Legacy of Versailles

[mgc1961]

Oct. 3, the 20th anniversary of German unification, will also mark the completion of the final chapter of World War I with the end of reparations payments 92 years after the country's defeat.

The German government will pay the last instalment of interest on foreign bonds it issued in 1924 and 1930 to raise cash to fulfil the enormous reparations demands the victorious Allies made after World War I.

The reparations bankrupted Germany in the 1920s and the fledgling Nazi party seized on the resulting public resentment against the terms of the Versailles Treaty.

The sum was initially set at 269 billion gold marks, around 96,000 tons of gold, before being reduced to 112 billion gold marks by 1929, payable over a period of 59 years.

Germany suspended annual payments in 1931 during the global financial crisis and Adolf Hitler unsurprisingly declined to resume them when he came to power in 1933.


Read on at http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,720156,00.html

[Art_from_Ark]

1. 96,000 tons of gold?

In other words, 96 million kilograms of gold, or 96 billion grams of gold. At today's gold price of more than $40/gram, that much gold would be worth close to $4 trillion! Even with the subsequent reduction of the original sum, that would still be over $1 trillion in reparations, at today's gold price. :wow: