You have “forced” me to do some research this weekend..I’m fairly sure of my facts, but will verify and discuss with you later. If you can provide any links/sources to substantiate your statements, I’d appreciate it. Thanks
Sally Marks is the one recent historian who has actually delved deep into the math of WWI German reparations. She wrote a good-sized chapter in a Routledge festschrift about 10 years ago or so.
Most analyses seem to be the work of non-economist historians.
Ultimately I find that all this misrepresentation of Versailles and of the established practice of reparations is in service of a rational explanation of the supposed inevitability of National Socialism.
It was neither rational or inevitable - sometimes nations do irrational things. Human nature can be very dark and unpredictable.
I find these arguments similar to the arguments that 9/11 was inevitable and was a predictable and foreseeable response to US foreign policy.