critic of Mr. Tusk in the past, will stay in office until elections in 2025 and, until then, can veto legislation passed by his political opponents in Parliament. Mr. Duda is now responsible for asking someone to form a government, a task that will probably fall, at least initially, to a member of Parliament from Law and Justice, which won more votes than any other single party. Without a majority, Law and Justice is unlikely to succeed and Mr. Duda will need to turn to the opposition.Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting. More

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      Poland Election: Centrists Poised to Oust Law and Justice Party

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      The election, seen as one of the most significant in decades, was cast as a choice between the defense of Polish sovereignty and liberal values.Centrist and progressive forces appeared capable of forming a new government in Poland after securing more seats in a critical general election on Sunday, despite the governing nationalist party, Law and Justice, winning the most votes for a single party.Exit polls showing a strong second place finish by the main opposition group, Civic Coalition, and better than expected results for two smaller centrist and progressive parties suggested a dramatic upset that would frustrate the governing party’s hope of an unprecedented third consecutive term.A jubilant Donald Tusk, Civic Coalition’s leader, declared the projected results a resounding “win for democracy” that would end the rule of Law and Justice, known by its Polish acronym PiS, in power since 2015.“We did it! We really did!” Mr. Tusk, a former prime minister, told supporters Sunday night. “This is the end of this bad time! This is the end of PiS rule!”The election for a new Parliament, held after a vicious campaign in the highly polarized nation, was closely watched abroad, including in Russia and Ukraine, and viewed by many Poles as the most consequential vote since they rejected communism in the country’s first partly free election in 1989. Reflecting the high-stakes, nearly 73 percent of the electorate voted, the highest turnout in a Polish election since the end of communist rule.Both the governing Law and Justice and Civic Coalition cast the election as an existential moment of decision on Poland’s future as a stable democratic state.Voting on Sunday in Gdansk, Poland. The election in Poland, held after an often vicious campaign in the highly polarized nation, has been closely watched abroad.Mateusz Slodkowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIf early forecasts turn out to be correct when final official results are announced, probably on Tuesday, Civic Coalition and its potential partners won 248 seats in the 460-member legislature, compared with 200 won by Law and Justice.Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the governing party’s chairman and Poland’s de facto leader for the last eight years, also claimed victory, declaring the vote “a great success for our formation, our project for Poland.” But he acknowledged that his party would have trouble forming a government if the exit polls are correct.Konfederacja, a radical right-wing grouping that shares many of the nationalist views of Law and Justice, won only 6.2 percent of the vote, giving it 12 seats. Exit polls are generally reliable in Poland but some experts cautioned that the unusually high turnout could make them less accurate. Because of long queues at polling stations voting continued late into the night in some places.Exit polls released by Poland’s three main television channels indicated that Law and Justice had won the most votes overall — 36.8 percent — compared with 31.6 percent for Civic Coalition. Two smaller parties, Third Way, an alliance of centrists, and The Left reached the necessary threshold to enter the more powerful lower house of Parliament, the Sejm.Seats in the Sejm are apportioned under a complicated proportional system that makes it difficult to determine with precision the future balance of power until all of the votes have been counted and those of smaller parties that failed to reach the threshold (5 percent for parties and 8 percent for coalitions) are redistributed among the top finishers.Przemyslaw Adynowski, a Warsaw lawyer, said he had voted for Civic Coalition in what he described as “probably the most important election in 30 years.” A victory for Law and Justice, he added, would complete Poland’s “phase of transition from democracy to an authoritarian system” and put it at odds with its allies in NATO and the European Union, except for Hungary, a much smaller nation with little clout.Campaign posters last week in Gorno, Poland. The governing Law and Justice party and its main rival, Civic Coalition, cast the election as an existential moment of decision on Poland’s future as a stable democratic state.Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPiotr Buras, the head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, declared the election “a triumph of both democracy and liberalism” that “opens the way for a massive reorientation of Poland’s domestic and European policy.”The result was particularly striking given that Law and Justice enjoyed a big advantage thanks to its tight control of Poland’s public broadcasting system, a nationwide network of television and radio stations that is supposed to be neutral but mostly served as a propaganda bullhorn for the incumbent party.The playing field was further tilted in the governing party’s favor by the holding of a referendum alongside the parliamentary election. Voters were asked to answer four loaded questions about immigration and other issues that were clearly intended to cast the European Union, and by association the opposition, in a bad light.One asked: “Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, in accordance with the forced relocation mechanism imposed by European bureaucracy?”The referendum short-circuited campaign finance restrictions, allowing Law and Justice to deploy state funds to promote supposedly neutral information about questions heavily slanted in its favor. Many voters, however, declined to answer referendum questions, viewing the exercise as a stunt by the governing party.Law and Justice hoped that the referendum would help revive an anti-migrant message that has for years been its electoral strong suit, but one that lost its edge in the final weeks of the campaign when some of its officials became embroiled in a visas-for-cash scandal. Evidence that a large number of Polish work visas, valid across the European Union, had been sold to African and Asian migrants led to the abrupt resignation of a deputy foreign minister and his removal from a list of candidates put forward by Law and Justice.Mr. Kaczysnki, the party’s chairman, warned that a vote for his opponents, led by Mr. Tusk, a former president of the European Council, the European Union’s main power center, would mean subordinating Poland’s national interests to those of Berlin and Brussels and the end of Poland as an independent democratic country.“They intend to eliminate democracy and any traces of the rule of law in Poland,” Mr. Kaczysnki said this month at a party convention.Mr. Tusk’s camp, for its part, presented Mr. Kaczynski as a mortal threat to liberal democracy and to Poland’s continued membership of the European Union, with which the departing Law and Justice government clashed repeatedly over the rule of law, the protection of minority rights and other issues.The election campaign was so vituperative and unsettling that many Poles, particularly opposition supporters, could not wait for it to be over.“It was awful, so brutal,” said Ewa Zabowska, a retired Health Ministry official, after casting her vote for the opposition at a Warsaw primary school. “It went on for too long. Nonstop lies for months.”What Ms. Zabowska viewed as lies, however, fans of Law and Justice accepted as alarming truths. “Tusk is an emissary of Germany — he will do exactly what Germany dictates,” Antoni Zdziaborski, a retired Warsaw tram driver, said after voting for the governing party.Anatol Magdziarz in Warsaw contributed reporting. More

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      Poland’s Ruling Party Uses Germany as Boogeyman as Tough Election Looms

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      Poland’s Law and Justice party is using Germany as a punching bag to rally its base for the election on Oct. 15, a tactic driven by the country’s de facto leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski.Amid rising alarm this summer in Poland and the Baltic States over a possible military attack from the east, the Polish Embassy in Lithuania requested an urgent meeting with the head of Germany’s diplomatic mission. Polish embassies in other European countries made similar requests.What the Polish diplomats wanted to talk about, however, was not the risk of an assault from Belarus or the war in Ukraine, but a less pressing matter: a demand that Germany cough up more than a trillion dollars to cover damage done by the Nazis during World War II.The issue of reparations, which was settled decades ago, is a personal fixation of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of the Polish governing party, Law and Justice. Last weekend, rallying supporters ahead of a critical general election next Sunday, he told a party convention that it was not only about the money, but also a “matter of dignity.”Demands that Germany pay Poland $1.3 trillion — the exact figure keeps changing — first surfaced several years ago, but they have flared with new intensity as Mr. Kaczynski looks for ways to secure his party a third consecutive term. Attacking Germany and its supposed hold on the leader of the opposition has become his main tool for mobilizing voters.Recent opinion polls put Law and Justice slightly ahead of its main rival, Civic Coalition, which groups center-right forces and progressives upset by the current government’s hard lines against abortion and minority rights. But neither of the front-runners is likely to win enough seats in Parliament to form a government on its own. Which side can do that will depend on the performances of smaller parties, including a far-right outfit opposed to helping Ukraine and a leftist coalition.Posters demanding that Germany pay reparations to Poland for crimes committed by the Nazis during World War II are seen in 2021 in Warsaw.Czarek Sokolowski/Associated PressLaw and Justice’s use of Germany to rile up its nationalist base in a tight race reflects the extraordinary behind-the-scenes influence of Mr. Kaczynski, 74. He dictates Polish policy on most matters of state even though he holds only one government post, deputy prime minister, a position that he assumed in June and that carries little formal power.“He always had an obsession about Germany,” said Radoslaw Sikorski, who served as defense minister in an earlier government headed by Mr. Kaczynski. “There is no chance of getting any money, but this is a good way to excite voters,” he added.Mr. Kaczynski “is a virtuoso at playing on fear, on what is worst in us as a nation,” Mr. Sikorski said.The influence of Mr. Kaczynski is so great that “he is No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 in this country,” said Bartlomiej Rajchert, a political strategist who worked closely with Law and Justice on its successful 2005 presidential election campaign for Mr. Kaczynski’s twin brother, Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash in 2010.The office of Mr. Rajchert’s consulting company, GDS, is next to Mr. Kaczynski’s on the second floor of a dingy, Communist-era building in the center of Warsaw that also houses Law and Justice headquarters. When Mr. Kaczynski is in town, Mr. Rajchert said, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, regularly visits him, as do other key government officials, apparently to receive instructions.“This is where important decisions get taken,” Mr. Rajchert said, pointing to Mr. Kaczynski’s office next door.Stanislaw Kostrzewski, Law and Justice’s longtime former treasurer, described Mr. Kaczynski as “a highly intelligent person” who “obviously doesn’t believe” the elaborate conspiracy theories featuring Germany that are being pumped out ahead of Election Day by a state broadcasting system controlled by the governing party.“It is all such nonsense, but it works,” Mr. Kostrzewski said. “I feel bad as a Pole because of the stupidity of my nation.”Donald Tusk, the leader of the opposition Civic Coalition party, last Sunday at an anti-government march in Warsaw. Mr. Tusk, according to Mr. Kaczynski, is not only a political rival, but a national traitor intent on selling his country out to German — and Russian — interests.Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBashing Germans not only stokes grievances left by World War II, when Poland lost around six million people, but also helps turn boring political arguments over taxation rates and the age of retirement, currently 65, into an exciting moral drama.In that telling, Law and Justice’s main opponent, the Civic Coalition’s leader, Donald Tusk, a former prime minister, figures as a German lap dog who, in Mr. Kaczynski’s description, is the “personification of pure evil” who must be “morally exterminated.”Mr. Tusk, according to Mr. Kaczynski, is a national traitor intent on selling his country out to German — and also Russian — interests.Mr. Kaczynski recently starred in an anti-German election ad on television that features him taking a phone call from a Polish-speaking man with a comically thick German accent playing Berlin’s ambassador in Warsaw.The ambassador, with Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries” blaring in the background, informs Mr. Kaczynski imperiously that the German chancellor wants him to raise Poland’s retirement age back to what it was — 67 — when Mr. Tusk was Poland’s prime minister from 2007 to 2014. Mr. Kaczynski sternly tells the ambassador that Warsaw no longer takes orders from Berlin. “Mr. Tusk is no longer here and these customs are gone,” he says.Casting Germany as a malevolent force in cahoots with Mr. Tusk helps justify the governing party’s long-running feuds over the rule of law and other issues with the European Union, which Mr. Kaczynski has described as a German-led “Fourth Reich.” Before returning to Polish politics in 2019, Mr. Tusk served as president of the European Council, the European bloc’s principal power center.Mr. Kostrzewski, the former party treasurer, said that Mr. Kaczynski had never cared about money or luxury — his car is a humble Skoda — and that his only real passion had always been politics, which took on a cold, deeply cynical edge after his brother’s death.Left alone in command of Law and Justice and free of his brother’s moderating influence, Mr. Kaczynski, Mr. Kostrzewski said, stacked the party and the government it formed after winning a 2015 election with “people who only tell him what he wants to hear” and who serve his “Machiavellian vision of executing power.”Mr. Kaczynski with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland, left, and Mariusz Blaszczak, the country’s defense minister, in August at the Law and Justice party’s headquarters in Warsaw.Radek Pietruszka/EPA, via ShutterstockFor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski — an opposition member of Parliament and deputy chairman of the legislature’s foreign affairs committee, whose father was an Auschwitz survivor and Poland’s foreign minister after the end of Communist rule — Law and Justice’s crude pre-election antics mean that “we have no foreign policy anymore, only foreign affairs for domestic use.”Mr. Kaczynski, he said, “thinks that whatever damage he does by being fanatically anti-German does not matter so long as it helps mobilize core voters.”For weeks now, state television has peppered news broadcasts with a recording of two single words — “für Deutschland” or “for Germany” — uttered by Mr. Tusk during a 2021 speech in German that thanked Germany’s Christian Democratic Union party for its role in healing Europe’s divisions at the end of the Cold War.The two words — a tiny and misleading fragment of what Mr. Tusk said — have become Exhibit A in Law and Justice’s case against the opposition leader as a German stooge.Aimed at rallying a party base that is mostly older, rural and often resentful of foreigners, the barrage of anti-German messaging has stunned and appalled Germans invested in postwar reconciliation and Poles who want to see their country as a serious player.At a security conference this past week in Warsaw — an event that was meant to spotlight Poland as Europe’s “new center of gravity” because of the war in Ukraine — politicians and experts from Poland and Germany bewailed the damage done to Poland’s image and European solidarity by Law and Justice’s pre-election stunts.A monument in Warsaw honoring the heroes of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. In the view of many Poles, Polish suffering in World War II has often been ignored by outsiders.Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesIn an interview, Knut Abraham, a member of the German Parliament and a former diplomat in Warsaw, described Law and Justice’s demonization of Germany and Mr. Tusk as “not only nonsense, but insane,” accusing the Polish governing party of shredding hard-won postwar reconciliation for electoral gain. Last year, Mr. Abraham accompanied the leader of Germany’s center-right Christian Democratic Union to Mr. Kaczynski’s office in Warsaw. The Polish party leader, he recalled, was civil, even charming, but peppered the conversation with historical references to slights against Poland. He is a “hard-core Polish nationalist” with a keen eye for political advantage, Mr. Abraham said.And no issue is easier to exploit at election time than the wounds of World War II, in which Polish suffering, in the view of many Poles, has been often ignored by outsiders focused on the Holocaust, a big part of which took place in Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland.Pawel Poncyliusz, who served as Mr. Kaczynski’s press officer before jumping to the opposition, said his former boss had a genuine interest in history but had harnessed the horrors endured by Poland in the past to serve his political ambitions.A lifelong bachelor who lives alone in the same modest Warsaw house he shared with his mother until her death a decade ago, Mr. Kaczynski, he said, “does not need women, money or holidays in Asia” but desperately needs to win and hold power.“In his head, he has unified himself with Poland,” Mr. Poncyliusz added. “Everything that is good for him is good for Poland. Everything that is against him is against Poland.”Anatol Magdziarz More