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The total damage to the USSR from World War II was equal to approximately half of all losses of the allied countries (Soviet Union, USA, Great Britain, France).

At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Stalin proposed setting the total amount of reparations for Germany at $20 billion., providing that half of this amount ( $10 billion.) will be paid to the Soviet Union as the country that made the greatest contribution to the victory and suffered the most in the anti-Hitler coalition. With some reservations, Roosevelt and Churchill accepted Stalin's proposal. 10 billion dollars with the then gold content of the US currency (1 dollar = 1/35 troy ounce) were equivalents 10 thousand tons of gold, and all reparations - 20 thousand tons of gold. It turned out that the USSR agreed to have German reparations cover less than 8% of its direct damage and only 2.8% for all damages. This seemed like a generous gesture on Stalin's part.

These figures contrast sharply with the gigantic amounts of reparations that the Entente countries (without Russia) imposed on Germany at the Paris Conference in 1919. The Treaty of Versailles set the amount of reparations at 269 billion gold marks - the equivalent approximately 100,000 (!) tons of gold. Destroyed and weakened first by the economic crisis of the 1920s and then by the Great Depression, the country was unable to pay colossal reparations and was forced to borrow from other states in order to fulfill the terms of the treaty. The Reparations Commission in 1921 reduced the amount to $132 billion, i.e. approximately twice, but this was equivalent 50 thousand tons of gold. Hitler, upon coming to power, completely stopped paying reparations in 1933. After World War II and the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, the heads of the Foreign Ministries of the United States, England and France obliged it to return to paying debts under the Treaty of Versailles. According to the London Treaty of 1953, Germany, which had lost part of its territory, was allowed not to pay interest until unification. The reunification of Germany on October 3, 1990 entailed the restoration of its reparation obligations under the Treaty of Versailles. Germany was given 20 years to pay off its debts, for which the country had to take out a twenty-year loan of 239.4 million marks. Germany only completed paying these reparations to its closest allies at the end of 2010. How strikingly different this is from the policy of the USSR, which, just a few years after the end of World War II, refused reparations from Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, which became part of the socialist community! Even the GDR, soon after its formation, completely stopped reparation transfers to the Soviet Union.

Stalin did not want a repeat of what happened in Germany and Europe after the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty. In fact, this agreement drove Germany into a corner and predetermined the movement of Europe towards the Second World War. Speaking at the Paris Peace Conference on the peace treaty with Hungary, the then Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR A. Ya. Vyshinsky explained the essence of the Soviet reparation policy: “The Soviet government is consistently pursuing a line of reparation policy, which is to proceed from real plans so as not to strangle Hungary, so as not to cut off the roots of its economic recovery, but, on the contrary, to facilitate the possibility of its economic revival , to make it easier for her to get back on her feet, to make it easier for her to enter the common family of the United Nations and participate in the economic revival of Europe.”

The Soviet Union also applied a gentle approach to other countries that fought on the side of Germany. Thus, the peace treaty with Italy imposes on the latter the obligation to pay reparations to the Soviet Union in the amount of $100 million, which amounted to no more than 4-5% of the direct damage caused to the Soviet Union.

The principle of a gentle approach to determining the volume of reparations was supplemented by another important principle of Soviet policy - the preferential repayment of reparation obligations products of current production. This principle was formulated taking into account the lessons of the First World War. Let us recall that the reparation obligations imposed on Germany after the First World War were exclusively monetary, and in foreign currency. As a result, Germany had to develop those industries that were focused not on saturating the domestic market with necessary goods, but on exports that provided the necessary currency. In addition, Germany was forced to apply for loans to pay the next tranches of reparations, which drove it into debt bondage. The Soviet Union did not want this to happen again. V. M. Molotov at a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers on December 12, 1947, he explained the Soviet position: “No current reparations supplies are made from the western zones, but industry in the Anglo-American united zone reaches only 35 percent of the 1938 level. Current reparations supplies are made from the Soviet zone in Germany supplies, and industry here has already reached 52 percent of the 1938 level. Thus, the industrial index of the Soviet zone, although there are more difficult conditions for industrial restoration, is one and a half times higher than the industrial index of the Anglo-American zone.”

At the Yalta Conference, the principle of the non-monetary nature of reparations was agreed upon by the leaders of the USSR, USA, and Great Britain. At the Potsdam Conference, the Anglo-American allies once again confirmed it. And starting in 1946, they began to actively torpedo it. However, they also torpedoed other agreements related to reparations. Thus, even at the Potsdam Conference, the allies of the USSR agreed that Germany’s reparation obligations would be partially covered by the supply of products and the dismantling of equipment in the Western occupation zones. However, the Allies created obstacles for the Soviet side in receiving goods and equipment from the Western occupation zones (only a few percent of the planned volume was received).

Started by the West in 1946 cold war against the USSR led to the fact that a unified allied mechanism for collecting reparations and recording them was not created. And with the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany in the western occupation zones in 1949, the possibility of the Soviet Union receiving reparations from the western part of Germany finally disappeared.

The specific figure for reparations imposed on Germany following the Second World War did not appear anywhere else after the Yalta Conference. This question still remains quite obscure. Germany's general reparation obligations were not documented. It was not possible to create an effective centralized mechanism for collecting reparations and recording the fulfillment of reparation obligations by Germany. The victorious countries satisfied their reparation claims at the expense of Germany unilaterally.

Germany itself, judging by the statements of its officials, does not know exactly how much reparations it has paid. The Soviet Union preferred to receive reparations not in cash, but in kind. According to a Russian historian Mikhail Semiryagi, from March 1945, within one year, the highest authorities of the USSR made almost a thousand decisions related to the dismantling of 4389 enterprises from Germany, Austria, Hungary and others European countries. Plus, about a thousand more factories were transported to the Union from Manchuria and even Korea. The numbers are impressive. However, everything is assessed in comparison. Nazi invaders destroyed 32 thousand in the USSR industrial enterprises. That is, the number of enterprises dismantled by the Soviet Union in Germany, Austria and Hungary did not exceed 14% of what was destroyed in the USSR. According to the then chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee Nikolai Voznesensky, due to the supply of captured equipment from Germany, only 0.6% of the direct damage to the Soviet Union was covered.

Some data is contained in German documents. Thus, according to the information of the Ministry of Finance of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Federal Ministry of Internal German Relations, withdrawals from the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR before 1953 amounted to 66.4 billion marks, or $15.8 billion. According to German experts, this is equivalent to 400 billion modern dollars. Seizures were made both in kind and in cash. The main positions of reparation movements from Germany to the USSR were the following (billion marks): supplies of products of current production of German enterprises - 34.70; cash payments in various currencies (including occupation marks) - 15.0.

In 1945-1946. This form of reparations was quite widely used, such as dismantling the equipment of German enterprises and sending it to the USSR. In March 1945, they created in Moscow Special Committee (SC) State Committee defense of the USSR, who coordinated all activities to dismantle military-industrial enterprises in the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany. From March 1945 to March 1946, decisions were made to dismantle more than 4,000 industrial enterprises: 2,885 from Germany, 1,137 from German enterprises in Poland, 206 from Austria, 11 from Hungary, 54 from Czechoslovakia. The dismantling of major equipment was carried out at 3,474 sites, 1,118,000 pieces of equipment were seized: metal-cutting machines 339,000 pieces, presses and hammers 44,000 pieces and electric motors 202,000 pieces. Of the purely military factories in the Soviet zone, 67 were dismantled, 170 were destroyed, and converted to produce civilian products 8 .

However, the dismantling of equipment led to the cessation of production in the eastern part of Germany and an increase in unemployment, so by the beginning of 1947 this form of reparations was curtailed. Instead, on the basis of 119 large enterprises in the eastern sector of the occupation, 31 joint-stock companies with Soviet participation were created. In 1950 they accounted for 22% of the industrial production of the GDR. In 1954, all joint stock companies with Soviet participation were transferred free of charge to the German Democratic Republic. This was the end of the history of World War II reparations.

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The author of this book, printed in a very small edition and becoming a bibliographic rarity almost immediately after its publication in Moscow, is military historian, professor, full member of the Academy of Military Sciences Mikhail Ivanovich Semiryaga. During the war, he served in the 27th Guards Rifle Division, then in SVAG - the Soviet Military Administration in Germany. When perestroika began, Semiryaga got the opportunity to work in previously closed archives and used this opportunity very well. He was the first in Russia to publish the notorious secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and many other documents, in particular, documents about the execution of Polish officers in Katyn in 1940.

Personal experience and acquaintance with previously inaccessible archival sources telling about the activities of the Soviet military administration in post-war Germany, allowed Mikhail Semiryaga to write a book full of interesting and rare information called “How We Ruled Germany.” The author examines in detail a variety of aspects of the activities of the Soviet administration that ruled occupied East Germany: political, economic, ideological, cultural, the work of the NKVD and captured brigades, the nationalization of industrial enterprises and the integration of former Nazis... One of the most interesting aspects is reparations. What was this all about? What were the reparations? What exactly and how much did the Soviet Union receive?

Is 10 billion dollars a lot or a little?

Post-war reparations, Mikhail Semiryaga writes in his book, were supposed to serve two purposes: the destruction of Germany’s military-industrial potential and partial compensation for the damage caused by the Nazis to the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. The size of reparations was discussed at the Yalta Conference in March 1945. And although neither England nor later the United States agreed with all the demands made by the Soviet Union, nevertheless, it was decided that half of all future reparations would be received from Germany by the USSR and Poland. This half was valued at $10 billion. It is unclear what calculation was used here. Only direct damage to the USSR, according to Soviet experts, amounted to 679 billion rubles during the war years. True, the ruble was an inconvertible currency and the real exchange rate of the dollar is very difficult to establish, but it is still much more than 10 billion dollars.

On the other hand, as data that remained secret until recently show, in practice the size of reparations that the Soviet Union ultimately received from Germany significantly exceeded the amount negotiated with the Western allies. Trophy teams sent from Germany to the USSR more than two and a half thousand dismantled industrial enterprises, over two million heads of cattle, almost one hundred thousand wagons with building materials, furniture, things, various household equipment, about three million pairs of shoes, half a million radios, 60 thousand only grand pianos and upright pianos and much, much more.

While they were still walking fighting, special army units were engaged in collecting trophies. But they were unable to dismantle large enterprises. Therefore, after the capitulation, a special institute of “dismantlers” was created, and specialists from the relevant industries were involved. Later, as the author of the book says, not only every People's Commissariat of industrial profile, but also many large Soviet enterprises, as well as various institutions that had nothing to do with industry, sent their own “dismantlers” to Germany. For example, the State Committee for Physical Education and Sports instructed its teams to dismantle swimming pools. Even Lenin Library sent her workers to Germany to collect and transport books and manuscripts to the USSR.

Economic inexpediency

At first, Mikhail Semiryaga emphasizes, the “dismantlers” did not think too much about the economic feasibility of their work. He gives the example of the Carl Zeiss plant in Jena. At first it was decided to dismantle the plant completely. SVAG workers were against it. But General Dobrovolsky, who then commanded the plant, assured Moscow that the plant, completely dismantled and sent to the USSR, would be operating there with a million-dollar profit within a year. And what happened? The equipment installed in the USSR led to a deficit of 50 million rubles, while the “half-dead”, as Semiryagi put it, Carl Zeiss workshops in Jena, in which only part of the equipment remained, and even that was outdated, produced products worth 100 million rubles

Note that a significant part of these products also went to the Soviet Union, because reparations also included supplies from current production. According to some German studies, the dismantling of even entire factories only played a role minor role compared with supplies of current products and income from Soviet joint-stock and trading companies. German researchers calculated, for example, that in 1947, a quarter of all products produced in the Soviet zone of occupation went to the USSR as reparations.

By the way, the Soviet Union received reparations not only from East Germany. From the western zones it was planned to transfer almost three hundred factories to the USSR and Poland. And although in the atmosphere of the outbreak of the Cold War, the Western occupation authorities did their best to slow down this process, out of 39 especially valuable factories located in the western zone and intended for reparations to the Soviet Union, thirty were completely dismantled by the spring of 1948.

Particularly noteworthy are such sources of reparation payments as the Soviet state joint-stock companies and Soviet trading companies created in East Germany. These are, in essence, joint ventures that largely worked for the USSR. Many of them were led by Soviet general directors. This form made it possible to simultaneously withdraw reparations and solve the employment problem in East Germany. After all, when entire enterprises were dismantled and taken away, many Germans were left without work. To imagine the scale of the Soviet activities joint stock companies(SAO) in East Germany, the following figures can be cited. In 1950, the share of CAO in the industrial production of the GDR was more than 22 percent, and in some industries - in energy, electronics and especially chemical industry– she was even much taller.

German Dneproges?

How significant were reparations for Soviet industry? Mikhail Semiryaga emphasizes that, for example, rapid growth equipment stock in the USSR was primarily due to reparations from Germany. And what about the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Station and other power plants restored in record time? Without in any way belittling the importance of the labor heroism of the people who worked at these facilities, the author of the book recalls that almost one hundred dismantled power plants with a total capacity of 4 million kilowatts were taken from Germany to the USSR. Entire factories were also exported, producing products that were not produced at all in the Soviet Union: perlon, artificial silk, synthetic rubber.

V-2 rocket

But the Soviet Union needed not only German products and German industrial equipment, not only, so to speak, “material” compensation for damage. The Soviet economy, weakened and partially ruined during the years of war and occupation, also needed material and technical personnel, specialists, emphasizes Mikhail Semiryaga. About two hundred technical bureaus and fifty experimental workshops and laboratories were created in the Soviet zone of Germany. Thousands of German scientists, engineers, and technicians worked there. Special attention was given to specialists in the military field.

True, the Western allies were clearly more fortunate here: yesterday’s Nazi designers and scientists came to them more willingly. Suffice it to recall the creator of the V-2, Wernher von Braun, who worked in the space field in the United States. It was he who became the chief designer of the launch vehicle that delivered American astronauts to the Moon. But the Germans also worked in the Soviet Union, involved in the creation of V-Vs, Messerschmitts, and chemical warfare agents...

By 1948, about 200 thousand German specialists, along with their families, were deported to the USSR. The first was a group of nuclear scientists, followed by rocket scientists and chemists. Those who were involved in the creation of the Soviet nuclear weapons, worked mainly in the Moscow region, the Urals and Sukhumi, chemists - in Leningrad, aircraft and rocket scientists - on Gorodomlya Island (Lake Seliger) and in Podlipki near Moscow, optics specialists - in Leningrad, Moscow and Kyiv.

In the financial world, occasional surfacings of the Loch Ness monsters, which everyone forgot about decades ago, occur. For example, this Sunday, united Germany completed the payment of reparations (or rather debts for servicing reparations) following the results of the First World War. 96 years have passed since the start of the war, and 91 years have passed since the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

This question has haunted the minds of hundreds of politicians and millions of voters in Europe and North America almost the entire interwar period. The ideologists of reparations (and the slogan “The Germans will pay for everything”) were the titans of post-war politics Clemenceau and Lloyd George. Due to disagreement with the exorbitant reparations imposed on Germany, John Maynard Keynes resigned from the British Treasury. His brilliant pamphlet on the financial disaster awaiting the losers and the losses from inevitable default awaiting the winners became a bestseller and made him known and respected beyond academic circles long before his publication. General theory employment of interest and money." Hitler and the Nazi Party marched into the Reichstag in protest against the intolerable debt burden imposed on the country. The American banker Dawes, who resolved the issue of reparations in 1923-1924, became Vice President of the United States. Strictly speaking, the Versailles reparations themselves were a global financial experiment that lasted nine decades.

Reparations in 1919 were a financial innovation - material compensation of the state for damages caused by the aggressive war it unleashed, introduced into international law. The concept of reparations was a by-product of the terms of a future world declared back in 1916 by American mediators “without annexations (transfer of territories to the victors) and indemnities (fines imposed on the vanquished, regardless of whose initiative the war began).” Since the treaty was dictated by the victors, and the vanquished were completely demoralized, reparations were imposed on Germany in the amount of 269 billion gold marks - the equivalent of approximately 100,000 tons of gold (at today's price - about $4 trillion, or about a third of the national debt, much larger in all respects modern USA). The amount of debt was twice Germany's GDP, and annual payments exceeded its trade surplus. Germany offered a payment of 50 billion marks in gold and goods - mainly through the transfer of German assets to the victorious countries and gradual payments over 15 years. According to Keynes (confirmed by subsequent events), the demands on Germany exceeded its ability to pay by about 4 times.

The responsibility to pay reparations was assigned to the new German government, which did it without enthusiasm, shirking by any means necessary. The economic crisis provided sufficient grounds for this. Germany found itself unable to service its debt, largely in the form of government bonds of the country's new government, by 1922. Domestic debt was devalued by hyperinflation (“Black Obelisk” by Remarque is a wonderful description of the situation from the inside, Hemingway’s reports - as it was seen from the outside), and the problems of the country’s external debt, i.e. reparations, became international.

Already in November, the International Reparations Commission decided to create an international committee of experts chaired by the American tycoon Charles Dawes. The Dawes Plan established that in 1924 Germany would pay reparations in the amount of 1 billion new “gold marks”. An important component of the Dawes Plan was an initial loan of 800 million gold marks. Until 1929, private and sovereign loans amounting to 21 billion marks came mainly from the United States to Germany. In fact, during the first year of implementation of the Dawes Plan, Germany had to pay only 200 million gold marks on its own. Reparations were paid from directly transferred customs and tax revenues, as well as from interest on government loans to German companies. To ensure payments from the Reichsbank and Reichsbank railways were placed under international control. In fact, international control was nominal, but stabilization loans were quite real.

The financial crisis of 1929-1930 led Germany to 40% unemployment, a full-fledged banking crisis and another default on reparation payments. And the American bankers found new plan- Jung's plan. It provided for a slight reduction in the size of annual payments (on average to 2 billion marks), stretching them until 1989, turning two-thirds of annual payments into contingent and deferred liabilities, abolishing the reparations tax on industry and reducing transport taxes, as well as the liquidation of foreign control bodies. But for German nationalists, including the fringe Adolf Hitler, it was still too much. The nationalists secured a referendum to pass the Freedom Law, which would prohibit German officials from paying their debts. The referendum failed, but Hitler became famous and was elected to the Reichstag in the next elections. When he became chancellor in 1932, he unilaterally refused to pay reparations and the associated debts. By the way, the total volume of payments by this time amounted to about 51 billion marks, that is, the amount paid was approximately equal to the German proposal for payments in 1918.

The victors after World War II were much smarter, and the occupation of Germany was complete. All compensation was taken in kind whenever possible - industrial equipment, manufactured goods, carriages, works of art. It was obvious that the debts, stretched over decades, would never be paid. But there were overdue payments on the obligations of 1919. They were renewed by the 1953 London Treaty. At the same time, part of the amount was postponed until an extremely unlikely event at that time: payments were to resume only when - and if - Germany was united. In 1990, this part of the obligations became payable over a twenty-year period, ending last Sunday. By the way, according to the Treaty of Versailles, Russia was also among the recipients of reparations, but in 1922 Soviet Russia abandoned them in exchange for recognition of the legality of the nationalization of German property in 1914 by the tsarist government and later confiscations under Soviet rule.

The sad financial story that began with gunfire in Sarajevo in June 1914 and ended last week leads to several conclusions. Firstly, fairness in interstate settlements is a very conditional thing and highly dependent on current policies. Secondly, greed and the desire to ruin the vanquished only tie his fate more closely with the winners, and in the end it is they who pay. Third, politicians should listen to their experts - although not all of them are Keynes; The country's ability to pay its debt must be more important than the desire to make zeros on mythical future payment receipts. Fourth, as the movie dad Muller said, “You can’t trust anyone” - the payment for the gold bonds of 1924 took place 86 years later and in electronic euros. Long-term obligations are an extremely unreliable thing: the wise Bismarck, who in 1871 assigned defeated France an indemnity of approximately 13% of GDP, payable over three years, understood well that the speed of payments is much more important than the amount.

Contribution is a word that has its roots in Latin language. It is translated as “collection” or “payments” that are imposed by the victorious state on the defeated side. International law prohibits such extortions. But the payment of indemnity occurs even now under the guise of other various penalties.

How did the indemnity come about?

Since ancient times, there has been a tradition that the winner takes his property from the vanquished. Thus, knights participating in tournaments did not miss the opportunity to appropriate armor, money or the horse of a slain opponent. It was legal, not disputed or condemned.

Historians claim that Alexander Suvorov, after the capture of Izmail, allowed his soldiers to rob whatever they wanted for three days. The same thing happened with the city of Ochakov, captured by Potemkin. And history knows a huge number of similar facts during the existence of mankind.

Conquered cities, villages or communities could independently “voluntarily” pay tribute in order to save themselves from defeat and ruin.

Of course, the roots of this phenomenon go deep into antiquity. Then the tribes fought, taking food, skins, jewelry and other valuables of that time from their rivals.

In 1917, the “Decree on Peace” appeared, which called for the abandonment of indemnities.

Napoleon and indemnity

Contribution is an enrichment opportunity for generals and commanders during war. After the liberation of Italy from Austrian oppression, gold, paintings, and livestock were exported from the country in huge quantities. Bonaparte thus helped his generals become millionaires. A huge amount of these riches now serve as valuable exhibits in French museums. At the same time, Italy does not claim the return of illegally exported wealth from 1796 to 1812. It is surprising that previously erected monuments to Napoleon still stand in the country. Squares and streets are named in his honor.

Contribution to Germany

The First and Second World Wars turned into a complete collapse for Germany. The countries that entered the Entente military-political bloc literally completely plundered the defeated country. It was the greatest robbery in the entire history of mankind.

Germany paid for the crimes committed with coal, steel, food, military and merchant fleet. Everything that was possible was confiscated and exported from the country. The Treaty of Versailles determined that Germany's indemnity would amount to 269 billion gold marks. In this case, this payment is very similar to reparation. It is this form of compensation that involves payment to the winning country defeated country, if it started hostilities and is found to be the guilty party. Contribution is a direct violation of the law.

Contribution in the modern world

IN modern world indemnity is a phenomenon that is considered unacceptable. A ban has been introduced on such extortions. The victors not only wanted to reimburse the expenses incurred in connection with the war, they wanted to cover absolutely all their expenses. Modern law says that if the occupiers want anything from the property of civilians, they must offer payment or some kind of reward. Despite this, indemnity continues to exist in the modern world. It looks like penalties allowed by modern international law. This is allowed in the following forms:

a) in return for the taxes that the population paid to their government in peacetime;

b) in return for requisition, or supplying the troops with necessary items in kind;

c) in the form of a fine for the crime committed (instead of criminal punishment).

There is such a type of substantive liability as restitution. In this case, the aggressor state undertakes to fully restore intangible and tangible assets. This payment does not imply any benefit. This is used very rarely, since it is often impossible to restore property. Most often, restitution was used as one of the methods of compensation within the framework of a reparation agreement. They are reflected in the Versailles Peace Treaty, the Paris Peace Treaty, the Treaty with Bulgaria and in other documents.

And another form of responsibility is restoration, which provides for the complete restoration by the violating country of the status of the captured or occupied territory, which was established before it committed illegal actions.

General and different in indemnity and reparation

Overall, both of these phenomena have more similarities than differences. In both cases, one state takes material assets from another in various forms: money or material goods. It's a tribute of sorts. Collections are made by the winning country, which also combines these payments.

The difference between indemnity and reparations is the fact that in case of victory, the country that was attacked receives compensation for the damage caused. It no longer looks like extortion, tribute or plunder. Reparation is possible only if the victim of aggression wins. That is, it occurs after the end of the war, and indemnity can occur during and after it.

Reparations could be in the form of a complete ban on using their material resources the violating state. Such measures are called “emergency”.

The largest number of payments occurred, of course, after the First and Second World Wars.

The United States is an exception. They were the ones who had to pay compensation to Japan, despite their victory.

Contribution is a direct violation of the law.

Countries that paid reparations

Germany leads the list of countries that were required to pay compensation. Great Britain, Greece, the USA, France, Israel, Yugoslavia, the USSR and other countries made claims against it.

Japan lost 42% of its national wealth due to reparations.

Italy, as an ally of Germany, carried out compensation for Yugoslavia, Greece, the USSR, Ethiopia and Albania.

Finland completely repaid its debts in 1952, which is a unique case. Although she later stated that the indemnity to Russia, which was fully paid, should be returned.

Hungary paid $300 million to the USSR and Yugoslavia. Romania had to pay the same amount.

Bulgaria had to compensate $70 million to Greece and Yugoslavia.

Germany is still paying "damages" to Israel and "reparations" to the US, but how long will they last? And in what size?

Few people know that Germany will be paying reparations for the First (!) before 2020. world war. Although the issue of Germany’s guilt for instigating the war still remains controversial, Germany, as the party that lost (did not start!) the war, is obliged to pay until 2020. At first, the forced Treaty of Versailles did not define the exact demands of reparations. They were established only later by a certain commission in the amount of a thousand billion marks.

Until 1924, another 25 conferences on reparations followed. Finally, the Dawes Plan set the amount at 132 billion marks, and in 1929 the Young Treaty lowered the amount to 37 billion marks, which had to be paid before 1988. However, the payments ended with the World Economic Crisis, and later with National Socialism, which without Versailles would hardly have become what it became. But isn't history repeating itself?
The victorious countries of World War II annulled the Young Treaty and established reparation obligations total amount 50 billion dollars (in 1949), which West and East Germans had to pay equally, which became a much heavier burden for East Germany than for West Germany. However, while in the Soviet occupation zone, and later in the GDR, the Soviet Union dismantled everything that was not firmly fixed, West German war debts were paid with borrowed money, i.e. turned into securities.

In 1953, the then West German government concluded an agreement with the victorious countries, according to which annual reparation demands should be paid only by the united Germany, which amounted to the so-called Shadow Quota, since it was in the shadow of the then division of Germany. However, in 1990, the Shadow Quota suddenly emerged from the shadows as suddenly payable securities. Century-long reparations valid and abolished by 2020, as Herbert Rothgengel’s poster says: “You must work as a laborer to the third generation.” (The famous poster from 1929, you can see here: http://www.dhm.de/lemo/objekte/pict/p74-3797/index.html - approx. transl.).

But even for World War II, Germany apparently hasn’t paid enough yet. Although in May 2001 the Bundestag decided to provide legal guarantees and unblock the payment of reparations to forced laborers, Stuart Eizenstat, the American negotiator for reparations for forced laborers of the Third Reich, suddenly raised the topic of reparations payments. Only forced labor, medical experiments and “arization” of property (confiscation of the property of “racially inferior” citizens of the Third Reich in favor of the “Aryans” - approx. transl.) may be considered closed in the future.

The “topic of reparations,” as was said, is not touched upon by the treaty. Yes, this is a Holocaust business. This is not surprising, because Germany to this day, almost a century after the Second World War, does not have a peace treaty, and reparations under international law are established only after the conclusion of peace. Thus, the payments with which Germany was actually imposed already under the Potsdam Agreement of February 1945, amounting to no less than 57 billion marks before 1954, of which 40% to Israel, were made in violation international law, and the value of dismantled facilities and lost eastern provinces has never been accurately estimated, if it is even possible to do so.

I don’t know whether it’s even possible to come to a “fair” decision. And, in fact, I don’t want to know this, because I don’t want to weigh Auschwitz against Silesia or the GDR against the Federal Republic of Germany. No, what is scandalous is that later generations, who are innocent by virtue of their later birth, are forced to make payments that are in the nature of punishment. This is a violation of the principle of the rule of law! To this I can add that my ancestors lived in Croatia, and I should study genealogy.

As a result, it may turn out that one of them was deported, killed or otherwise maimed by the Roman emperor Diocletian (245-313, reigned from 284 to 305), since in his old age his throne stood in Salona, ​​now Split, on the Dalmatian coast. And if I find anything like this, I will demand compensation from the Italian State as successor state Ancient Rome. Let's see how many annual growth has accumulated in 1700 years.
http://perevodika.ru/articles/8836.html

On January 27, 2010 (12 Shevat 5770), the President of Israel, Shimon Peres, gave a speech in Hebrew to members of the German parliament and government regarding International Day Holocaust memory.

Among the holders of the status of Holocaust victims, the most privileged are those from Germany and Austria, who receive benefits from the German government depending on the financial situation of their family before the start of the war.

Those who remained in this territory until the end of 1946 are paid by Germany; those who left after January 1, 1947 are paid by Israel. (from http://mnenia.zahav.ru/ArticlePage.aspx?articleID=3998). The benefit for people from other countries who repatriated before 1953 is significantly less, and for those who arrived after 1953 it is even less. These categories can qualify for bonuses based on health conditions, but they have to prove that certain illnesses were a consequence of surviving the Holocaust.
The problem is that the number of benefit recipients has almost doubled due to the expansion of the definition of “Holocaust survivor.” It now includes people who were in the territories occupied by the Nazis or who fled from the occupation. Thus, the list of “refugees” (a new category of law) includes people from the countries of North Africa and the former USSR.
The government allocated 130 million shekels in 2008 to increase benefits, which should rise to 300 million by 2011. On a state scale, this amount is significant, but when calculated for all those in need, it is ridiculous. The response to this initiative of the authorities was the “March of the Living”, organized by the “Nitsulei Shoah”, another public scandal and a storm of political speculation raised around it.

Israel received 90 billion marks or approximately 60 billion dollars from Germany “for the Holocaust.” In addition, the Israeli lobby, having occupied the United States, withdraws from them $600 in reparations for each Israeli soul, and not every 10 years, but every year.

Summarizing all the reparations data for the Second World War, it is not difficult to calculate that we are talking about the amount exceeding 1.2 trillion. (1,200,000,000,000) dollars, of which most left " citizens entitled to Israeli citizenship” or “Israel itself.”

It is also interesting to compare the figures and compare the compensation paid to the USSR and Israel (adding payments to “displaced persons”)... The Holocaust really became