“RE: Germany Makes Final WW1 Debt Payment
Are they liable to pay anything for WW II?”
German reparations for World War II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_reparations_for_World_War_II
After World War II, both West Germany and East Germany were obliged to pay war reparations to the Allied governments, according to the Potsdam Conference. Other Axis nations were obliged to pay war reparations according to the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947.
London Agreement on German External Debts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Agreement_on_German_External_Debts
The total under negotiation was 16 billion marks of debt resulting from the Treaty of Versailles after World War I which had not been paid in the 1930s, but which Germany decided to repay to restore its reputation. This money was owed to government and private banks in the U.S., France and Britain. Another 16 billion marks represented postwar loans by the U.S. Under the London Debts Agreement of 1953, the repayable amount was reduced by 50% to about 15 billion marks and stretched out over 30 years, and compared to the fast-growing German economy were of minor impact.
Some of the agreement included debts to be paid after the reunification of Germany. Over decades it seemed unlikely to transpire, but in 1990 another 239.4 million Deutsche Mark of unpaid coupons were revived. On 3 October 2010 the last payment was made of 69.9 million euro.[4] This is considered to be the last payment by Germany on all known debts resulting from both world wars.
In 2014, countries are still paying off debt from World War One
http://qz.com/290183/in-2014-countries-are-still-paying-off-debt-from-world-war-one/
Germany
On Oct. 3, 2010, Germany finally paid off all its debt from World War One. The total? About 269 billion marks, or around 96,000 tons of gold.
The reparations were part of many humiliating clauses imposed by the Treaty of Versailles following Germany’s defeat in 1918, mainly by France, which suffered so much during the war and was also fearful that without the weight of such repayments, Germany would rise again quickly as a military power and attack it.
The UK sent a certain economist, John Maynard Keynes, as the principal representative of the British Treasury to the Paris Peace Conference. He resigned in June 1919 in protest at the size of reparations. “Germany will not be able to formulate correct policy if it cannot finance itself,” Keynes said. All very prescient, as Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party seized on popular hatred of the Versailles treaty to take power. Following the Great Depression in 1929, Germany’s debt was cut to 112 billion marks, payable over a period of 59 years. Not that it mattered—Hitler suspended reparation repayments in 1933.
In 1953, following the end of the Second World War, West Germany agreed at a conference in London to pay off its debts from before World War II, and in return was allowed to wait until reunification before paying €125 million in outstanding interest owed from 1945-1952. In 1990, the Berlin wall fell and Germany started paying off that interest—the very last of which was paid in October 2010 on the 20th anniversary of reunification.
One of the lessons of World War Two was the consequences of lumbering a losing nation with huge debts. “After WWII, they decided to hang the leaders but not to punish the nation,” Mark Harrison, an economics professor at University of Warwick, told the BBC. “But in WWI, it was the other way around.”