First World War officially ends as Germany pays off its debt

[HavokFour]

First World War officially ends as Germany pays off its debt​

Almost 92 years after the guns fell silent on the Western Front, the final act of the First World War will be played out on Sunday when Germany pays the last chunk of reparations imposed by the victorious allied powers.

The payment of 59.5 million pounds ($96.9 million Cdn) ends the crippling debt that was the price of one world war and laid the foundations for the next.

Germany was forced to pay the reparations under 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, in which almost 10 million soldiers died.

The initial sum agreed in 1919 was 226 billion Reichsmarks, a sum later reduced to 132 billion ($35 billion Cdn) - at the time. The bill would have been settled much earlier had Adolf Hitler not reneged on reparations after taking power.

Hatred of the settlement agreed at Versailles, which crippled Germany's Weimar Republic as it tried to shape itself into a democracy following the armistice, was significant in propelling the Nazis to power.

Most of the money will go to private individuals, pension funds and corporations holding debenture bonds as agreed under the Treaty of Versailles, where Germany was made to sign the "war guilt" clause, accepting blame for the conflict.

© Copyright (c) The Daily Telegraph

Source.

 

[daftandbarmy]

I wonder if that includes the interest?  ;D

 

[vonGarvin]

So.....does this make us all First World War vets, and we have until Sunday to find ourselves a Hun to bayonet?  >

 

[PuckChaser]

You figure someone would have come to their senses and stopped the payments when Germany became part of NATO.

 

[BDTyre]

So....are we still eligible for medals then?

 

[AJFitzpatrick]

You figure someone would have come to their senses and stopped the payments when Germany became part of NATO.

I'll just say that France was the biggest backer of monetary reparations and leave it at that.

 

[bdave]

Absolutely retarded.

 

[George Wallace]

Absolutely retarded.

As is this reply and most of the others as well.  If one were to study history and politics, instead of making the same mistakes over again, we wouldn't think this was worth the commentary.  Stop to think how long it takes you to pay off a car loan or a mortgage.  Just because you buy a few shares in the Bank or Car company, does not negate your loan payments.  Now multiply that by billions of dollars and add interest and then tell me how soon you can pay it off.  Then add a Second World War in there to double or triple your loan with the added interest and the default fees for not paying for six or so years and then tell me when the paymensts should stop.  But......hey..... you are the big economist........you think this is ____________.

 

[bdave]

As is this reply and most of the others as well.  If one were to study history and politics, instead of making the same mistakes over again, we wouldn't think this was worth the commentary.  Stop to think how long it takes you to pay off a car loan or a mortgage.  Just because you buy a few shares in the Bank or Car company, does not negate your loan payments.  Now multiply that by billions of dollars and add interest and then tell me how soon you can pay it off.  Then add a Second World War in there to double or triple your loan with the added interest and the default fees for not paying for six or so years and then tell me when the paymensts should stop.  But......hey..... you are the big economist........you think this is ____________.

After WW1 and the treaty of Versailles, Germany was forced to pay off everyone's "tab", so to speak; since they lost the war.
They were also restricted in many things.  With the coming of Hitler's rise to power and WW2, Germany stopped following those restrictions.
Once Germany had been defeated, I believe the consensus was that the humiliation and restrictions imposed on Germany by the Allies is what had lead to WW2.
I simply don't understand why they were still obligated or 'bothered' to pay it off after that conclusion had been reached.

 

[57Chevy]

From Wikipedia Treaty of Versailles

At Versailles, it was difficult to decide on a common position because their aims conflicted with one another. The result has been called the "unhappy compromise".

France's aims:
France's chief interest was security. France had lost some 1.5 million military personnel and an estimated 400,000 civilians and had suffered great devastation during the war. Like Belgium, which had been similarly affected, France needed reparations to restore its prosperity and reparations also tended to be seen as a means of weakening any future German threat. Clemenceau particularly wished to regain the rich and industrial land of Alsace-Lorraine, which had been stripped from France by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871.

Britain's aims:
Britain had suffered little land devastation during the war and Prime Minister David Lloyd George supported reparations to a lesser extent than the French. Britain began to look on a restored Germany as an important trading partner and worried about the effect of reparations on the British economy. Lloyd George was also worried by Woodrow Wilson's proposal for "self-determination" and, like the French, wanted to preserve his own nation's empire. Like the French, Lloyd George supported secret treaties and naval blockades. Lloyd George managed to increase the overall reparations payment and Britain's share by demanding compensation for the huge number of widows, orphans, and men left unable to work as a result of war injuries.

United States' aims:
There had been strong non-interventionist sentiment before and after the United States entered the war in April 1917, and many Americans were eager to extricate themselves from European affairs as rapidly as possible. The United States took a more conciliatory view toward the issue of German reparations. Before the end of the war, President Woodrow Wilson, along with other American officials including Edward M. House, put forward his Fourteen Points, which he presented in a speech at the Paris Peace Conference. The United States also wished to continue trading with Germany, so in turn did not want to treat them too harshly for these economic reasons.

 

[SevenSixTwo]

As is this reply and most of the others as well.  If one were to study history and politics, instead of making the same mistakes over again, we wouldn't think this was worth the commentary.  Stop to think how long it takes you to pay off a car loan or a mortgage.  Just because you buy a few shares in the Bank or Car company, does not negate your loan payments.  Now multiply that by billions of dollars and add interest and then tell me how soon you can pay it off.  Then add a Second World War in there to double or triple your loan with the added interest and the default fees for not paying for six or so years and then tell me when the paymensts should stop.  But......hey..... you are the big economist........you think this is ____________.

But, in a technical sense Germany did declare "bankruptcy" when the government was dissolved in WW2. Also, how did payments work with the impoverished East Germany?

I just think it's silly to say the reparations should be paid no matter what punishing newer generations for something that happened not two peoples ago but three (before Nazi Germany). What if Germany had annexed Britain and France would they still pay?

Also, as said in the article these payments didn't even benefit the public in paid countries only private ventures.