Poland Repurposed a Nazi Factory Site to Make TNT to Drop on Gaza
By ALEXANDER ZAITCHIK
The state-owned Polish company, Nitro-Chem, produced 90% of the TNT that U.S. weapons manufacturers used to make “Mark Series” bombs, according to a new report.
A Polish firm plays a central role in providing trinitrotoluene (TNT), the key explosive used in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, according to “The Missing Ingredient: Polish TNT,” a report published today by a coalition representing the People’s Embargo for Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, Shadow World Investigations, and Movement Research Unit. Nitro-Chem, a state-owned company located in Poland’s northeast, produced 90% of the TNT imported by the U.S. to make the aerial bombs sent to Israel in recent years, the report claims.
Since October 2023, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) unleashed tens of thousands of bombs likely containing payloads of Polish-made TNT, resulting in the destruction of as much as 80 percent of Gaza’s buildings, including civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, and refugee camps. “Based on information provided by the bomb’s U.S. manufacturer, General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems, the Polish company Nitro-Chem, and U.S. government databases, we can conclude that there is a high probability that a significant proportion of [Mk 84s] that Israel dropped on the Gaza Strip since October 2023 are filled with Polish-made TNT,” the report found.
Nitro-Chem contracts with U.S weapons manufacturers in the Mk 80 supply chain date back to at least 2016, with the most recent orders signed in April of this year featuring delivery dates continuing until 2029. The timing of one major contract at the height of the air campaign against Gaza in April 2024 suggests that the Israeli army was burning through its large supply of one-ton Mk 84s—a barrage that was already without recent military precedent. According to an estimate in Haaretz based on officer interviews, as many as two-thirds of the 50,000 bombs dropped by the IAF through the end of August 2024 were Mk 84s. Military experts described the display as one “not seen since Vietnam.”
Although the Biden administration placed a hold on Mk 84 shipments to Israel, it was lifted within days of Trump taking office in January. The hold Biden placed on the shipments was a hiccup, and the supply chain is as robust as ever, according to the report, with multiple contracts showing the three countries—Poland, the U.S., and Israel—eager to replenish the IAF’s bomb.
Israel requested to purchase 35,529 one-ton bombs from General Dynamics in February. Two months later, Nitro-Chem signed its largest ever deal to deliver 18,000 tons of TNT to Paramount Enterprises International—a U.S. intermediary that delivers the TNT to General Dynamics—between 2027–2029. According to the report,
“The agreement was signed in Poland by the CEOs of PEI and Nitro-Chem, in the presence of Poland’s Deputy Defense Minister, Cezary Tomczyk, who stated that Poland’s deals with the U.S. concerning TNT exports are “iron-clad.” The underlying mechanism of this partnership was detailed by [Polish investigative news outlet] Onet which in June 2025 investigated why Poland, despite an ongoing war on its eastern border for over three years, has been unable to produce basic artillery shells for its own military, while at the same time the country’s only NATO TNT producer, Nitro-Chem, sells enormous quantities of TNT to the United States at very low prices. The article quotes an anonymous military source, who said: “Polish politicians were told that if Poland wants the American security umbrella, we must continue selling them TNT. Breaking this contract was portrayed as an act against American companies in Poland.”
As with the bombs already dropped on Gaza, the replacements will fix Polish-made TNT into warheads at a General Dynamics factory north of Dallas. The company has been the prime contractor for Mk 80 bombs since the Vietnam War, when they became standard for the U.S. and its allies.
Israel would not have been able to decimate Gaza to this extent without the TNT production capacity of Nitro-Chem, which after the Cold War emerged as the largest producer of the explosive among NATO and EU members. During the October War of 1973, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) adopted the U.S.-made Mk 80 series, which features an admixture of aluminum powder to increase the heat and destructiveness of the charge. Israel’s air campaign in Gaza mostly featured the largest bombs in the series—the 1,000-pound Mk 83 and the 2,000-pound Mk 84. By April of 2024, Israeli pilots had detonated around 75,000 tons of Polish-made TNT on the densely populated enclave. In nuclear terms, this is an explosive force equivalent to a 75-kiloton fission bomb—significantly more than twice the combined yield of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Along with Vietnam, the Mk 80 supply chain echoes another dark chapter of history—one closer to the mixing site of its main ingredient. The Nitro-Chem plant is located on the former grounds of one of the biggest arms factories built by the Nazis between 1940 and 1944. The authors of the TNT report note that, during the German occupation, Polish resistance cells repeatedly “infiltrated the plant and carried out acts of sabotage.” No such acts have been reported in recent years, as the TNT used in the Gaza genocide uses roads and train tracks in the vicinity of multiple Holocaust memorials, including the site of a mass grave known as the Valley of Death, and the Potulice Concentration Camp, where an estimated 25,000 prisoners were processed.
This irony is not lost on the report’s authors who write, “We call on Nitro-Chem and the Polish authorities to immediately cease the supply of TNT for the production of Mk 80 series bombs and artillery used by Israel, as well as direct supplies of explosives to Israel. Their failure to do so may meet the legal criteria for aiding and abetting genocide and other international and domestic crimes.”
