Germany to complete WWI reparations at last.

[KrooK]

All in all I think that if Germany paid GB, they can start paying Poland.
They did not pay majority of WW2 reparations.
Damages only in Warsaw are being estimated on 100.000.000.000 USD.

Anyway I knew about problems with remaining amunition but I was sure Germany is paying for it.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Anyway I knew about problems with remaining amunition but I was sure Germany is paying for it.

Germany has not paid reparations since 1931. (And barely anything before that)

The little pocket change that is the subject of this thread, is not a reparations payment. It is a repayment of a loan Germany received to pay reparations. However, Germany used it to pay neither the reparations, nor did it repay the loans. Germany did, however, happily use the money to prepare, even re-arm, itself to plunge the world into war again.

The allies of WWI had come to accept that they themselves have paid for all of the damages of WWI. However, after 1990, it was requested that Germany at least refund some of the substantial profit Germany made from reparations. This Germany has now done.



All of which would be fine. Were it not, that this repayment is presented all over the web as 'Germany finally done paying reparations!'. 'How chivalrous of them that they paid it all!'. 'How evil of the allies to suck Germany dry for ninety years!'.
All three of which are, as is customary for the reparations issue, factually incorrect, and/or, as is even more common, based on fundamentally erroneous notions.



My favourite author:
'Reparations reconsiderd: a reminder'. http://www.jstor.org/pss/4545548

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Very interesting, thanks louis. It seems like we have a big need for an explanation of why wwii happened and grasp at anything conveniently simple.

[Louis VI the Fat]

It seems like we have a big need for an explanation of why wwii happened and grasp at anything conveniently simple.

Two problems conspire against a simple explanation. Firstly, the events of the 1920's and 30's are excruciatingly complicated. Secondly, by their nature, these events do not lend themselves well to simplification.

Some historical events one can simplify and still leave their essence intact. This is not readily possible with the Treaty of Versailles, or reparations. A simplification here often leads to stating the exact opposite. Reality, propaganda, and perception need to be carefully distuingished, to an extent that precludes any simplification.



Compare:

German nationalist propaganda said that international Jewry abused temporary German weakness in a bid to enslave Germany forever. Germans were lured to think they had to resist Jewish domination to survive as a nation. This caused the Holocaust.

One can not simplify this into:

International Jewry wanted to enslave Germany forever. Germany resisted this enslavement. This caused the Holocaust.

The simplified version omisses the crucial aspects of the events. It ends up stating what amounts to almost the exact opposite of the longer version of events. It is likewise with the reparations issue.

WWI reparations, I would dare say, are the exact opposite of what public opinion generally makes of them. 'Versailles mythology' is not a reliable narrative of events with some nuances left out for brevity, no, Versailles mythology is wrong to its core, and is the exact opposite of reality.
As a brief case in point, I'll again state the startling conclusion of many modern economic historians that, far from bringing it to destitution, Germany made a financial profit from WWI reparations. Until 1932, Germany received more money to pay for reparations than it ever paid in reparations. (WWI was no exception to the rule that losing a war to America is a most profitable business.)

German reparations, an excruciatingly tangled thicket into which only a few intrepid explorers have ventured. Understandably, most students of twentieth-century history have preferred to sidestep the perils of travel on territory of extreme financial complexity and, as a consequence, a number of misconceptions about the history of German reparations remain in circulation. This brief summary is not addressed to those few brave trailblazers, whose work it indeed salutes, but rather to those many who have assiduously avoided the subject and to the myths about reparations which still adorn studies of the Weimar Republic and interwar history.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action...ne&aid=2869676