Alex Tsipras places roses on the National Resistance Memorial in Kaisariani, Athens, shortly after being sworn in as Greece’s new prime minister. Photo: EPA/Alexandros Beltes.
War reparations back on the table
While Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has declared he has a “moral obligation” to claim reparations from Berlin for the economic damage Greece suffered under Nazi occupation during World War II, the likelihood of it happening are remote in the extreme.
“I can’t overlook what is an ethical duty, a duty to history … to lay claim to the wartime debt,” said Tsipras in his inaugural address to parliament earlier this month. That he made a visit to a WWII memorial in Athens his first act after being sworn in shows the importance that Greece’s youngest ever prime minister attaches to the issue, and its symbolism, as he negotiates with the German-led eurozone.
The SYRIZA government claims Germany owes it around €162 billion ($A236 billion), half the country’s existing public debt, but the struggle by successive Greek governments to persuade Germany to pay war reparations is a long and complex narrative.
As far back as 1945, the Paris reparations conference that convened at war’s end accepted calculations that estimated the damage to Greece amounted to 7bn pre-war US dollars. However this wasn’t the suggested reparation payment, as the purpose of the conference was to work out percentages of a then unspecified reparations pool.
The criteria of how the pool was to be divided up was drawn up by the US, and contributions to the allied war effort (military expenditure and war production) were compensated for to a greater extent than degrees of suffering, collateral damage and resistance.
In the years that followed, Greece was compensated by the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency with goods amounting to $25-80m.
In an effort to support West Germany against the Soviet threat, the western powers introduced the Marshall Plan to rebuild destroyed west European infrastructure, and in 1953, a US-conceived “haircut” for German external debt from the pre- and postwar era was agreed, while “considerations of claims arising out of the second world war” were “deferred until the final settlement of the problem”, with that final settlement being deferred to the reunification of Germany.
By 1960 the German government had bowed to continuing pressure and agreed to pay a lump sum to Athens of 115m Deutsch Marks (then worth around $US 70 million) for those “affected by national socialist persecution on the basis of their race … or world view”.
The payment, made mostly in relation to Holocaust atrocities, was one of one of 12 war compensation deals Germany signed with Western nations, but Greece has always insisted that this was a downpayment, rather than full reparations.
Thirty years later, just before German reunification, West Germany and the German Democratic Republic signed the Two-plus-Four Treaty with the four victorious powers of World War II – the United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia. The treaty (approved by Greece and other states) drew a line under any future claims for war reparations against a unified Germany.
Within days of Alexis Tsipras’ comments on the subject, Germany’s economy minister Sigmar Gabriel rejected the claim outright, returning to the old mantra that the issue was concluded 25 years ago.
Legal experts are reportedly divided over whether the 1990 treaty has closed the door forever on further reparation claims, but any attempt is likely to prioritise recovering the loans the Greek Central Bank was forced to give to Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1944 of some 476 million Reich Marks.
The distinction between reparation payments for war crimes, and repayments of the so-called Besatzungsanleihe: monthly loans demanded from the Greek government to pay for the maintenance costs of the German army in Greece – is vital.
In the last days of the war, senior German economists calculated this German debt to amount to 476m Reichs Marks, equivalent to €10bn today.
In terms of quantifiable formulas that could win the day in an international court, this may initially be the most achievable.
Meanwhile, Greek Australian community leaders and politicians added their voices to the long-standing debate this week.
Maria Vamvakinou, Labor federal member for Calwell, said she supported the Greek government’s revival of the claims against Germany.
“Greece has a moral claim, and in light of the current predicament, it should most certainly pursue the matter as part of an overall debt renegotiation settlement.
“Greece was a victim of German aggression and I don’t believe that chapter has been concluded nor settled adequately. This is still a live issue today, an outstanding matter, and not just a footnote in history.”
Sydney lawyer Harry Danalis – president of the Greek Orthodox Community of New South Wales – said that in his view, while the moral obligation of Germany was overwhelming, “the legal position on the forced war time loans is strongly in favour of Greece, and should be pursued”.
Mr Danalis said the concessions given to West Germany over its war debt should be remembered in the context of Greece’s current negotiations with the eurozone.
“Germany received many concessions from the Allies for reparations, including reducing their debt and postponing the payment of full reparations; concessions which Germany is not now prepared to extend to Greece in the current negotiations.”
Meanwhile, former South Australian MP Steve Georganas told Neos Kosmos Greece had the right to use the issue in its arguments for grater flexibility in the debt repayments.
“What Tsipras is doing is using as many tools as possible to renegotiate, and it’s not unreasonable,” says Georganas.
“This was money borrowed by force that was never repaid, and it set the course for the next 70 years for a country like Greece – that was already a poor nation – to never be able to recover”.
Asked to comment on the Greek prime minister’s recent comments, a spokesperson for the German government at the German Embassy in Canberra told Neos Kosmos:
“For Germany, there are no open legal questions regarding reparations, including forced loans. At the same time, Germany fully acknowledges its historical responsibility towards Greece. In that regard, Federal President Joachim Gauck has made a clear statement in his Ligiades speech during his visit in Greece last March.*
“Germany and Greece share a long history of trustful cooperation, both bilaterally and within EU and NATO. We seek to enhance this cooperation by further developing the newly established initiatives the ‘Greco-German Youth Office’ and the ‘German-Greek Future Fund’ which reach out to the Greek municipalities which fell victim of National Socialist atrocities.”
*In March 2014, German Federal President Joachim Gauck visited the village of Ligiades in northwest Greece, site of a German massacre in 1943. He was accompanied by the then Greek President Karolos Papoulias, a wartime resistance fighter in his teens, who was born in the nearby town of Ioannina. During his speech, Gauck declared himself shocked at the “robberies, terrorist actions and murders committed by a country that had become a ruthless dictatorship”.
source: Neos Kosmos
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