German forced loan in Greece

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Extract from file R 27320 from 1944, sheet 114 in the Political Archives of the Federal Foreign Office

A German compulsory loan in Greece (also Greek compulsory loan from 1942 ) is a monetary claim from Greece that is justified with payment transactions during the occupation of Greece by the German Wehrmacht (1941 to 1945). The demand, the continuation of which is the subject of political discussion, is viewed by the German Federal Government as a reparation demand and rejected on this basis.

facts

The occupation regime by the Axis powers Bulgaria , Italy and Germany was accompanied by economic exploitation. Greece not only had to bear the cost of the occupation ; the occupying powers also withdrew raw materials and products from Greece on a large scale, which resulted in the so-called Great Famine .

Since the transport from Greece was constantly increasing in terms of value and quantity, but hardly any counter-deliveries were made from the German side, Greece had a credit balance on the clearing accounts via which the goods were formally paid for. In December 1942, the Greek collaborating government was forced to agree to a regulation whereby this balance was treated as an interest-free debt. This should be paid back after the end of the war.

According to a final report by the Foreign Office of the German Reich on April 12, 1945 to the Reichsbank , the amount of this loan was 476 million Reichsmarks .

Positions in the recent past

In a column in the Berliner Zeitung on February 23, 2015, Götz Aly called the “ forced loan ” a “legend” that has been cherished and cherished for years by the historian Hagen Fleischer . This was followed on March 18, 2015 in the newspaper Die Welt by the author Sven Felix Kellerhoff . He uses a file from 1945, which is now archived in the Political Archive of the Foreign Office (PA AA) under the inventory number "R 27320" and is publicly accessible. According to this, the occupation costs are said to have been netted, the estimated balance at the end of the occupation of Greece was 476 million RM, which, however, according to the file, still had to be reduced by Imperial German services.

Negotiations in connection with claims against Germany after 1945

Paris Reparations Conference

After the end of the Second World War , a reparations conference was held in Paris in autumn 1945 at the invitation of the victorious Allied powers , at which Greece demanded ten billion US dollars , which was half of the sum that Germany would have to pay in total reparations according to the proposal of the USSR . This was judged to be too high by the US and UK. Greece received dismantled industrial facilities as reparations, the equivalent of which was estimated at US $ 25 million.

London Debt Accords

In the London Debt Accord of 1953, the examination of claims for reparations was postponed until after the conclusion of a formal peace treaty . According to Article 5, this also affected claims from the credit balances acquired in clearing accounts during an occupation as well as claims against the Reichskreditkassen. With this agreement , not only the regulation of the occupation costs in the narrower sense was postponed, but also the regulation of credits and clearing credits, which gave rise to a German debt.

1960 Treaty on Benefits to Greek Victims

As part of the contract with the Federal Republic of Germany of March 18, 1960 on benefits for Greek nationals who were affected by National Socialist persecution measures , Greece received payments of 115 million D-Marks “for reasons of race, belief or World view of Greek nationals affected by National Socialist persecution ”and their surviving dependents. This treaty was part of a series of global reparation agreements with eleven western states such as France , Italy and the Netherlands , as well as with Austria . The Agreement and the Act of Consent were promulgated in the Federal Republic of Germany on September 21, 1961, the Greek law on August 24, 1961 - it came into force on October 21, 1961. Resistance fighters were also eligible for the services provided for in the Greek ratification and distribution law. According to the knowledge of Ernst Féaux de la Croix in 1985 "details of the distribution procedure remained in the dark".

The signing of the contract was accompanied by an exchange of letters between the Foreign Office and the Greek Embassy in Bonn. In the letter from the Greek side, however, the Greek side reserved the right to “request the settlement of further claims arising from National Socialist persecution during the war and occupation during a general examination in accordance with Article 5, Paragraph 2 of the Agreement on German Foreign Debt of February 27th To approach [to the German government] in 1953 ”.

In order not to set a precedent for compensation after the Second World War ( reparations ), only individual claims were to be satisfied; the claims for war compensation and for the repayment of the forced loan from 1942 were excluded.

Furthermore, the Federal Republic secured itself in the medium term by postponing demands for the signing of a peace treaty.

Two-plus-four contract

The London moratorium was ended in 1990 by the two-plus-four reunification treaty . In the opinion of the Federal Government, this means that the question of reparations should no longer be regulated according to the will of the contracting parties. The states of the then Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) - including Greece - agreed to this in the Paris Charter . On the other hand, the Greek side objected that Greece only “took note of” the contract and that the question of compensation has not yet been resolved.

Legal reviews

Government of Greece

Greek politicians and survivors' associations have always pointed out the question of reparations and also asserted claims from the forced loan of 1942. From a Greek point of view, it has not yet been conclusively clarified from a legal point of view whether a repayment of the compulsory loan is to be counted under the reparation payments or whether it should rather be regarded as a loan under civil law .

More recent examples include a commission set up by the Conservative Antonis Samaras ' government to examine the chances of success of the demands. His successor, the leftist Alexis Tsipras , also affirmed the “moral responsibility to our people, to history and to all peoples of Europe” to demand the money. It seems unlikely that Greece could win European partners on the issue, as an expected rift with Germany seems unattractive. Consequently, the Greek authorities have not taken any initiatives in this direction.

German federal government

The German Federal Government regards the demand for repayment of the bond as a reparation claim and has not recognized this since 1990. In particular, she argues that regulations and payments have been made regarding reparation, from which Greece has also benefited.

After decades of “peaceful, trusting and fruitful cooperation” between Germany and its NATO and EU partner Greece, according to the rhetoric of the German government, “the reparations question has lost its justification”. The Federal Republic therefore sees no reason to meet the demand.

The view of the federal government is legally controversial. According to a report by the Scientific Service of the Bundestag (WD 2, 041/13), your legal opinion is not mandatory.

In March 2015, German politicians such as Volker Kauder , Gerda Hasselfeldt and Wolfgang Schäuble rejected the Greek government's claims for reparations payments as unjustified under international law . The Foreign Office, too, B. the Minister of State Michael Roth (SPD), rejects reparation demands of the Greek government. The question of reparations is legally and politically closed, declared the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier .

Amount of the claim in 2015

The value of the “compulsory loan” of 1942 is assessed very differently by experts: the calculations are between three billion and 64 billion euros. According to a confidential report by a commission of experts from the Greek Court of Auditors, which was presented to the government in January 2015 , the Greek experts are expected to reach a figure of eleven billion euros. Other experts now estimate Germany's total debt to Greece at up to 160 billion or even 575 billion euros.

A Greek study on Greece's monetary claims against Germany was completed in early March 2013 and declared as top secret. On March 8, 2015, To Vima newspaper published this study. The total claims are put there between 269 and 332 billion euros. Prime Minister Tsipras said two days after the release that a parliamentary committee should look into the matter.

In April 2015, the Greek Deputy Finance Minister Dimitris Mardas named the current value of the forced loan of 10.3 billion euros.

literature

Official reports and opinions

Scientific literature

  • Ernst Féaux de la Croix : State treaty supplements to the compensation. In: Ernst Féaux de la Croix, Helmut Rumpf: The development of compensation law from a national and international law and political point of view. (=  Federal Minister of Finance , Walter Schwarz (Hrsg.): The reparation of National Socialist injustice by the Federal Republic of Germany. Volume III) Beck, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-406-08426-5 , pp. 201-309.
  • Helmut Rumpf: International law and foreign policy aspects of reparation. In: Ernst Féaux de la Croix, Helmut Rumpf: The development of compensation law from a national and international law and political point of view. Beck, Munich 1985, pp. 311-346.
  • Katrin Fenrich, Institute for Peacekeeping Law and International Humanitarian Law at the Ruhr University Bochum (ed.): The German-Greek reparations carousel ... and the marmot greets every year , Bofaxe no. 465D of February 25, 2015; ifhv.de (PDF).
  • Bernhard Kempen : The Distomo case: Greek reparation claims against the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Hans-Joachim Cremer / Thomas Giegerich / Dagmar Richter / Andreas Zimmermann (eds.): Tradition and cosmopolitanism of law. Festschrift for Helmut Steinberger (=  contributions to foreign public law and international law ; Volume 152). Springer, Berlin [a. a.] 2002, pp. 179-195.
  • Anestis Nessou: Greece 1941–1944. German occupation policy and crimes against the civilian population - an assessment according to international law . V&R Unipress, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-89971-507-1 , p. 332-338 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Scientific Service of the German Bundestag, Department WD2 (ed.): On the Greek forced loan from 1942 (WD2 - 3000 - 093/13) . S. 2 ( zdf.de [PDF]). zdf.de ( Memento of the original from March 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zdf.de
  2. ^ A b Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Reparations: Does Germany owe the Greeks 70 billion? , Welt Online , September 17, 2011.
  3. ↑ Hagen Fleischer / Despina Konstantinakou: Ad calendas graecas? Greece and the German reparation , in: Hans Günter Hockerts , Claudia Moisel, Tobias Winstel (eds.), Limits of reparation. Compensation for victims of Nazi persecution in Western and Eastern Europe 1945–2000 , Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, pp. 375–457, here p. 456 Note 331: Nestler activity report, as an attachment to Paul Hahn, Director at the Deutsche Reichsbank and 1941– 1944 German banking commissioner in Greece (alternate point of the Foreign Office), to the President of the Reichsbank from April 12, 1945, PA AA, R 27320. Archive number and amount also given by Fleischer: If you remember, we can forget , Federal Center for Political Education ( bpb), March 17, 2014. The exact reading of the file is, however, also part of the discussion. In addition Kellerhoff, Greece's 476 million bond does not exist , Welt Online, March 18, 2015 and Michael Martens , Historical Debt? The Greece file , FAZ of March 17, 2015.
  4. ↑ Götz Aly: Greek debt legends , Berliner Zeitung, February 23, 2015.
  5. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff: Greece's 476 million bond does not exist , Welt Online, March 18, 2015.
  6. ↑ Christoph Buchheim: The occupied countries in the service of the German war economy during the Second World War. A report by the Research Center for Defense Economics . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , 34 (1986), pp. 117–145, here p. 122; ifz-muenchen.de (PDF).
  7. ^ Contract text in the government draft of the Approval Act, BT-Drs. 3/2284 (PDF).
  8. ↑ Cf. Féaux de la Croix, pp. 201 ff .; Rumpf, p. 333 ff.
  9. ^ A b Féaux de la Croix: State Contractual Supplements to Compensation , 1985, pp. 227–231.
  10. ^ Hermann Frank Meyer : Bloody edelweiss. The 1st Mountain Division in World War II , Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2008, p. 645.
  11. ↑ Sven Stein: Germany and Greece in the Euro Crisis , 2014, p. 82.
  12. ↑ N. Christodoulakis: Germany's War Debt to Greece: A Burden Unsettled , 2014.
  13. ^ Answers from the Federal Government to several small inquiries from the Die Linke parliamentary group , BT-Drs. 17/709 of February 11, 2010 (PDF) and 18/451 of February 6, 2014 (PDF).
  14. ↑ Small request from the left-wing parliamentary group of January 17, 2014, BT-Drs. 18/324 (PDF), as well as elaboration of the WD: On the international legal bases and limits of war-related reparations with special consideration of the Greek-German relationship (PDF)
  15. ↑ Foreign Office rejects reparations , n-tv.de , March 17, 2015.
  16. ↑ Nazi crimes in Greece: Steinmeier calls debate about reparations "dangerous" , Spiegel Online, March 18, 2015.
  17. ↑ Debt crisis paradox: Germany owes Athens eleven billion from forced credit , Focus from January 12, 2015.
  18. ↑ Deutschlandfunk of January 27, 2015 : “Germany's debts from the past”.
  19. ↑ Germany should owe Athens billions , Der Standard of January 12, 2015; Gauck on a state visit to Greece: Praise for reforms, dispute over money ( memento from March 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), article on tagesschau.de from March 6, 2014.
  20. ↑ Jaques Delplas, interview in: Les Échos of June 22, 2011 (French).
  21. ↑ Tsipras accuses Germany of trickery . FAZ, March 11, 2015.
  22. ↑ It's about billions of euros: Athens could seize German property . n-tv.de, March 11, 2015.
  23. ↑ Second World War: Athens puts German debt at 278 billion euros . Spiegel Online, April 7, 2015.