Posted on 09/29/2010 7:09:40 AM PDT by shove_it
The First World War will officially end on Sunday, 92 years after the guns fell silent, when Germany pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies.
The final payment of £59.5 million, writes off the crippling debt that was the price for one world war and laid the foundations for another.
Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging what was then the bloodiest conflict in history, leaving nearly ten million soldiers dead.
The bill would have been settled much earlier had Adolf Hitler not reneged on reparations during his reign.
[...]
France, which had been ravaged by the war, pushed hardest for the steepest possible fiscal punishment for Germany.
The principal representative of the British Treasury at the Paris Peace Conference, John Maynard Keynes, resigned in June 1919 in protest at the scale of the demands.
"Germany will not be able to formulate correct policy if it cannot finance itself,' he warned.
When the Wall Street Crash came in 1929, the Weimar Republic spiralled into debt. Four years later, Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
You would have thought that the forgiveness would have been thrown in as part of The Marshall Plan.
Thanks France,oh and thanks for Vietnam too.
Important to note that German soldiers, under orders, destroyed everything they could of value in northern France and Belgium before they withdrew. Those acts were warcrimes, and the reparations were imposed to compensate Belgium and France for those acts. Further, reparations were imposed on France by Germany for the 1870 war between them. France paid off those reparations, despite the injustice of the imposition.
Credits to the German government for keeping to the terms of an agreement, for the sake of rebuilding their national honor.
Thanks for this reminder...
While war in general is horrific, WWI was just unutterable carnage...I honestly don’t know how the populace of that time lived through it...as well as WWII and the War of Northern Aggression.
Important to note that German soldiers, under orders, destroyed everything they could of value in northern France and Belgium before they withdrew. Those acts were warcrimes, and the reparations were imposed to compensate Belgium and France for those acts. Further, reparations were imposed on France by Germany for the 1870 war between them. France paid off those reparations, despite the injustice of the imposition.
Credits to the German government for keeping to the terms of an agreement, for the sake of rebuilding their national honor.
Important to note that German soldiers, under orders, destroyed everything they could of value in northern France and Belgium before they withdrew. Those acts were warcrimes, and the reparations were imposed to compensate Belgium and France for those acts. Further, reparations were imposed on France by Germany for the 1870 war between them. France paid off those reparations, despite the injustice of the imposition.
Credits to the German government for keeping to the terms of an agreement, for the sake of rebuilding their national honor.
92 years from now, our great grandchildren will STILL be paying off Obama’s debt.
I love it when the US kicks someone who deserves it right in the sprouts.
France had been active in Indo China in the late 1800s.
Ping for Sunday useage. Thanks for sharing. I had no idea.....C
Frogs and Brits don’t forgive
The left loves the French, for their much vaunted "sophistication". To which I say, "Is this the same French sophistication which led the entire world into war, no less than three times, in the space of a hundred and fifty years? No, thanks, I'll pass..."
the infowarrior
Better late than never.
When Dean Rusk told LBJ that DeGaulle demanded all US soldiers to leave France, LBJ’s response was.
“Ask him ‘Does your order include the bodies of American soldiers in France’s cemeteries?’”
I believe that Colin Powell made a related statement to France about the US never seeking conquest during WWII, only seeking enough land to bury our dead.
(1) Germany defaulted on the reparations debt in 1923. France responded by occupying the Ruhr region of Germany.
(2) In 1924, under the Dawes Plan the debt payment scheduled was restructured.
(3) In 1929, the Young Plan organized the issuance of bonds by the Weimar Republic to finance the reparations and also a reduction in the reparations from 226Bm to 112Bm.
(4) In 1932 the Lausanne Conference placed a moratorium on reparations interest payments.
(5) In 1933, Germany repudiated the bonds and refused to pay the interest.
(6) In 1953 under the London Agreement, the West German government agreed to take on the external debt incurred by the Third Reich and also agreed that the reduced Young Plan reparations - although repudiated by the Third Reich - were legitimate debts. The FDR agreed to repay the FDR's share of the external debts with the GDR's share to paid upon reunification by a reunited Germany.
(7) The FDR finished paying off all its portion of the Third Reich debt, including its portion of the reparations, in 1980.
(8) In 1995, the BR undertook to finish paying off the GDR's unpaid share of all the old debt. This portion will be finished this Sunday.
When the Second Reich defeated France in the 1870-1871 war, the Germans imposed reparations upon the French.
When reaprations were imposed on Germany, the number that France put forward was a number based on a per capita debt calculated from the per capita debt imposed on France in 1871 adjusted for inflation.
It was the beginning of the end for the British Empire but it took WW2 to make it final. The loss of population that would have procreated the next generation set the stage for what France and Britain experienced at the start of WW2.
He was a charter member of the American Legion and a true patriot, passing those values on to his children and grandchildren.
I was the only member of the family to whom he told what he went through in France. He was a good man and a great Grandpa!
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