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Marks writes that Germany could have easily paid the 50 billion marks in reparations, but instead chose to repeatedly default on payments as part of a political strategy of undermining Versailles. [168] Marks says that in 1921, Germany met her requirements in full because custom posts were occupied by Allied troops. [46]
Most of Germany's reparations payments were funded by loans from American banks, and the recipients used them to pay off loans they had from the U.S. Treasury. Between 1919 and 1932, Germany paid out 19 billion goldmarks in reparations, and received 27 billion goldmarks in loans from New York bankers and others.
When Germany stopped making payments in 1932 after the agreement reached at the Lausanne Conference failed to be ratified, [12] Germany had paid only a part of the sum. This still left Germany with debts it had incurred in order to finance the reparations, and these were revised by the Agreement on German External Debts in 1953. After another ...
Of this figure, Germany was only required to pay 50 billion gold marks ($12.5 billion), a smaller amount than they had previously offered for terms of peace. [65] Reparations were unpopular and strained the German economy but they were payable and from 1919 to 1931, when reparations ended, Germany paid fewer than 21 billion gold marks. [66]
Dawes, who was the U.S. vice president at the time, received the Nobel Peace Prize of 1925 for "his crucial role in bringing about the Dawes Plan", specifically for the way it reduced the state of tension between France and Germany resulting from Germany's missed reparations payments and France's occupation of the Ruhr.
The government of Adolf Hitler declared all further payments cancelled in 1933, and no further reparations payments were made until after the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Germany finally paid off its debts under the Versailles treaty, which had been reduced by 50% at the 1953 London Debt Conference, in 2010. [157]
The Young Plan was a 1929 attempt to settle issues surrounding the World War I reparations obligations that Germany owed under the terms of Treaty of Versailles.Developed to replace the 1924 Dawes Plan, the Young Plan was negotiated in Paris from February to June 1929 by a committee of international financial experts under the leadership of American businessman and economist Owen D. Young.
Other treaties ended the relationships of the United States and the other Central Powers. Included in the 440 articles of the Treaty of Versailles were the demands that Germany officially accept responsibility "for causing all the loss and damage" of the war and pay economic reparations. The treaty drastically limited the German military ...