Germany to Finish Paying Reparations for WWI Sunday

"This is no peace, it is an armistice for 20 years."

And he was off by roughly 9 months.

He did not say anything about the reparations being wrong. Just that the treaty would not secure peace in the long term.

This topic actually made the national TV news today. Interesting. They usually don't mention things like that.

They blamed it on the Nazis btw.

They blamed it on the Nazis btw.

Wait what.

They found a way: "Paying took so long because Hitler stopped paying for a decade."

Well I'd say that not paying for a decade and putting Germany into a war that nearly demolished it completely, helped in part by giving an order to demolish it completely, probably did have an effect yes.

For starters, it wasn't the Germans who started the wider conflict. You can blame the Russians for that. You see, it started off as just being a conflict between Austria and Serbia. Then Russia decided to step in to the whole damn mess. Of course, this obligated Germany to come to the aid of the Austrians... who I remind you were their allies... Germany merely defended its ally as per its obligation. France was then obligated to come to Russias aid by an agreement that said that if Germany went to war with either France or Russia (be it offensively or defensively, I believe) the remaining power would join in on the others side.

Germany was not to blame for escalating the conflict. But scapegoating them was great for the French, and if it filled British coffers too, who's to stop them?

...I hate Britains history with a savage passion.

edited 2nd Oct '10 1:09:40 PM by GameChainsaw

Austria-Hungary would not have dared to threat or start a war against Serbia without guaranteed German support. Serbia was obviosly pro-Russian and had Russian support. Everybody knew that would happen in case of an Austrian aggression. I did see why Russia is to blame the Great War, and not the Austrian and German leadership for their for the willingness to solve their problems through war.

From the wikipedia page: "The Haber process is important because ammonia is difficult to produce on an industrial scale, and the fertilizer generated from the ammonia is responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth's population."

Holy shit. Didn't know that.

fertilizer

Holy shit.

Hehehe.

Well even if you now condemn the payments, you should also see why Clemenceau wanted the Germans to pay for the war. I visited the former battlefields, and even now, nearly 100 years later, you can imagine, how horrible the destruction must have been. France and Belgia suffered hard, regions of the countries were ravaged, and France lost nearly one generation of young people. As a German,I can hardly blame them, especially because Germany demanded also huge payments after the franco-prussian war, despite the fact that the war was entirely faught on french ground.

I'm glad that this chapter is finally closed, although as far as I know, some articles are still in effect, (for example are some buildings in Hamburg still owned by the Czech Republik till 2017). I really would prefer the thought that Germany paid, because we are just honestly, however the truth is much simpler. After WWII, West-Germany signed a treaty, which postponed the payments until East und West-Germany would be reunited. After the reunification, and because to the british dipolmats(thank you Thatcher), Germany had to pay its debts and due to the german intention to be a good neighbour, every single condition was fullfilled.