[MGSA-L] Susan Watkins, "Another Turn of the Screw"

Wed Aug 1 12:20:58 PDT 2012

1. In a nutshell, the answer to the question of German reparations is encapsulated in the answer offered by the late Greek politician and historian Spyros Markesinis in his interview with Theodore A. Wilson (on behalf of Harry S. Truman Library), which was held in Athens, Greece on July 22, 1970. 

See full transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. 
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/markezis.htm

===========================
QUESTION: How important a role did German reparations play (or were expected to play) in Greek reconstruction?

MARKEZINIS: The role of German reparations was negligible. Reparations did not exceed 18 million dollars which were given in automobiles, some tools, and scrap iron. To be sure, the World War I attitude, whereby the vanquished were expected to pay damages and to restore the economies of the countries which had won, did not exist in Greece either. Yet there was a limited relevant expectation and momentarily particular significance was attached to the transfer and installation also in Greece of German industrial equipment taken from that which had escaped the destruction of Allied bombing.

Still greater expectations were placed in the hope that Germany would be in a position to help seriously with regard to her responsibility for the annihilation of the Greek currency."

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/markezis.htm

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2. There are two issues at hand: (a) The obligation, incumbent upon the reunified state of Germany, to repay (with interest) the compulsory loan it imposed, as an occupation force, on the Greek Treasury in 1941 (which amounted to 2.5 times the country's budget). (b) Germany's obligation to pay reparations to war victims.  

The German position is based on three lines of argument. First, it refers to an undocumented 1958 agreement between Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis and the German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, akin to a secret agreement or a gentlemen's agreement, according to which Greece effectively agreed to withdraw from further claims in return of unspecified benefits and accommodations. At the time, West Germany (FR Germany) was the destination of thousands of Greek economic immigrants in the aftermath of WWII and the ensuing Greek Civil War. The amnesty of the War Criminal Max Merten in 1959 is emblematic of the prevailing political climate in Greece at the time [*].  To my knowledge, no record of such agreement has been made public and it is my understanding that "secret agreements" are not tenable in international law. 

Second, Germany maintains that has already paid for reparations. Indeed, Greece did receive under the Greek-German convention of March 18, 1960, the meager sum of 115 million Deutsche marks as compensation for War Crimes committed specifically against Jewish and Roma Greek citizens (the final disposition of these funds is open to question). However, no compensation was ever awarded for Crimes committed against other Greek citizens who also fell victims to German atrocities (extending to hunger and disease)  as part of war reparations. 

And third, Germany raises the issue of "statute of limitations" by which the debt was barred, since more than 70 years have elapsed since the "loan agreement" was signed.

http://www.transform-network.net/en/home/article/the-compulsory-loan-of-greece-to-the-nazis-and-fascists-in-the-second-world-war.html

[*] http://news.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_530302_28/05/2006_185422

http://greece.haifa.ac.il/events/holocaust_greece/Samuel_Hassid.pdf

====
CDK
8/1/12

________________________________
 From: Dan Tompkins <pericles at temple.edu>
To: MGSA List <mgsa-l at uci.edu> 
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 8:11 PM
Subject: [MGSA-L] Susan Watkins, "Another Turn of the Screw"

The subject line gives the title of Watkins' introduction to the current issue of New Left Review 75, May-0June 2012.   I don't want to violate whatever copyright obtains by copying the full article, but the relevant passage appears below:  Watkins' discussion of "the  ironies of a German giving lessons in debt repayment."

Footnote 15 refers to Richard Clogg's recent London Review of Books essay, "In Athens," which concludes:

> It isn’t [Christine] Lagarde’s doing that she enjoys a large tax-free salary as head of the IMF, but it is no wonder that her remark that it is now ‘payback time’ for Greece causes nothing but resentment. Meanwhile, a word of contrition, if not apology, for German war crimes that are still a living memory (from Merkel), and a recognition of past Greek sacrifices in the common struggle against fascism, which are likewise still a living memory (from Cameron), would not come amiss.

Watkins is more specific, alleging deferral of reparations to Greece for damages in WWII.  I post to MGSA partly because this seems to be a matter for historians to consider and argue.  I don't know the background, beyond Watkins' essay, and would be very interested in hearing further details, preferably with references.

Best,

Dan Tompkins

Susan Watkins:
... Putting paid to any illusions of post-nationalism, the Merkel government has sanctioned the crudest displays of chauvinism towards Greece, emulated by leaders in Finland and Austria. Trumpeted by the Springer press under the headline, ‘Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks! And sell the Acropolis too!’, the CDU’s Josef Schlarmann explained: ‘Those in insolvency have to sell everything they have to pay their creditors. Greece owns buildings, companies and uninhabited islands, which could all be used for debt redemption.’ [14] The ironies of a German giving lessons in debt repayment have not been lost in Greece. Under the Nazi occupation, a hefty monthly payment was extracted from the Greek central bank to cover the Wehrmacht’s expenses; in March 1942 an additional forced loan of 476 million Reichsmarks was levied by the Axis powers. Greek partisans put up some of the toughest military resistance to the Nazis in Europe; the damage
 wreaked by the occupiers’ revenge was commensurate. Reprisals were exacted on the civilian population at a rate of fifty Greeks for every German killed. Much of the country’s infrastructure was destroyed; forced exports and economic collapse helped bring about one of the worst famines in modern European history. [15] Nazi rule was followed by a three-year British and American counter-insurgency operation to stamp out the Communist-led partisans.After the War, ex-Nazi German leaders and their American conquerors were quick to salve their consciences by negotiating reparations for material damage with Israel; the Luxembourg Agreement was signed in 1952. The following year, the US, Britain and France wrote down the debts of their new Cold War ally and deferred the question of Second World War reparations until the two Germanies were re-unified. Greek claims were excluded from the 1990 ‘2+4’ agreement on reparations signed by the Bonn and Berlin
 governments with Washington, Moscow, London and Paris. Legally, however, the RM476 million loan should count as credit, rather than war damage, and Greece is entitled to be repaid. Without interest, it would amount to $14 billion in today’s money; with interest at 3 per cent over 66 years, over $95 billion. Since German reunification, Athens has made persistent attempts to table the question: the then Foreign Minister, Antonis Samaras, raised it with Hans-Dietrich Genscher in 1991, Andreas Papandreou with Kohl and Hartmann in 1995, Costas Simitis with Schroeder and Fischer in April 2000; in each case they met with peremptory German dismissal.In May and June this year the political pressure on Greeks to support pro-Memorandum parties in the elections, and threats of what would ensue if they returned a Syriza government, swelled to a campaign of international proportions. The loudspeakers of virtually the entire Western European media blared out the
 message that if Greeks dared to elect Syriza, they would be made to pay. Syriza, a Bennite grouping which insisted that austerity was not working, was dubbed ‘anti-European’ and its leader Alexis Tsipras universally described as ‘exploiting’ Greek anger. The German edition of the Financial Times published a page in Greek, headlined ‘Resist the Demagogue’—‘It is only with parties that accept the conditions of international donors that your country will keep the euro . . . Resist the demagoguery of Alexis Tsipras and Syriza. Do not trust the promises that we can simply terminate the agreement, without consequences.’ The London edition opined that the NPD’s Samaras—who had made the May 2012 elections a condition of joining Lucas Papademos’s government in November 2011—was insufficiently ‘pro-European’ and might need to be replaced as NPD leader. [16] A newly elected François Hollande made clear on Greek TV what could
 be expected from Socialist France, ‘warning’ Greek voters:If the impression is given that the Greeks want to get away from the commitments that were made and abandon all prospect of recovery then there will be countries in the euro area who prefer to finish with the presence of Greece in the euro area. It is up to the Greeks . . . their choice is whether they want to stay in the euro area or not. It requires compliance with budgetary discipline and action for growth. [17]Fall outWhat has been the political outcome of this strategy? In Greece, a ‘national government’ of the pro-Memorandum parties—NPD, PASOK and DIMAR, a rightist split-off from Syriza—rests on just 29 per cent of the electorate. In order to keep it in power, Hollande and other Euro-group leaders are already stressing the need to soften the MoU deadlines they had insisted Syriza respect. Elsewhere in the Eurozone—Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France—ejection of
 incumbents has become the order of the day. In some countries the two-party system—or two-and-a-half parties, as in Ireland—is starting to run out of rope: the anti-MoU Sinn Fein is around 18 per cent in the polls; in the Netherlands the Socialist Party, critical of austerity policies, has been running at 20 per cent. Turn-outs in elections across Europe are also falling markedly. The ESM is being ratified without referenda, but a more ambitious Euro-group fiscal body would not be able to escape a popular vote.At the time of writing, the Troika’s super-sovereign status is being bitterly contested by Italy and Spain. Rajoy has hopes of getting a €100bn banking guarantee without strictEFSF conditions; different standards, it seems, apply to Portugal and to Spain, where the imposition of central rule on Autonomous Communities, not least the highly indebted Catalonia, is politically explosive. Monti has called for ECB bond purchases without
 the indignities of Troika diktat for ‘well-behaved’ countries like his own. What of France? Under Sarkozy, Paris gave unstinting support to Berlin; ‘Nicolas will agree’, as Merkel put it. [18]Hollande’s Parti Socialiste now commands every level of the French political system: the Presidency, Senate, National Assembly, 21 out of 22 regions and large swathes of local government. During his campaign, Hollande spoke of re-negotiating the Fiscal Compact Treaty; but he made no move to put it to a referendum, contenting himself with getting existing EU funds redubbed as a growth package. It seems unlikely that France will offer a real lead to the Mediterranean bloc against Germany.Germany’s first attempt to impose the Stability and Growth Pact on its fellow nations during the euro’s early years famously foundered when it broke the rules itself in 2003. The Länder and city states are already contesting the limits of the Fiscal Compact: North
 Rhine–Westphalia, Berlin and Hamburg are set to out-borrow its constraints in 2012. With the world economy faltering, German attempts at austerity may backfire. In the 1990s, the IMF’s high-handed structural adjustment programmes helped to make Latin America the vanguard continent for opposition to neo-liberalism. Syriza, only a fraction behind theNPD in the June 2012 election, has dispatched one of its leading economists to Buenos Aires to discuss Argentina’s experience of default. Ecuador’s successful debt audit—opening the government’s books and undertaking a democratic assessment of what was owed and what was ‘odious’—offers further lessons. If the oligarchies that have run the EUsince Maastricht have never won the active support of their populations for the direction of their rule, up till now they have not met any real political resistance. It remains to be seen whether this drastic new turn of the vice, in crisis
 conditions, can screw the popular will down again so easily.
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>...
>[14] ‘Verkauft doch eure Inseln, ihr Pleite-Griechen . . . und die Akropolis gleich mit!’, Bild, 3 March 2010. The attitude recalls English MPs’ colonial contempt for Irish famine victims—‘incapable of the honest exertion, the prudence, and the integrity, which were characteristics of the poor of this country [England]’—and assertion that ‘So much was never done for any country, by another, in the history of the world . . . The starvation has arisen from the misconduct of the Irish on the spot’. See George Bernstein, ‘Liberals, the Irish Famine and the Role of the State’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 29, no. 116, November 1995.[15] Sven Felix Kellerhoff, ‘Schuldet Deutschland den Griechen 70 Milliarden?’, Die Welt, 17 September 2011; Richard Clogg, ‘In Athens’, LRB, 5 July 2012.[16] ‘Samaras’s political judgement in focus’, FT, 22 June 2012.[17] ‘French president warns Greeks against anti-bailout
 vote’, France24, 14 June 2012.

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