Newspaper To Vima claims to have seen the findings and reports that the experts found that Germany should pay Greece 108 billion euros for damage to infrastructure and 54 billion euros for a loan that the Nazi occupation forces obliged Greece to take in order to pay Berlin during the war.The reparations are equivalent to about 80 percent of Greek gross domestic product.
Greek ‘loans’ to Nazi occupators
According to Bank of Greece, Athens borrowed to German occupation forces
1,617,781,093,648,819 Drachmas to German Nazi occupation forces and
220,479,188,480 Drachmas to Italian fascist regime during the first years of WWI.
According to the “loan” agreements of March and December 1942 these amounts should be returned to Greece after the end of the war. The loans were never paid back neither by Germany, nor by Italy.
Right after the war, Bank of Greece estimated that the total amount was equivalent to 4.5 million golden British Pound
German magazine Der Spiegel has picked up the report saying ‘there could be soon anger between Greece and Germany”. Especially the moment Athens would officially publish the findings report.
The Great Famine was a period of mass starvation during the Axis occupation of Greece, during World War II (1941–1944). The local population suffered greatly during this period, while the Axis Powers initiated a policy of large scale plunder. Moreover, requisitions together with the Allied blockade of Greece, the ruined state of the country’s infrastructure and the emergence of a powerful and well-connected black market, resulted in the Great Famine, with the mortality rate reaching a peak during the winter of 1941–1942.
More on Germany – Greece WWII reparations dispute read here.
PS I ‘ll say it very clear: her mit dem Geld!
I offer 10% discount on cash payment 🙂
i would not hold my breath!!short memories abound when it comes to debt
Inst this a damn good reason NOT to make any repayments on German loans right now ? Whats good for the goose (no pun intended)
The Greeks are barking mad to start stirring this pot. If they have a claim, what about all the other occupied countries some of whom are much bigger and suffered correspondingly great losses, e.g. France, Poland…..?
The war was over 68 years ago!!!
no problem with that if the other countries make their claims too 🙂
Life is kind of strange. Could any of you have predicted the future of the EU over a decade ago? Including how much anti-German animosity it would rekindle or how it would lead to the takeover of entire countries by the banksters without a shot being fired?
a decade ago? me, certainly not. I was still EU fan, I think.
Yes. Anyone who thought through the consequences of the euro being applied to very different ecomonies. It requires transfer payments to the ecomonically weaker parts of the monetary union, and with that comes poitical subordination. Simple basic ecomonic knowledge and analysis. This is not hind-sight. In the UK a few MSM commentators saod so at the time (e.g. Evans-Pritchard). Plus a bigger percentage of ordinary professional people who took the time t think about it.
The point is that this is not some accident, and it is a big lie for the EU to pretend it is. The euro was, and is, a political project, to force political union. The speed and scale of the propblems on Greece etc. may have surpised Brussels. But the basic outcome is as they planned.
So do you think there will be a breakup? Or has the cement dried and hardened enough that the cage is inescapable?
There is no saving the Euro. What is happening right now is a policy of grab what you can before the proverbial smelly stuff really hits the fan. Rumours today that Slovenia will be looking for a bail-out within days, Italy is not far behind them, and they in turn are followed very closely by none other than France. There ain’t enough cement to fill the cracks, leave alone keep the whole thing together.
Bank CEO’s are now openly calling for “confiscation” of unsecured deposits, as is the Spanish PM. Europe has truly become an open air assylum managed by the inamtes…
No. At least until or unless the electorate of an EZ country replaces its present politicians with some who put the interests of their country above being part of the international club of presidents/prime ministers. There is very little sign that this will happen, as the kind of “nationalist” parties that might do it are at the 10-20% level. The likes of Evans-Pritchard were correct is predicting the problems, but wrong in predicting EZ break-up, as they completely underestimates the political commitment to the euro, even in the face of the destruction of economies in the periphery. Any EZ breal-up is not a matter of the strength of the cage, it’s a matter of political will and direction.
BTW, the upcoming power play in Europe will be whether Germany maintains control of the finances or the EU/ECB wrests control from them, via eurobonds, trans-EU taxation, forms of automaticity of the German contribution etc.
How does that Grateful Dead song go? …”What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been”…
Do not forget that since the end of the ww2 there were always claims from greece to germany’s unpaid debt but the latter always found excuses, beginning from the unification of germany in the years after the war and ending to ‘what are you digging now, it’s been so many years since then’ they said a few years ago. Greece never agreed to stand back on it’s claims. And it certainly didn’t remember it now because of the crisis. Other countries have made claims too, some got paid, some not, this is totally irrelevant.