War Reperations
Notes
- Too high
- Suffered Great dept
- 55 billion$
- Couldn't even pay interest
- Amount of reparation changed in 1929
Quote
"But how do you put a price on war? Is it the property value of destroyed buildings? Rounds of ammunition shot? The cost in human life? It took two years for the international Reparations Commission to assess damages in relation to Germany's national wealth — after all, the payment plan needed to be affordable — and decide how much the government owed. The first reparation demands were 266 gold marks, which amounted to roughly $63 billion then (close to $768 billion today), although this was later reduced to $33 billion (about $402 billion today)." -Claire Suddath
Political Cartoon
Subjunctive Question
What would the outcome of the Paris Peace Treaty have been for Germany, had they not had been charged with such costly reparations?
Interesting Fact
The story of German reparations involves several payment plans, years of inflation, broken promises, canceled debts and a man named Adolf Hitler who flat out refused to give anyone anything.
Summary
To summarize, a sum of 5.5 billion$ of reparations were placed on Germany after WW1. Unfortunately, Germany ran into such deep dept that they couldn't even afford to pay off their interest rates. This destroyed Germany economically, and the Germans thought of it as national humiliation.