O Empréstimo Forçado da Grécia à Alemanha - documentos, artigos e links

[Dilath Larath]

Nazi Extortion: Study Sheds New Light on Forced Greek Loans

By Manfred Ertel, Katrin Kuntz and Walter Mayr

Is Germany liable to Athens for loans the Nazis forced the Greek central bank to provide during World War II? A new study in Greece could increase the pressure on Berlin to pay up.

Loukas Zisis, the deputy mayor of Distomo, a village nestled in the hills about a two hour drive from Athens, says he thinks about the Germans every day. On June 10, 1944, the Germans massacred 218 people in Distomo, including dozens of children. Zisis, who is just 48 years old, wasn't yet born at the time of the attack.

"We can't forget the Germans," Zisis says. They came to Distomo 71 years ago with their guns. "Today they are exerting power over our village with their banks and policies," he adds. He's standing in the wind on a rocky ledge, a small man in a leather jacket, and looking out over the town. Two-thousand people live here.

The massacre, which continues to shape the place today, was one of the most brutal crimes committed by the Nazis in Greece, with the carnage lasting several hours. For decades, a trial over the massacre wound its way through the courts at all levels in Greece and Germany. Greece's highest court, the Areopag, ruled in 2000 that Germany must pay damages to Distomo's bereaved.

"But we are still waiting," says Zisis. "There has been no compensation."

Last week in Greek parliament, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras demanded German reparations payments, indirectly linking them to the current situation in Greece. "After the reunification of Germany in 1990, the legal and political conditions were created for this issue to be solved," Tsipras said. "But since then, German governments chose silence, legal tricks and delay. And I wonder, because there is a lot of talk at the European level these days about moral issues: Is this stance moral?"

Tspiras was essentially countering German allegations that Greece lives beyond its means with the biggest counteraccusation possible: German guilt. Leaving aside the connection drawn by Tsipras, which many consider to be inappropriate, there are many arguments to support the Greek view. SPIEGEL itself reported in February that former Chancellor Helmut Kohl used tricks in 1990 in order to avoid having to pay reparations.

A study conducted by the Greek Finance Ministry, commissioned way back in 2012 by a previous government, has now been completed and contains new facts. The 194-page document has been obtained by SPIEGEL.

Outstanding German Debt

The central question in the report is that of forced loans the Nazi occupiers extorted from the Greek central bank beginning in 1941. Should requests for repayment of those loans be classified as reparation demands -- demands that may have been forfeited with the Two-Plus-Four Treaty of 1990? Or is it a genuine loan that must be paid back? The expert commission analyzed contracts and agreements from the time of the occupation as well as receipts, remittance slips and bank statements.

They found that the forced loans do not fit into the category of classical war reparations. The commission calculated the outstanding German "debt" to the Greek central bank and came to a total sum of $12.8 billion as of December 2014, which would amount to about €11 billion.

As such, at issue between Germany and Greece is no longer just the question as to whether the 115 million deutsche marks paid to the Greek government from 1961 onwards for its peoples' suffering during the occupation sufficed as legal compensation for the massacres like those in the villages of Distomo and Kalavrita. Now the key issue is whether the successor to the German Reich, the Federal Republic of Germany, is responsible for paying back loans extorted by the Nazi occupiers. There's some evidence to indicate that this may be the case.

In terms of the amount of the loan debt, the Greek auditors have come to almost the same findings as those of the Nazis' bookkeepers shortly before the end of the war. Hitler's auditors estimated 26 days before the war's end that the "outstanding debt" the Reich owed to Greece at 476 million Reichsmarks.

Auditors in Athens calculated an "open credit line" for the same period of time of around $213 million. They assumed a dollar exchange rate to the Reichsmark of 2:1 and applied an interest escalation clause accepted by the German occupiers that would result in a value of more than €11 billion today.

'No Ifs or Buts'

This outstanding debt has to be paid back "with no ifs or buts," says German historian Hagen Fleischer in Athens, who knows the relevant files better than anyone else. Even before the new report, he located numerous documents that prove without any doubt, he believes, the character of forced loans. Nazi officials noted on March 20, 1944, for example, that the "Reich's debt" to Athens had totaled 1,068 billion drachmas as of December 31 of the previous year.

"Forced loans as war debt pervade all the German files," says Fleischer, who is a professor of modern history at the University of Athens. He has lived in Athens since 1977 and has since obtained Greek citizenship. He says that files from postwar German authorities about questions of war debt "shocked" him far more than the war documents on atrocities and suffering.

In them, he says German diplomats use the vocabulary of the National Socialists to discuss reparations issues, speaking of a "final solution for so-called war crimes problems," or stating that it was high time for a "liquidation of memory." He says it was in this spirit that compensation payments were also constantly refused. Fleischer had long been accused of bias and he says he is now pleased to have support from Athens -- particularly given that the present study has nothing to do with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' Syriza government.

When work on the study first began in early 2012, the cabinet of independent Prime Minister Loukas Papademos still governed in Athens. A former vice president of the European Central Bank, Papademos formed a six-month transition government after Georgios Papandreou resigned. In April 2014, the successor government of conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras decided to continue work on the study and appointed Panagiotis Karakousis to lead the team of experts. The longtime general director of the Finance Ministry was considered to be politically unobjectionable.

50,000 Pages of Documents

Karakousis spent five months reading 50,000 pages of original documents from the central bank's archives. It wasn't easy reading. The study calculates right down to the gram the amount of gold plundered from private households, especially those of Greek Jews: 7,358.0014 kilograms of pure gold with an equivalent value today of around €235 million. It also notes also how German troops, as they pulled out, quickly took along "the entire cash reserves from branch offices and regional branches" of the central bank: Exactly 634,962,691,995,162 drachmas in notes and coins, which would total about €40 million today.

Above all, the study, with some reservations, provides clarity about the forced loans. "No reasonable person can now doubt that these loans existed and that the repayment remains open," says Karakousis.

This history of the loans began in April 1941, after the German troops rushed to assist their Italian allies and occupied Greece. In order to provide their troops with provisions, the German occupiers demanded reimbursement for their expenses, the so-called occupation costs. It's a cynical requirement, but one that became standard practice after the 1907 Hague Convention.

Out of the ordinary, though, was the Wehrmacht requirement that the Greeks finance the provision of its troops on other fronts -- in the Balkans, in Russia or in North Africa -- despite Hague Convention rules forbidding such a practice. Initially, the German occupiers demanded 25 million Reichsmarks per month from the government in Athens, around 1.5 billion drachmas. But the amount they actually took was considerably higher. The expert commission determined that payments made by the Greek central bank between August and December 1941 totaled 12 billion rather than 7 billion drachmas.

'Unlimited Sums in the Form of Loans'

With their economy laid to waste, the Greeks soon began pushing for reductions. At a conference in Rome, the Germans and Italians decided on March 14, 1942 to halve their occupation costs to 750 million drachmas each. But the study claims that Hitler's deputies demanded "unlimited sums in the form of loans." Whatever the Germans collected over and above the 750 million would be "credited to the Greek government," a German official noted in 1942.

The sums of the forced loans were up to 10 times as high as the occupation costs. During the first half of 1942, they totaled 43.4 billion drachmas, whereas only 4.5 billion for the provision of troops was due.

A number of installment payments, which Athens began pressing for in March 1943, serve to verify the nature of the loans. Historian Fleischer also found records relating to around two dozen payment installments. For example, the payment office of the Special Operations Southeast was instructed on October 6, 1944 to pay, inflation adjusted, an incredible sum of 300 billion drachma to the Greek government and to book it as "repayment."

'Debts Have to Be Paid Back'

In Fleischer's opinion, the report makes unequivocally clear that the Greek demands do not relate to reparations for wartime injustices that could serve as a precedent for other countries. "One can negotiate reparations politically," Fleischer says. "Debts have to be paid back -- even between friends."

Postwar Greek governments sought repayment early on. The German ambassador confirmed on October 15, 1966, for example, that the Greeks had already come knocking "over an alleged claim."

On November 10, 1995, then Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou proposed the opening of talks aimed at a settlement of the "German debts to Greece." He proposed that "every category of these claims would be examined separately." Papandreous' effort ultimately didn't lead anywhere.

So what happens now? What should become of this new study, the contents of which had remained secret before now?

"I am not a politician," says Karakousis, "I've just done my duty."

But the question also remains whether the surviving relatives of the victims of Distomo will ever be provided with justice -- and whether there are similar cases in other countries.

German lawyer Joachim Lau, whose law firm is based in Florence, Italy, represents the interests of village residents of Distomo even today. Lau, born in Stuttgart, a white-haired man of almost 70, is fighting for compensation in the name of the Greek and Italian victims of the Nazis. "I am disappointed by the manner in which Germany is dealing with this question," he says. He says it's not just an issue of financial compensation. More than anything, it is one of justice.

Careless Statements

In February, Lau warned German President Joachim Gauck in an open letter against propagating the "violation of international law" with careless statements about the reparations issue. In his view, the legal situation is clear: Greek and Italian citizens and their relatives affected by "shootings, massacres by the Wehrmacht, by deportations or forced labor illegal under international law" have the right to individual claims.

For the past decade, Lau has been pursuing the claims of the Distomo victims in Italy. The Court of Cassation in Rome affirmed in 2008 that the claims were legitimate and that he could pursue the case. Earlier, the lawyer had already succeeded in securing Villa Vigoni, a palatial estate on the shore of Lake Como owned by Germany -- and used by a private German association focused on promoting German-Italian relations -- as collateral for the suit. In 2009, Lau succeeded in having €51 million in claims made by Deutsche Bahn against Italian state railway Trenitalia seized. On Tuesday, the high court in Rome is expected to rule on the lifting of the enforcement order.

Following a ruling made by Italy's Constitutional Court in October 2014, private suits in Italy against Germany have been possible again. One of the justices who issued the ruling is the current president of Italy, Sergio Mattarella.

It remains unclear whether this ruling will unleash "a wave of new proceedings" in Italy, says Lau, who currently represents 150 cases, including various class-action lawsuits.

Present and Past, Guilt and Anger

Everything connects in the mountain village of Distoma -- the present and past, guilt and anger, the Greek demands on Germany today and past calls for reparations. Efrosyni Perganda sits in the well-heated living room of her home. The diminutive woman, 91 years of age, has alert eyes and wears a black dress. She survived the massacre perpetrated by the Germans at Distomo and she's one of the few witnesses still alive in the village.

When the SS company undertook a so-called act of atonement in Distomo following a fight with Greek partisans, the soldiers also captured her husband. Efrosyni Perganda stood by with her baby as they took him. She never saw him again.
As the Germans began to rampage, she hid behind the bathroom door and later behind the living room door of the house in which she still lives today. She held her baby tightly against her chest. "I forgive my husband's murderers," she says.
Loukas Zisis, the deputy mayor, silently leaves the house as the woman finishes telling her story. He needs a break and heads over to the tavern, where he orders a glass of wine. "I admire Germany: Marx, Engels, Nietzsche," he says. "The prosperity. The degree to which society is organized. But here in the village, we aren't finding peace because the German state isn't settling its debt."

Zisis admires Germany, but the country remains incomprehensible to him. "We haven't even heard a single apology so far," he says once again. "That has to do with Germany's position in Europe." This is something that he just doesn't understand, he says.

spiegel

[Dilath Larath]

Festering anger, Nazi war crimes and the £60bn the Greeks believe the Germans owe them
 

The SS indulged their bloodlust on men, women and children alike. While homes and shops blazed around them like some hellish inferno, women were violated and those who were pregnant were stabbed in the guts. Small babies were bayoneted in their cribs. The village priest was beheaded.

By the time Hitler’s men had left the Greek village of Distomo near the ancient town of Delphi on that bloody day in June 1944, 218 people were dead.

The Waffen-SS was pleased with its work: the local partisans who had dared to attack a German unit had been taught a bitter lesson in revenge.
The slaughter at Distomo was such an outrage that, in 2003, even a German Federal Court judge described it as ‘one of the most despicable crimes of World War II’.

But he refused to grant the families of the victims any compensation for their suffering, and not a single German soldier was ever punished for what he and his comrades had done.

The Distomo massacre is just one example of the terrible suffering endured by the people of Greece during World War II and, some would say, of the German government’s reluctance to pay for the crimes committed against the Greeks in their nation’s name.

Countless other villages could tell of similar atrocities. Some 60,000 Greek Jews — more than three-quarters of the nation’s Jewish population — were rounded up and sent to their deaths in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Yet, neither the massacres of villagers nor the ethnic cleansing of the Jews was the deadliest of torments inflicted on Greece. For the worst Nazi war crimes of all were essentially economic.

Hitler’s troops helped themselves to everything, stealing goods and food to such a degree that hundreds of thousands of Greeks were left destitute and starving. At least 300,000 Greeks died as a result.

After Germany defeated the Greek army, the Nazis set about treating the country the same way they did their other conquests: as a fiefdom to be abused and exploited.
Some 60,000 Greek Jews  more than three-quarters of the nation's Jewish population were rounded up and sent to their deaths in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka

Hitler’s men even raided the Greeks’ central bank, forcing them to give Germany a massive ‘war loan’ — one that has never been paid back, more of which later. Economists estimate that if it were repaid today, it could cost the German government £60billion. The memory of that travesty has been reignited this week by Greeks angry at the austerity measures being imposed on them — primarily by Germany as it seeks to stop the euro crisis spinning out of control.

‘There have been reparations to individuals, but not to Greece itself. Every other country in Europe had reparations apart from Greece. It’s not fair to say Greeks should die for free’.

A year into World War II, the Greeks had managed to stay clear of the conflict that had engulfed the rest of Europe. Hitler was not interested in Greece: he had bigger fish to fry.

But one man was spoiling for a fight. Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy, was desperate to show Hitler that he, too, could launch a blitzkrieg.
And so, in October 1940 the Italians attacked Greece. They made some gains at first, but were soon driven back to where they had started. In March 1941, the Italians mounted another attack, but this was a total failure.

It was at this point that Hitler lost patience with his incompetent ally and intervened. He ordered the all-conquering German forces to sweep down through Yugoslavia and then overrun Greece. By early May 1941, Greece was under German control.

As historian Roger Moorhouse, author of Berlin At War and an expert on wartime Germany, explains: ‘The Nazis systematically stripped Occupied Europe of everything it had.
‘They were desperate to keep the Home Front onside. The spectre of starvation in Germany, and the loss of support for the war that had caused it, loomed large in their minds and it was something they wanted to avoid.

‘So they took honey from Greece, wheat from the Ukraine, wine and Cognac from France, bacon from Denmark and so forth. Whether you got compensated depended on your race.

‘In France, whose people were considered civilised, the chances were you might get paid for your produce, albeit at a very disadvantageous rate. If you were a Ukrainian, and thus a subhuman Slav, it would simply be confiscated. The Greeks were southern nobodies in Nazi eyes.’

As a result, Greek businesses, property and goods, including olive oil, leather, tobacco and cotton, were either seized outright or bought with a new, near-worthless currency called ‘Occupation Marks’.

To make matters worse, the Royal Navy mounted a blockade of Greece, resulting in a terrible shortage of food, especially in the big cities. By the end of 1941, the Red Cross estimated that 400 people a day were dying from starvation in Athens alone.

The Germans responded to this gathering humanitarian disaster with indifference. Hitler’s henchman Hermann Goering, whose love of fine food had left him morbidly obese, told the leaders of Germany’s occupied territories: ‘I could not care less when you say that people under your administration are dying of hunger. Let them perish, so long as no German starves.’

The Greeks have not forgotten what they call The Great Famine. Nor has what one might call The Great Theft slipped their minds either. Because the Germans didn’t just wreck the Greek economy, seize its products and starve its people. They took its money, too.

In February last year, the Greek Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos fumed: ‘The Germans took away Greek money and never gave it back.’

It was Nazi policy to make the people they conquered pay for their own oppression. At its most obscene, the Jews had to pay for their tickets on the cattle trucks that took them to the gas chambers. In Greece, the procedure was marginally more civilised.

On March 14, 1942, a team of German and Italian lawyers, in the absence of any Greeks, signed an agreement obliging the Bank of Greece to provide Germany with a ‘war loan’ of 476 million Reichsmarks (a currency which preceded the Deutschmark). And 70 years later not one penny of it, let alone any interest, has been repaid.

Economists (German ones, as it happens) have calculated that, allowing purely for inflation, Greece’s 1942 loan to Germany would today be worth £9bn. But if one adds even a modest rate of interest of 3 per cent, then that debt increases to a staggering £60bn.

That would be enough to cover Greece’s fiscal deficit for the next five years, giving the country time to restructure its economy and put government finances on a more sustainable footing.

And it’s not as if Germany couldn’t afford to pay up. The Bundesbank has more than 3,500 tons of gold in its vaults, worth over £200bn. But does it owe any of that to Greece?
Neither the German Embassy nor the German government are willing to comment on the issue. But the Greeks have no doubt where the truth lies.

In the words of a spokesman at the Greek Embassy in London: ‘There was a loan, and we have still not got anything back from Germany. The Germans deny it. They say: “We have helped you with reparations.”

‘But those were nothing compared with this sum. There have been reparations to individuals, but not to Greece itself. Every other country in Europe had reparations apart from Greece. It’s not fair to say Greeks should die for free.’

In Greek eyes, the Germans are lucky that the sum at issue is only £60bn. They point to a finding made at the 1945 Paris Conference on Reparations that Greece should receive compensation from Germany equivalent to more than £90bn today.

The Greek government, however, has never raised this issue when negotiating with the EU over the Greek debt crisis.
Prime Minister George Papandreou says: ‘It would be easy for people with bad faith to interpret this as a sign of weakness, that we are looking for an alibi to shirk our responsibilities.’

So could the Greeks take the German government to court to get their money back?
According to City lawyer Graham Defries: ‘In principle, there’s no reason why one can’t pursue an action of this kind. Debt doesn’t just get extinguished.

‘In international finance, the concept of an interest-free loan doesn’t exist, and it can’t legitimately be described as a loan if the money was obtained by coercion. So it’s a crime, and therefore not covered by previous reparations.’

In other words, the German government may have a moral duty to give the Greeks their money back. It might even have an economic interest in doing so — since a Greek default would cost the German economy far more than £60bn.

fonte

[Incognitus]

Esse próprio artigo (o primeiro do tópico) mostra que:
* Existia um reconhecimento Alemão de uma dívida quantificada em drachma;
* Existiu um repagamento em drachma de parte dessa dívida (o que mostra para lá de qualquer dúvida que a dívida estava denominada em drachma.

As referências a Reichmark, dólares e euros resultam de conversões dos próprios autores, e não dos documentos.

Documentos Alemães que apresentem a dívida em Reichmark tenderão a ser agregações contabilísticas que convertem os montantes das moedas em que estão expressos os activos passivos para uma só moeda (Reichsmark), naturalmente. Isso não significa que os activos e passivos de alguma forma passem a estar denominados nessa moeda. Eventualmente seria possível com documentos destes para 2-3 anos consecutivos, ver o efeito da desvalorização do drachma na expressão da dívida total em Reichsmark (devem existir períodos onde a dívida em drachma sobe e a dívida express em Reichsmark desce).

[Dilath Larath]

Allies of World War II

United Nations
Military alliance
1939–1945   

The Allies of World War II, called the United Nations from the 1 January 1942 declaration, were the countries that opposed the Axis powers together during the Second World War (1939–1945). The Allies promoted the alliance as seeking to stop German, Japanese and Italian aggression.

The anti-German coalition at the start of the war (1 September 1939) consisted of France, Poland and Great Britain, soon to be joined by the British Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.)

After first having cooperated with Germany in partitioning Poland whilst remaining neutral in the Allied-Axis conflict, the Soviet Union joined the Allies in June 1941 after being invaded by Germany and its allies in Operation Barbarossa.

The United States joined in December 1941 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As of 1942, the "Big Three" leaders of Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States controlled Allied policy; relations between Britain and the U.S. were especially close, the latter replacing France as Britain's prime partner after the Entente Cordiale dissolved in the aftermath of the fall of France, despite last ditch efforts to save it by turning it into a fully fledged Franco-British Union.

China was already at war with Japan since 1937 but officially joined the Allies in 1941. The Big Three and China were referred as a "trusteeship of the powerful", then were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" in Declaration by United Nations and later the "Four Policemen" of "United Nations" for the Allies. Other key Allies included India, the Netherlands, Norway and Yugoslavia as well as Free France; there were numerous others. Together they called themselves the "United Nations" (and in 1945 created the modern UN).

-----------------------


Greece
Further information:
Military history of Greece during World War II and
Axis occupation of Greece


Greece was invaded by Italy on 28 October 1940 and subsequently joined the Allies. The Greek Army managed to stop the Italian offensive from Italy's protectorate of Albania, and Greek forces pushed Italian forces back into Albania. However after the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, German forces managed to occupy mainland Greece and, a month later, the island of Crete. The Greek government went into exile, while the country was placed under a puppet government and divided into occupation zones run by Italy, Germany and Bulgaria. From 1942, a strong Resistance movement appeared, chiefly in the mountainous interior, where it established a "Free Greece" by mid-1943. Following the Italian capitulation in September 1943, the Italian zone was taken over by the Germans. Axis forces left mainland Greece in October 1944, although some Aegean islands, notably Crete, remained under German occupation until the end of the war.

[Dilath Larath]

Esse próprio artigo (o primeiro do tópico) mostra que:
* Existia um reconhecimento Alemão de uma dívida quantificada em drachma;
* Existiu um repagamento em drachma de parte dessa dívida (o que mostra para lá de qualquer dúvida que a dívida estava denominada em drachma.

As referências a Reichmark, dólares e euros resultam de conversões dos próprios autores, e não dos documentos.

Documentos Alemães que apresentem a dívida em Reichmark tenderão a ser agregações contabilísticas que convertem os montantes das moedas em que estão expressos os activos passivos para uma só moeda (Reichsmark), naturalmente. Isso não significa que os activos e passivos de alguma forma passem a estar denominados nessa moeda. Eventualmente seria possível com documentos destes para 2-3 anos consecutivos, ver o efeito da desvalorização do drachma na expressão da dívida total em Reichsmark (devem existir períodos onde a dívida em drachma sobe e a dívida express em Reichsmark desce).

não preferes fazer o debate num tópico à parte? este fica só para referência. a consulta fica mais fácil.
eu abro um tópico - O Empréstimo Forçado da Grécia à Alemanha - debate - e passa-se para lá a discussão.
apaga daqui e copia para lá. quando estiver apago isto também.

D

[Incognitus]

Não, já seriam tópicos demais sobre o mesmo tema... se não serve não participo mais neste debate.

[Dilath Larath]

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.[citation needed]

2 Recipients
2.1 Greece
2.2 Israel
2.3 The Netherlands
2.4 Poland
2.5 Yugoslavia
2.6 Soviet Union
3 Other forms of payment
3.1 Annexation of territories
3.2 Dismantling of industries
3.3 Intellectual property
3.4 Forced labour

An early plan for a post-war Germany was the Morgenthau plan with terms that would have essentially transformed Germany to an agrarian society. The French Monnet Plan would have transferred the Ruhr Area to France.

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Recipients
Greece

em anexo: Excerpt Akte R 27320, page 114 (political archive of the German Federal Foreign Office)

In 1942, the Greek Central Bank was forced by the occupying Nazi regime to loan 476 million Reichmarks at 0% interest to Nazi Germany. In 1960, Greece accepted 115 million Marks as compensation for Nazi crimes. Nevertheless, past Greek governments have insisted that this was only a down-payment, not complete reparations. In 1990, immediately prior to German reunification, West Germany and East Germany signed the Two Plus Four Agreement with the former Allied countries of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia. Since that time, Germany has insisted that all matters concerning World War II, including further reparations to Greece, are closed because Germany officially surrendered to the Allies and to no other parties, including Greece. On Sunday, February 8, 2015, the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras appeared in front of the Greek parliament and officially demanded that Germany pay further reparations to Greece.

[Dilath Larath]

Não, já seriam tópicos demais sobre o mesmo tema... se não serve não participo mais neste debate.

é que assim este tópico fica de fácil consulta. no tópico de debate referenciavam-se os documentos daqui.
ficava tudo de leitura muito mais fácil.

o tópico da grécia ficava para os desenvolvimentos actuais da situação grega.
aqui era mais um trabalho de investigação e apuramento da verdade (possível)

D

[Incognitus]

E entendes o que ali está escrito?

É possível ver documentos que agregam e contabilizam coisas em moeda Alemã sem que os activos/passivos sejam expressos em moeda Alemã. Um empréstimo que é pago em drachmas tem forçosamente que ser denominado em drachmas.

[Dilath Larath]

goldpfundpreises betragen. berichtigt man die schlussaufstellung dementsprechend kommt man zu folgendem ergebnis:

gesamtsumme der der deutschen whermacht zur verfügung gestellten beträge

griechische abschlagszahlungen auf bezatsungskosten

deutch anlastungen

deutch rückzahlungen

deutch restschuld

diese zahlen dürften dem tatsächelichen wert der griechischen leistungen und der deutschen erstattungen anhe kommen.

demzufolge würde sich die restschuld die das reich gegenüber griechenland hat noch auf 476 mio. Rm belaufen.

esta é a cópia que fiz do texto do documento. alguém pode rever  para ver se dei alguma calinada?
agora vou fazer a tradução no google.

D

[Dilath Larath]

goldpfundpreises betragen. berichtigt man die schlussaufstellung dementsprechend kommt man zu folgendem ergebnis:

gesamtsumme der der deutschen whermacht zur verfügung gestellten beträge

griechische abschlagszahlungen auf bezatsungskosten

deutch anlastungen

deutch rückzahlungen

deutch restschuld

diese zahlen dürften dem tatsächelichen wert der griechischen leistungen und der deutschen erstattungen anhe kommen.

demzufolge würde sich die restschuld die das reich gegenüber griechenland hat noch auf 476 mio. Rm belaufen.

esta é a cópia que fiz do texto do documento. alguém pode rever  para ver se dei alguma calinada?
agora vou fazer a tradução no google.

D

gold pound price amount. adjusted to the conclusion lineup accordingly we come to the following result:

total sum of the amounts of the German whermacht provided

Greek advance payments of bezatsungskosten

corrections applied deutch

repayments deutch

deutch remaining liability

this will have to pay the tatsächelichen worth of Greek and German services refunds come Anhe.

which argues that the residual debt which has rich against greece still 476 million. Rm amount.

não é grande espingarda este tradutor. ou provavelmente copiei mal.
alguém que domine a língua alemã aqui no forum?
era uma grande ajuda.

D

[Dilath Larath]

tinha uns erros

cópia revista do original:

goldpfundpreises betragen. berichtigt man die schlussaufstellung dementsprechend kommt man zu folgendem ergebnis:

gesamtsumme der der deutschen whermacht zur verfügung gestellten beträge

griechische abschlagszahlungen auf besatzungskosten

deutsch anlastungen

deutsch rückzahlungen

deutsch restschuld

diese zahlen dürften dem tatsächlichen wert der griechischen leistungen und der deutschen erstattungen nahe kommen.

demzufolge würde sich die restschuld die das Reich gegenüber griechenland hat noch auf 476 mio. Rm belaufen.

tradução google

gold pound price amount. adjusted to the conclusion lineup accordingly we come to the following result:

total sum of the amounts of the German whermacht provided

Greek advance payments of crew costs

German corrections applied

German repayments

German residual debt

pay these should come close to the actual value of the services and the German Greek refunds.

consequently, would the remaining liability which the kingdom against Greece has 476 million. Rm amount.

'Reich' é aparentemente traduzido para 'kingdom'

D

[Dilath Larath]

aparentemente as maiúsculas são importantes na tradução do google

mais uma revisão:

Gold pfund preises betragen. Berichtigt man die Schlussaufstellung dementsprechend kommt man zu folgendem ergebnis:

gesamtsumme der der deutschen Wehrmacht zur verfügung gestellten beträge

griechische abschlagszahlungen auf besatzungskosten

deutsch anlastungen

deutsch rückzahlungen

deutsch restschuld

Diese Zahlen dürften dem tatsächlichen wert der griechischen leistungen und der deutschen erstattungen nahe kommen.

demzufolge würde sich die restschuld die das Reich gegenüber griechenland hat noch auf 476 mio. Rm belaufen.

Gold pound price amount. Corrected to the final statement accordingly it comes to the following result:

total sum of the amounts of the German Wehrmacht provided

Greek advance payments of crew costs

German corrections applied

German repayments

German residual debt

These figures are likely to come close to the actual value of the services and the German Greek refunds.

consequently, would the remaining liability which the kingdom against Greece has 476 million. Rm amount.

D

[Zenith]

Les crimes financiers commis par les nazis pendant la Seconde guerre mondiale restent assez méconnus

Depuis l'élection d'Alexis Tsipras (Syriza), le serpent de mer de la dette qu'aurait l'Allemagne envers la Grèce depuis la Seconde guerre mondiale s'agite de nouveau, comme nous le rappelions récemment sur Slate. Le nouveau Premier ministre grec compte présenter la facture des crimes nazis à l'Allemagne, faisant sienne une revendication très populaire en Grèce. Rien que le remboursement des 476 millions de Reichsmark que le Troisième Reich a extorqué à la banque nationale grecque en 1942 sous forme d'emprunts obligatoires s'élèverait à plusieurs milliards d'euros en comptant les intérêts, fait remarquer l'hebdomadaire Der Spiegel:
«Le service scientifique du Bundestag a évalué la valeur de l'emprunt à 8,25 milliards d'euros avec les intérêts en 2012. Un rapport du gouvernement grec avance la somme de 11 milliards. Cet ordre de grandeur suffirait à accorder ne serait-ce qu'une respiration à Tsipras.»
Mais la Grèce n'est pas le seul pays européen à avoir été pillé par les nazis, écrit Der Spiegel. En 1944, l'Allemagne nazie avait déjà dérobé 14 milliards de Reichmarks à la France, à la Belgique et au Danemark via des emprunts forcés de ce type.
Si les actes de barbarie commis par le Troisième Reich ont été largement documentés, les crimes financiers commis par les nazis restent assez méconnus:
«Presque tout le monde sait aujourd'hui que pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, l'Allemagne a pillé les territoires occupés avec une brutalité inconcevable. Mais en plus de déporter, de mettre au travail forcé, d'exproprier et de laisser mourir de faim des millions de personnes, les nazis usaient d'une politique de vol encore plus subtile: la politique monétaire et financière du Reich allemand visait à se servir de manière systématique chez les ministères des Finances et les banques centrales des Etats occupés –en ruinant leur monnaie au passage.»
S'appuyant sur les recherches de l'historien Götz Aly, spécialiste de l'histoire du nazisme, l'hebdomadaire allemand donne quelques exemples des combines auxquelles avaient recours les nazis pour dévaliser les territoires occupés par leurs troupes: afin de doter d'un fort pouvoir d'achat les entreprises allemandes ainsi que les soldats de la Wehrmacht stationnés hors d'Allemagne, les nazis manipulaient les taux de change. La couronne tchèque fut ainsi dévaluée d'un tiers peu après que les troupes allemandes ont envahi le pays.
Ils ne se gênaient pas non plus pour «exporter» l'inflation, en mettant en place une monnaie parallèle au Reichsmark, les «Reichskreditkassenscheine», qui n'était valable que dans les pays qu'ils avaient envahis et que les soldats pouvaient échanger sur place à des taux de change très avantageux. Leur pouvoir d'achat était ainsi dopé, et ce sans provoquer d'inflation en Allemagne:
«A la suite de cela, les marchandises vinrent vite à manquer dans les territoires occupés, l'inflation masquée augmenta.»
L'Allemagne n'a pourtant jamais honoré ses dettes. Comme l'explique Der Spiegel dans un autre article, l'Accord de Londres, signé en 1953, lui a permis d'effacer plus de la moitié des 30 milliards qu'elle devait aux pays européens qu'elle avait envahis. C'est cette clémence des puissances alliées qui ont d'ailleurs permis à l'Allemagne de connaître son fameux «Wirtschaftswunder» («miracle économique») dans les années 1950, comme l'expliquait en 2013 l'historienne allemande Ursula Rombeck-Jaschinski sur le site de la radio et télévision internationale allemande Deutsche Welle:
«On peut considérer que le miracle économique n'aurait pas été possible sans cet accord sur la dette.»
Un enseignement qui pourrait bien donner de nouveaux arguments à Alexis Tsipras.

[Dilath Larath]

o melhor artigo que li sobre toda esta situação

Germany's Unpaid Debt to Greece: Economist Albrecht Ritschl on WWII Reparations That Never Were

Albrecht Ritschl, professor of economic history at the London School of Economics.

In this interview, Albrecht Ritschl, professor of economic history at the London School of Economics, discusses Germany's unpaid war debts and reparations to Greece from World War II, and characterizes Germany as the biggest debt transgressor of the 20th century.

Michael Nevradakis: Many people are not aware of the occupation loan that the Nazi regime forced Greece to give during World War II. Tell us a brief history about this issue.

Albrecht Ritschl: The very basics of this are that Germany exacted a forced loan from the Bank of Greece during the occupation, and that forced loan was not paid back, and there was probably no intention to. What we had here was an attempt to disguise, to camouflage, so to speak, occupation costs as a forced loan - and this loan had several bad aspects. It fueled hyperinflation in Greece, which was already on the way due to the Italian occupation, and most importantly, it drained Greece of vital resources. It led to a catastrophic decline in economic activity; it probably did nothing to make the German occupation in any way less unpopular than it had been before. It stiffened the resolve of the Greek resistance; it did all sorts of very tragic and bad things.

Did the Nazis also extract forced loans from other countries that they occupied?

Yes, this was a very common and widely used instrument. Just to explain a little bit what was going on, the Nazis implemented a fixed-exchanged currency system in the occupied countries, manipulating the exchange rates to the reichsmark, to the German currency at the time, more or less at will. That system was centralized at Germany's central bank, the Reichsbank in Berlin, through a system of short-term accounts, like overdraft accounts, and Germany went into overdraft with respect to the occupied countries - that created the illusion of payments.

When German officers went into French, Belgian and Dutch factories - those were the three countries where Germany got most of its resources out, and requisitioned machinery and raw materials - they would pay, and these payments would essentially be credited to the account of their respective national banks at the Reichsbank. The forced loan from Greece followed a very similar pattern. Now as I have already said, the vast bulk of these loans were essentially from Western Europe. Greece, due to the small size of its economy, was only a very small part of this. Nevertheless, the effects on the Greek economy were devastating.

What happened after the end of World War II as far as the forced loans from Greece and the other countries are concerned - and the reparations and the repayments of German war debts in general?

You will be surprised to hear that nothing happened, and the reason is the following: After the Allied invasion and the collapse of the Nazi regime, the first thing the occupation authorities did was to block all kinds of claims by and against the German government, under the legal fiction that that the German government and the German state didn't exist anymore. And the question was then what to do with it as soon as new state structures were created in the late 1940s. That was highly controversial, because many of the governments in Western Europe were saying, "We are all too happy to restart trade and some sort of economic relationships with occupied Germany, and by the way, we still have these unsettled clearing accounts with the Germans . . . how about the Germans just deliver goods to us in order to run down the deficits on these accounts?"

"The situation during the Marshall Plan period was that all these debts still existed on paper, but they were worthless in the sense that the debt was blocked."
That became a major policy concern with the occupying powers, especially with the Americans, as the Americans were quite worried that in the end, the occupied zones of Germany would bleed out economically through such a system of repayment of the war loans and that America would essentially then have to restock or refuel Germany. Why they were so worried about this has to do with the history of reparations after World War I, when something similar was put in place after the end of the German hyperinflation. There was an American scheme for the stabilization of the German economy called the Dawes plan, which essentially did the following: Germany would pay reparations to the Western allies and America would provide financial assistance to Germany. That scheme between 1924 and 1929 kind of went out of hand and led to, basically, America bankrolling Germany's reparations.

So the Americans, after World War II, were extremely worried about a repetition of this thing, so what they did was to block all these things. How did they block it? Through an ingenious and slightly malicious device: Whichever country wanted to receive Marshall aid from the Americans under the Marshall Plan had to sign a waiver waiving all kinds of financial claims against Germany from World War II against Marshall aid. This means that it would not be entirely blocked, but it would have to [be] put on hold until postwar Germany had paid off its Marshall aid from the United States. In technical terms what that did was to make reparation and credit claims against Germany from World War II junior, second rank, lower in rank to Marshall assistance to Germany. And since everybody wanted to get Marshall aid from America, everybody grudgingly signed these waivers. So the situation during the Marshall Plan period was that all these debts still existed on paper, but they were worthless in the sense that the debt was blocked.

What is the total amount of war debt that Germany is said to owe Greece and the other countries as well?

The debt to Greece was to the tune of a little bit less than 500 million reichsmarks; total debt to Western Europe on clearing accounts was about 30 billion reichsmarks. Now this doesn't sound like a lot, but it becomes a little bit more meaningful if I tell you that the grand total is about a third of Germany's gross national product in 1938, the last year before Germany started World War II. Now, that is not the only debt, because Germany manipulated the value of the debt through the exchange rate system that it had under its total control.

There are calculations done by German government officials toward the end of World War II, so still under Nazi rule, where they were trying to figure out what is the realistic value of all this debt that was incurred in occupied Europe, and they arrived at a figure that was closer to 85 or 90 billion. That gets very close to Germany's national product of 1938; let's say about 85 to 90 percent. Now we are talking really big sums. Just to give you an idea: Germany's national product last year was somewhere above 2 trillion euros, so let's take 90 percent of that. We are still above 2 trillion euros, just to give you an idea of what that debt back then was relative to Germany's economic potential.

Is there any way to quantify that debt and its value today if we adjusted for inflation and the changes in value over the past several decades?

There are several ways of doing it. What I just did is one way of doing it, and here we would say the grand total of that debt, if we take German GDP as the yardstick and don't try deflating it, the total value of the debt measured as a percentage of Germany's GDP in one given year, would today be over 2 trillion euros.

What has Germany's argument been, historically and also in the present day, regarding the issue of the war debts and reparations?

There was an important interim step, which was the London Agreement on German Debt. In the early 1950s, negotiations were started between West Germany and the creditor countries about what to do with all of this. A solution was found - basically imposed again by the Americans and to some extent by the British - that did two things. First, it lumped together the war debts with the reparations - which is not an innocuous step to take. Second, it used slightly fuzzy language, which is open to interpretations, which said that settlement of these issues would be postponed until after future German reunification. Why are these two things important?

The first thing is, if you lump together this war debt with German reparations, you basically create one big pot. And there is no doubt that Germany paid very substantial reparations in kind after World War II, basically through two elements. One was forced deliveries - that was especially important for what later became East Germany - and second through a cutting of the territories, which are now a part of Poland and to a small extent, Russia, which could all be termed reparations in kind. So if you lump together these war debts with reparations in time, then the balance is a little bit lower, because these reparations in kind were no doubt quite substantial. The other thing is this fuzzy language postponing settlement of these things until after German reunification, because then the big question then became whether this clause, article 5 of the London agreement, would become binding after the German reunification, which did indeed take place in 1990.

At the present time, we hear a lot in the press and the media about the German economic success story, about German fiscal responsibility, as compared to the supposed irresponsibility of the Southern European countries, such as Greece. But you have argued that Germany was the biggest debt transgressor of the 20th century. Why do you believe this is the case?

Well, we can just do the numbers, and I already talked about these war debts being almost equal to Germany's economic output in the last pre-war year, when the German economy was running at full employment. So this was essentially never paid back. Plus we have Germany's internal public debt, which was all but wiped out in a currency reform undertaken by the Americans in the Western zones of occupied Germany and by the Soviets in the Eastern zones of occupied Germany in 1948. The Soviets wiped out Germany's public debt entirely; the Americans wiped it out by 85 percent. Now, if we add everything up and try to come up with a super grand total, both internal and external, wiped out in the currency reform and in the London agreement, we arrive at a figure which is roughly - this is very rough, but just to have some sort of an idea - four times Germany's national product. So to provide this in values of today, if we accept that Germany's national product is somewhere to the tune of over 2 trillion euros, which is beyond 2.5 trillion US dollars, we would be talking about a default and debt forgiveness of somewhere in the range of 10 trillion dollars. I would tend to think that this is probably unrivaled in 20th century history.

Is there any movement or any activism that you are aware of at the present time to raise awareness about the war debts and war reparations?

There is relatively little. To explain that, let's delve a little bit into the legal position at the time of Germany's reunification in 1990. Germany received this kind of baptism certificate for a unified Germany which is incredibly subtly worded and whose only purpose was, apparently, to prevent reparation or restitution claims against unified Germany being raised on the grounds of the fact that there is a unified German state now and that something like article 5 of the London debt agreement could all of a sudden be reactivated. The German point of view is essentially that the so-called 2+4 treaty of 1990 is not making any mention of any reparations or wartime debts of Nazi Germany, and given the fact that this issue is not covered by the treaty, the issue is essentially dead. This has consistently been the position of the German government. The German position has so far been quite successful . . . several attempts to challenge it in the European court have been unsuccessful, and it seems to me that from a legal standpoint, there is relatively little chance that this will be successfully challenged.

"The damage done by Nazi Germany, not just in terms of morality and human suffering, but simply in terms of creating material and financial damage, is so huge that it will simply supersede Germany's capacity to pay."
Which leads us to the question of why the awareness in Germany of these issues isn't greater. And there is one thing that gives an indication of that. It's clear that official Berlin has no intention to talk about these issues very much, because lawyers are always worried about creating legal precedent for any claim, so official Berlin remains mum on these issues. The one who did say something, and it was quite revealing, was former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, who at the time of the negotiations once walked out to a press conference and when he was asked about these issues, he said: "look, we claim that we cannot pay reparations, because if we open this Pandora's box, then given the viciousness and brutality of Nazi warfare, the genocides - there were several genocides that the Nazis carried out - given these absolutely horrific facts and the unbelievable scale of these horrific crimes, any attempt to quantify this and translate it into claims against Germany will either come up with ridiculously low compensation or it is basically going to eat up all of Germany's national wealth." And this has consistently been Germany's standpoint ever since: that the damage done by Nazi Germany, not just in terms of morality and human suffering, but simply in terms of creating material and financial damage, is so huge that it will simply supersede Germany's capacity to pay.

And as an economist, I have to say I'm afraid that this is not entirely far-fetched; there is something to it. So what Helmut Kohl then said next was that instead of opening this Pandora's box and going down the route of reparation claims, it will probably be better to continue what he viewed at the time as successful economic cooperation within Europe. Back then, this looked good, and it was in those pre-euro days when everybody was wildly optimistic about the future of economic cooperation in Europe. Now we have become a little bit more realistic about this, but back then it was probably not entirely unrealistic or unreasonable to think of these issues that way.

In your view, what would be the best solution regarding the Greek and German governments regarding the war debts and the war reparations issue at this time?

The best solution would of course be to try and depoliticize things to the maximum possible extent. Now, I know that this is entirely unrealistic because it has been political from day one. What I will prefer to do, instead of giving an illusionary personal opinion on this, is probably to provide some forecast as to where I think the whole issue is going to go.

"I do think that we need much more debt forgiveness, and I think we would need it relatively fast."
Let me say a few things about what I think should be done - I don't want to evade your question entirely. I do think that we need much more debt forgiveness, and I think we would need it relatively fast. I'm among those who are quite worried about the political situation in Greece right now. The Greek government is quite clearly the servant of two masters. One is the electorate in Greece, which understandably and quite obviously is not pleased with the situation, to say the very least, and the other masters are the international creditors, led by Germany, and to a lesser extent by the IMF [International Monetary Fund]. Quite clearly, the interests, at least in the short term, of the creditors and Greece's population, are not aligned; they are quite contrary to each other. It puts the Greek government in a terrible situation. I'm worried about it for the future of democracy in Greece, and I'm worried about it as a German for two reasons.

First, because of the historical responsibility that Germany cannot deny, and second because Germany once went through a very, very similar experience. That experience was the end of the reparation problem after World War I, in the Great Depression of the 1930s. The German government had been made to pay reparations under a very strict scheme. The scheme, the Young Plan, started in 1929; it was tough, and in many, many respects, it reminds me of what the German Finance Ministry and the troika have been imposing on Greece; the effects were very similar: decline of output to the tune of 25 to 30 percent, mass unemployment, political radicalization. Basically, what the Young Plan did was to put Nazi boots on the streets. Oh yes, I'm quite worried about the situation in Greece, so I do think we should take swift action in order to stabilize Greek democracy. Do I think this is going to happen? I'm a bit skeptical. I'm afraid that two things will happen: First of all, in the end there will be widespread debt forgiveness, but all of this will come late in the day, and that far-reaching damage to Greek democracy will have been done.

fonte

[Incognitus]

aparentemente as maiúsculas são importantes na tradução do google

mais uma revisão:

Gold pfund preises betragen. Berichtigt man die Schlussaufstellung dementsprechend kommt man zu folgendem ergebnis:

gesamtsumme der der deutschen Wehrmacht zur verfügung gestellten beträge

griechische abschlagszahlungen auf besatzungskosten

deutsch anlastungen

deutsch rückzahlungen

deutsch restschuld

Diese Zahlen dürften dem tatsächlichen wert der griechischen leistungen und der deutschen erstattungen nahe kommen.

demzufolge würde sich die restschuld die das Reich gegenüber griechenland hat noch auf 476 mio. Rm belaufen.

Gold pound price amount. Corrected to the final statement accordingly it comes to the following result:

total sum of the amounts of the German Wehrmacht provided

Greek advance payments of crew costs

German corrections applied

German repayments

German residual debt

These figures are likely to come close to the actual value of the services and the German Greek refunds.

consequently, would the remaining liability which the kingdom against Greece has 476 million. Rm amount.

D

Sim, mas infelizmente é daquelas coisas em que se tem que ter uma noção muito exacta do contexto.

Por exemplo, imagina que tens uma empresa americana que tem um empréstimo em yenes. Essa empresa nos seus relatórios contabilísticos vai referir-se a essa dívida em dólares, não obstante a dívida continuar em yenes. Aqui passa-se o mesmo no contexto de um governo Alemão. Ele não vai falar de cada activo na moeda de origem, e sim vai converter tudo para a sua moeda quando debate os montantes.

Por exemplo, algures existirá um documento referenciando um desses repayments/pagamentos que aí está expresso em Reichsmark, mas o pagamento foi efectivamente em drachmas. O que mostra que a dívida em si eram em drachmas.

[Incognitus]

Duas coisas que esse artigo diz:
* Por um lado confirma que os claims que a Grécia tem são uma parte pequena de claims equivalentes;
* E por outro diz que as dividas desse género seriam eliminadas para quem aceitasse formalmente ajuda do Plano Marshall.

Portanto, a Grécia assinou e recebeu ajuda do Plano Marshall? Recebeu. Isso torna a coisa um bocado académica, a menos que a Grécia queira escolher quais os contratos que assina que valem e não valem (que de resto parece ser o caso).

[Dilath Larath]

Germany, Greece and the Marshall Plan
Jun 15th 2012, 13:48 BY ALBRECHT RITSCHL | LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Albrecht Ritschl is professor of economic history at the London School of Economics and a member of the advisory board to the German ministry of economics.

OLD myths die hard, and the Marshall Plan is one of them. In the New York Times of June 12th German economist Hans-Werner Sinn invokes comparisons with the Marshall Plan to defend Germany's position against Eurobonds, the pooling of sovereign debt within the euro zone. His worries are understandable, but the historical analogy is mistaken, and the numbers mean little. All this unnecessarily weakens his case.

Mr Sinn argues against Germany's detractors that Marshall Aid to postwar West Germany was low compared to Germany's recent assistance, debt guarantees etc. to Greece. While Marshall Aid cumulatively amounted to 4% of West German GDP around 1950 (his figure of 2% is too low but that doesn't matter), recent German aid has exceeded 60% of Greece's GDP, and total European assistance to Greece is now above 200% of Greek GDP. That makes the Marshall Plan look like a pittance. And it strips all the calls for German gratitude in memory of the Marshall Plan off their legitimacy. Or does it?

What Mr Sinn is invoking is just the outer shell of the Marshall Plan, the sweetener that was added to make a large political package containing bitter pills more palatable to the public in Paris and London. The financial core of the Marshall Plan was something much, bigger, an enormous sovereign debt relief programme. Its main beneficiary was a state that did not even exist when the Marshall Plan was started, and that was itself a creation of that plan: West Germany.

At the end of World War II, Germany nominally owed almost 40% of its 1938 GDP in short-term clearing debt to Europe. Not entirely unlike the ECB's Target-2 clearing mechanism, this system had been set up at Germany's central bank, the Reichsbank, as a mere clearing device. But during World War II, almost all of Germany's trade deficits with Europe were financed through this system, just as most of Southern Europe's payments deficits towards Germany since 2008 have been financed through Target-2. Incidentally, the amount now is the same, fast approaching 40% of German GDP. Just the signs are reversed. Bad karma, that, isn't it.

Germany's deficits during World War II were mostly robbery at gunpoint, usually at heavily distorted exchange rates. German internal wartime statistics suggest that when calculated at more realistic rates, transfers from Europe on clearing account were actually closer to 90% of Germany's 1938 GDP. To this adds Germany's official public debt, which internal wartime statistics put at some 300% of German 1938 GDP.

What happened to this debt after World War II? Here is where the Marshall Plan comes in. Recipients of Marshall Aid were (politely) asked to sign a waiver that made U.S. Marshall Aid a first charge on Germany. No claims against Germany could be brought unless the Germans had fully repaid Marshall Aid. This meant that by 1947, all foreign claims on Germany were blocked, including the 90% of 1938 GDP in wartime clearing debt.

Currency reform in 1948—the U.S. Army put an occupation currency into circulation, and gave it the neutral name of Deutsche Mark, as no emitting authority existed yet—wiped out domestic public debt, the largest part of the 300% of 1938 GDP mentioned above.

But given that Germany's debt was blocked, the countries of Europe would not trade with post-war Germany except on a barter basis. Also to mitigate this, Europe was temporarily taken out of the Bretton Woods currency system and put together in a multilateral trade and clearing agreement dubbed the European Payments Union. Trade credit within this clearing system was underwritten by, again, the Marshall Plan.

In 1953, the London Agreement on German Debt perpetuated these arrangements, and thus waterproofed them for the days when Marshall Aid would be repaid and the European Payments Union would be dissolved. German pre-1933 debt was to be repaid at much reduced interest rates, while settlement of post-1933 debts was postponed to a reparations conference to be held after a future German unification. No such conference has been held after the reunification of 1990. The German position is that these debts have ceased to exist.

Let's recap. The Marshall Plan had an outer shell, the European Recovery Programme, and an inner core, the economic reconstruction of Europe on the basis of debt forgiveness to and trade integration with Germany. The effects of its implementation were huge. While Western Europe in the 1950s struggled with debt/GDP ratios close to 200%, the new West German state enjoyed debt/ GDP ratios of less than 20%. This and its forced re-entry into Europe's markets was Germany's true benefit from the Marshall Plan, not just the 2-4% pump priming effect of Marshall Aid. As a long term effect, Germany effortlessly embarked on a policy of macroeconomic orthodoxy that it has seen no reason to deviate from ever since.

But why did the Americans do all this, and why did anyone in Europe consent to it? America's trauma was German reparations after World War I and the financial mess they created, with the U.S. picking up the bill. Under the Dawes Plan of 1924, Germany's currency had been put back on gold but Germany went on a borrowing binge. In a nutshell, Germany was like Greece on steroids. To stop this, the Young Plan of 1929 made it riskier to lend to Germany, but the ensuing deflation and recession soon became self-defeating, ending in political chaos and German debt default. A repetition of this the Marshall Planners were determined to avoid. And the U.S. led reconstructions of Germany and Japan have become the classical showcases of successful liberal intervention.

So does Greece, does Southern Europe need a Marshall Plan? Is Sinn right to say that Greece has already received one—or a 115-fold one, as he argues? The answer to first question may be yes, in the limited sense that a sweeping debt relief programme is needed. The answer to the second question is a resounding no. Greece has clearly not received a Marshall Plan, and certainly not 115 of them. Nor has anyone else. As far as historical analogies go, what Southern Europe received when included in the euro zone was closer to a Dawes Plan. And just like in Germany in the 1920s, the Southern Europeans responded with a borrowing spree. In 2010 we didn't serve them a Marshall Plan either, but a deflationary Young Plan instead.

This latter-day Young Plan is not even fully implemented yet. But we see the same debilitating consequences its precursor had around 1930: technocratic governments, loss of democratic legitimacy, the rise of political fringe parties, and no end in sight to the financial and economic crisis engulfing these states, no matter how many additional aid packages are negotiated. Woe if those historical analogies bear out.

Europe should learn from history. But it needs to learn fast. There might be no recovery unless debts are reduced to manageable proportions. That is what ended the Great Depression in Europe in the 1930s, and that is what in all likelihood is needed again. Professor Sinn is right to resolutely ask for action on this, even if his take on the Marshall Plan is wrong.

economist

[Kin2010]

Dilath, este é um assunto que deve ser simplesmente ignorado. Para onde iria o mundo se todas as nações alguma vez prejudicadas numa guerra passada começassem a pedir indemnizações? É absurdo. O passado distante deve ser totalmente ignorado, a bem da paz actual. Já agora, os actuais alemães não são nazis, não são o III Reich, não devem ser responsabilizados pelas malfeitorias do III Reich.

Os gregos não pagam indemnizações ao Irão pela invasão de Alexandre? Portugal ia à falência se tivesse que indemnizar pelo tráfico de escravos, fomos recordistas nisso.

Ah, e já que nos cingimos à II Guerra Mundial, por que é que os britânicos não indemnizam a Alemanha pelos terríveis crimes genocidas que cometeram contra ela?