**...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....qz/290183/in-2014-countries-are-still-paying-off-debt-from-world-war-one/
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 13:27:30 +0000
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