It’s really quite amazing how things that just aren’t true can become important issues in politics. Take, for example, this repeat of the demand from Greece for reparations over the damages done by the Nazis to Greece. It’s most certainly true that the occupation was foul, murderous and expensive. And that Greece lost a great deal of money during the course of it. However, that’s simply not the same as stating that there’s some legal requirement for Germany to pay damages or reparations now.
But still this subject keeps coming up, even from the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras:
German officials said Wednesday that the matter of compensation for the Nazis’ World War II occupation of Greece is closed and the government isn’t prepared to discuss the issue further with Athens.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has revived the question of war-time debts, telling Parliament on Tuesday that his debt-ridden country has never been fully compensated by Germany. Greece believes it is due payments for wrecked infrastructure, war crimes and a loan that occupied Greece was forced to make to the Nazis.
This has been gone over many times including here:
But as you can see, even that is problematic. There’s rather a Catch-22 situation there. If they can show that the money was stolen then it doesn’t have to be paid back. If it’s a normal credit then, well, inflation of a zero interest loan has been such that Germany could pay it all back tomorrow without breaking a sweat and without improving the Greek situation more than only the tiniest amount. That’s a tough needle to thread in a legal sense: proving that it was a simple commercial transaction but then arguing that it was under duress which is why no interest was charged.
There’s two different legal issues in play here. The first is war reparations. Those have, as far as the legal system is concerned, been paid. That issue is done and dusted and no amount of complaining is going to change that. The second is the forced loan. But as above, if it was a loan at zero interest then it’s of no practical relevance today. And if it was some sort of theft under the pressure of occupation then it falls under the reparations part, which is all done and dusted. There simply aren’t any legal grounds to continue to chase this chimera.
I do however have great sympathy with this view:
Not all Germans agree. Annette Groth of the radical Left party said Berlin should honor 11 billion euros linked to an “occupation loan” which Nazi Germany forced the Bank of Greece to make.
“It is Germany’s moral duty to pay the money, even if there are different opinions on international law,” she told Reuters.
That’s that zero interest loan again. It is, in the scheme of things, a trivial amount but it’s also enough to get Greece over the financing hump and into the third debt deal. I don’t say that I recommend its being paid as a matter of public policy but I would say that I’ve good deal of sympathy with the idea as an ex gratia gesture of good will.
My latest book is “23 Things We Are Telling You About Capitalism” At Amazon or Amazon UK. A critical (highly critical) re-appraisal of Ha Joon Chang’s “23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism”.