Germany Closes Book on World War I With Final Reparations Payment

Der Spiegel ^ | David Crossland

[2ndDivisionVet]

Germany will make its last reparations payment for World War I on Oct. 3, settling its outstanding debt from the 1919 Versailles Treaty and quietly closing the final chapter of the conflict that shaped the 20th century.

Oct. 3, the 20th anniversary of German unification, will also mark the completion of the final chapter of World War I with the end of reparations payments 92 years after the country's defeat.

The German government will pay the last instalment of interest on foreign bonds it issued in 1924 and 1930 to raise cash to fulfil the enormous reparations demands the victorious Allies made after World War I.

The reparations bankrupted Germany in the 1920s and the fledgling Nazi party seized on the resulting public resentment against the terms of the Versailles Treaty.

The sum was initially set at 269 billion gold marks, around 96,000 tons of gold, before being reduced to 112 billion gold marks by 1929, payable over a period of 59 years.

Germany suspended annual payments in 1931 during the global financial crisis and Adolf Hitler unsurprisingly declined to resume them when he came to power in 1933.

But in 1953, West Germany agreed at an international conference in London to service its international bond obligations from before World War II. In the years that followed it repaid the principal on the bonds, which had been issued to private and institutional investors in countries including the United States....

[2ndDivisionVet]

How long will it take us to pay off Mr. Obama's accumulated debt?

[Quiller]

How long will it take us to pay off Mr. Obama's accumulated debt?

Longer, once his version of reparations start being paid.

Oh, wait. That's what much of 'equal opportunity' and 'desegregation', and a few other government programs are -- reparations wrapped in a different package so that it is palatable, but drives toward the same end.

[MissEdie]

South Carolina paid off it’s reparations from the Civil War in 1959. So judging by it taking two different entities almost 100 years to pay it off,... But then again, obama hasn’t finished destroying us yet.

[apillar]

Seriously, they actually paid it?!? I always assumed after Hitler pretty much told Europe to “Go to H_ll” it was considered Null and Void and when Germany was defeated it WWII, the new government wouldn't have considered itself bound by it anyway. You learn something new everyday I guess...

[wolf78]

Seriously, they actually paid it?!? I always assumed after Hitler pretty much told Europe to “Go to H_ll” it was considered Null and Void and when Germany was defeated it WWII, the new government wouldn't have considered itself bound by it anyway. You learn something new everyday I guess...

What few people know: Germany actually also repaid the Marshall plan money it got as loans, as opposed to e.g. Britain and the UK which got 2-3 times the amount (on a per capita basis) as gifts.

Also, the patents Germany lost to the allies after WWII were worth many times the Marshall plan billions.

AFAIK never fully paid the WWI reparations. I mean those would be 4 trillion US dollars in today's money. It was a ridiculously large sum in order to keep the German economy down with interest payments given that Germany was the leading industrial power in Europe before WWI, having replaced Britain as the pinnacle of technological progess.