Repressed, Remitted, Rejected: German Reparations Debts to Poland and Greece

442 Pages·2021·1.489 MB·English

by  Karl Heinz Roth, Hartmut Rübner

Repressed, Remitted, Rejected

Published in 2022 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
English-language edition
© 2022 Karl Heinz Roth and Hartmut Rübner
German-language edition
© 2019 Metropol
Originally published as Verdrängt – Vertagt – Zurückgewiesen:
Die deutsche Reparationsschuld am Beispiel Griechenlands und Europas
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Roth, Karl Heinz, author. | Rübner, Hartmut, author.
Title: Repressed, remitted, rejected : German reparations debts to Poland
and Greece / Karl Heinz Roth in association with Hartmut Rübner.
Other titles: Verdrängt – Vertagt – Zurückgewiesen. English | German reparations
debts to Poland and Greece
Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2022. | Translation of: Verdrängt – Vertagt –
Zurückgewiesen. Die deutsche Reparationsschuld am Beispiel Polens und Griechenlands.
Berlin: Metropol, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021028819 (print) | LCCN 2021028820 (ebook) | ISBN
9781800732575 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800732582 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939-1945--Germany--Reparations. | World War,
1939-1945--Greece--Reparations. | Greece--History--Occupation,
1941-1944. | Germany--Relations--Greece. | Greece--Relations--Germany. |
Germany--Relations--Europe. | Europe--Relations--Germany.
Classification: LCC D819.G3 R6813 2022 (print) | LCC D819.G3 (ebook) |
DDC 940.53/1440943--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021028819
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021028820

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-80073-257-5 hardback
ISBN 978-1-80073-258-2 ebook
https:// doi.org/10.3167/9781800732575
c
ontents
List of Tables vii
Preface to the English Edition ix
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction. Methodological and Historical Aspects of the
Reparations Problem 1
Part I. The Price of Plunder
Chapter 1. Exploitation and Destruction: The Occupation of
Poland (1939–1945) 21
Chapter 2. The Occupation and Plunder of Greece (1941–1944) 65
Chapter 3. Testing Grounds of Occupation Policy: Poland and
Greece in Comparison with the Rest of Nazi-Occupied
Europe 88
Part II. The Failure of the Allies
Chapter 4. Allied Reparations Policies: From Joint Planning to
the Cold War 131

Chapter 5. Poland as Part of the Eastern Reparations Zone
(1945–1953) 147
Chapter 6. Developments in the Western Reparations Zone
(1945–1951): The Conceptual Guidelines of Britain

and the United States 166
vi • Contents
Part III. Divide et Impera
Chapter 7. The Reparations Policy of the West German Power
Elite to the End of the 1980s 183
Chapter 8. Greece on the Sidelines Once Again 225
Chapter 9. Interim Conclusions 252
Chapter 10. The Two-plus-Four Treaty and the Exclusion of the
Reparations Question 257
Chapter 11. Developments since the 1990s 270
Chapter 12. Greece Comes Away Empty-Handed 282
Chapter 13. New Conflicts: The Controversy Surrounding
German Reparations Debts since 2015, and the
Problem of ‘Remembrance Culture’ 299
Chapter 14. Guilt and Debt: The Extent of Germany’s
Reparations Debts and What Has Been Paid So Far 327
Chapter 15. Arguments in Favour of a Final Reparations
Amendment to the Two-plus-Four Treaty 356
Appendix. Notes and Documents in the Compilation of
Primary Sources 359
List of Abbreviations 387
Sources and Bibliography 392
Index 417
t
ables
1.1. The financial plundering of Poland 46
3.1. The underground economy’s share of total economic output
in seven of the countries in the German occupation sphere 120
3.2. The loss of life caused by the Germans during the
Second World War in seven countries 122
14.1. The material war damage (financial exploitation, robbery
and looting, destruction measures) 331
14.2. List of compensation for those persecuted by the Nazis,
and for the families of those killed 334
14.3. The exploitation of forced labourers in the Reich and in
the occupied territories (estimates of the withheld
wage payments) 336
14.4. Baseline values for the reparations claims on Germany
from the Second World War 337
14.5. The extent of the reparations claims against Germany from
the Second World War in 1990 and 2018 338

14.6. German reparations payments since the end of the Second
World War 342
14.7. German reparations and compensation payments to Greece
so far in comparison with Greece’s reparations claims 344

14.8. Germany’s reparations and compensation payments to
Poland to date 344

14.9. Germany’s reparations debt, what has been repaid to date,

and its share of German GDP in 2018 345
viii • Tables
14.10. Compensation practices in the Federal Republic of Germany
through to the end of 2018: A comparison of German and
non-German benefit recipients 348
14.11. A comparison of the compensation payments made to
the victims of Nazi persecution from Germany, Greece
and Poland 350
14.12. Compensation payments made from public funds to the
military-political functionaries of the Nazi dictatorship
(1949–2000) compared with the compensation received
in the same period by those persecuted by the Nazis 351
p e e
Reface to the nglish dition
In the spring of 2017, the first German-language edition of our book on the
history of German reparations debt after the Second World War was pub-
lished by Metropol in Berlin. It was well received, but also sparked heated
controversy. We are most pleased that it is now being made available to the
English-speaking public. It will introduce this audience to a historical prob-
lem, the emergence and development of which was decisively shaped by the
‘big’ Western Allies – Great Britain and the United States. The failure of the
Allies to resolve their dispute over the reparations and compensation pay-
ments to be shouldered by Germany is considered to have been a significant
factor behind the outbreak of the Cold War.
We have taken the opportunity provided by the publication of this English
edition of our book to revise, update and expand the first edition, because
a great deal has happened in the disputes over reparations since we first
submitted the manuscript to the publisher in the summer of 2016. In some
countries, new archival sources have become available. Numerous scientific
publications and personal recollections have been published, either in parallel
with our book or subsequently. German–Greek grassroots initiatives have
continued to develop and have caused a significant reaction at the level of state
relations between the two countries. The issue of reparations has, moreover,

been placed back on the agenda by the governments of, and academic insti-

tutions in, other countries once occupied by the National Socialists. In this

respect, the example of Poland is particularly significant. We have had to
take all of this into consideration, because our publication is conceived as a
workbook that is not only committed to historical science, but also seeks to

intervene in ongoing political conflicts.
In the process of revising the book, we have not only focused on outlining
the Nazi occupation of Greece and the German–Greek disputes over repara-
tions, which have now been going on for over seventy years and remain unre-
solved today. Instead, we have taken into account all of the events that have

been taking place across Europe that have had an impact on German–Greek
relations. This particularly applies to the recent Polish initiatives which are
broadening the terrain, putting a halt to the previous isolation of Greece in the
x • Preface to the English Edition
face of an overpowering and intransigent German elite, and paving the way
for a final enforcement of the reparations claims at a multilateral European
level. For this reason, we have also incorporated into our overview the Polish
compensation initiatives that were relaunched in summer 2017.
All in all, the English edition shows significant improvements. It makes it
possible for readers to place the as-of-yet unfulfilled reparations claims of all
the formerly Nazi-occupied countries within their European and international
contexts, and thus provides the basis for a coordinated approach to settle the
reparations issue once and for all. We cannot, however, claim to have had
the ‘last word’ on this issue. Rather, our workbook marks a beginning, an
impetus to include new research and discussions within the complex field of
the issue of compensation, as well as to expand upon this research. It will be
left to others to fill in the gaps contained in this book. The main drawback
of our work is that, with a few important exceptions, it does not include the
documents drawn up by the formerly occupied countries in response to the
papers prepared by the German reparations bureaucracy. In order to remedy
this shortcoming somewhat in the here and now, we have expanded our col-
lection of documents to include several key texts from Poland and the former
Soviet Union, which help to sharpen our view of the disputes over compensa-
tion at a European and an international level. The author of the book is Karl
Heinz Roth. Hartmut Rübner prepared the documentation.
Further, we have thoroughly revised the chapter on the calculation of the
war damage inflicted by the Germans, as well as the payments that Germany
has made so far, by drawing on new archival documents and source editions
from Poland and the Soviet Union. In doing so, we realized that in the first
German edition of our book we had underestimated the extent of the dev-
astation caused by the war, whereas we had overestimated the compensation
hitherto provided by the two German states. Due to their topical significance,
we have supplemented our case study of Greece with a look at the balance
sheet of the damage inflicted on Poland during the war. The comparison that

emerged between these two countries has produced some surprising results.

In the first German edition, we were able to include the one hundred

key documents referred to in the Introduction, but unfortunately this has
not been possible in the English edition. This edition is thus limited to the
Introduction, an overview of our scientific apparatus and an expanded list of

documents. Nevertheless, so as to make the improved and expanded version
of the book available to English-language readers in its entirety, the English-
and German-language documents cited in the Introduction can be found –
whether this be in their original language or in translation – on the Berghahn
Books website. Unfortunately, it was impossible to translate the non-English

ones into English as well. Finally, the website also contains the preliminary
notes on the editorial process and the expanded list of documents.