That’ll be $95bn, please Berlin

Greece has launched an official report to back up claims that it is owed billions of euros in unpaid war reparations by Germany. In a bizarre attempt to address crippling debt repayments of its own, Athens has employed a team of civil servants to scour the country’s archives for hard findings.

Doubts persist that Greece was sold up short in the writing of the postwar settlement for crimes committed by Nazi Germany during the occupation that began in 1941. ‘‘Greece has never resigned its rights’’ said Christos Staikouras, the Deputy Finance Minister. Reparations will be ‘‘subject to study and settlement at an international level in accordance with the rule of international law’’, he continued. The issue remains unresolved.

No love has been lost between the countries since the outbreak of the Euro crisis. Greece is under great pressure from the triumvirate ‘troika’ committee of the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission to maintain its debt commitments. Its new prime minister, Antonis Samaras, elected in June on a cautiously pro-austerity mandate presides over a contracting economy and growing civil unrest. Both countries recriminate mutually one another in the mainstream press: Germans are depicted as insensitive foisters of austerity; Greeks, feckless and workshy.

It is remarked that Greece received significantly less than demanded at the Paris Conference on reparations after the fall of Nazi Germany. On German withdrawal of mainland Greece in 1944, tens of thousands of Greeks had been killed and hundreds of thousands had died of malnutrition. Notwithstanding a final settlement treaty in 1990 and West Germany’s payment in 1960 of DM115 million ($67 million) to Greek victims of crimes in labour camps; Greece stands firm that it has never been repaid a loan of 476 million reichmarks, of which its national bank provided interest-free to bankroll Nazi Germany during the three year occupation.

This bone of contention will not go away just yet. While it may smack of veritable straw-clutching in a time of desperation, Greece’s claims must be corroborated by solid evidence and adhere to international law. When put into context however, the requested sum is eye-watering and has wide significance for paying off its debt.

_Die Welt_ newspaper calculates without interest, the loan would amount to $14 billion today. Assuming a rate of three per cent interest, this would be worth at minimum, $95 billion. With $407 billion (€327 billion) of mounting government debt – 161 per cent of GDP – perhaps you cannot fault the Greeks for trying.