Talking to a number of poles has gotten me some interesting opinions on this. There are those who believe this was a political move by the current government called the civic platform, the current government has had a number of corruption scandals and the economy is bad (I've learned if the economy is good people are more prone to forgive corruption scandals) so they'll likely lose the election. The accusation goes that they've bought unneeded tanks, undercutting the domestic Polish tank industry so as to drum up German support for giving the Polish politicos jobs in Belguim where they can hide from the fallout of their actions. Honestly that seems a bit farfetched to me.The Polish Defense Ministry has acquired 119 tanks from the German Army. These include 105 Leopard 2A5 tanks and 14 2A4 variants, the ministry said in a statement. The contract was signed by Polish Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak and his German counterpart, Thomas de Maizière.
“The version which we are acquiring will remain operational for many years to come without the need to be modernized,” Siemoniak said. “We want the Leopard to be the main tank operated by the Polish Army.”
“Germany wants to continue the close cooperation of the two countries’ armed forces,” de Maizière said. “Now the Leopards will enhance the collaboration of soldiers from our countries for world peace and security.”
Deliveries are scheduled from 2014 to 2015. The contract is worth €180 million (US $243 million), according to the Polish MoD. The procurement also covers related military equipment, including transportation vehicles, machine guns, training and radio location systems.
Meanwhile, the Polish military is aiming to overhaul the 128 Leopard 2A4 tanks it already operates. The tanks were produced from 1984 to 1986.
The fact that alot of Poles did feel queasy about buying German tanks citing that "Oh sure they're buddy buddy now but what about in 20 years" was an interesting insight and tells me a number of Poles likely don't have deep faith in NATO or the EU. Add to this that every Pole I spoke to agreed that they were on the frontier and most likely to be hit first if anything went to pot and that having lots of tanks was a good idea and you got something interesting going on.
For the record... Unless NATO falls or becomes incredibly discredited... The Russians are not coming west. Futhermore, given that the current Russian army is under going downsizing (seriously going from 10,000 to 3,000 tanks) and modernization... It's unlikely that Russian can sustain an extended invasion of Poland. Of course that only holds true as long as the Poles remain vigilant and armed.
I'm not even going to discuss the idea that modern German would invade Poland. Some things are simply to silly even for N&P.