2026 Theses Doctoral

Starting from Scrap. Material Politics of Polish Reconstruction and the Industrial Remaking of East Central Europe, 1944-1950

Partyga, Karolina

This dissertation examines how a group of Poles tried to convert Germany’s Second World War defeat into an opportunity for launching Poland’s industrialization and thus redefining economic relations in East Central Europe. In doing so, it shows that Poland’s breakneck industrialization began in 1950 was not a product of communist ideology, but of the lessons that Polish economic leaders learned during the militarized armistice that followed the Second World War. Thus, the thesis frames the period traditionally characterized as reconstruction (1945-1950) as a pan-European power-contest over the material world left from Germany’s failed bid for domination; a contest through which the enormous occupation armies in the heart of Europe shaped everyday economic life, possibilities of pursuing postwar justice, and economic management strategies.

This thesis tells this story through the relationship between a rising Polish industrial elite and a material critical for industrializing Poland: scrap metal. Scrap metal was both a ubiquitous feature of the war-torn landscape and a critical resource for making steel. As such, it was indispensable for the material recovery of not only Poland, but all of Europe.

This thesis follows Polish industrial actors concerned with metallic waste, from their encounter with scrap metal behind the frontlines of the Soviet march on Berlin, to the launch of the first Six Year Plan (1950-1955) when most of this waste had been cleared up. It examines the arguments they had with enterprising Poles, communist party activists, soldiers, and international diplomats about who should obtain and use war damaged-infrastructure within Poland’s new borders and abroad. It investigates the Poles’ pursuit of postwar justice in attempts to secure scrap metal from Soviet, US, and British military administrations who oversaw the dismantling of Germany’s military-industrial complex.

Ultimately, it shows that the disappointment of hopes to move materials to Poland’s advantage pushed Polish industrial leaders towards projects of industrial expansion underwritten by deliveries of raw materials and technologies from the USSR.

In telling the story of recycling the war waste, this dissertation offers new perspectives for historical studies of European reconstruction, of the economic toolkit of industrialization, and of state socialism. It is a history of a search for postwar justice that highlights the stakes of peace in East Central Europe – a region where the return to the past was not possible and a radical reconfiguration desperately desired. It is a history of economic management in which warfare was a catalyst not just for abstract planning, but for commanding resources on the ground – for running the state like a military engineer. And, therefore, it is a history of socialist state-building that decenters ideology and shows that material challenges of the postwar wasteland generated the political system of the Polish People’s Republic.

This dissertation is based on research in five Polish archives. Most of the materials analyzed were produced between 1944 and 1950 and originated with state, party, business, and military actors. Those actors were not only Polish, as the archives contain the copies of documents produced by the protagonists’ interlocutors. By following Polish industrial leaders as a network brought together through expertise, rather than class origin, this thesis offers not only a historiographical, but a methodological contribution to the study of state-socialist regimes.