Germany to complete WWI reparations at last.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Louis VI - what reparations?

Reparations to repair damages of WWI.


For that is what is meant by WWI reparations. WWI was faught on French soil. So all damages were French, not German. Therefore, the fourteen points, the pre-armistice agreements, the armistice - all stated explicitly that Germany was to pay reparations to France for all of the damages incurred.
This was lowered by a magnanimous French delegation in the actual peace treaty (articles 231 and 232): Germany would only be required to pay insofar as Germany could afford to pay. France would pay all of the remainder. France agreed to bear the lion's share of the costs of WWI in this manner to make the peace with Germany, and to ensure anglo, especially US, assistance in the case of renewed German agression.


What little was asked of Germany as reparations was subsequently repeatedly lowered. In the end, Germany has paid total reparations only marginally higher than the value of what the defeated, retreating German troops plundered and destroyed in the last few weeks of the war, as negotiations were nearing completion already.
This tiny amount which Germany actually paid was substantially lower than what Germany was loaned to enable Germany to pay. To top it off, in 1932, Germany publicly stated that it would never repay these loans.


The staggering conclusion is: Germany made a financial profit from WWI reparations.


The pocket change that Germany paid today I estimate is about equal to just the annual cost France and Belgium incur each year in just removing and storing WWI ammunition. This is only getting worse every year, as the ammunition becomes more instable. The job to clean the soil of WWI ammunition is estimated to last for at least another 700 years. That is the optimistic estimate. And that's just the ammunition problem. So I'm happy for Germany that it is finished paying for WWI. France and Belgium, meanwhile, will pay reparations for all eternity.


All of which wouldn't be so bad, if only the persistent myths about Versailles wouldn't reverse all of the above in the public imagination. German propaganda since 1918 has proved so succesful that to this day public opinion and amateur historians repeat a German ultra-nationalist narrative concerning the subject.