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Looks Like Germany May Have To Pay Up
Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
German magazine Der Spiegel digs deep(er) into the ‘Greece question’ this weekend, and does so with a few noteworthy reports. First, its German paper issue has Angela Merkel on the cover, inserted on a 1940′s photograph that shows Nazi commanders against the backdrop of the Acropolis in Athens. The headline is ‘The German Supremacy: How Europeans see (the) Germans’. The editorial staff has already come under a lot of fire for the cover, and I’ve seen little that could be labeled a valid defense for further antagonizing both Germans AND Greeks (and other Europeans) this way. Oh, and it’s also complete nonsense, nobody sees modern day Germans this way. It’s just that their government after 70 years is still skirting its obligations towards the victims. That’s what people, the Greeks in particular, don’t like.
Second: Spiegel’s German online edition has a sorry that claims Greek paper To Vima will come with revelations on Sunday accusing Georgios Katrougalos, Syriza’s deputy minister for Policy Reform and Public Service (I’m translating on the fly) of corruption in the case of the reinstallment of public workers that had been fired under the Samaras government under pressure from the Troika.
Allegedly, Katrougalos’ law firm (in which he has had no active role since becoming a member of the European parliament last year) has a contract with these workers that will pay it 12% of whatever they receive in back pay. Predictably, the opposition has called for Katrougalos’ firing, but Tsipras has said he talked to him and is satisfied with the explanation he was given..
It smells a bit like something Bild Zeitung (Germany’s yellow rag) would write, but there you are. Which makes the following perhaps somewhat surprising. Because:
Third: Spiegel English online edition has a long article on a report just out by a special Greek commission, instated by former governments, on the German war reparations that Tsipras has repeatedly talked about, and that German FinMin Schäuble has famously high handedly tried to sweep off the table. That may not be so easy anymore now. There are already increasingly voices in Germany itself that want Berlin to change its approach to the matter, and the report will only make that call louder. Let’s see if I can get this properly summarized:
Nazi Extortion: Study Sheds New Light on Forced Greek Loans
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?”
[..] 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. 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.
Note: the Two-Plus-Four Treaty of 1990 (aka Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany) was the result of negotiations about the reunification of the two Germany’s. It was signed by both, and by France, Britain, Russia and the US, the four nations who held former German territory at the end of WWII.
It’s noteworthy that Der Spiegel says that Greek demands for reparations ‘may have been’ forfeited with the treaty (something Germany claims), while Tsipras insists on the exact opposite: that the treaty created the legal and political conditions for the reparations issue to finally be resolved. As we will see, many experts lean towards Tsipras’ interpretation. Greece never signed, and nobody else had the right to sign in its name, that’s the crux. But there’s more:
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.
It’s a tad strange that the magazine apparently jumps from that ‘may have been forfeited’ interpretation of the treaty to what amounts to a fait accompli, by saying the ‘key issue’ now is the forced loans, not the reparations. I would think it’s very much both. But let’s follow their thread:
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.
First thing that springs to mind is: say what you will about Germans, but they’re fine bookkeepers!
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.
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. 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.
Those are pretty damning words. So far just from one man, granted, but again there’s more:
When work on the study first began in early 2012, the cabinet of independent Prime Minister Loukas Papedemos still governed in Athens. A former vice president of the ECB, Papedemos 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.
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.
As they say: before you know it, we’re talking about real money. And I see no reason to doubt Karakousis’ assertion that ‘repayment remains open’. Not only was German conduct reprehensible during the war, it remained so after. So it shouldn’t really come as surprise that Tsipras has more than once mentioned the 1953 London Agreement on German External Debts, in which Germany was relieved from much of the claims held against it. Tsipras wants Berlin to do the same for Greece now. A potential weakness is that Greece was signatory to that agreement. Still, the loans were certainly not part of it, only ‘war damage’ was included.
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.”
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.
Ergo: for a period of thirty years, the Greeks tried, but to no avail. That’s a pretty ugly record. It’s now another 20 years later, and nothing has changed. All in all, the Greeks have been stonewalled for 70 years.
What should become of this new study, the contents of which had remained secret before now? [..] 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 governments’ rude behavior may well stem, among other things, from that last point: that if any of the Greek claims are recognized, other countries may come knocking too.
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.
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.
This perhaps clarifies the definition of ‘war damage’, the term used in the 1954 London agreement. In Lau’s interpretation, it does not include, let’s say, ‘personal suffering’.
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.
Note: there could be a legal precedent here that that can serve as a ‘conduit’ to allow Greece to seize German property in its country.
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.
The bones of victims of the Nazi killings in Distomo feature as part of the village’s memorial to the massacre.
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.
German occupation troops in the ransacked Greek village of Distomo on June 10, 1944, shortly after 218 local residents were executed as part of Nazi reprisals.
I hope – and I think – that Germany will pay up. It seems to me to be the only way to save the European Union it has made its economy so dependent on. I don’t see the war reparations go away anymore. So either Berlin pays what legal experts determine should be paid, or it risks becoming a pariah in its own neighborhood.
That the Germans in the 1950s and 1960s, at home and in schools, chose not to tell their children anything about their crimes cannot serve as an excuse to silence the children of their victims. Germany will need to eat a lot of humble pie with its beer.
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wenn Schweine fliegen.
OK Listen. How's this work, then? I'll piss and moan about you all being dead beats and you crap all over me about being Fascist Nazis collapsing your economy. Whaddyou mean it's true. Will you just stop for a moment. Lemme finish, OK? So you get mad at me and then tell me that we need to pay you for WWII damage. Whaddya mean write it up for inflation? No we can't do that! What court case? Oh Jesus H Fucking Christ on a pogo stick. OK OK .... OK Good point we want more than one payment. OK so we write it up by the value of gold adjusted fiat currency whateverthefuck. OK. See, then we pay you for that and you pay the banks what they're due so that the banks don't have to write the loans down and take the hits which we'd have to bail them out from. Yeah. Waddya mean Ukraine gas? So yes, you're indirectly paying the Ukraine for the gas because we're paying you to pay us back which we pay to Ukraine for gas. No, I don't fucking know what happens to it once it gets to the Ukraine. Probably buy more guns from the Americans. Say, would you be interested in any more submarines? You sold yours! To China! What the fuck kind of duplicity are you Greeks playing at!
Ain't it the truth. Worst soap opera plot ever.
I have nothing against printing money, but where's our cut?
i seem to remember something in history about demanding vindictive reperations from germany resulting in another, even worse war. But oh well, probably not important. Its not like history ever repeats itself or anything
It won't because the Greeks are exceptional ... er, some such shit ... don' worry it's all for the chitlens
Wake me up when they start talking about reparations in the war against children.
It doesn't matter whether or not the Nazi government is gone ... the Greek government now has a legal sounding excuse to stiff the Germans.
Nevermind that they are stiffing a bunch of people who weren't even alive during the war.
They'll do it anyway. That's the danger when you loan out too much money to one person, that one person now has YOU by the balls.
Fuck you Raul.
What a piece of shit blog and Tyler -- WHY THE FUCK are you putting this crap on here?
AE used to be a great blog, but their recent "Germany should give more free cash to various people for WWII" stance is ridiculous.
When does Germany get compensation by the British and American governments for the bombing a non-militarized high density civilian population centers? The bombings of Gießen, Dresden, Augsburg & Ulm come to mind.
Ahhh -- Raul you ideologically bankrupt piece of shit -- you won't address these things for one of two reasons;
1) They lost, so they have to pay. If this is your take -- its a horrible ideologically bankrupt position to take.
2) Because of what they did -- they should have to pay.
The USSR aside, which by and objective measure was infinitly worse than Nazi Germany, how is punishing people further down the line and giving money to people who were not alive to be offended a solution? All this will do is propulgate more hatred.
But then again, you don't think of these things, like most Socialists -- you see a large chunk of cash somewhere, and you want to "socially redistribute it."
Fuck you Raul. Seriously, from the bottom of my heart -- fuck you.
All talking about reparations these days...
No matter who it is from...
Is all about only one thing...
"Show me da money!"
yep, when agressivity is added, you feel the case is almost done and the civilizational varnish is almost gone, horror is close.
with speed of actual modern world compared to mid 20th, i can tell without too much error in the time line we are all dead within 25 years.
Have you heard the joke: "Why haven't the Americans never had a coup d'etat?... because they don't have an American Embassy!!!". Funny, though technically untrue, JFK was overthrown.
When is the American Government beginning to pay reparations for the tens of government overthrowns worldwide?
Now in all seriousness, I don't know how the Germans put up with all this idiocy. I guess they have to endure their corrupt politicians like the rest of us. Germans stick it to Europe!!! get out of that abomination called EU, return to the mark. Fuck the Greeks and all the rest. Don't worry, no matter how expensive Mercs and Beemers get people still will buy them, because they are worthwhile buy. The ECB is now debasing the Euro, there it goes the savings, the capital, in other words there it goes you Germans, a capital intensive economy.
The sooner you leave the better for you. And as a bonus you don't have to put up with all this crap.
Germany should be forced to pay gays, gypsies, the mentally disabled,artists, relatives of Russians, Americans, French, British, Italians, Danes, Polish, Australians, Norwegians, Czechs, Africans, Zulus, Eskimos, Cherokee Indians, Hobbits, trangendered, and wildlife sanctuaries eleventh trillion euros.
When the Brits pay for keeping the ports blockaded for nearly a year after the conclusion of the first world war in Germany starving children to death then perhaps a discussion can begin.
Yeup.
I always wonder what would happen here in Germany once (if ever) the "USA USA USA!!!!" colored glasses are taken off, and it becomes common knowledge how many times and how hard the Anglo-Empire (as I am becoming more and more convinced that the current Anglo-American establishment is just the mere extension of the former British Empire) has fucked over Germany.
It is in essentially everony's best interest to keep the blinders off -- but if they ever do come off -- God help us all.
I invite you to take a peek here at the English-German connections to empire. The USA is being groomed to be the Neo-Nazi empire and most Americans are clueless. We can agree on one thing, "God help us all. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Windsor
The House of Windsor is the royal house of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms. It was founded by King George V by royal proclamation on 17 July 1917, when he changed the name of the British Royal Family from the German Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (a branch of the House of Wettin) to the English Windsor, due to the anti-German sentiment in the British Empire during World War I.[1] The most prominent member of the House of Windsor is its head, Queen Elizabeth II, who is the reigning monarch of 16 Commonwealth realms.
What was the Marshall Plan? Didn't the US in large measure enable Europe to rebuild by making the dollar the reserve currency and holding to Bretton Woods for 25 years? Just asking the question here.
A strange spelling for Meyer?
"Wake me up when they start talking about reparations in the war against children."
Thank you for the link, w a l k - a w a y. I was looking for precisely that. ADHD is dope-pushing baloney, an extremely rare, well-nigh non-existent "disorder" which is over-diagnosed in order to sell dope, even though it can badly hinder the development of kids. Absolutely obvious, and thanks again for sharing the confirmation.
yw, another good video is The War on Kids.
For more on this topic see my blog.
This new leftist Greek gov needs to talk about the interest rates they are charging debt-ridden Greece, not this BS WWII reparation, that'll make em buckle by public opinion and guilt. Commies can't even beat the socialists at their own game.
Not to minimize the horrors of war but does it occur to anyone that Germany was flat out broke in 1929 and ten years later it was the most prosperous nation in Europe if not on Earth? Did they do that all by themselves? And let's not forget that Prescott Bush got busted big time for providing resourses to the enemy? Why don't the Bushes have to pay part of the reparations? No way did Germany pull off that war alone. It was planned that way all along from fancy board rooms in DC, just like the Russo-Ukrainian war, although that one went off script.
Can't wait for the US to start paying reparations.
interesting thought, about ten wars in the last twenty years. i want greenspan to write me a check from his speaking engagements. reparation for my lose of a career. pay up fucker or i'll default on my ____________, ha...
And you know it is in the cards. Reparations for slavery, and then all the rest. Illegal alien oppression, homosexual oppression, Muslim oppression. Everything is about excuses for redistribution...except for those at the very top of the food chain, those to big to fail. Its a hell of a thing, a hell of a path we have headed down.
Economic justice...hell yeah.
paved with good intentions the entire way to hell.
Nuclear powers do not pay reparations. Nor are their "Leaders" tried for war crimes.
...which is the best reason I have heard yet for these countries to support the continued possession of nuclear weapons - even when their people do not want them...
Small correctionz to that statementz, 'winners' dont pay reparations bla bla bla.
What was the Marshall Plan? Germany hasn't needed to waste money on a military for a long time because of the US military presence over there. Germany has a military in name but it's taxes pay for social benefits while in the US, we pay to police the world and enforce the monetary system.
Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler by Antony Sutton
http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_Hitler-5.pdf
Banksters and corporate psychopaths made millions from the production and sale of weapons so they should also be handed a bill with interest for all those target populations on the receiving end of their vile weapons.
Let me get this straight. As is pretty well known WW2 and the destruction of Europe was caused by the reparations after WW1 causing the economic pain that resulted in Hitler gaining power. Even though the atrocities were far worse during ww2 the world was smart enough not to pull that stunt again. Well now they want to retroactively enforce reparations on generations that we're not alive during the war!!!
Great, this will end well. If this joke is the result Germany should realize NOW the euro is a failure and cut and run!!
This is about war. Those who want to rule the world can do no better than to have each of us at each other's throat.
Keeping us at each other's throats is exactlly why they keep pushing social strife among different ethnic groups. Notice how they constantly push the fake and divisive system of "multiculturalism" at the same time. Their gonad-free MSM swarms keep stirring the pot until they get unrest on the streets with police, and then the inevitable happens, whereupon they continue to inflame things.
While anger is turning into violence we are all being further hemmed in. The worst thing for anyone to do is to give heed to the MSM vermin who show up like locusts in a corn field when the smallest incident happens. Most of these problems could be handled at the local community level.
I refuse to use the word "racist" since it was coined by some marxist slob for that very reason.
Close but not quite. Both wars were planned. WW1 was planned in the 1890's. They moved their malefactors into place. William Wiseman in London as head of British Intelligence, and his friend Max Warburg as head of German Intelligence. Leon Trotsky was guest of Jacob Schiff in NYC waiting for a bundle of money from the Fed, and returned to Russia for all the Bolshevik bloodletting. The Fed and its psycho twin the IRS had been set up years before to rip off American workers to fund the goals of our ruling serial killers.
As soon as WW1 was over they started planning for the next one. Blaming Germany for both wars is only the cover story for the real perpetrators, many of whose spawn still occupy positions of power over us. Victoria the Bolshevik skank Nudelman gave us a glimpse into the perverted world of governance when she got busted with the phone call detailing the overthrow of the Ukrainian government.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=wall+street+and+the+rise+...
Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler by Antony Sutton
Vlad is in a position to ask for reparations since it was our demented rulers who funded the Bolshevik mass murders and the Commie hell that claimed the lives of 60 inhabitants of Russia/USSR over several decades.
http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution by Antony Sutton
Fleur,
merci beucoup for the links.
Second link does not work: I googled then it showed up:
http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_...
Again thanks for the links!
@zzzddd1--you are very welcome, and thank you for clearing up the link problem. Also I meant "60million" Russia / USSR deaths in the same link.
What is the 'Germany' you write about ?
People are fooled by mere words.
Certain bankers made 'credits' out of thin air. Then 'loaned' 'them' to people who they knew wouldn't pay that sum, with the attached interest 'due'. Now they want 'Greece' to turn over physical wealth to the banksters. 'Greece' is the word used for the millions of people who had nothing to do with the back room deals, and knew nothing about them.
People will allow themselves to be impoverished over words. They will kill and die for words. When you hear talk about 'Germany', 'Greece', 'the USA', etc - be sure you're told what is meant by the words being used.
Then check your wallet and strap on your helmet, because it's likely someone's gonna try to steal from you or hurt you.
Politicians are paid to use nice sounding words to screw you over.
+1 Quintillion. This has my vote for Best Thread Comment Award.
How about Britain pay Germany for the fire bombings of Dresden?
Mark my words, if Germany has to pay, whether they are obligated or not, and it breaks Germany financially they will start World War Three.
They are not a breed to trifle with when they get stepped on, as WW1 and WW2 illustrated. For a small population they almost pulled a win in WW2 except they made a mistake in attacking Russia. They already over ran most of Europe and North Africa.
It's funny, because it was reparations from WW1 that led to the rise of Hitler and WW2.
Yep. Also when Germany didnt pay up as they wanted, France and Belgium marched troops in and took over their land "Occupation of Ruhr" in 1923.
This didnt go over well either and was a turning point of sympathy towards the Germans.
So having unjust reparations, then military taking your land, its not hard to see why Germans followed the path they did in WWII.
Yes Germany has been paying Tribute ..er Reparations for 97 years now. None of the tax herd in Germany now were adults in the 1940,s and chances are that their grandmothers or mothers were gang raped by Soviet and American "liberators". Quid pro quo , how about some reperations for that ? Oh yeah thats right , silly me , Germany is "occupied"
Ah, dear Germans and Greeks. Do not worry.
Money is just a belief system - it only works so long as we have confidence in it. Which is why everybody who works for a bank is on cocaine.
@dogOfSinope - in the sci-fi movie classic 'They Live', there is one scene where the sunglasses which allow the wearer to see the underlying Reality, are used to look at money. On the cash are the words -
"This is your GOD."
Money is the overwhelming, active religion on this planet and few even question that fact. And, the psychopath money junkies rule this world and enslave it's people.
Mention the notion that the 'loans' are a made up fraud & the Greek people should tell the banksters to Go to Hell (where they belong) - and many people get indignant. Their brainwashing is strong.
Until Humanity wakes up to this illusion, and the illusion that others have 'authority' over free individuals, they will continue to remain slaves. The choice is there's.
Maybe people will actually choose true Freedom someday - - maybe in two or three hundred years. Anything is possible.
Knuckles this has Barnum and Bailey written all over it.
Seriously. I think Ilargi and Kunstler have been compromised...both have gone way off track.
This article is total hogwash and the author should covet a ban from ZH for eternity for penning it.
just another distraction from the reality of living within a countries means.
humans always look for a scapegoat for their own inadaquacy!!!!
The Nazi government ceased to exist in April 1945.
The present generation, and the present government had nothing whatsoever to do with WW2.
Holding people responsible for the crimes of their long dead ancestors.... isn't that called a pogrom?
Debts owed by the Hitler government are not collectible unless you chase him all over Hell. But debts owed by a bank, individual or company might be.
Even then, we are talking about debts in Reichsmarks which are worth nothing, or drachmas which are worth practically nothing.
Well, according to your "logic", debts owed by the previous Greek government are also not collectible, are they?
Nor the US 'national debt' , the foundations for which were created with the Federal Reserve and the income tax by the banksters and their controlled lawyer/liar/politicians.
The brainwashing is strong. Many aren't active church goers, but they sure believe in the religion of Money.
They'll go to war over it. They'll kill and die for it.
Wanna stop using the banksters made up fiat worthless dollar ?
Then you get invaded.
It's for the children, and peace, and democracy and because 'you're bad'.
That's right if the government ceased to exist. There is a difference between a change of administration and a change of government.
If your dad commits a crime and is fined authorities will come and repossess his house and car - no matter that you live there or use a car and didn't commit any crime yourself. No one holds you responsible. But yeah, one gets affected by the deeds of ones ancestors. Isn't life a bitch?
Sweet. When do I get my check for the deeds committed by the romans who invaded my ancestor's homeland in Germany during the aggressive expansion of the roman empire? I'm also expecting a hefty payout for the atrocious plunder of my Colombian ancestors' homeland by the marauding Spanish during the conquistador era.
Pay up, you italian and spaniard bastids!
Huns already plundered Roman Empire, so I guess you are even.
They can take his house and car, they can't take his grandchildren's if they have done nothing wrong.
How would you like being sued for your grandparents' debts?
ha ha true
ha ha true
Superb Knuckles.
wenn Schweine fliegen...
the greeks might still be saying it in 70 years re current loans
Hasn't the Holohoax proven that pigs can fly? Why not make the Germans pay another time - once again for the absolutely last time big promise! LOL!
If Jewry could declare war on Germany in 1933 and nobody after a war with 50 million dead cared despite their power in New York, London, Paris and Moscow? That England declared war on Germany and not vice versa? That Britain bombed civilian German cities months before the first German bomb was dropped on British war targets, even after several futile warnings from the German government to stop bombing inner cities? Who cares in this world, that Greece was collaborating with Britain and had stationed British troops on its soil despite Britain being at war with Germany, and therefore Greece was an enemy combatant and Germany according to international law had the law on it's side to attack and occupy Greece?
But my sympathy with today's Germans is very limited because they have allowed that their forefathers to be denounced by the international hyenas in the City of London and New York, the same forces that have been attacking one country after the next since. The Germans have absolutely no honor and self respect and therefore fully deserve to pay. Very clever by the Greek Communists to bring the Jews into the game. LOL! With new billions of money waiting to be grabbed, they can be sure New York will support them (ooops, USrael already delivered them the "documents" they need).
Is there a better business than to make the Goyim fight each other based on lies?
Nobody gives sh.t about the law or the facts. It's only smoke and mirrors to hide the real game:
When i came to power, i took over a nation which was a democracy. Indeed, as long as Germany was a democracy we saw that everyone in the world came to their help and aid. Yes, the German people used to live in a democracy, and had been plundered and squeezed dry. No, what does democracy or authoritarian state mean for those INTERNATIONAL HYENAS? They're not interested in either!
They are only interested in one thing: Is anyone willing to let themselfes be plundered, yes or no? Is anyone stupid enough to keep quiet in the process, yes or no? And when a democracy is stupid enough to keep quiet, then it is good! And when a authoritarian government declares: "You do not plunder our people any longer neither from the inside or outside, " then that is bad.
If we, as a so called "authoritarian state", which differs from the democracies by having the people behind them - (applause). If we as an authoritarian state had also complied with all the sacrifices that the INTERNATIONAL PLUTOCRATS burdened us with; if I had said in 1933, "Esteemed Sirs in Geneva what would you have me to do?" "Aha! We will immediately write on the slate: 6 billions for 1933, 1934, 1935, excellent, we will deliver! Is there anything else you would like? Yes, ofcourse, Sir, we will also deliver that!" Then they would have said: "At last a sensible regime in Germany."
ps:
After the "evil" Germans withdrew from Greece, peace broke out between Royalists and Communists and lasted until 1949(!) with roughly 125.000 victims, multitudes more than the during German occupation...
Black is white.
Slavery is freedom.
War is peace.
Shalom!
Againstthelie, one of the best comments ever on ZH, a thousand thanks brother
Nice place for the Holohoax jew haters to hang out
Time is running out for you.
Your spot at the Fema camp is waiting.
Delete bank account, confiscate property and round you up.
They call it Karma
A little strange that in some countries one can be imprisioned for QUESTIONING events that happened seventy years ago don't you think? I can't think that would happen with Rwanda, Sri Lanka, the Gulags etc.
The fact that a historical question or comment carries a penalty is overcompensation for hiding something.
+ 6,000,000
Seems like 6,000,000 Jews have been dying for a long time...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dda-0Q_XUhk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dda-0Q_XUhk
Yep, funny how the truth doesn't fit the official narrative.
Don´t agree with every single detail, but on the whole the track is correct .
Did we mention over 1.2 millions of German POWs deliberately starved to death immediately after the WWII by the General Dwight Eisenhower occupation administration?
General George S. Patton said immediately after the WW II: "We have fought the wrong enemy". After World War II, Patton expressed anti-Semitism and treated Jews badly in the former concentration camps – called displaced persons camps after the war – that he ran for the United States. According to the New York Times, Patton wrote into his journal that people believe “the Displaced Person is a human being, which he is not, and this applies particularly to the Jews who are lower than animals....” Just a few months later, General Patton has been murdered.
But perhaps not as much as the great USof A.
Better yet, the Femi-Nazies should pay me for 50 years of man hating,
and pointless bitching.
"Better yet, the Femi-Nazies should pay me for 50 years of man hating,"
And better yet, what about your paying reparations for every porn movie you've watched to the female "actresses" you've seen being raped, and sometimes tortured, for your sadistic pleasure?
Even if you only pay the ones who are still alive after three years of "acting" in porn movies, it'll be a beginning.
You mean like the way male 'actors' are sterotyped, humiliated, demeaned, cuckholed, and ridiculed in every movie, sitcom, and commercial-ad role aired in the last 30 years?
Think about it. Who's the dumbass moron character presented in all of them?
Just wait until the ethnic cleansing begins in the USSA.
'He who wins the war writes the history'
http://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/lufthansa-strikes-enter-third-day-m...
Dont mention the war!
I mentioned it once, but i think i got away with it.
How many Nazis do you know from WW2?
Me neither.
Time to move on. The blacks need to get over it too. It's like where are my fucking reparations from the Romans?
I don't know any black one parent born out of wedlock Nazis either but I sure as shit want my cut of the reparations.
What is that?
20 acres and half a mule?
Yeah, I'm an insensitive prick. So sue me for reparations.
You beat me to the punch... was thinking the exact thing.
This post about WWII reparations is assinine. How far back do we go?
I'm pretty sure some ancestor of mine was killed by an African when humanity was first migrating out of the continent 100k years ago. Perhaps I should lawyer up and lay claim on their oil reserves.
Go far enough back and you'll find that your ancestors were from Africa and had dark skin.
Even if you're a white cracker racist now.
Paying war reparations for WWI was the reason Germany was forced into WWII.
Treaty of Versailles left Germany poor and desperate.
History will repeat.
Romans?, fuck im still waiting on my money from the vikings.
Money?
I want Eve to put the apple back on the tree and do as she is told!
Exactly.
Raul shows his horrible bias in the last few posts. Punishing this generation of Germans won't make today's Greeks better off nor will it bring back the dead.
He seems like a smart guy, if one gets past his obvious hatred of Germans. Since he's bright, he would do us all a favor by analyzing Greece's real options instead of posting this king of agitprop.
I want reparations from Cromwell and Robespierre.
Stalin was the first to mention gas chambers. Why is it never about the 60 million Christians killed in Banker, er, World War II?
And Stalin sure would like to deflect international attention from unprecendented pogroms, purges and genocide that he and his government did to the Russian people.
which would most certainly open the door wide to US slavery reparations. vlad might as well put us all out of our misery right now.
I would be completely good with a one time payment to all blacks of 100k, and an end to all welfare, that is based on the ability to reproduce, and not on true physical or mental disability (not how disability is defined now)....
Does anybody but me realize that reparations such as these amount to "Original Sin" which can further be extended to be taken as all black males should be incarcerated because of the lawlessness of the black male population as demonstrated by their level of incarceration?
Try that one on tight over your tin foil hats, Progressives.
Don't worry, if need be I can defend myself with a plastic spork from under the desk.
"Hands up, don't shoot!"...lmao!
////
Wut?
It was a lie, a fabrication, made up by a thug, it never happened, Al ;-)
yep. a circle jerk. dept jubille under the table.
So how much money should India get from the UK for Winston Churchill deliberately starving 4 millions Indians to death accounting for more 90% of the casualties of the British Empire during World War II?
How Sir Winston Churchill Starved 4 Million Indians
Madhusree Mukerjee’s book [Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II, New York, Basic Books, 2010] is not a denunciation of British rule of India, but a meticulous chronicling of the role of the British Raj in furthering a famine in Bengal, and suppressing the fact that this deliberate holocaust took 4 million lives. British historians, including Sir Winston Churchill in his five-volume memoir, glossed over this rather ‘irrelevant incident.’
http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=1396
Nothing. Because atrocities only matter when they're committed against jews. Even if they're made up
Those poor Germans. So industrious. So innovative. So susceptible to extortion and blackmail.
When are the proud German people going to stand up for themselves?
Sharpton ?
Good one. The Brits never caused a famine in India, but they ameliorated dozens of them which was more than any Indian government had ever done.
What were the Indians doing during this famine, besides watching their neighbors starve? Where were the Brits supposed to get mass quantities of food when they were practically starving themselves?
You are clearly a dim-wit...the british ameliorated famines by forcing farmers to grow opium for china? Was that how british famine amelioration worked?
Or was it by exporting Indian food by the millions of tones to Europe and other markets while Iindian's starved?
Heck, they did it to the Irish.
Learn something, these are bad times for dumb-fucks.
Why does Germany owe Greece anything? That is what this really boils down to.
How is this different than some 'Murican in 2006 getting a no doc mortgage against a home he couldn't afford, and now crying he's a victim? Is that an excuse for the bank to wipe out the loans even though the borrower bought his and her BMW 328i's? [Putting aside here for the sake of this argument that the money was digitally created, etc.; focusing on the moral issue here].
I generally concur with your sentiment. But aside from rightfully castigating those who knowingly live beyond their means......should we also not focus our primary anger at the proverbial 'snake's head' in this scenario? That is, the hellspawn banksters who seem to be the origin points for ALL of these scenarios?
I mean, if there's any group that deserves the sharpened pike of moral outrage....it should be those bankster slime and their willing puppets in gobbermint. They are the very definition of 'living beyond means'.
FTA: "That the Germans in the 1950s and 1960s, at home and in schools, chose not to tell their children anything about their crimes cannot serve as an excuse to silence the children of their victims."
Why not? We've done a pretty good job of silencing the victims of Operation Phoenix and Operation Condor.
Dont let Native US Indians see this article.
OK. If they do we'll settle with some infected balnkets.
That was the British.
The Crown also licensed the original sole legal purveyors of slaves to the colonies. (No shit, Sherlock)
You know, with those "by appointment to HM the whatever" stickers on their foreheads
How about a "slave to fashion" tee shirt with that logo?
Ka Ching!
Grand stuff!
Saw one on line that had a drawing of the pyramids and underneath says "Slavery Works"
NSFWiC (Not suitable for wear in Compton)
According to the logic of the article, we should give back Manhattan to the Native Americans, though I'm not sure they would accept it.
US Banks funded Hitler. Just saying. Oh, I meant to say, Papy Prescott Bush the banker funded Hitlers war machine. Well documented. Here's a great video on the whole thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Qt6a-vaNM
Maybe the Bushes can pay-up to?
Have a look at IBM in Germany during ww2.
War is the ultimate consumer, that's why banksters love it so much.
I'm not sure the u.s had a problem with Hitler's Germany. The UK declaring war drug the u.s kicking and screaming into it. The Japan attacked which cinched it.
Doesn't matter,,, we're all fascists now.
Used to drink beer with Humble Pie, skip add..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sdXjm8pZMws
It is time to get over the "crimes" of the "German people. The many Nazi warcrimes, including confiscation of money from Czechoslovakia and - yes - Greece, were crimes of an extreme political party that went off the deep end. The German people had no say in the madness of the last years of the Third Reich, any more than we have a say in the madness of the USSA today. They need explain nothing to their children (especially since folks like you can't stop telling those children that they are somehow evil because of evil done by some of their countryment in the past). And, there are very few people still alive who were even of voting age at the time - do you believe in inherited guilt?
There is also a difference in the Germans having war reparations forgiven from WWI - the real instigating cause of WWII - and the Greeks having Goldman Sacks sign them up for the Euro under false pretenses... and then spending like drunken sailors until there was no money left.
It's really simple.
Government is a criminal enterprise.
The only way forward for humanity is to stop the crime.
Countries are bullshit fictions, used against humanity by the psychopaths who have taken control.
"do you believe in inherited guilt?"
Do you believe in original sin?
Do you believe in Great Societies and would that be "exceptional"? ;-)
Do you believe in genetic evil?
Inherited guilt...??!! Fuck, most people believe in the whole Original Sin™ thing...Inherited Guilt is a cousin that lives next door.
Really? How does that thought even take off??? The Germans had no say? They were dying by the millions in the eastern front, d-day and due to sabotage in the occupied countries. Not one of them thought to themselves einen moment, bitte??? Yet zee Greekz have to pay up because some corrupt politician made a backdoor deal with GS and zee rest of zee Eurolalaland bankerz to put them into a union of fiat eurotrash trinkets? Hmmm zee comparison seemz shacky to say zee least.
So the statists of Greece are after the statists of Germany over money. Are we sayin Alexander the Great was Macedonian or Greek now? ;-)
Greek of course and that´s why the Greeks owe half of Asia some quadrillion Euro in war reparations.
I say print up some reichsmarks and give it to them...lol.
Correct me if I'm wrong but the money being asked for won't go to the victims of the families of the massacre as far as I can tell, it'll go to the Greek state (bad enough), then apparently to the EU (even worse) for Greek government debt repayment.
Brussels must be laughing themselves silly watching Raul getting himself tied up in feel good knots ;-)
It'll be recycled back to Ukraine for Gas. (See post above)
Oh, excellent, so Gazprom gets it ;-)
Vlad and the Oligarchs... feeding the "Evil Rooskies" more foreign exchange they so dearly lack (facepalm)
its all greek o me
No because something good came out of the Greek empire with its philosophies etc. From the "fourth reich" came forth a destroyed continent with whole parts of its society mechanically and systematically killed, the cold war and a continent struggling to get back in its feet. Pay up bitchez.
(oh, and the rest of Balkans also has not been duley compensated for the crimes committed there by the nazis).
Well, maybe we Germans really owe the Greeks those 478 milion Reichsmark from that loan. Todays value: ZERO. If they want to we´ll print those Reichsmarks for them, paper and ink is cheap.
Al Sharpton called, he wants his reparations card back....
Yep, Germany has to pay - for its stupid, almost religious belief in "Bündnisverpflichtung" (bound by alliance)and "pacta sunt servanda". They get screwed everytime (Maastricht agreement the latest), and yet they can't understand why nobody holds up their end(s) of the contract(s). Political imbeciles.
See, almost nobody mentions how it came to the occupation of Greece. Understandably - since Goebbels death there's no more good german propaganda available, only exceptionalist drivel. Almost nobody mentions Italy's role in this little history lesson. The Greeks, they love Italy...
Americans (exceptionalists) think the french are dropping their rifles unused, Germans since that time think quite the same about italians, difference is "... the thinnest book ever written is called 'italian heroes'...", but that's actually not true, the book in question is called "english haute cuisine".
Well, CONGRATS Italy!
Relax, the Greeks will not get more money. And it´s not the German way to hide behind others like the Italians, Hungarians or Bulgarians. Those pathetic Greeks are the perfect useful idiots for us Germans in this European powerplay and they do not even realize it.
"Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles" after all. Yep, then you get what was on that cover of Der Spiegel: The rest of Europe hating Germany.
Forgive worldwide debt, distribute wealth to take war and revolution out of the mix, build technologically & ecologically sound community-based resources like food & water, and barter responsibly and fairly with your neighbors. What's so freaking hard here?
I don't know. You would have to ask Stalin.
I accidentally up voted you because I read that as "bartend responsibly and fairly with your neighbors."
I demand reparations from the Fed.
Honestly this is great oppo for Frankfurt to take more long-term control over the country. I hope Greek folks know that these bullshit loans are just a noose though, and it seems there's a strong/interesting separatist movement. Greece has been a world unto itself for so long and I think they'll be well-suited from the "collapse now and beat the rush" standpoint
It's about time Italy paid reparations to France for the crimes of Julius Caesar.
K...I'm just gonna go ahead and say it cuz it needs to be said.
Mooohamid started a chain reaction billion car pile up stretching from the sands of Medina along the Silk Road on down to the waters of Indonesia.
Any compensation being offered for all that blood?
Not on your western life ;-)
Christopher Bollyn 2015 “Solving 911 Ends the War”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP_Ezjm7xDg
Since we are on the subject of Reparations.......
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/azealia-banks-calls-reparations...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/azealia-banks-calls-for-reparat...
This deserves a sea of red, but there are a few valid points the fool in the article brings up if one chooses to think about what is said, in reference to the banks, and the misery that they caused, and continue to perpetuate.
Israel? Palestine's lawyers are on line 1.
Making Germany 'pay up' for WWI turned out really good...
That is why Germany got its debts forgiven in 1953 but war reparations because they killed whole parts of European societies is a moral issue apart from even a financial one.
Germany announced that Denazification was complete about that time also in 1953. Wikipedia changed the reference and now you can't find the exact date, but it used to say 1953(if memory serves me).