On 09/01/2012 21:31, wrote:

Under what circumstances would they have allowed Polish citizens to
obtain West German passports and when was that?

Perhaps "Germans" (however officially defined) who found themselves
living in Poland in 1945, when Poland was moved westwards and took over
land which had been unambiguously Germany pre-war? Presumably not every
German in that position either fled or died in the immediate post-war
period.

Germany has (had?) some kind of "right of return" rules, allowing people
of German background from places outside Germany to go to Germany itself
- there were German communities in odd corners of the Russian empire,
for example, though obviously things went badly wrong from them in 1941.

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/64474 says
"In order to immigrate to Germany, members of the diaspora now must
qualify in two ways. Their passports – which in Kyrgyzstan, in a
holdover from Soviet practice, indicate ethnicity – must have always
listed them as Germans. And they must demonstrate basic language ability
and cultural familiarity in a test given biannually at the German
Embassy. Since 2005, children and spouses of immigrants have also had to
pass a language exam. These days, few take the test."

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK