If you were to ask people when World War One ended, you would most likely receive the answer, "11th November 1918". While that would be correct - the armistice was famously signed on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day on the eleventh month - this century-defining conflict reached its conclusion in another sense on this very day. With the arrival of 3rd October 2010, the hefty reparations payments imposed upon Germany after the war have finally finished; the final installment has been paid and the German people are no longer deep in the debt left over from 92 years ago.
The Treaty of Versailles: A Treaty of CompromiseThe payments were mandated as part of the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed in 1919 and the terms of which were driven forward mainly by the so-called 'Big Three' - David Lloyd George of Britain, Woodrow Wilson of America, and Georges Clemenceau of France. If the latter had had his way, Germany would have been hit even harder; Clemenceau was the angriest of the trio, and his main aim was to punish Germany. Essentially, he wanted to take a revenge so complete that the Germans would never be able to stage another attack of this sort again. But this wasn't what his companions wanted.
Wilson, in particularly, was the polar opposite in terms of his objectives. He had a list known as the Fourteen Points that were concerned with creating a long-standing peace, based around the soon-to-be-formed League of Nations. He didn't want to even blame Germany for the war, let alone punish them. Lloyd George, meanwhile, sat somewhere between these two perspectives; he wasn't overly concerned with anything other than accumulating more financial opportunities for the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, these divided and confused aims led to what was essentially a compromise: a treaty that stood at neither end of the spectrum, but rather hovered perhaps somewhat ineffectually along the middle ground.
Paying Throughout the Decades
Emerging from these tense negotiations was a total demanded sum of 269 billion gold marks, approximately £23.6 billion or $32 billion (in 2010's economic climate, $389 billion). The payments rarely went smoothly until the last half of the 20th century; firstly, they became a major point of contention within Germany. The country's economic issues meant that the government immediately struggled to meet deadlines, leading to the implementations of the Dawes Plan in 1924 and the Young Plan in 1929. The global depression struck in the 1930s, forcing a year-long moratorium on international debt. Following up on these delays, halting the payments was one of the first rebellious act Adolf Hitler committed after becoming Chancellor in 1933.
