Does Germany owe Greeks billions of euros in World War II reparations for the damages and the enforced loan during the occupation of the country by the Nazis? So far, Berlin has vehemently rejected any Greek claims.
However, as Keep Talking Greece reports, two German researchers, who dug into the documents of the dispute, have discovered and calculated that the German state owes Greece 185 billion euros.
Of this not even a 1% has been paid to Greece.
In their book “Reparation debt. Mortgages of German occupation in Greece and Europe” publishers Karl Heinz Roth, a historian, and Hartmut Rübner, a researcher, unfold the documents of the dispute and come to the conclusion that the reparations issue was not solved in 1960, as Berlin has been claiming.
According to the book review published in German conservative daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Roth and Rübner have researched German documents only and came to the conclusion that:
US allies and “the power elites of West Germany” have systematically ignored Greece’s demands for WWII reparations.
In SZ article “Athens – Berlin: Open Bill, Open Wounds” it is said among others that:
At the Paris Reparations Conference in 1946, the Greek government presented a damage record of $ 7.2 billion – eventually earning a share of $ 25 million.
The leitmotiv of the book is that an alliance between the US and the “West German power elite” has systematically ignored Greek demands for decades.
“Undeniable, however, is the diplomatic arrogance with which the Federal Republic rejected the Greek demands for decades. If you do not believe it, you are welcome to make your own impression in Hartmut Rübner’s carefully edited extensive documentary appendix,” SZ notes.
In the first part of the book, Roth analyzes the decades-long efforts of Athens to receive reparations.
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