POLAND’S leaders stressed the need for a strong military in the face of war in neighbouring Ukraine as they led solemn ceremonies today to mark the 85th anniversary of German Nazi forces invading Polish territory at the start of World War II.

Some 1,200 people were killed during the attack during the early hours of September 1 1939.

This comes as fears grow of electoral gains by a far-right party in two state elections in eastern Germany.

President Andrzej Duda said it wasn’t enough to speak about “reconciliation” or to “bend your head in a sense of guilt,” claimed the lesson to learn from Nazi aggression is “the readiness to organise the entire Western world, Europe and Nato for the defence against aggression that we are witnessing today in the battlefields of Ukraine.”

But the spectre of another rise of far-right politics in Germany continues to grow as two state elections in eastern Germany on Sunday offer the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) the chance to become the strongest party for the first time. 

A third election follows on September 22 in another eastern state, Brandenburg, currently led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats. Germany’s next national election is due in a little over a year.

Alice Weidel, a national co-leader of the anti-immigrant AfD, has described Sunday’s votes as “an important milestone for the national parliamentary election next year.” 

But with polls putting AfD’s approval rating at about 30 per cent in both states, it would most likely need a coalition partner to govern, and it’s highly unlikely anyone else would agree to put it in power.

In Thuringia second and third place look to go to the right-wing Christian Democrats and the left-wing, anti-war Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance.