Repressed, Remitted, Rejected: German Reparations Debts to Poland and Greece 9781800732582

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Repressed, Remitted, Rejected

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

Karl Heinz Roth in association with Hartmut Rübner Translated by Ben Lewis

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

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

Contents

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

Tables

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

Preface to the English Edition

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 published 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 problem, 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 payments 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 institutions 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 reparations, which have now been going on for over seventy years and remain unresolved 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 collection of documents to include several key texts from Poland and the former Soviet Union, which help to sharpen our view of the disputes over compensation 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 devastation 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 Englishand 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.

Acknowledgements

We always hoped to arrange for an English-language edition of this book. Germany’s unpaid reparations debts from the Second World War is an international problem and it is thus crucial to publish our study in the lingua franca of today’s world. English is, moreover, spoken throughout the whole of modern Europe, meaning that this publication can be read by those affected by, or interested in, the reparations question in all those countries of continental Europe that suffered under German occupation. Our wish for an English edition has now come true, and we are very grateful to all those who made this possible. Our main thanks go to the Stiftung für Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts and to Berghahn Books. The board of the Stiftung für Sozialgeschichte (Angelika Ebbinghaus and Marcel van der Linden) has supported our project in every possible way. It has provided us with the necessary funds to conduct our archival research, to expand our research apparatus further and to fund the translation of our study into English. What is more, the foundation released its employee Malte Heuer so that he could dedicate himself to proofreading the study and to resolving the technical issues involved in expanding our historical documentation. We are equally grateful to Marion Berghahn and Chris Chappell at Berghahn Books for including the updated version of our study in their programme, and for overseeing the completion of the English edition. We are also greatly indebted to the translator, Ben Lewis. In him we have found a most knowledgeable and experienced native speaker who has mastered the translation of a difficult text that hovers between the disciplines of history, international law, sociology, political science and economic statistics. In producing this edition, then, we have enjoyed the privilege of optimal working conditions, enabling us to revise, update and expand the original German publication. Various individuals, discussion groups and institutions have contributed to our success. Without their help, it would hardly have been possible to revisit the multifaceted question of the reparations problem, to arrive at an appropriate assessment of it in all its complexity and, on that basis, to overcome the gaps and shortcomings of the first edition.

xii • Acknowledgements

We owe our thanks to Sebastian Gerhardt for pointing out substantial deficiencies in our discussion of the destruction caused by the Germans in the Soviet Union and Poland, and its implications for the reparation question. Eberhard Rondholz has repeatedly made us aware of flaws in our presentation of the German–Greek compensation disputes, and brought about a number of corrections. Triantafillia Kostopoulou has tirelessly supplied us with the latest papers from the corridors of power, the think tanks and the publication media of the policymakers in Athens and Berlin. The analysis bureau of the Polish parliament (Sejm) and the Western Institute in Poznań also provided us with important materials and information that familiarized us with the current reparations discourse in Poland. Of great importance to us also were those in the discussion forums – including specialist legal associations and experts from research institutes – to whom we presented our interim results and conclusions. In addition, Magdalena Bainczyk, Frank Brendle, Angelika Ebbinghaus, Constantin Goschler, Thomas Kuczynski, Stephan Lehnstaedt, Dimitris Psaras, Aris Radiopoulos, Werner Röhr, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, Martin Sabrow, Martin Seckendorf, Christoph SchminckGustavus, Christina Stamouli, Aristomenis Syngelakis and Stanisław Żerko have either answered our specific questions, or pointed us to important additional sources of information. We are, of course, solely responsible both for the content of our study and for the conclusions that we have drawn in our engagement with the reparations issue. But without the support of these institutional and personal networks it would not have been possible to round off our earlier preliminary publications with a final synthesis of our findings.

Introduction

Methodological and Historical Aspects of the Reparations Problem

Reparations in International Law What are reparations? This question is fundamental to our study and is by no means easy to answer. After studying the historical sources and the relevant specialist literature, we would like to propose a definition that does justice to this multifaceted and complex problem, and that encompasses as many of its components as possible: reparations are compensation payments that must be made for violations of the law of war and of international humanitarian law. They are the liability equivalent of international criminal law, and should compensate for the material and humanitarian consequences of wars of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity and human rights violations, such as those that occur in wars, civil wars and other acts of excessive violence.1 Wherever it is underpinned by customary international law, the entitlement to reparations is a universal one. This entitlement takes account of the fact that, in the past century, the violence conducted between and within states has increased enormously, both in extent and intensity. The entitlement is no longer a matter of victorious nations calling on those nations they have defeated to settle a more or less arbitrarily fixed sum of the costs incurred during the conflict, as was the case after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.2 Today, victorious and defeated nations alike must be

2  •  Repressed, Remitted, Rejected

subjected to the universal entitlement to reparations, insofar as they have violated international humanitarian law. Reparations come in the form of the transfer of money and assets, such as deliveries from current production, the provision of work and services, and one-off transfers of physical capital (the means of transport, industrial plants, the cession of territories etc.). From the point of view of political economy, what this amounts to is the transfer of purchasing power, commodities and capital from one economy to another or, indeed, other economies. When it comes to damages that have occurred within a single economy, funds from the state budget will be allocated to the social group that is to be compensated. The legal forms of value transfer are rather diverse. Transfers usually occur within the framework of bi- or multilateral treaties overseen by appropriate legal procedures. But they can also result from lengthy arbitration hearings established on the basis of these treaties. Not infrequently, such agreements are preceded by individual or collective private legal action in domestic and foreign courts, which are then summarily settled with the conclusion of the treaty. As a rule, governments – or authorities subordinate to them – act as the debtors in these treaties and legal procedures, whereas their sovereign contracting parties assume the role of creditors: either themselves or as trustees of the injured parties. They then transfer the assigned assets to their budgets or redistribute them to the injured parties. This practice, developed during the 1950s, has gradually been refined through the involvement of professional mediators – commissions of experts, funds, foundations and so on.3 In this way, an increasing personal and institutional distance has been established between the debtors and the creditors. The original severity of confronting the crimes against international law that gave rise to reparations demands is increasingly being displaced by the communicative structures of the culture of remembrance relating to these crimes. What we have provided thus far is an initial conceptual approximation of the concept of reparations, based on our reading of the source material and a synopsis of the most significant manuals, treaties and expert commentary.4 This conceptualisation can only serve as a way of helping to finding our way in the field. The phenomena that our conceptualisation strives to help us understand are extremely complex, controversial and contradictory. On no other terrain of international relations or capital movements have such fierce terminological struggles been fought out as over the issue of reparations. Even the concept of reparations itself has time and again either been controversial or even frowned upon. In the official German translation of the Treaty of Versailles, for example, the term ‘reparations’ was continually translated as ‘compensation’;5 and then, in the ideological struggles of the 1920s, it advanced to the status of a central

Introduction • 3

cipher that shaped the frontlines of German politics. The current trend, by contrast, is towards viewing reparations – now trivialised as ‘compensation’ – for the victims of National Socialism, the crimes committed during the Nazi occupations and the Holocaust as separate phenomena, since the complex problem of reparations as a whole is considered to be ‘settled’ and should thus disappear from public discourse.6 Specific material interests are behind these terminological disputes and interpretative paradigms. These interests are shifting the terrain of compensation claims, anchored in international law, resulting from wars of aggression, war crimes and genocide, deportation into forced labour, predatory economic acts of plundering and expropriation, and domestic human rights violations. The issue has thus become a Pandora’s box. Those who open this box do so at great risk and immediately find themselves in a rapidly expanding problem area that is shaking up our fundamental conceptual systems, and involves tackling the taboos of the catastrophic twentieth century. At the same time, however, there is a growing realisation that a key problem lies hidden in this chaos – a problem that can only be detected and investigated by an interdisciplinary approach. Confronting the reparations problem is time-consuming, disillusioning and frightening. Those wishing to emerge from it to some extent unscathed are well advised to entrust themselves to the tried and tested methodology of historical synthesis. To solve the reparations problem, we will restrict it to four conceptual stages. First, we will compile the facts listed in international humanitarian law that constitute an entitlement to reparations. From this, we will proceed one step further to present in detail the various components that comprise the concept of reparations in its entirety. Then, using the example of the Treaty of Versailles, we will turn to the historical experiences and prejudices that shaped the mentality of the responsible historical actors during the Second World War and in the decades of reconstruction that followed it. Finally, we will outline this historical introduction’s field of tension – an integrative analysis of the issue of reparations that will begin with the case of Greece following the end of the war. To begin with, let us look at the main violations of international humanitarian law which, alongside the criminal outcomes of these cases, can allow us to establish a universal entitlement to reparations. In doing so, we will base ourselves on the legal-historical framework that initially proceeded from the international law of war, but then broke apart the schema of distinguishing between victors and conquerors in that law, and eventually led to the inclusion of human rights violations within states in the canon of reparation claims. Legally, the most important event justifying an entitlement to reparations is the initiation of a war of aggression.7 Wars of aggression have been

4  •  Repressed, Remitted, Rejected

outlawed since 1928, when the Kellogg–Briand Pact was agreed and ratified by numerous nations – Germany included. In 1945, the tribunal in the Nuremberg Trial of Major War Criminals included this ban in its statutes and used it to develop the charge of ‘crimes against the peace’. An expanded version of this ban on wars of aggression can also be found in the Charter of the United Nations. From this point on, wars can only be conducted for self-defence or to enforce sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council. These provisions, however, do not include acts of military aggression that fall short of outright war. Nor do they account for interventions made by other states to support a particular group within civil wars in other countries. The result of this is that the spectrum of ‘unequal’ wars between the North and the South and the South and the North, including ‘proxy wars’, continues to expand. This state of affairs is, however, irrelevant to a discussion of reparation claims resulting from the Second World War. Germany and its allies bear sole responsibility for the wars of aggression that were initially regional in nature but then escalated into world war. The second systematic violation of international humanitarian law is also derived from the law of war. It comprises the provisions to limit the powers of occupying powers that were set out in the fourth section of the Hague Peace Accords in 1899 and 1907 (the so-called Hague Convention on Land Warfare).8 According to this convention, the occupying force must respect the integrity of the population within the occupied area, and is responsible for supplying it with sufficient food provisions. Reprisals against, or collective punishment of, the civilian population is prohibited. Private, communal, cultural and non-military state property are sacrosanct. The occupying power is nonetheless allowed to draw on the adult male civilian population to perform work and services within the occupied territory. However, deportations to other countries – including to the country responsible for the occupation – are prohibited. Taxes and contributions may also be imposed in order to cover the costs of running the occupation and of supplying the occupying troops. The Hague Rules of Land Warfare thus operate within a significant grey area, and leave considerable room for interpretation. This ambiguity was exploited as long ago as the First World War – with devastating consequences. In the course of our overview we will see how, in the first phase of the Second World War, the Germans expanded upon this room for interpretation even further. Moreover, we will establish how, in their ruthless exploitation of the occupied territories for the purposes of ‘Total War’ after 1941, the Germans completely abolished the Hague Rules of Land Warfare, which, despite everything, did impose restrictions on occupying forces. A series of international agreements concluded since the 1920s under the aegis of the International Committee of the Red Cross protect both the right

Introduction • 5

to exist and the human rights of refugees, prisoners of war and the civilian population as a whole in the event of war.9 These ‘Geneva Agreements’ continuously supplemented and expanded upon the provisions of the Hague Land Warfare Regulations. We can only present the most important of these provisions here. Deportations and resettlements are prohibited in principle, hostage-taking and the killing of hostages strictly forbidden, as are torture, rape and other forms of ill-treatment and humiliation. Prisoners of war and others who have been detained must be sufficiently accommodated and provided for, and treated humanely. Women and children are to be placed under special protection. Partisans are to be granted the status of combatants insofar as they: belong to a formation of the resistance movement, can be recognised as such, and carry their weapons openly. In the event of their capture, they are to be treated as prisoners of war. After the end of the Second World War and with the formation of the United Nations, the protective measures of international law that had previously applied to the law of war were systematically expanded upon.10 This was intended to prevent a repetition of the injustices under the occupation and the crimes against humanity committed by the fascist Axis powers. A series of international agreements were concluded which transformed the existing international law of war into international humanitarian law by incorporating violations of human rights within states into its canon. The cornerstones of this process are the London Statutes of the International Military Tribunal of August 1945 to punish human rights crimes; the United Nations Charter on Human Rights adopted in December 1948; and the unanimously agreed Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.11 These agreements only came into effect after the end of Nazi rule. However, since international law is not subject to the principle of nonretroactivity of law, the newly created provisions could be applied without restriction to criminal and civil law enforcement pertaining to the terrible legacy of the Nazi dictatorship. Incidentally, this legal situation also applies to the reparations claims that the government of Namibia and the representatives of the Herero and Nama peoples have been making for some years against the Federal Republic of Germany as the legal successor of the colonial power that was the German Kaiserreich (1871–1918).12 Between 1904 and 1908, colonial troops and settlers exterminated large parts of the indigenous population of German South West Africa, enslaved the survivors and appropriated their land.13 Now, more than one hundred years later, the German government has to take responsibility for these actions – even if it refuses to believe this. International humanitarian law provided the basis for the adoption of numerous civil agreements, causing a huge differentiation within the

6  •  Repressed, Remitted, Rejected

politics of reparations. At the level of civil law too, a legal-historical process thus came to an end that had begun as a counterpart of the international law of war and that, after the Second World War, culminated in a wideranging and universally applicable canon of damages payments. The main components of this process will be outlined below. We will show how international humanitarian law has by no means adapted all the elements of the classical law of war to its modified set of standards. So-called looting rights remain the most deeply rooted in the traditional international law of war.14 According to the provisions of the Hague Rules of Land Warfare, all military goods, weapons systems, supplies, means of communication and documents confiscated in the course of combat become the property of the enemy as soon as they have been seized. The same applies to those state-owned elements that are crucial to a state during war, such as gold and foreign exchange reserves. The victorious power does not have to reimburse the defeated power for this loot, or ‘trophies’. Thus, as with the case of the international provisions on occupation policy, there are considerable grey areas, and there is room for interpretation on this score too. To a large extent, these provisions foreshadow the reparations provisions contained in the subsequent peace treaty, but this by no means ensured that such predatory looting – often referred to in the files as ‘savage reparations’ – were included in reparations calculations. We will see below just how much the Allied armies’ looting, which lasted until the summer months of 1945 and which assumed enormous proportions, coincided with their governments’ interests in reparations. It led to serious conflicts among the main powers within the anti-Hitler coalition, which – alongside other important factors – made it impossible to find an amicable solution to the reparations problem. In contrast to ‘savage’ reparations, ‘classical’ interstate reparations procedures are usually outlined within peace treaties, in which the victors conclude agreements that are bound by international humanitarian law regarding the post-war order.15 These agreements range from a balanced restoration of the status quo to a one-sided diktat that forces the defeated power to cede considerable territory and make substantial damages payments. The symmetry or asymmetry of such a peace treaty is understandably dependent on whether the defeated nation or coalition has capitulated only under certain conditions or has done so unconditionally. In the latter case, the defeated nation can even temporarily disappear as a legal entity in international law, with the result that only the victors have a seat at the negotiating table and thus determine the post-war order by themselves. We will illustrate the pitfalls of a conditional surrender and its consequences for the reparations issue when we discuss the example of the Treaty of Versailles. But in the case of an unconditional surrender, as

Introduction • 7

after the absolute capitulation of Nazi Germany, the consequences are even more momentous. In Potsdam, the main victorious powers not only acted as reparations creditors, but at the same time had to place themselves in the role of reparations debtors and decide what damage payments could be expected from Nazi Germany for the huge destruction it had caused, without destroying its material basis of existence. Ultimately this was an insoluble dilemma, and we will demonstrate how the conflicts over the reparations that Germany had to pay contributed decisively to the collapse of the anti-Hitler coalition. But this dilemma also had an international legal dimension. Since the defeated nation had surrendered unconditionally and for the time being had lost its status as a subject of international law, the victorious Allied powers could not conclude a peace treaty with it. As a result, all the agreements on the post-war order – from the issue of borders through to reparations payments – were up in the air, and all agreements were only provisional in nature. In 1946–47, the four large victorious powers and the ‘small allies’ in their tow could only manage to conclude a peace treaty with the former allies of Nazi Germany16 and not Germany itself, because these powers could not agree on the establishment of an administration for the whole of Germany under the control of the Allied Control Council. This state of affairs had grave implications for the reparations problem. All acts of reparations pre-empted agreements that would have to be arrived at in a subsequent peace agreement. In addition, Germany was divided into two reparations zones. While reparations policies in the Soviet sphere of influence remained largely true to the usage of the reparations regulations derived from the law of war, in the Western zones, and later in the Federal Republic of Germany, these policies went in a completely different direction and were characterised by an almost incalculable series of bilateral treaties. Another significant component of the reparations concept is the restitution of stolen or forcibly taken property.17 This concept already played a role in the reparations provisions within the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, but it was only with the fall of the Nazi dictatorship that compensation developed into a multilayered problem that endures until today. The reasons for this are obvious: various social groups had been robbed and expropriated on racial, ethnic, social, religious and political grounds in a way never before seen in modern history. In addition, this persecution did not just begin in 1938 with the commencement of external aggression against Austria and Czechoslovakia, but started almost immediately after the establishment of the National Socialist dictatorship. As a result, compensation became an issue that affected the whole of German-dominated Europe – including the neutral countries that had acted as exchange hubs

8  •  Repressed, Remitted, Rejected

for gold and foreign currencies. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ compensation when thinking about the problem of reparations as a whole. From the very beginning, the compensation claims for acts of aggression against certain social, ethnic, religious, cultural and political groups of society, as part of the broader issue of reparations, applied to the whole of German-dominated Europe, including the territory of the Reich itself.18 The payments associated with this – essentially one-off payments and pensions – were and continue to be trivialised as ‘compensation’: as if murder, manslaughter, concentration camp imprisonment, internment in the other facilities of the Nazi camp system, being deported to conduct forced labour or the resulting traumatisation and damage to the families of the victims and the survivors could be straightened out through material compensation. Rather, it could and can only be about helping the relatives of those killed to begin a new phase in their lives, to treat those who had survived, to repatriate the refugees as quickly as possible, and to prevent those suffering from chronic illnesses and disabilities from being plunged into age-related poverty. These consequences of the Nazis’ demographic, terror and extermination policies affected at least 25 million people. As with the restitution procedures, ‘internal’ and ‘external’ compensation payments had to be provided. The tasks involved in this were enormous and raised serious issues that cut to the very foundations of society, such as the question of treating all the victims of National Socialism equally – regardless of nationality or social status. We will outline the premises and methods used by the German reparations bureaucracy when dealing with these questions. The fifth area of reparations policy becomes apparent when we consider the fate of those stateless refugees brought about by the Nazis’ policies of expulsion, deportation and resettlement.19 After the war, these refugees were scattered around the world, but tens of thousands of them vegetated in camps in Germany. The problem of ‘displaced persons’ dominated the plans and operations of numerous international state and non-governmental aid organisations during the early post-war years. This problem could only be solved gradually, and spilled over into other fields of reparations policy with which it was often closely linked. In essence, therefore, after the end of the Second World War there were five different components that shaped the terrain of reparations policy, as defined by the sanctions provisions of international humanitarian law: the savage reparations of martial law; the ‘classical’ reparations as an anticipation of a peace treaty that had become increasingly illusory; the practice of restitution; humanitarian compensation policies; and the reparation payments made to the stateless refugees. As we will see, the Allies made extensive use of looting rights. They divided interstate compensation

Introduction • 9

practices between an Eastern reparations zone and a Western one. In the Western sphere, compensation practices were quickly dropped and replaced by restitution and compensation procedures for refugees and victims of the Nazis. In the Eastern zone, on the other hand, compensation practices retained the dominant position they had acquired. When it came to restitution and humanitarian compensation procedures, different aims were pursued and both restitution and humanitarian compensation payments became increasingly insignificant. These developments will be examined in more detail in the coming chapters. Before we do so, however, let us turn to the historic event that shaped the mentality and decision-making processes of the historical actors on the side of the creditors and of the debtors in equal measure: the reparations conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, and their consequences.

The Treaty of Versailles and the Long Shadow of the Reparations Question At the end of September 1918, with the imminent collapse of the Western front, the German army’s Supreme Command had tasked the Reich government with entering into armistice negotiations with its Allied opponents. US president Woodrow Wilson’s peace declaration of January 1918 was to serve as the basis for this. Wilson then renewed and expanded this several times in the months that followed.20 Alongside fundamental proposals for the future post-war global order,21 Wilson’s ‘14 points’, as well as the statements that followed them, placed several conditions on the German government for entering into ceasefire and peace negotiations. In contrast to the other Allied powers that – with the exception of the Soviet Union22 – made quite harsh proposals, Wilson’s demands were rather moderate. He demanded the cessation of submarine warfare, the withdrawal of German troops from all occupied and annexed territories, a government reshuffle, German involvement in the reconstruction of the destroyed territories in Belgium and the North of France, and the settlement of an openly negotiated peace treaty that was devoid of any secret clauses. Following the arrival of Germany’s ceasefire request and the German government’s reorganisation in October, there were extensive bilateral preliminary negotiations, which the other Allied coalition partners eventually joined. They did so, however, under one significant caveat, which Wilson announced to the German government on 5 November 1918. Citing Wilson’s comment on German responsibility for the reconstruction of the destroyed territories, the other Allied powers stressed that they understood this statement to mean ‘that Germany is to pay compensation for all the

10  •  Repressed, Remitted, Rejected

damage inflicted on the Allied civil population and its property during the attacks by air, land and sea’.23 The Germans agreed to this. Six days later, the ceasefire was agreed, with the Germans additionally stating that they were prepared to hand over significant parts of their war weaponry, to leave territories to the west of the Rhine to be occupied, and to annul the separate peace treaty agreed with the Soviet Union in March 1918.24 In the course of the peace negotiations, the Allies left these rather mild conditions far behind them, and considerably expanded their demands for compensation. Although they kept to the word of the preliminary treaty’s conditions, the Allies changed their content beyond recognition by adding payments for war pensions and support for the families of soldiers to the compensation bill. But such payments related to the general cost of the war for the Allied governments and thus no longer entailed offsetting the personal and material damage inflicted on the civil population in the occupied territories. This point was made by the US delegation, and by the economist John Maynard Keynes of the British delegation.25 Under the direction of the negotiating French president Georges Clemenceau, however, these reservations were brushed aside, as were their misgivings about the moral verdict of claiming German sole responsibility for the war. The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919.26 Section VIII (§§ 231–47) established German war guilt, and obliged the German government to make substantial advance payments until a reparations agreement could be concluded. The most significant of these various payments were: the provision of 20 billion gold marks; the sale of the merchant fleet; large deliveries of coal to Belgium and France in the coming decade; the delivery of basic chemicals; and the repayment of the loans that the Allies had provided to Belgium.27 In addition, an Allied Reparations Commission was to be set up. Its task was to draw together the various damages claims from the Allied and Associated Powers, to calculate the total cost of these claims, and to come up with a payment plan by 1 May 1921. At the beginning of May 1921, the Germans were presented with the final reparation claims in the form of a six-day ultimatum.28 After deducting the advance payments already made, the Germans had to raise 132 billion goldmarks, for which debt securities amounting to 50 billion goldmarks had to be advanced. The second tranche of 82 billion goldmarks would only have to be raised following a review of German solvency. The payment plan was based on these security deposits. It envisaged payments of 2 billion gold marks per year. In addition, 26 per cent of German exports (around 3 billion gold marks per year) were to be provided in kind. The German reparations debtors bowed to these harsh conditions for barely a year.29 Then they demanded a moratorium on the payments and reduced the coal deliveries. In January 1923, the French and Belgian

Introduction • 11

governments responded by occupying the Ruhr in order to maintain the deliveries by force of arms. This, in turn, provoked a passive resistance campaign in Germany that was generously funded by the money press. The result was the collapse of the already severely damaged German monetary system, the inflation-driven expropriation of the middle classes and a harsh currency reform, which in 1924 ushered in a new stage of reparations policy. In the framework of the Dawes Plan (1924) and later the Young Plan (1929), the annual payment rates were reduced, and the total sum still to be paid fell to 47 billion Reichsmarks; in addition, a significant part of the reparations debt was converted into commercial bonds. This relief was by no means enough for the debtor. In order to get rid of the compensation payments completely, in the era of presidential cabinets the German government adopted a rigorous deflationary policy that aggravated the effects of the world economic crisis that had meanwhile kicked in. Thus a high price had to be paid for the moratorium proclaimed by US president Herbert Hoover in July 1931. A year later, as a result of the Lausanne conference, the German government was obliged to make a final payment of 3 billion gold marks. Since none of the participating states – Germany, Britain or France – ratified the treaty, it was not legally binding, meaning that the outstanding balance was never paid. However, the triumphant opponents of reparations overlooked the fact that shares converted into private foreign bonds under the Dawes and Young plans were explicitly excluded. Twenty years later, they reappeared at the negotiations table during the London debt negotiations. The strategy of refusing to pay the reparations had far-reaching political consequences. Combined with the stab-in-the-back myth30 and the rejection of sole German guilt for the outbreak of the First World War,31 this strategy led to the Weimar Republic not having any chance of survival, because it opened the door to the agenda being set by the military-industrial complex and the fascist mass movement for a revanchist war. From an economic perspective, it was quite successful. As we know today, reparations policy by no means impaired the economic reconstruction of Germany. The actual purchasing power and capital transfers produced were far too low for that. According to the most tangible estimates available today, these transfers amounted to around 36 billion Reichsmarks, or just under 9 billion US dollars, which is just over a quarter of the total amount that was set out in the treaty.32 The reparations provisions of the Versailles Treaty were fiercely criticised not only by the Germans, but also by numerous Allied experts and contemporary observers. The reservations they had at the time find reflection in the current state of historical research.33 First, the statement outlined in the reparations agreement on German war guilt was inaccurate: while

12  •  Repressed, Remitted, Rejected

it is true that in the crisis of July 1914 the Central Powers had taken a big risk by banking on a preventative war, to a lesser extent this was also true of Germany’s opponents – particularly France and Russia. These powers certainly played a role in triggering the catastrophe of the century caused by the international arms race and intensified imperialist rivalry, even if this role was a subordinate one.34 But a few days after the outbreak of the war, the situation was clear: with its invasion of neutral Belgium on 3 August 1914, the German Reich’s leadership demonstratively disregarded international military law and, from that point on, barbarised the conduct of war in a never-ending series of war crimes: massacres of the Belgian and French civilian population; the deliberate destruction of cultural assets; the systematic robbery of bonds; the deportation of the civilian population to conduct forced labour; the removal of rolling stock and industrial sabotage; the destruction of the infrastructure of entire regions; and the conduct of unrestricted submarine warfare from 1917 onwards. Germany’s counterpropaganda would have had a much more difficult time if these facts had been drawn on in order to legitimise the claims for Germany to pay war reparations, especially since – according to international law of the time – Germany’s actions constituted war crimes.35 Second, the scope of the damages Germany needed to pay, as agreed during the preliminary negotiations, was blown wide open by the reparations provisions in the treaty itself. These damages were unduly extended by including costs that were unambiguously viewed as falling under the cost of war encountered by any state. This disregard of the borders drawn up during the process of German surrender poisoned the negotiations and created the climate of a ‘dictated peace’ that garnered sentiments of nationalist revanchism that even affected the far left of the German workers’ movement. Third, the failure to respect the stipulations agreed in the preliminary negotiations led to an increase in the sums demanded as reparations. Even when taking into account the provisions of international law that prevail in today’s world, these sums were inflated, especially since the Soviet Union – alongside France, Belgium and Serbia, the biggest victim of the First World War – had eschewed the negotiating poker of Versailles by unilaterally annulling the war and foreign debts of Tsarist Russia. During the peace conference, Keynes calculated the humanitarian and property damage that the Germans inflicted on the civil populations of the occupied territories. He arrived at a sum of between 42 and 60 billion gold marks.36 Fourth, following the reparations negotiations of the Treaty of Versailles, a tendency prevailed that would continue to be dominant even after the Second World War: the large victorious powers pursuing their own interests while disregarding the legitimate claims of their inferior Allied partners.

Introduction • 13

Although Britain’s civilian population escaped rather lightly from the war, the British government did not even entertain the idea of passing on some of the reparations it had received to smaller countries such as Serbia, which had lost over a third of its male population and a quarter of its total population.37 Keynes’s demand for a pool of reparations money to be distributed among the hardest-hit regions and population groups was ignored. One final point of criticism relates to the great power that initially had the perspective of reconstructing Europe and advocated a thoroughly moderate reparations policy – the United States. The fact that the US government abandoned this position during the peace and reparations negotiations and left the field to France and the United Kingdom has always been a source of bemusement. Shrewd observers of the time were under no illusions about this, however: if US president Wilson had really wished to enforce a reparations agreement in line with the ceasefire agreements, he would have had to waive the $11 billion in war bonds that the US had provided to its Allied partners. All those involved knew that France, the UK and Italy in particular demanded such high reparations because they needed to repay their war debts to the US. However, US governments remained relentless in the years that followed the negotiations too. They insisted on repayment, and as much as three-quarters of the amounts set out in the Young Plan were to be dedicated to the repayment of interAllied debt. As a result, German reparations payments were drawn into a momentous transatlantic financial cycle. Since, moreover, the reparations debt was largely commercialised, the high interest rates involved became a source of financial speculation internationally. The German capital market was flooded with credit and short-term loans. When the banking crisis led to the abrupt withdrawal of these loans, this then triggered the collapse of the Central European banking and financial system in 1931. Today, nearly a hundred years on, it is beyond our reach to understand fully the actions and strategic outlooks of those historical actors responsible for modifying reparations policy in the way that they did. The tone adopted by Clemenceau and some other exponents of the Versailles Quorum and the Allied Reparations Commission was sometimes acerbic, and the German politicians who had to answer for the crimes of their Supreme Command were often humiliated. However, we should never lose sight of what imperial Germany and the Habsburg monarchy did in France, Belgium, Serbia and Eastern Europe.38 They were the first to flout the ban on chemical warfare explicitly outlined in the Hague Convention on Land Warfare. They had taken hostages, shot franc-tireurs, and devastated entire swathes of land. Already in the reparations calculations between 1919 and 1921, the entire array of what was explicitly forbidden in international martial law hid behind the phrase ‘compensation for the damage inflicted

14  •  Repressed, Remitted, Rejected

on the civilian population and its property’. The only exception to this was the Shoah39 and the large-scale plans for expulsion and Germanisation. In addition, it must be remembered that after four years of war Germany had bled dry and was starving, but the atrocities of warfare and occupation had, without exception, taken place beyond its borders. When, twenty-five years later, the anti-Hitler coalition prepared itself for a second round of negotiations, the memory of the pitfalls of Versailles was ubiquitous. Just like public opinion of the time, however, this memory was highly selective and clouded by prejudice.40 Anyone who leafs through the documentation of the negotiations between the ‘Big Three’ in the run-up to the Potsdam Conference encounters these prejudices at every turn. The Western leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition repeatedly noted that the reparations paid by the Germans after the First World War were remarkably low, meaning that the coalition must not set the bar too high in the upcoming negotiations, because nothing could be got out of Germany anyway. Moreover, leading US politicians repeatedly stressed that this time around the US taxpayer must not be called on to settle Germany’s reparations debt – as if it was the American taxpayer who had invested in and speculated on the highly commercialised Dawes and Young plans and not the world of American finance.41 Another argument that can be found in these documents cautioned against taking reparations sums from Germany’s current production, because doing so would destabilise the commodity markets of the reparations creditors, and jeopardise the policy of full employment. Such unilateral and erroneous historical patterns of perception on the part of the central decision makers in the USA and Great Britain did not bode well for the upcoming second international round of reparations policy. Such prejudice clouded their judgement and hindered their ability to arrive at a consensual and balanced compromise. To be sure, the experts – some of whom were present in Versailles and had learned their lessons – knew better. Like the Soviets, who had not already been ‘burnt’ by Versailles, they pressed for prudent solutions to the problem. But their expertise was largely ignored. The historical perception of the reparations decisions made in Versailles became a burden that exerted a negative impact on the reparations decisions made after the Second World War. At the beginning of the 1950s there was another sequel, because now the German reparations debtors once again entered the stage of international politics. The social composition of their actors was noteworthy: they were made up of reactivated politicians of the conservative party spectrum in the Weimar republic, and also of second- and third-rate Nazi technocrats who had now been rehabilitated. These two groupings, which were often at odds with each other, were nonetheless bound by a shared horror – the

Introduction • 15

‘reparations diktat of Versailles’. For them, another comprehensive settlement of the reparations problem embedded within a peace treaty was out of the question. The emergence of another ‘front of the reparations creditors’ had to be prevented under all circumstances and at almost any cost. These terminological, methodological and historical premises are, in our view, indispensable to understanding the reparations problem. In this volume, the case studies of Poland and Greece are discussed against this background. The first focus of our study is to reconstruct the fundamental features of the occupations of Poland and Greece, and to compare them with the rest of German-occupied Europe. The second focus is to account for the Allied reparations debates and decision-making processes during the war years, as well as the implementation of these decisions in the Eastern and Western reparations zones. Following this, the ‘never-ending story’ of reparations policy – controversial to this day – becomes the focus of our attention. In so doing, we refer to the development of the discourse on reparations, across several decades, in relation to the disputes between Germany and Poland and Germany and Greece. As the issue of reparations was omitted from the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Regard to Germany (Two-plus-Four Treaty) agreed in 1990, these disputes remain live today. In the penultimate two chapters, we compare what Germany has hitherto paid in reparations to the extent of the damage inflicted on Poland, Greece and the rest of German-occupied Europe. Finally, we submit a proposal for the initiation of a final reparations conference.

Notes   1. For an initial overview of this, see Shelton, ‘Reparations’. A compilation of the most important conventions of the law of war and international human rights law can be found in Tomuschat and Walter, Völkerrecht, Section III, 127 ff.; Section VII, 493 ff.; Section VIII, 537 ff.   2. In addition to the cession of considerable territory, France had to provide five billion gold marks to the German Reich. This was divided between several public funds and thus strengthened the speculative tendencies underlying the economic boom of the so-called Gründerjahre, the expansion of economic activity before the crash of 1873.   3. In such cases, funds from the public budget can also be combined with payments from private sponsoring groups – such as from business associations. An example of this was when the ‘Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ was set up in 2000 to provide compensation for erstwhile slave and forced labourers under the Nazi regime.   4. The bibliography provides detailed information on this. In what follows, we will merely reference those materials that we have used to clarify specific questions.   5. RGBl. 1919, 701 ff.

16  •  Repressed, Remitted, Rejected

  6. This backdrop is largely blanked out in the conventional historical collected editions on the Federal Republic of Germany’s reparations policies.   7. Kipp, ‘Angriff’, in Schlochauer, Wörterbuch des Völkerrechts, Vol. 1, 63–68; Bernhardt, ‘Briand-Kellogg-Pakt von 1928’, in ibid., 248–52.   8. Schneider, ‘Haager Friedenskonferenzen von 1899 und 1907’, in ibid., 739–45; Roberts and Guelff, Documents on the Laws of War; Best, Humanity in Warfare.   9. ‘Genfer Abkommen über die Behandlung der Kriegsgefangenen vom 27. 7. 1929’, RGBl. 1934 II, 227 ff.; Schlögel, ‘Genfer Abkommen zum Schutze der Kriegsopfer vom 12. 8. 1949’, in Schlochauer, Wörterbuch des Völkerrechts, Vol. 1, 644–51. 10. Haase Müller and Schneider, Humanitäres Völkerrecht; Gasser, Humanitäres Völkerrecht; United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, ‘International Legal Protection of Human Rights in Armed Conflict’. 11. Jescheck, ‘Genocidium’, in Schlochauer, Wörterbuch des Völkerrechts, Vol. 1, 658–59; Quigley, The Genocide Convention; Tams, Berster and Schiffbauer, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 12. ‘Salt in the Wounds: Namibia and Germany’, The Economist, 13 May 2017, p. 32; Schweizer, ‘Die Kolonialzeit holt Deutschland ein. Die Verhandlungen mit Namibia zur Aufarbeitung des Völkermordes an den Herero und Nama sind ins Stocken geraten’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 19 July 2017, p. 5; on the overall context of German reparations debt in the twentieth century, see Roth, ‘Reparationsschuld: Hypotheken der deutschen Völkermord- und Vernichtungspolitik im 20. Jahrhundert’. Presentation in Hamburg on 19 September 2017 (MS). Archive of the Stiftung für Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (henceforth SfS-Archiv), Bestand III.72, Vorträge Karl Heinz Roth. 13. Zeller and Zimmerer, Völkermord in Deutsch-Südwestafrika: Der Kolonialkrieg (1904– 1908) in Namibia und die Folgen; Kößler and Melber, ‘Völkermord und Gedenken. Der Genozid an den Herero und Nama in Deutsch-Südwestafrika 1904–1908’, in Brumlik and Wojak, Völkermord und Kriegsverbrechen in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, 37–76. 14. Honig, ‘Beuterecht im Landkrieg’, in Schlochauer, Wörterbuch des Völkerrechts, Vol. 1, 198 f.; Scheuner, ‘Beuterecht im Seekrieg’, in ibid., 199–201; Dinstein, ‘Booty in Warfare’, in Oxford Public International Law. 15. Seidl-Hohenveldern, ‘Kriegsentschädigung’, in Schlochauer, Wörterbuch des Völkerrechts, Vol. 2, 337–43; Röper, ‘Reparationen’, in Handwörterbuch der Sozialwissenschaften, Vol. 8 (1964), 812–21; Von Spindler, ‘Reparationen’, in Gerloff and Neumark, Handbuch der Finanzwissenschaft, Vol. 4, 136–57; Shelton, ‘Reparations’. 16. Namely with Bulgaria, Finland, Italy, Romania and Hungary. A peace treaty with the restored Austria was only agreed in 1955. On the peace treaties concluded with these countries, as well as the reparations arrangements outlined within them, see Menzel, Die Friedensverträge. 17. Von Schmoller, ‘Restitution’, in Beckerath et al., Handwörterbuch der Sozialwissenschaften, Vol. 9, 1–3; Tanzi, ‘Restitution’, in Oxford Public International Law. 18. ‘Bericht der Bundesregierung über Wiedergutmachung und Entschädigung für nationalsozialistisches Unrecht sowie über die Lage der Sinti, Roma und verwandter Gruppen’ [Report by the German Federal Government on redress and compensation for National Socialist injustice, as well as on the situation of the Sinti, Roma and related groups], Deutscher Bundestag 10. Wahlperiode, Drucksache 10/6287, 31. 10. 1986; Herbst and Goschler, Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Hockerts, Moisel and Winstel, Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung. 19. Botholz, ‘Flüchtlinge’, in Schlochauer, Wörterbuch des Völkerrechts, Vol. 1, 536–39; Marrus, Die Unerwünschten; Mananashvili, Möglichkeiten und Grenzen.

Introduction • 17

20. See the reproduction of the 14-point programme and the subsequent statements by Wilson in Michaelis and Schraepler, Ursachen und Folgen, Vol. 2, docs 399a to 399d, pp. 374–78. 21. Namely the restoration of free world trade, the right of all nations – Poland in particular – to establish sovereign nation states, universal disarmament and the foundation of a international association of all nations (what would later become the League of Nations). 22. At the end of November 1917, Trotsky and Lenin published a peace declaration in which they called for peace without annexations or contributions. Wilson’s ‘14 points’ must therefore also be viewed as an indirect response to this proclamation, which had caused a sensation across the globe. A reproduction of this declaration is in Michaelis and Schraepler, Ursachen und Folgen, Vol. 2, Doc. 273, 117 ff. 23. Reproduced in ibid., Vol. 2, Doc. 446, 467 f., quote from p. 468. 24. In addition, the peace treaty agreed with Romania (the Treaty of Bucharest) was revoked. The text of the armistice of 11 November 1918 is reproduced as document 457 in ibid., Vol. 2, 482–87. 25. Keynes, Die wirtschaftlichen Folgen, 90 ff. 26. RGBl. 1919, 701 ff.; excerpts can be found in Michaelis and Schraepler, Ursachen und Folgen, Vol. 3, Doc. 733, pp. 388 ff. 27. Article VIII of the peace treaty in ibid., Vol. 3, 405 ff. 28. Reproduced in ibid., Vol. 4, Doc. 959, pp. 339 f. (Ultimatum) and Doc. 959a, pp. 340–44 (payment plan). 29. See Hainbuch, Das Reichsministerium; additionally, see Wandel, ‘Kapitalbewegungen I’, in Albers et al., Handwörterbuch der Wirtschaftswissenschaft, Vol. 4, 378–88, here 381 ff. 30. Propaganda thesis of the German revanchist camp, according to which the collapse of the Western front and the Reich leadership’s entering into armistice negotiations were caused not by the exhaustion of the country’s own military capacity to wage the war, but rather exclusively by the anti-war movement and the working-class left in particular. 31. Röhr, Hundert Jahre deutsche Kriegsschulddebatte, 26 ff. 32. See Moulton and McGuire, Germany’s Capacity to Pay, 72 f.; Moulton and Pasvolsky, War Debts and World Property, 279 ff. 33. The best known of these are the commentaries by Keynes, who summarised the critical objections of his contemporaries most succinctly. Keynes, A Revision of the Treaty. On the outlook of historians today, see in particular Boemeke, Feldman and Glaser, The Treaty of Versailles. 34. The best summary of the state of historical research is Leonhard, Die Büchse der Pandora. Geschichte des Ersten Weltkriegs; additionally, for a discussion of the rivalries between the great imperialist powers, see Janz, 14. Der große Krieg. 35. By contrast, the concept of a war of aggression was only added to the canon of international law in the context of the Kellogg–Briand Pact in 1928. 36. Keynes, Die wirtschaftlichen Folgen, 109 ff. 37. Of the 4.5 million inhabitants of the Kingdom of Serbia, 1.2 million died; 600,000 civilians were killed in the repression meted out by the Bulgarian and Hapsburg occupiers, and a further 400,000 either starved, froze to death or fell victim to infectious diseases. 38. Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914. A History of Denial; Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction. Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War; Thiel, ‘Menschenbassin Belgien’. Anwerbung, Deportation und Zwangsarbeit im Ersten Weltkrieg; Luther (ed.),

18  •  Repressed, Remitted, Rejected

The Great War and Memory in Central and South-Eastern Europe; Marković (ed.), Veliki Rat. Der große Krieg. Der Erste Weltkrieg im Spiegel der serbischen Literatur und Presse. 39. At this point, however, it must be recalled that the German military staffs were fully informed about the genocide that their Ottoman ally had conducted against the Armenians, but did not take any action. 40. See Backer, Die Entscheidung zur Teilung Deutschlands, 33 ff., 49 ff. 41. Kuczynski, American Loans to Germany; Kuczynski, Bankers’ Profits from German Loans.

Part I

The Price of Plunder

Chapter 1

Exploitation and Destruction The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)

On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded the Republic of Poland without having declared war.1 Poland was the first country to resist Germany’s aggressive expansionism by force of arms. Its military leadership planned to retreat to eastern Poland to fight against the German invaders, who were far superior when it came to technology, operations and personnel. There, following the relief offensive by its French and British allies on Germany’s western border that was expected to take place in the middle of September, the Polish military leadership wanted to engage in active resistance to repel the invasion. But the Franco-British offensive failed to materialise. Although elite German tank units first appeared in southern Warsaw on 9 September, the Polish capital defended itself from the invaders until 28 September. On 17 September the Red Army marched into eastern Poland, but Poland’s political leadership made it across the border into Romania on that same day, just before the Red Army could cut off its escape route. However, the Polish leaders did not capitulate to the Germans any more than the Polish army did, as the latter continued to operate in autonomous combat groups until the beginning of October. From the outset, the German army and the militias of the German minority in Poland working with them committed serious war crimes.2 They murdered hundreds of Polish soldiers shortly after their capture. In Gdansk and in Pomerania they massacred members of the Polish intelligentsia and administration. The shooting of hostages and the mass execution

22  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

of those involved in the citizens’ committees that had defended their cities became more commonplace. Numerous Jewish communities were wiped out, especially in the smaller towns. The German Luftwaffe (air force) bombarded dozens of defenceless cities and inflicted tremendous damage on Warsaw; after the city had been surrounded, it was also exposed to constant fire from German artillery units. These war crimes were committed by units of the Wehrmacht (Nazi armed forces), the task forces of the Security Police, and the ‘self-protection’ units of the German minority directed by the Security Police. By the end of the hostilities, 27,000 Polish civilians had been murdered, and at least 40,000 fell victim to the first ‘savage’ wave of deportations.3

The Strategic Aims and Phases of the German Occupation of Poland These excesses of violence were no accident. They expressed a will to destroy, to which the Nazi leadership had sworn the Wehrmacht, and to which the SS had committed itself ever since the decision to invade in April 1939. Poland was to be exterminated as a state and nation.4 To this end, its ruling classes, intelligentsia and elite functionaries were to be annihilated, and the educational system and Polish culture were to disappear. A demoralised and helpless layer that was incapable of resistance would remain and be made available to the Germans as a submissive and apathetic reservoir of migrant workers. At the same time, Germany’s borders were to be pushed eastwards, far beyond the areas that it had had to cede to the newly founded Republic of Poland at the end of the First World War. In order to make this process irreversible, a radical ‘Germanisation of the soil’ was planned: all Poles – not only Jewish Poles – were to be expropriated and expelled to make way for the German minority and the additional Germans, from within the Reich and beyond, who were to settle there. An area in central Poland was earmarked for the almost nine million Poles who had been expelled – a ‘dumping ground’ and ‘rubbish heap’, which in future would serve as a reserve for cheap migrant labour. After the end of their first so-called ‘lightning war’ (Blitzkrieg) campaign, the political, military and economic leadership groups of the Nazi dictatorship were initially convinced that this programme could be smoothly implemented. Since, in the weeks before the war, they had succeeded in undermining the faltering negotiations on extending the Franco-British guarantee to protect Poland to a military alliance with Soviet Russia5 and, instead, had concluded the Hitler–Stalin pact to define their mutual ‘spheres of interest’ with the Soviets in Eastern Europe, they initiated the

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  23

fourth partition of Poland. This, however, was the geopolitical prerequisite for their decision to destroy Poland as a state and nation. Nevertheless, the Nazi leadership initially offered the two Western allies a ‘Polish residual state’ as a negotiating tool to force the Allies to withdraw their declaration of war against Germany on 3 September. This would allow the Nazis to be able to continue their concept of staggered ‘lightning wars’ until they were ready for the final military battle for world domination. It was thus no coincidence that the strategic plan for the annihilation of Poland only found concrete reflection in the practices of the occupation between 28 September – the day of the conclusion of the German–Soviet Border and Friendship Treaty – and 12 October 1939, when the British government rejected the Nazis’ tactical manoeuvre.6 From mid-October 1939, the Nazis’ strategic objectives were implemented organisationally. The military administration was wound up on 25 October. Gdansk, which had already been annexed on 1 September, was united with Pomerania to form the administrative district [Gau] of Gdansk–West Prussia [Danzig–Westpreußen]. East Prussia was assigned the administrative districts of Ciechanów and the Suwałki area. Greater Poland was merged with the district of Lodz to form the district of Posen (from 1940, this was known as the Wartheland). The Polish part of Upper Silesia, together with an ‘Eastern strip’7 and German Upper Silesia, formed the new administrative district of Katowice. In these areas – referred to as the ‘incorporated eastern territories’ despite the fact that they were separated from the German Reich by a police border – the Germans brought under their control the main bulk of Poland’s economic resources, particularly coalmining, energy, iron and steel, textiles, chemicals and the most profitable areas of agriculture. A ‘General Government’ encompassing the areas of Krakow, Lublin, Radom and Warsaw was established to rule and administer the occupied Polish territories. General Governor Hans Frank took up his post on 26 October, the day of the formal annexation of the Western Polish provinces, and announced his first decrees; however, the administrative apparatus did not consolidate itself until the beginning of 1940. The exact constitutional status of the General Government remained up in the air, and this made it evident that ‘Residual Poland’ – around a quarter of Poland’s original territory – was only viewed as fulfilling the function of a final destination for those deported from the annexed territories. Further, Germany handed over Poland’s eastern voivodeships to the USSR, which then incorporated them into the Soviet republics of Belarus and Ukraine. In so doing, the border roughly corresponded to the line of demarcation agreed upon by the Entente powers during the Paris peace negotiations in 1919 and followed the Pissa, Narew, Bug and San rivers (the Curzon Line).8 But this situation

24  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

was only a brief interregnum. Following their attack on the USSR, the Germans annexed Western Ukraine and its metropole Lwów into the General Government, and placed the district of Białystok, to the northeast, under a civil administration. At the beginning of 1941, the administrative district of Kattowice was fused with that of Opole and placed under the command of a Supreme President and Gauleiter. As a result of the German aggression and the agreements between Germany and the Soviet Union, Poland had not only been partitioned for the fourth time, but had been carved up economically too. The Germans annexed the economic centres of the voivodeships in the west of Poland and immediately began to integrate them into the production, regulation and administration of its war economy. By contrast, the General Government was denied all possibilities of consolidation and development. Even though there were several significant economic centres in this area too, such as the District of Warsaw and the central industrial belt between Radom, Kielce and Ostrowiec that placed a modern emphasis on the production of weapons and munitions, these industrial strongholds were denied the right to exist in the ‘Homestead of the Poles’. Their raw materials, supplies and semi-manufactured goods were plundered and transported to Germany, alongside machines and equipment. The Germans abided by these fundamental strategic decisions until the end of the occupation. However, due to shifts in the course of the war, they were forced to modify their aims tactically and to adjust their priorities. This tactical adaption was far more evident in the General Government than in the annexed territories. It is possible to identify four phases of the German occupation of Poland. The first lasted from the beginning of the invasion through to the preparation of the attack on the Soviet Union in March 1941. This period was defined by the original strategic concept behind the occupation. In the annexed territories, the first wave of terror gave way to a systematic implementation of the displacement practices, which saw an intensified exploitation of human and economic resources for the benefit of the German war economy. Coalmining and the iron and steel industries in Upper Silesia were separated from each other: special companies of the Reich (the Reichswerke Hermann Göring, the Preussag AG, and so on) appropriated the majority of the mines, whereas the takeover of the technically outdated iron and steel industry was delayed. At the same time, the Four-Year Plan authority set up an Office of the Reich Trustee for the Occupied Eastern Territories to expropriate the majority of Polish and Polish-Jewish commercial, trade and agricultural enterprises. It appointed hundreds of thousands of so-called Volksdeutsche (those who had German roots but did not hold German citizenship) and so-called Reichsdeutsche (who did hold citizenship) as administrators of these enterprises, and gradually transferred the

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  25

titles of the stolen assets to them, whereas the expropriated Polish families were deported to the General Government from early December 1939. In addition to this, there was the compulsory recruitment for ‘labour deployment’ in the Reich itself, which began immediately after the establishment of the German Labour Administration. So large were the numbers involved here that, alongside the Polish prisoners of war, the forced labourers, who predominantly came from the annexed territories of Western Poland, represented the largest contingent of workers deported to the Reich during this period (0.9 million people, or around 60 per cent). Due to the increasing demands of the war economy and the increased exploitation of agricultural production for the benefit of the Reich, there was not enough time to conduct a rapid and comprehensive ‘Germanisation of the soil’. In the Łódż industrial area, which was renamed Litzmannstadt, a central ghetto was built to accommodate the expropriated Jewish population. The Polish smallholder farmers who had been de facto expropriated but who in fact stayed on their land came under the control of a central agricultural holding company. In the meantime, the General Government implemented an extensive ‘wrecking phase’. Economic resources were so thoroughly looted that it was difficult for them to be subsequently integrated into the German war economy. The ruins of the severely destroyed city of Warsaw were not cleared away. Added to this were the masses of displaced Poles and Polish Jews, which increased the pauperisation and impoverishment of the population. Economic disorganisation and hunger spread. The General Government administration was neither willing nor able to deal with these catastrophic developments. It too understood its main task to be the establishment of a reasonably functional labour administration. When registering and recruiting the unemployed for ‘Reich labour deployment’, it initially relied on the economic compulsion provided by living conditions – impoverishment, hunger and the mass unemployment caused by the collapse of the economy. However, since knowledge of the catastrophic working and living conditions spread rapidly in the Reich, it also increasingly resorted to violence in the course of 1940. The second phase of the occupation dates from spring 1941 to late autumn 1942. During this time, the political-economic consolidation of the annexed territories was completed. The deportations to the General Government were halted, but the transfer of forced labourers to the territory of the Reich reached its peak. The population policy measures for ‘Germanisation’ were also adapted to the growing importance of the war economy: the remaining Poles were split up by the introduction of a ‘German People’s List’ and – to the extent that they were declared to be ‘citizens who could not be Germanised’ – subjected to specific legal, social and racist discrimination. Significant changes also took place within the

26  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

General Government. Some of these already came about in autumn 1940 and were associated with preparations for the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. Transport infrastructure was expanded massively. Huge military training areas and unloading stations were built for the deployment of attack troops. What was once a ‘rubbish heap’ now became the most important transit area to escalate the ‘struggle for living space in the east’, and at the same time the region’s hitherto largely crippled production capacity for weapons, munitions and repair shops became more important. As in the annexed territories, agriculture too was now subject to increasing delivery quotas, which in some areas rose to as much as 60 per cent of the total harvest. In line with the growing importance of ‘residual Poland’ to the German war machine, the post of governor general for the occupied Polish territories was upgraded to the ‘Governor General of the General Government’. At the same time, however, other aspects of Germany’s strategic aims were becoming more radical. In the spring of 1941, the Nazi leadership decided to turn the General Government into a ‘secondary country of the Reich’ (Nebenland), and to Germanise it completely as part of the extensive expansion into Eastern Europe.9 In addition, in a pre-emption of what was to come, the Nazi leadership decided to murder the entirety of the now largely ghettoised Polish-Jewish population in the General Government. At the end of 1941, six extermination camps were built, in which the Jewish population of the entirety of Nazi-controlled Europe was gradually murdered. The third stage of the German occupation spanned the period between November 1942 and early summer 1944. The Wehrmacht’s summer offensive had rocked the Soviet Union again in 1942, but in the winter of 1942/43 an era of Soviet strategic defence began. This had an immediate impact on the occupied territories, and made the growing contradiction between strategic goals and actual military-economic developments increasingly apparent. The exploitation of resources and people for the German war machine reached its zenith in the annexed territories. Whereas the Reichsgau Wartheland achieved the status of a ‘model district [Gau] of the German Reich’ on account of its sophisticated discrimination against, and exploitation of, the Polish population, as well as its radical administrative policies of Nazification, Upper Silesia rose to the status of an armaments metropolis, which increasingly competed with the German industrial Ruhr area in terms of heavy industry productivity. At the same time, the structuring of the hierarchy of discrimination and exploitation, which was based on social racism, was completed, and the lowest segments – the Jewish forced labourers who were still exempt from extermination, the ghetto inmates, and the ‘Polish protected people’10 – were exposed to impoverishment,

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  27

malnutrition and widespread epidemics. The situation also deteriorated dramatically in the General Government. The SS gained considerable power within the occupation apparatus due to its role in the so-called ‘Operation Reinhard’ to exterminate the Polish Jews. It used this power to push ahead with its policy of Germanisation, and launched a campaign in the district of Zamość to expel and expropriate Polish farmers, who were to make way for German resettlers from abroad. This provoked massive resistance that even the Germans’ brutal ‘pacification actions’ could not break. From then on, resettlement was only possible within the framework of large-scale operations against the partisan movement. The passive and active resistance of the Polish population consolidated and could not be broken even by extreme terrorist practices, such as the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the public mass executions there. In contrast to the SS and the Security Police, the Wehrmacht armaments authorities and the General Government administration focused on the short-term requirements of maximal increases in war production, on the recruitment of forced labourers and on continuing to increase food supplies to the Reich. This procedure was also characterised by extreme violence. It was partly successful too, as it was possible to increase armaments production considerably by reactivating key enterprises. By contrast, more and more people and communities resisted the recruitment of labour and the delivery of agricultural produce. However, as the Nazi leadership in Berlin had rejected the initiatives of the occupation administration that had been launched in 1943 and again in the spring of 1944 as part of the latter’s attempts to alter its destructive approach in the context of a ‘new policy in Poland’, by the early summer of 1944 the crisis of the occupation regime had become insoluble. The fourth and final stage of the German occupation of Poland began in July 1944 and ended in January 1945 with the liberation of the General Government and the annexed northern and western provinces in spring 1945. In June/July, the Red Army broke up the Wehrmacht’s Army Group Centre and crossed the boundary line to the General Government that had been drawn up at the end of September 1939. In the following weeks, the Red Army liberated large swathes of southern Poland and finally reached the eastern bank of the Vistula in mid-September. Within the resistance movement, which was growing stronger despite the terror of the occupation, the power struggle for the post-war configuration of Poland began. On 22 July, a Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN), supported by the Red Army, was formed in Chełm. It represented the left wing of the resistance under the leadership of the Communist Party, which was refounded in 1942. In response, Armia Krajowa, who was working with the delegation of the exiled government in London, launched an

28  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

armed uprising in Warsaw on 1 August. It quickly developed into a general popular uprising, and was crushed by the Germans with brutal excesses of violence. The Germans then deported and interned the surviving population. The hated centre of the Polish resistance was finally destroyed, insofar as the building material there was not required for its conversion into a ‘fortress’ that was incorporated into the new line of defence along the Vistula. But it was not only in Warsaw that, following several tactical modifications, the Germans returned to their original strategic end goals. The front of battle once again ran across Poland, but this time in the opposite direction. The Germans were even more ruthless than in September 1939. By the time they crossed the eastern border of the General Government as part of their retreat, they had already gained considerable experience in applying the concept of ‘scorched earth’. They stole everything that they could transport away: raw materials, food supplies and livestock.11 They dismantled special machinery and important equipment for the production of armaments. They destroyed whatever they could not take with them. Polish transport infrastructure also fell victim to the demolition squads of the pioneer troops. Moreover, the Army High Command forced the male population that was fit for work and able to defend itself to join the treks embarked upon by their convoys, which they sent on marches before withdrawing from the front lines. Only in part did the workforce succeed in preventing the destruction of the production facilities. By the end of the occupation, Poland had indeed become a ‘heap of rubble’.

The Role of Terror and the Policy of Extermination Since the Germans not only wanted to subjugate and exploit Poland, but also to destroy its existence as a state and nation, they could – and wanted to – resort to just one main instrument to achieve such an objective: the systematic application of terror.12 Terror thus became the main method of German occupation policy. As, from the German point of view, the destruction of the Polish state and community primarily required the elimination of its political, cultural, ecclesiastical and economic leadership, its intelligentsia and its elite functionaries, it was impossible to use these forces as mediators of a ‘contract administration’ or to enlist them for cooperation – however defined. Due to the elimination of all forms of political statehood, all parties and associations, and almost all self-governing bodies,13 there was no organisational basis to do this either. The occupiers repeatedly demonstrated their disinterest in any prospect of collaboration. Even the Polish employees of the city councils, district captains, county councils, Jewish councils, community leaders and local police authorities (the ‘blue’ Polish police) that

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  29

were deployed in the basic units of the German occupation regime were merely recipients of orders. They had no opportunity to negotiate compromises in favour of the social groups they represented. Consequently, they were literally crushed between the dictates of the occupiers and the resistance’s catalogues of demands. Terror is always an expression of extreme violence and the willingness to use it. As a radicalised action on the part of the state executive, its function is to intimidate, demoralise, subdue or at least deter marginalised and potentially dissident social groups. In fascist regimes, it is an essential structural feature with which to assert strategic power interests, both at home and abroad. In the case of Poland, this fundamental structural feature of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany was projected onto a militarily subjugated country for the first time. In the process, it was qualitatively enhanced, for terror was not only specifically exercised – either preventively or reactively – against certain social groups and the resistance, but was applied across the board against the entire Polish population. General and specific terrorist practices went hand-in-hand and thus became the main method of occupation policy and its administrative implementation. Anyone who managed to avoid being called up for ‘construction service’ or who protected escaped Jewish people was handed over to local or special courts and shot. Municipalities that did not deliver their allocated harvest quotas were burnt down. For every German soldier killed or wounded, fifty hostages were murdered. Passers-by, cinema-goers and restaurant diners fell victim to the random raids to collect forced labourers. Terror became the cornerstone, and the key to understanding all the practices, of the German occupation administration. Its aim was to suppress a society that had been temporarily assigned the role of a colonised helot people, before their extermination following the German ‘Final Victory’, just like the Jewish population that had already been murdered. The three main pillars of the occupation – the SS and the police, the Wehrmacht and the administrative apparatus – were involved in the planning, organisation and implementation of terror. Their operations often overlapped, but were not always in harmony with each other and, in some cases, were quite controversial. For since terror was the main method of occupation policy, it served the actors as a decisive means of shaping and steering the occupying power as a whole. From the beginning, the SS and the police complex assumed a dominant position. Within this archipelago, the Security Police was the decisive driving force behind the planning and implementation of terror. The Security Police emerged from the mobile units of the task forces that had built up the territorial structures of the Secret State Police, the Criminal Investigation Office and the Security Service. It concentrated on fighting

30  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

the resistance, but also increasingly influenced domestic policy as a whole. The Gestapo ran numerous prisons, of which the Pawiak prison in Warsaw acquired tragic notoriety. Of the 100,000 resistance fighters incarcerated there, 37,000 had been murdered by the end of the occupation. Whenever its operations required the deployment of larger paramilitary formations, the Security Police drew on the battalions and regiments of the Order Police. These forces carried out large-scale raids to gather forced labourers, assisted the forced expulsions, drove the Jewish communities into the ghettos and, later on, drove them out again into the deportation trains to the death camps. They carried out most of the mass executions. From 1941 to 1942 they forced the delivery of the harvest quotas and organised the annual ‘harvest emergency’. Units of the Order Police – renamed as SS-police regiments in 1943 – took part in the Zamość Action from November 1942; and in the months that followed, they burnt down hundreds of villages, often murdering the inhabitants in bestial circumstances. The concentration and extermination camps formed the logistical backbone of the SS terror. Two of them – Stutthof and Auschwitz – were in the annexed territories, while two others – Majdanek and Płaszów – were in the General Government. Numerous satellite camps were also built, with Auschwitz and its forty satellite camps acting as the pacesetter for the industrial utilisation of prison labour. In addition, there were more than two thousand camps for Jewish forced labourers, ghetto labour camps, prison labour camps, ‘construction service camps’ and transit camps. These figures do not even take into account the police prisons: the police alone had more than five hundred detention centres.14 The SS added several extermination sites to this system from the autumn of 1941. When it founded these killing factories in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chełmno, Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec, it crossed the line from terror to genocide. Before they were destroyed as part of Operation Reinhard, the Polish Jews were exposed to German terrorism in a particularly severe manner. There were several reasons why the SS in occupied Poland, of all places, could cross the ‘red line’ of terror and destroy the Polish Jews on the spot. In Poland more than in any other country, terror dominated domestic policy, which was based on the ultimate goal of ‘Germanisation’. Moreover, even though in 1942 the General Government became a militarily secured ‘domestic theatre of war’, it was situated so far away from Germany that the monstrosity of what was happening there could only become known internationally to a very limited extent. As a result, the SS leadership, backed by the Nazi ruling elite, thought that it was time to begin to implement – in Auschwitz-Birkenau and in the extermination camps on the eastern border of the General Government – their strategic war aim of exterminating the

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  31

Polish-Jewish population and, beyond this, Soviet prisoners of war and ‘Gypsies’, as well as including the Jews deported from the other occupied countries in this genocide. The Wehrmacht was the second major actor involved in the policy of terror. It was involved in the war crimes committed against Poland by bombing defenceless cities, massacring prisoners of war and shooting hostages from the very beginning. In the period that followed, it assumed important functions in the division of labour of the forced expulsions, the extermination of those involved in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the mass crimes against Warsaw’s civilian population in August–September 1944 and in the subsequent destruction of the capital. Additionally, it increasingly intervened in the fight against the partisan resistance. Although the SS initially secured dominance by subordinating the General Government and the Białystok district to the head of the Anti-Partisan Units in June 1943, in February 1944 all military and paramilitary units were assigned to the commander of the Wehrmacht. From then on, these included the units of the Security Police and the SS police regiments. This not only increased the fighting strength of these associations, but above all enormously increased their ability to carry out terror. So it was that, in the final stages of the occupation, the Germans were able to inflict the greatest losses on the Polish resistance movement and on those in the population who continued their campaign of passive resistance. In comparison to those of the SS and the Wehrmacht, the terrorist practices of the German administration played merely a secondary role. Nevertheless, these should not be underestimated, especially since the authorities involved – in particular the labour administration and the agricultural departments – repeatedly supervised the paramilitary associations of the occupation apparatus responsible for forced recruitment and the seizures of harvests. In addition, the judiciary established itself as a nationwide administration of exclusion and oppression by subjecting the Polish and Polish-Jewish majority in the annexed territories and in the General Government to specific laws of exception. The special courts were the most important instrument of the judicial terror. They started operating in September 1939; eventually, there were twenty in the annexed territories and thirty in the General Government. In the annexed territories, they continued to be an important instrument of political persecution after the introduction of German jurisdiction. They had issued around one thousand death sentences by the end of the occupation. In addition, a special criminal law was introduced in January 1941, which levelled the criteria of crimes, misdemeanours and transgressions for Poles and Jews, and punished them all with either concentration camp confinement or the death penalty. With this, a justice of terror became part of everyday life for

32  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

the oppressed, and the terror system was thereby perfected. The General Government administration forewent such special criminal law specifications. Instead, in 1942 it reactivated the Security Police’s standstill courts and gave them such extensive powers that they could impose the death penalty for every conceivable ‘offence’. The catalogue of offences ranged from keeping the status of an officer secret or not delivering grain quotas through to fleeing forced recruitment or helping Jews to hide. This is how terror penetrated the everyday lives of those in the General Government. It is not possible in this introduction to trace the overlaps between the various practices of terror by looking at the examples of those terror campaigns that were particularly devastating.15 It will suffice merely to point out how quickly they followed on from each other. In occupied Poland, these campaigns shaped the lives and deaths of those subjugated and humiliated. I have already referred to the first wave of terror during the military operations. In the annexed territories, this was immediately followed by a second wave, which was directed specifically against the Polish ruling and administrative classes, as well as the intelligentsia (the so-called ‘political land consolidation’ [politische Flurbereinigung]). This had cost 40,000 lives by the end of 1939, and was continued in the General Government in May–June 1940 as an ‘extraordinary pacification operation’ (with around 3,500 victims). The third wave of terror came in the form of mass expulsions from the annexed territories in December 1939. In that month alone, 87,000 Polish and Polish-Jewish citizens were deported to the General Government.16 These ‘local plans’ overlapped with the mass registration and deployment of forced labourers for ‘Reich deployment’. The number of these labourers soon exceeded the million mark. These actions, with their brutal access to those affected and the cruel reprisals in the case of flight and refusal to flee, also had the character of a terrorist action. This was followed from 1942 onwards by the fifth terror campaign in the General Government to gather and confiscate the harvests. This was then repeated annually and, from the end of 1942, escalated to become the sixth wave of terror, which saw the systematic expulsion of small farmers from several areas within the Lublin district (the so-called Zamość Action). Due to the growing active and passive resistance, the confiscation of harvests and the recruitment of forced labourers could eventually only be carried out in the framework of large anti-partisan actions, which in 1943–44 swept across the General Government and amounted to the seventh wave of terror. All military, paramilitary and security police occupation forces were involved here, with eight hundred villages and settlements burnt to the ground and their inhabitants brutally murdered – including women, children and the elderly. The occupation terror eventually reached its zenith in Warsaw in August–September 1944. In the suppression of the uprising,

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  33

200,000 inhabitants – mostly civilians – were killed. The surviving population – 650,000 people – were displaced, interned and then deported in groups to the concentration and labour camps. Afterwards, the capital was almost completely reduced to rubble. The decision of the Nazi leadership and the German generals to use terror as the main instrument of their occupation policy in Poland and to rule out making even minimal concessions to the survival needs of the civilian population had devastating consequences. The population loss caused by this decision was undoubtedly the most serious and, in terms of its demographic impact, the most momentous legacy of the German occupation of Poland. The attack on Poland was the first war of annihilation waged by the Germans in the Second World War. It cost the lives of 5.7 million Polish citizens, or 16.4 per cent of the total population as of 1938.17 Six hundred thousand people died during or as a result of the war, and 5.1 million civilians (or 89.5 per cent) fell victim to the terror of the occupation. Three million of them, 58.8 per cent in total, were Polish Jews. After the end of the war, this terrible victim toll was broken down even further.18 According to surveys conducted by the Polish War Compensation Office, 3.577 million people were murdered in the death camps, ghetto liquidations, mass executions and ‘pacification’ operations; and a further 1.286 million died in the camps and prisons, mainly as a result of hunger and severe exhaustion or epidemics. Outside of the camp system, 521,000 people died either as a result of the abuse and injuries inflicted on them, or due to the extreme working conditions. According to these surveys, almost as many were severely injured and traumatised. These included the 863,000 survivors of concentration camps and prisons (including several thousand victims of criminal medical experiments), almost 2.5 million who were displaced and forced to resettle, and 590,000 invalids. In addition, 1.14 million more people contracted tuberculosis than the statistical average for the pre-war years. As we shall see below, these figures were slightly exaggerated. Nevertheless, they provide an adequate insight into the extent of the demographic catastrophe that Poland faced at the end of the war.

The Exploitation and Ruin of the Polish Economy The basic strategic concept of the German occupation created the possibility of ruthlessly exploiting the economic and human resources of the Polish economy. To this end, the Germans immediately incorporated the northern and western economic centres directly into their war and armaments economy. They closed the gaps in the labour force that was available to them

34  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

by violently transferring Polish workers into the Reich and by unrestrainedly looting ‘residual Poland’, the area that was left after the fourth partition. As a result, any considerations regarding the sustainable economic exploitation of the Polish national economy by integrating it into the perspective of a ‘European economic area’ played no role. Some sort of consolidation of the country, however limited, by including it in the ‘new order’ based on the division of labour, was never on the cards. The capacity of Upper Silesian heavy industry was exploited ruthlessly, and investment in renewal or replacement was largely avoided. The economy of the General Government, on the other hand, was systematically ‘cleared out’, and only from 1942 onwards was it included in the programmes for the transfer of arms contracts to the occupied territories. As a result, from the very beginning, Poland was dominated by one main strategic line of economic exploitation: the deliberately driven ruin of its economy, which was only gradually curbed by the growing demand for supplies from current production. However, the strategic commitment to the deindustrialisation of the General Government contradicted the concept of the maximum exploitation of the arms industry that was later imposed on it, and this ultimately accelerated the socio-economic ruin that, alongside the system of terror, gradually pushed Polish society to the brink of the abyss. In what follows, we will outline the most important features of the two main components of economic exploitation – ruining Poland’s productive basis and maximising the supplies squeezed out of current production from its shrinking economy. * The most striking component of the concept of ruin, which began immediately after the military conquest, was the ‘clearing out’ of all raw materials, stocks, semi-finished products, machines and industrial equipment that had been declared to be bottleneck products for the war and arms economy on the booty lists of the German economic command.19 From the first day of the invasion, several loot commandos were active. In the areas designated for annexation, they concentrated on confiscating the raw materials and stocks found in order to restart production as quickly as possible. In central Poland, on the other hand, the columns of a special ‘representative for the acquisition of raw materials’ began with systematic plundering. By mid-February 1940, they had removed 1 million tonnes of chemical goods, 93,000 tonnes of pig iron, steel and scrap metal, and 28,000 tonnes of precious metals. In the district of Warsaw and in central Poland, they dismantled 187 factories and factory installations. Twenty-five thousand wagons of ‘looted’ goods rolled into the Reich, with an estimated value of 750 million pre-war złoty, whereas the damage caused by the war was estimated at 500 million złoty.20 These ‘clearance operations’ continued until early summer

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  35

1940. For Poland, which was still poorly developed in industrial terms, they resulted in huge losses of economic capacity. These losses were so great that they even made it difficult to build up a limited capacity for repairs and maintenance, which had become necessary due to the deployment of German troops from the autumn of 1940. Parallel to this, the Main Trust Office East [Haupttreuhandstelle Ost – HTO] implemented the second part of the reduction of the annexed territories’ economic capacity: the complete expropriation of Poland’s economic capacity and its transfer to hundreds of thousands of trustees and administrators, who then incorporated it into the German war economy.21 We have already sketched out the procedure used in this case, and so can restrict ourselves to a few key figures. By mid-1941, the HTO had transferred 73,000 looted properties to German municipal administrations, and itself administered 700,000 apartments and 214,000 plots of land.22 By the end of 1941, the number of confiscated industrial properties had risen to 38,000 and the value of securities had risen to 194 million złoty. In addition, almost 2,800 industrial enterprises, 20,900 handicraft enterprises and more than 12,000 commercial businesses had already been sold, while about half of the confiscated craft and commercial businesses were liquidated. When the wave of expropriations and closures subsided at the beginning of 1942, 897,000 farms with a total area of 8.1 million hectares had been confiscated. The Polish farmers who remained in the annexed territories were forced onto unprofitable plots of land, which were largely joined together and ‘Germanized’ by 1944. In the meantime, the most valuable parts of large industry were also divided up. Forty-six of the sixty-five Upper Silesian coalmines were transferred to the ownership of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring, while the Preussag AG, Energieversorgung Oberschlesien AG (EVOS), Bergwerksund Hüttengesellschaft AG (Berghütte) and I.G. Farbenindustrie AG shared the rest among themselves. In addition, the newly founded Berghütte, with seventeen iron and steel factories and sixteen ore mines, had risen to become the leading coal and steel group, and relegated the German-Upper Silesian private companies to the fringes. Finally, another important newcomer was I.G. Farben, which, in addition to the newly acquired coalmines, had taken over an electricity plant and was the only major company to provide substantial investment funds for the construction of two hydrogenation plants23 and a huge chemical combine in Auschwitz. A third variant of the ‘plundering’ of Poland came in the systematic theft of its art treasures and cultural assets, which lasted until the end of the occupation.24 It was conducted openly and with particular intensity during the first phase of looting, during the destruction of the ghettos in 1942–43 and before the beginning of the withdrawal operations.

36  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

Several German ‘experts’ and special command units were engaged in these looting operations, with some of them competing fiercely for the loot. In the annexed territories, commandos of the SS’s think tank Ahnenerbe scoured all museums, libraries and collections in order to seize the most valuable pieces before Polish and Jewish art possessions were liquidated. Even before the General Government was proclaimed, Reichsmarschall Göring arranged for the confiscation of the collections of the Polish National Museum, the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow and several castles. He then appointed a ‘Special Commissioner for Art’, who began the hunt for key works of art history, while an SS detachment transferred Veit Stoss’s altarpiece from St Mary’s Basilica in Krakow to Nuremberg, and a special commissioner of Hitler ‘secured’ particularly valuable works for the museum planned in Linz. From 1941 onwards, Governor General Hans Frank systematised the looting. He had all public and many private collections confiscated, and arranged for their most important pieces to be held centrally at the seat of government for ceremonial purposes. Up until the end of the occupation, many looted Polish works of art and cultural assets were transferred to German museums, to the private collections of the Nazi leadership and to antiquarian bookshops. As a result, Polish archives, libraries, museums and collections suffered huge losses of materials. In addition, the Germans destroyed numerous monuments and historical buildings in order to destroy Polish culture. After the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, and after the contents of the Royal Palace had been transported to Dresden, they eventually destroyed the historical Old Town in its entirety. It is extremely difficult and problematic to estimate the value of the looted and destroyed works of art and cultural assets. At the beginning of 1947, the Office for War Compensation put it at 5.365 billion złoty.25 The destroyed architectural monuments made up the biggest share of this – an estimated 4.11 billion – whereas the loss of works of art and art collections was estimated at 1.208 billion złoty. * A second key phenomenon that substantially damaged the Polish economy was the forcible appropriation and exploitation of its labour force. This by no means just applied to those workers who were deported to the Reich for ‘labour deployment’. Since the Germans gradually placed almost all of what was left of Poland’s productive capacity in the service of their war and armaments economy without increasing the capital stock, the result was an overexploitation of resources, which was predominantly carried out using forced labour. It would thus be inappropriate for us to limit our balance sheet of the recruitment of forced labourers simply to those used for ‘Reich deployment’.

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  37

The structural basis for the forcible appropriation and exploitation of human resources was the Labour Administration. In the annexed territories, this was set up immediately after the invasion, and by mid-September there were already thirty offices with numerous outposts. In the General Government this process was delayed by several months; only in early 1940 did the departments of the district administrations responsible for regulating the labour market begin to open offices. Unlike the labour offices of the annexed western provinces, those in the General Government were not incorporated into the labour administration of the Nazi dictatorship, although they both operated on identical conceptual guidelines. Their essential premise was the universal obligation to work. All those between the ages of 18 and 60 (later this was updated to those between 14 and 65) had to register with the labour authorities and to place their capacity to work at their disposal; those who failed to do so lost the right to food rations and were subjected to increasingly draconian penalties. As a result, the Germans quickly gained an overview of the labour market, with their disposal over the unemployed providing the lever to commence immediately with controlling measures – above all for ‘Reich deployment’ or for redeployment within Poland. Of equal importance was the opportunity to expand massively the sector of the working classes that came about from forced labour. In particular, it also made it possible for the intelligentsia and women to be incorporated into the rapidly shrinking reserve army of labour. In addition, measures were immediately taken to split the social strata covered by the obligation to work into two groups with different degrees of discrimination – Polish citizens and Polish citizens of Jewish origin. However, the SS contested the employment services’ disposal over that segment of the labour force located at the bottom of the social pyramid. In the General Government, the SS was only responsible for these workers from summer 1940 to autumn 1942, whereas in the annexed territories the SS and police apparatus claimed sole control over Jewish forced labourers from the outset, insofar as these had escaped deportation to the General Government. The deportation of Poles from all social classes to the Reich amounted to an immediate loss of assets for the Polish economy.26 These deportations began immediately after the German invasion, and from the outset were marked by excessive violence. Alongside the massacres, arbitrary arrests and raids were the order of the day until the end of the military administration. In the annexed territories they overlapped, from October 1939 onwards, with the first measures taken by the employment offices, which in the meantime had become operational, to record the youth ‘obliged to work’ on a list, and to summon them individually to present themselves. Since the majority did not appear at the collection points, the German ‘recruiters’

38  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

organised real manhunts in cooperation with the SS and police units. They did not shy away from sneaky tricks in doing so. By the end of 1940, two million Polish ‘protected people’ were supposed to be deported to the Reich, but despite all their efforts, the Germans managed to capture only 30 per cent of them (about 400,000). In the following years, these targets were reduced considerably. Even the expansion in the powers represented by the establishment of a General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment in March 1942 could not change this, because the Polish labour force was now increasingly needed in the annexed territories themselves. In the General Government, however, a rather different development set in after the end of the military administration. Here the Department of Labour initially relied on the automatic nature of economic coercion, which was undoubtedly quite pronounced due to the increasing number of displaced persons from the annexed territories and the widespread collapse of the economic apparatus. Nevertheless, only forty thousand people had ‘voluntarily’ migrated to the Reich by the spring of 1940. As a result, the labour authorities in the General Government now also switched to open methods of violence. The ‘labour escapees’ and their families had their support rates cut; later their relatives were taken hostage. In rural areas, such individual interventions were only possible to a limited extent. For this reason, the employment offices, which were subordinate to the district captains, imposed certain ‘quantity quotas’ on the heads of the municipalities, and drastic collective penalties were imposed if these were not fulfilled. Cattle and equipment were taken away from the fleeing smallholders. With increasing frequency, entire villages, woodlands and fields were surrounded and raided. Finally, the ‘slave hunts’ increasingly overlapped with paramilitary ‘pacification actions’. Since the resistance movement also made the fight against the labour offices and their particularly hated representatives one of its main objectives, the system of forced recruitment for ‘Reich deployment’ largely collapsed in the course of 1943. Historical research today agrees that 95 per cent of all workers who came to Germany were taken there against their will.27 This finding also undoubtedly applies to the Polish prisoners of war who were released from the Wehrmacht camps in the summer of 1940 and assigned the status of ‘civilian workers’. They were treated with the same discrimination and stigmatisation on Reich territory. They were isolated from the rest of the German and non-German workforce and, like all other Polish – and Soviet – forced labourers, were prevented from returning until the end of the war. Alongside those forced to migrate to Germany for work were Polish workers who were themselves exploited by the Germans in their homeland.28 Their scope for action was also limited. In the annexed territories, they had

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  39

been degraded to a propertyless and pauperised helot layer, systematically monitored and humiliated by the employment services, the police authorities and the German minority. In the commercial sector, the only labour tasks available to them were the least qualified and physically demanding ones; small farmers were forced onto the most unprofitable plots. Although they were not completely excluded from German labour or social and collective bargaining legislation, they formed an appendage that was discriminated against in every respect. Their net wages were 30–40 per cent below the German average. A series of special taxes, including a special ‘social security levy’ [Sozialausgleichsabgabe], were deducted from these wages so that, despite their considerably lower incomes, they had to pay a disproportionately high share into the German social security system. Moreover, from 1941 they were formally subject to the ‘obligation to work’; as a result, they had to accept any job assigned to them and were not allowed to quit. However, this status was by no means typical for all Polish workers. On the one hand – especially in Upper Silesia and to some extent in GdanskWest Prussia – hundreds of thousands of Polish workers were included in the German People’s List, first introduced in March 1941, as ‘persons capable of re-Germanisation’. This improved their social status somewhat. Worse off, however, were all those who were now classified as ‘renegades’ (Section IV on the list), as well as the ‘protected people’ who were left out. In addition, more and more workers fell into the clutches of the camp system for even the most minor of offences. From 1941, these camps increasingly affected the non-Jewish Polish working population too. In the annexed territories, all these factors combined to form a social status that, even when all the differentiations are taken into account, can only lead to one conclusion: workers were being subjugated to forced labour in their own country. In the General Government, labour-policy conditions were partly different. The labour administration was less systematically organised and much more corrupt than in the annexed territories, to which the tried-andtested structures of Nazi labour policy were transferred over many years. In the wake of the long period of plundering, economic activity only got going again gradually, and only to the extent that the deployment of troops, deliveries of Wehrmacht supplies and later the production of weapons and ammunition made necessary. Nevertheless, initial mass unemployment was quickly eliminated because the extreme neglect of the civil sector increasingly impaired the reproduction of the working population, reduced labour productivity and resulted in a drastic overstaffing of the workforce. As a result, the growing deficiency also led the General Government’s labour administration to take openly coercive measures, which overlapped with the raids and ‘slave hunts’

40  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

for ‘Reich deployment’ and strengthened the resistance movement accordingly. Initially, the employment gap created by the ‘Sauckel Action’ and the increasing enfeeblement of the workforce was filled by Soviet prisoners of war and Jewish forced labourers. But even these reserves had their limits, and the structural crisis of the General Government became an insoluble one. In the end, the working and pauperised classes of society suffered terrible years of humiliation and deprivation here too. The coercion imposed on them was in keeping with the violent and coercive nature of working conditions in the annexed territories. But it was more due to the destructive basic structures of German occupation policy than to the social-racist and population-political exclusion procedures that were practised in the annexed northern and western territories. Despite all this, the Poles subjected to the German regime of exploitation had some limited room for manoeuvre, which was guaranteed by the resistance and a kind of ‘underground economy’. The Polish Jews were denied these last areas of ‘quasi-life’; and, when it came to labour policy, they went through an ordeal whose stages were just as structured in the General Government as they were in the annexed territories.29 Only a minority of the Jewish population were able to travel freely to their places of work or to receive any wages at all, even though these were well below the already extremely low wage rates of Polish workers. The vast majority, however, ended up in the camp system, which as a rule was organised and monitored by the SS and police apparatus. All SS and police leaders of the Reichsgaue, government districts and localities maintained labour and penal camps, and they either hired out their inmates to industrial and commercial enterprises or made them available for refurbishment projects and the expanding business complex of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Businesses were set up in all the larger ghettos, and the ghetto administrations in turn provided work detachments. In addition, there were special organisations such as the Schmelt organisation,30 founded in Upper Silesia in autumn 1940, and the SS and police leaders’ camp system in Lublin, which came into being in December 1939, and underwent several changes through to the end of the occupation, expanding more and more in the process.31 These camp systems were based exclusively on slave labour. No wages were paid. The working, housing and nutritional conditions were so catastrophic that we must speak of ‘annihilation through work’. There were frequent overlaps with the concentration camp system, as proved by the large Płaszów camp, which was converted into a concentration camp. But its separation from the world of Polish forced labourers gradually became blurred too, since more and more Polish forced labourers were also barracked and interned in order to discipline them and to monitor them more effectively. Moreover, we should not forget that tens of thousands of non-Jewish Polish

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  41

prisoners were also interned in the concentration camps – such as Stutthof and Auschwitz – from the very beginning. Thus, the balance sheet of German labour policy is also abysmal – and it amounts to a terrorist policy. According to the current state of research, 2.8 million people were deported to the Reich and about 400,000 of them remained there for a short time only. This means that – alongside the 400,000 prisoners of war – we must assume a total of 2.4 million. Of these, about 750,000 people came from the annexed territories, whereas 1.25 million came from the General Government and the district of Białystok;32 these accounted for about 10 and 12 per cent of the total Polish population respectively. * The Germans’ food and starvation policies caused a further reduction in the capacity of the Polish economy that had particularly serious consequences for its population. They developed a radical approach that not only stemmed from their desire to exterminate Poland as a state and nation, but also from the contradictions and crises of the whole of Nazi-dominated Europe.33 In the course of 1940–41, it became increasingly difficult for the Nazi leadership to supply Germany and its expanding dominion with sufficient food. This question was of crucial importance to them, because they regarded the adequate nutrition of the German population as the most important guarantee for maintaining their political loyalty. The leadership thus developed a perfected rationing system that could easily be applied in the occupied territories. However, as the war unexpectedly dragged on, strategic food supplies began to shrink. For this reason, from spring 1941 onwards, the nutrition experts in the German corridors of power planned to starve to death tens of millions of people during the invasion of the USSR. This idea mainly failed to materialise, and it was initially limited to the starvation genocide of Soviet prisoners of war. However, as the food situation within the Reich continued to deteriorate, German food planners increasingly turned their attention to occupied Poland, where the General Government itself had already become a ‘starvation region’. The food-supply situation in occupied Poland had deteriorated dramatically since the beginning of 1940.34 The Reich districts [Gaue] of Danzig-West-Prussia and the Wartheland were Poland’s agricultural surplus areas, which had supplied central Poland with grain and food. Since the beginning of the occupation, however, they had been cut off from ‘residual Poland’ and had begun to deliver massive quantities of grain and food to the Reich. This diversion of surpluses led to serious shortages in the General Government as early as winter 1939/40. The shortages were initially made up for by German supplies, but these were suspended in the spring of 1940. The General Government administration reacted to

42  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

this measure by introducing the rationing system: those who could prove they were in permanent employment were allocated a food and clothing card. In addition, there was complete control over the agricultural sector. The central measure of this control was the imposition of delivery quotas, which were schematically transferred to the districts and counties. Since, however, the delivery of consumer goods in return for this was largely not forthcoming, soon these quotas could only be enforced (and even then, only partially) with violence. This was especially the case because the quotas were unrealistic – in the district of Warsaw, for example, it was 60 per cent of the total harvest. As a result, a ‘state of exception’ came into existence at harvest time, which became an extraordinary feature of the occupation. This emergency was even officially proclaimed from 1942 onwards. The deterioration of the food supply had disastrous consequences for the already largely pauperised urban population strata. The situation was further aggravated by the fact that, from spring 1941 onwards, the General Government was also forced to provide constantly increasing deliveries of food both to the Wehrmacht units deployed in the attack against the USSR and to the Reich itself. As a result, food rations were reduced to 600 calories for normal consumers, and to just 200–400 calories for Jews, who had in the meantime been largely ghettoised. This was tantamount to condemning the entire Polish population to starvation – albeit at different speeds. The Polish people could only offset this in a makeshift way by establishing an ‘underground economy’ beyond the control of the occupying forces (see below). But the economic consequences were also devastating. Chronic malnutrition led to a drastic decline in the psychological and physical powers of the workers. Labour productivity declined and, because of rising absenteeism rates, the workforce had to be increased by an average of around 25 per cent. By autumn 1941, the hunger crisis had worsened to such an extent that not only was the – already minimal – supply of consumer goods placed in jeopardy, but the production and repair capacities established by the Wehrmacht supply lines appeared to be at risk too. In this extreme situation, there were fierce clashes between the government of the General Government and the Nazi leadership in Berlin over a way out of the impasse. These clashes resulted in the decision to accelerate the process of killing off the Polish Jewish population through active extermination.35 By the summer of 1941, the death rate in the large ghettos had already increased. Despite the ghettos being rigorously cordoned off, the first typhus epidemics were rampant. In addition, the attempts of the government of the General Government to force the mass deportation of the Polish Jewish population to the occupied territories of the USSR had failed. The escalating hunger crisis now prompted them to change course. In order to bring about the improvement in the nutritional situation of the

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  43

non-Jewish social strata that the failed mass deportations could not achieve, it was decided that those in the Jewish population stratum regarded as ‘unable to work’ were to be murdered. This first step towards mass extermination had been carried out by the spring of 1942. A second wave of exterminations followed from August 1942, which now covered the entire Polish Jewish population. Only the ‘Jewish forced labourers’ (Rüstungsjuden) employed in the recently begun production of weapons and ammunition, as well as and the slave labourers exploited in the concentration camp external commands and SS camps, initially escaped this fate. On the other hand, the General Government administration’s plans, first developed in October 1942, to include in the genocide – alongside the two million Polish Jews murdered so far – the approximately two million children, invalids and elderly of the non-Jewish population by completely depriving them of food from January 1943 onwards, were not implemented.36 The extermination programme agreed upon with the Berlin headquarters and the SS leadership was a macabre success. The harvests of the years 1942 and 1943 turned out unexpectedly well. Since the resistance did not assume a mass character until autumn 1943, the Germans were able to increase the delivery quotas drastically. From 1942 onwards, enormous quantities of grain, potatoes, meat and fats were transported to the Reich. The daily food rations granted to the non-Jewish population were also increased to 300 grams of bread or about 1,000 calories per normal consumer. Since essential additional foodstuffs, such as meats and fats, remained restricted, these rations still amounted to starvation rations, being only around 55 per cent of what the Germans received.37 However, when combined with the mass flight into the ‘underground economy’, these rations made it possible for the non-Jewish population to live a ‘quasi-life’ that saved it from ultimate genocide. For the Jewish world, the General Government administration’s food and starvation policies amounted to nothing less than Armageddon – the transition from plans for the territorial ‘final solution of the Jewish question’ to genocide in the gas chambers of the extermination camps. But the consequences were also devastating for the Polish economy, reaching far beyond the losses of economic capacity caused by the confiscation and transfer of its agricultural products to the occupying forces and into the Reich. By the end of the occupation, 3.07 million tons of grain, 2.84 million tons of potatoes, 907,950 tons of meat or livestock, 468,112 tons of sugar and 40,270 tons of fats were taken from the annexed territories and the General Government and given to the occupation troops and to the Reich itself.38 They made a decisive contribution to overcoming the food crisis in the Reich, and accounted for 50 per cent of all direct imports in the decisive years of 1942 and 1943. Far more important, however, were the

44  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

long-term consequences: the resulting disruption of the Polish economy and the serious, permanent damage to the health of the people, which came in addition to the trauma caused by terror and internment. Five million of those who had survived the occupation were left permanently harmed. * The fiscal and monetary plundering also contributed significantly to the ruin of the Polish economy. In doing so, the experts of the Reich Ministry of Finance and the Reichsbank, who were assigned to occupied Poland, developed a systematic approach that certainly matched the Nazi leadership’s desire to destroy Poland in every respect.39 But first they had to improvise. The management of Bank Polski (the national bank of Poland) had prevented the Germans from accessing the bulk of its foreign exchange reserves, złoty stocks and printing blocks for the production of banknotes. Initially, this was not particularly significant, because the Germans unashamedly robbed the bulk of their loot and only issued formal confiscation certificates or paid Reichsmarks for a smaller portion of what they took. Since, in addition, the exchange rate was modified in favour of the Reichsmark right at the beginning of the raid, the burden on the Reich treasury due to the possible return of the amounts spent in RM was kept within narrow limits. But even this was too much for the German currency experts. Therefore, in the fourth week of the war, they introduced a Wehrmacht special currency, the Reichskreditkassenscheine (the Reich’s credit treasury notes), which were only valid in the conquered Polish territories and which foreshadowed the subsequent refinancing of the entire cost of the occupation. Henceforth, the occupiers ‘paid’ for all goods and services they needed for their ongoing maintenance in this fake currency. The RKK organisation acted as the issuing agent, setting up shop in Bank Polski’s regional branches and establishing a central office in Łódź. Towards the end of this first phase of improvisation, a landmark decision was made. It was enshrined in Hitler’s decree on the administration of the occupied Polish territories, published on 12 October 1939. This decree contained, among other things, the fateful stipulation that the non-annexed parts of Poland would have to pay for the costs of the occupation and its administration; the Reich Ministry of Finance was also given a voice in the setting of public budgets.40 The administration of the General Government ratified this decision in January 1940 without any objections. It thus recognised the de facto subordination of the now established main finance department to the Reich Ministry of Finance. Institutionally, this paved the institutional path for the complete plunder of fiscal policy in the General Government. Although there was sometimes considerable tension between

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  45

the officials delegated to Krakow and the Berlin headquarters of the Reich finance ministry, ultimately the demands for the best possible use of the General Government to finance the costs of the war were always fulfilled. The institutional implementation of these radical stipulations occurred in several steps until the turn of 1940. After the formal annexation of northern and western Poland, the branches of the Reich credit treasury organisation there were converted into Reichsbank headquarters and branch offices, and incorporated directly into the German finance and customs administration and the Reichsmark area. However, its headquarters were relocated to Krakow and placed under the supervision of the finance department. It increasingly restricted the issue of additional Reich credit treasury notes and replaced them with the approximately 600 million złoty that in the meantime had been looted and transferred from the annexed areas to Krakow. Nevertheless, the total number of notes in circulation was completely inadequate and also uncontrollable. For this reason, the HQ of the Reich’s credit treasury notes was refounded as an issuing bank in mid-December 1939 and placed under the supervision of a German banking director,41 who from then on was responsible for procuring the funds required by the occupation administration through his control over the banknote printing press. The final expansion of the financial and monetary policy instruments for the exploitation of the Polish economy began in April 1940. The issuing bank circulated new złoty notes and confiscated the RKK notes still in circulation. They were exchanged for the new currency just like the old looted złoty were. This also marked the end of the first phase of plunder. The systematic raiding could now begin. The issuing bank acted as a subaltern tool. It also played a central role in lending. Through favourable, discounted lending rates, it promoted the growing German economic sector and the development of German commercial banks (Commerzbank, Viennese branches of Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank, as well as the Bank of German Labour). Given the overall catastrophic situation, however, there were only minimal savings and extremely weak capital markets. The main function of the issuing bank was always to operate the banknote printing press in such a way that favoured the administration of the occupation and that relieved the German war chest. In contrast, the operations of the Finance Department of the General Government acquired major significance. The department developed brutal methods for optimising the revenue side of its budgets in order to offset, at least partially, the massive increase in the occupation costs and the contributions to the Reich treasury. In fact, it managed to generate considerable increases in revenue by bringing the Polish monopoly institutions into service, by pushing through customs policy and by stepping up the collection of taxes – the increase in wage and income taxes imposed on Polish

46  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

employees played a particularly important role in this regard.42 Despite this, it was only possible to balance the budget by around 20 per cent. But this low ratio to total spending was sufficient to control the overall situation and not jeopardise the growing provision of loans or the delivery of contributions to the Reich central treasury by bringing about hyperinflation. However, the looting operations carried out for the benefit of the Reich central treasury and to finance the costs of the occupation, the expansion of the military infrastructure and the increasing arms deliveries had a much greater impact. Expenditure on the Wehrmacht, the SS and police apparatus, arms deliveries and the expansion of the infrastructure amounted to a total of 400 million złoty for the period September–December 1939. In 1940, this sum more than tripled, and reached a peak of over 4 billion złoty in 1943.43 On top of this, the General Government had to make a ‘military contribution’, which amounted to a total of 3.8 billion złoty by the end of the occupation.44 With the exception of these ‘military contributions’, all the payments were channelled through a clearing account held by the Reich Central Treasury at the issuing bank and credited to the General Government. However, since the treasury made only minimal counter-transfers in Reichsmarks, the issuing bank issued Reich bonds to cover the compulsory loan demanded by the Reich. In 1944, the treasury was finally indebted to the General Government to the tune of 9.4 billion złoty.45 Table 1.1 The financial plundering of Poland (figures in millions at an exchange rate of 1 RM to 2 złoty) Currency

Złoty

RM

Clearing debts

75.8

37.9

Looted złoty

600

300

RKK notes

200

100

Taxes, customs duties and monopoly revenue

7,272

3,636

Occupation costs*

17,887

8,943.5

‘Military contribution’

3,807

1,903.5

‘Civil administration’**

3,562

1,781

Compulsory loan to the Reich treasury

9,425

4,712.5

Total

42,828.8

21,414.4

Source: Compiled in accordance with Kilian, Krieg auf Kosten anderer, Tables 14–19, pp. 168 ff.; Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 2, Table 10, p. 376. Notes: * The Wehrmacht, the SS and the police apparatus, arms supplies and military infrastructure ** Compiled in accordance with the regular budgets of the General Government administration, including the district leaders

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  47

In historical research, radically different estimates of the extent of the financial plundering of Poland have been in circulation for decades. Even those whose estimates were considerably higher than the data published in the 1970s have been surpassed by the facts that have now been verified. Even today, a reliable overall view of the looting is not possible, because the finances of the annexed territories ceased to be reported separately from 1940. But even without this gap, the balance is still alarming if we include the transfers of the first looting phase and the data processed via the German Clearing House – and manipulated downwards accordingly – into the overall account. The total of the financial looting amounts to a minimum of 42.828 billion złoty. If we use the exchange rate fixed by the Germans at the beginning of the war (1 RM: 2 Zł), we arrive at a total of 21.414 billion RM (see Table 1.1). * One of the greatest surprises in the history of occupied Poland is that, despite their destructive interventions in the demographic, economic and financial substance of the country, the Germans succeeded in integrating it more and more into their war and armaments economy. While this fact is understandable in the case of the Upper Silesian industrial area, where at an early stage the decision was made to increase extractions from current production, it is not easy to explain why the capacity of the General Government, which had largely been ‘cleared out’ at a previous stage, could be increasingly used for armaments from 1942/43 onwards. In the first two years of the occupation, the Germans made considerable efforts in the annexed territories to make agriculture more efficient, to expand the transport infrastructure and to improve the energy supply. From 1942 onwards, they restricted these activities to modernising the metallurgical, arms and chemical industries and then – right through until the end of their occupation - switched systematically to reducing the workforce and production facilities. The Upper Silesian industrial centre’s share of the production of German armaments increased considerably. First and foremost was hard coal production: as early as 1940 the mines were already producing 56.4 million tons of coal per year, increasing the annual output to 70.7 million tons by 1943. While this figure fell slightly to 67.4 million tons in 1944, it still outstripped the coal output of the Ruhr area for that year.46 The iron and steel industry also caught up from 1941onwards, after its two leading companies, the state-owned Berghütte group and the Oberhütten, which belonged to the Bellestrem group, had been modernised. Here, too, the highest production figures were seen in 1943 with 1.3 million tonnes of pig iron, 2.8 million tonnes of steel and almost 1.7

48  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

million tonnes of rolled steel products.47 Their semi-finished products were processed by the local arms industry – which partly overlapped with the coal and steel industry – to produce huge quantities of infantry weapons, light cannons, tanks and explosives. The most spectacular increases in output, however, came in the chemical industry. The chemical industry processed coal tar – produced abundantly during the coking of coal in the mining industry – into synthetic substitutes that were used to make explosives and chemical weapons as well as fuels and lubricants. As early as 1941, ammonia production increased by 136 per cent, petrol production by 750 per cent and industrial oils by 330 per cent.48 It is not possible at this point to go into the other production segments that were also of central importance to the German war and armaments economy, such as zinc and lead smelting, or the textile industry concentrated in Litzmannstadt, which comprised 13 per cent of total German production despite a far-reaching reduction in capacity. In the General Government, industrial restructuring proved considerably more difficult because the armaments authorities that also set up there (the armament inspectorate in the occupied Eastern territories – the General Government from the summer of 1940) were unable to halt deindustrialisation until the summer of 1940.49 Against the backdrop of the deployment of troops against the USSR, a shift then occurred, with priority initially being given to the development of the capacity for transport and repair (the expansion of the Eastern Railway and the establishment of Wehrmacht plants). In addition, the Reichswerke Hermann Göring took possession of the three largest iron and steel works in central Poland, and provisionally took over the most important armaments factories in the Warsaw district and the central industrial district from the industrial enterprises confiscated by the General Government’s trusteeship administration. At the same time, the trustees liquidated two-thirds of craft enterprises and three-quarters of commercial enterprises50 in order to ‘free up’ the workforce needed to begin the production of armaments. What is more, the customs border with the annexed territories was removed in 1942, guaranteeing the smooth transfer of arms supplies to the Reich. Once these radical rationalisation measures had been completed, the central steering authorities of the German armaments industry – the Reichsvereinigung Kohle, the Reichsvereinigung Eisen and the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production – took command of the new capacity and, following a large-scale decommissioning and rationalisation operation, set up the Armament Inspectorate in the General Government in order to allocate extensive relocation orders. This created a military-industrial complex in the district of Warsaw and the central industrial district, which exploited 140,000 Polish workers, including 26,000 Jewish forced labourers.

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  49

From then, arms production increased steadily, reaching a peak in May 1944 with a delivery value of 84 million Reichsmarks. In total, arms, ammunition, equipment and aircraft engines worth some 800 million Reichsmarks were produced, including 121 million pieces of infantry ammunition and 13.2 million artillery shells: 14.2 per cent and 4.9 percent of ammunition production in the whole of German-controlled Europe respectively.51 * The ruthless concentration of Poland’s shrunken economic forces on the production of armaments exacerbated the population’s food crisis. Since this change in course was accompanied by increased political terror, the mass recruitment of forced workers, financial looting, starvation policies, and the annihilation of the Jews, society increasingly fell into a state of ‘quasi-life’ on the edge of the abyss. It raised the question of how this society, with all the enormous losses and demographic changes, could even survive the German occupation. This development made itself felt at an early stage in day-to-day life in the General Government through shortages of food and rapid price increases. In this respect, things were different for the population of the General Governate to the population of the annexed territories, where it was classified as belonging to the lowest section of the German system of wages and food, and was accordingly confronted with reduced, but stable wage and price relations. For a long time, wages stagnated at extremely low pre-war levels, whereas the cost of living quickly rose. Even though in the General Government too there was an official attempt to hold down prices alongside the wage freeze, this was actually illusory due to the lack of food, which meant that the food and clothing cards issued to the workers and the families of the deported forced labours were largely worthless: it was not possible to get hold of food or clothing at guaranteed prices. Since the costs of living had been rapidly rising from 1940, and in Warsaw were already twenty times the pre-war level by 1942, increasing again by a factor of sixty by May 1944,52 the average Polish family could not survive on the remuneration or food rations that were allocated to them. Those wishing to avoid starving to death and being reported for ‘Reich deployment’ had to come up with something new. This ‘new’ approach came in the form of an underground economy, which in 1941 became a mass phenomenon and eventually involved almost the entire Polish population.53 Secondary literature has often underestimated this phenomenon and seen things from the perspective of the occupiers in brushing it off disparagingly – even if not always intentionally – as ‘illicit trading’ or as a ‘black market’. This is astounding, because without establishing such an economy, Polish society would never have been able to assert itself

50  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

politically in the ‘underground state’ or to organise the partisan movement: the underground economy formed the material basis of that movement. Those who were unable to participate in this economy had no chance of surviving. The Soviet prisoners of war were just as excluded from it as the Polish Jews were following the closure of the ghettos. It is for this reason that the mass murder of the Polish Jews in summer 1941 began as a starvation genocide. In spring 1941, three hundred thousand Soviet prisoners of war died of starvation in the General Government alone.54 The underground economy consisted of all the non-registered goods and services that the Polish government could produce and distribute behind the backs of the occupiers.55 In the commercial sector, the main places of production were households, small industrial workshops and craftsmen’s workshops, while the smallholder farmers kept considerable amounts of their agricultural produce safe from confiscation by the Germans. Mass products were also siphoned off from the German-controlled economic sector. This was achieved by clandestine part-time work (moonlighting), theft and, to a lesser extent, bribery. On this basis, an informal distribution system developed, which took place mainly in kind. Most households participated in this system, and those dependent on work regularly stayed away from their workplaces for days at a time in order to arrange for the survival of their families.56 Only limited quantities of mass goods could be transported, but informal merchant groupings soon emerged too. They specialised in large-scale, covert rail transportation, and went along with the enormous risks of punishment – forced labour, concentration camp confinement or even execution – in return for an appropriately high financial return. According to current estimates, the underground economy accounted for 50–65 per cent of the basic living requirements of the Polish population.57 The unregistered part of agricultural and commercial production in the underground economy had risen to 39 per cent of the country’s official gross national product by the end of the occupation.58 In order to ensure their bare survival, the Polish people had managed to respond to the extensive destruction of their economy by building a shadow economy, which under the conditions of a brutal occupation took on the character of an underground economy. * From July 1944, the flames of the war engulfed Poland once again, albeit this time in the opposite direction. Due to the increased intensity of the fighting, the destruction caused was even more immense than during the Blitzkrieg of September 1939, and the Germans made it even worse through systematic acts of destruction, which they referred to in their militarised bureaucratic

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  51

language as ‘loosening, eviction, paralysis and destruction measures’ (the so-called ARLZ measures). These ‘scorched earth’ operations had nothing to do with the immediate acts of war, and even at that time were illegal under international law. They were carried out with extraordinary thoroughness, and divided into four phases. In the first phase, the Germans removed from those areas under threat from the enemy offensive everything in terms of people, material goods and living agricultural inventory that was not absolutely necessary for production or troop supplies, with a particular focus on bottleneck materials such as fuel, industrial metals and special machinery. After the ‘evacuation order’ had been issued, all people and movable goods that were considered important for the continuation of the war and the armaments efforts were removed. Finally, the pioneer units operating directly behind the front line went into action and carried out the plans for partial destruction (the so-called ‘paralysis’ measures) or total destruction drawn up in the months beforehand. In the case of Poland, they mostly opted for the latter, more radical variant, and blew up the factories, rolling stock and transport infrastructure, and then burned the remaining supplies. In applying these methods, the responsible Wehrmacht staffs – the Army Group Centre and Army Group North Ukraine (known from September 1944 as Army Group A) – developed a terrible routine in their withdrawal from the USSR, which they now transferred to the General Government and, from January 1945, to the annexed territories.59 In the General Government, the ARLZ orders came into force in July 1944. They were announced one month later in the districts of Białystok and Ciechanów. The consequences were devastating. The demographic and economic structure of the Polish economy was once again damaged in this last phase of robbery and destruction, which further compounded the previous ruinous interventions. The fact that the Germans dismantled or destroyed almost everything that they had invested in the years of occupation to expand the infrastructure and to increase the amount they could extract from current production had a particularly fatal impact. The Germans have kept precise records of this last barbaric act of their occupation policy too, so that it is possible to draw up a fairly accurate balance sheet of its impact.60 During the withdrawal from eastern Poland, the unexpectedly rapid retreat operations initially restricted their ability to keep to the schedules of their ARLZ plans; but it was remarkable just how much they were able to remove in terms of raw materials, grain and semi-finished products, despite the bottlenecks in rail transport. Added to this was the large-scale clearance of cattle and the forced inclusion of all those who were still able to work or to conduct military service, while the inmates of prisons and the last Jewish forced labour camps were murdered. When the army high commanders then succeeded in stabilising the fronts on the Vistula and

52  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

in southern Poland for a few months in August/September 1944, a system began to emerge in their ‘scorched earth’ practices. Army Group A again mobilised over four hundred thousand forced labourers for entrenchment and fortification work on the new defence positions around Krakow and in the central Polish industrial area. A further five hundred thousand forced labourers had been deported to the Reich by September 1944, and the bulk of the industrial and agricultural supplies fell victim to the ‘scavenging’ of the combat troops and paramilitary units, which had grown to 1.5 million soldiers by spring 1941. Meanwhile, the Armaments Inspectorate dismantled everything that the arms companies cooperating with them had invested in terms of machinery, plant and equipment in the central industrial district and the district of Warsaw in 1942–43. Although the fronts of the Red Army and Polish units quickly advanced into the annexed territories in January and February 1945, the Germans succeeded in putting their plans for destruction, which had been prepared in detail, into action. They destroyed the arms industry, and removed or blew up almost all the rolling stock, as well as 90 per cent of the transport infrastructure – bridges, stations and the main railway lines. They did not spare the housing stock of the few urban-industrial agglomerations either. The destruction of Warsaw has already been mentioned: the metropolis was systematically razed after the deportation and internment of the surviving resident population. Not only was the historic Old Town blown up and burnt down, but the districts located west of the Vistula were levelled to the ground too, with the exception of certain streets that were destined to become fortifications as part of the ‘dismantling’. Before the German pioneer associations went into action, a ‘total clearance’ of the entire commercial and housing inventory had taken place, and about one million people lost their property. In the first months of 1945, the Germans continued their extermination programme in the annexed territories. In Pomerania, the Greater Poland voivodeship and Upper Silesia they also destroyed considerable parts of the infrastructure, residential housing stock and the industrial plants. In the case of some particularly capital-intensive new plants, such as the I.G. Farben plant at Auschwitz, management limited itself to the removal of key components. Overall, however, the destruction wrought in the annexed territories appears to have exceeded even the practices of ‘scorched earth’ applied in the General Government.61 * The combination of political terror, ruinous economic and financial policies, economic exploitation and the systematically planned destruction of resources had disastrous consequences for the Polish economy. Poland lost over 6 million people, 17.3 per cent of its total population, and a further

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  53

5 million became disabled, traumatised or suffered from serious chronic diseases as a result of years of malnutrition. Of the economically active sections of the population, 2.4 million were coerced into forced labour in the Reich. This awful demographic balance sheet is mirrored by the no less terrible balance sheet of macroeconomic ruin. This is a particularly significant legacy of the occupation, because before the German invasion Poland was an emerging economy that had suffered severely from the consequences of the Great Depression. The German occupation saw Poland lose 38 per cent of its national wealth, including 35 per cent of its agricultural sector, 32 per cent of its industrial economy, 50 per cent of its transport infrastructure, 65 per cent of its trade, 60 per cent of its banking and insurance capital, and 43 per cent of its cultural assets.62 In the more economically developed northern and western regions, the damage was much greater, with capital stock reaching only about 40 per cent of its pre-war level.63 Machinery and industrial plant shrunk by half, and urban housing decreased by 40 per cent. Rolling stock was almost completely destroyed or removed (97 per cent), and 63 per cent of the railway lines were no longer functional. Agriculture also suffered considerable losses: 28 per cent of farms were destroyed, and livestock shrunk by 91 per cent.64 Obviously, the Germans in the annexed territories took particular care to eliminate the stimuli for economic growth that they had initiated there during the first phase of the occupation. It was solely thanks to the development of the underground economy that the actual national product generated was significantly higher than previously assumed, but it was only partially included in official economic statistics.

Creating a New Order out of the Destruction: ‘Folkdom Policy’ and the ‘General Plan East’ What happened during the occupation of Poland cannot be explained by an analysis of the strategic goals, the policy of terrorism or the ruin of the economy alone. Poland was not only to be wiped out politically, culturally and economically; it was also regarded as the first staging post on the way to ‘gaining German living space in the East’. This involved the resettlement or destruction of the Polish population in order to make way for Germans from the Reich and the diaspora of foreign Germans. From the outset it was also important to render the process of the Germanisation of the population irreversible by ‘Germanising’ the landscape, the cities, the agricultural and economic structure, the administration and the spatial arrangement of the country.65 The emerging nation, weakened by a severe structural crisis, was regarded by the conquerors as an overpopulated and amorphous entity lacking in any culture, which – with the exception of

54  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

the scattered remnants of German colonisation of the East in past times – could be destroyed to make way for a rational and efficiency-oriented reorganisation. Not only inveterate haters of Poland, but also thousands of technocrats – population economists, agricultural scientists, regional planning experts, landscape designers and urban planners – regarded the newly conquered Poland as a tabula rasa. They saw no need to take its demographic or socio-economic conditions into account. But the German Empire was also marked by severe structural crises and had numerous rural ‘emergency areas’ whose rehabilitation was on ice due to the armaments boom taking priority. Administrative reform had also stalled in its early stages. It was thus tempting to pre-empt the overdue structural reforms there in the annexed territories and in the General Government themselves, which had been declared a ‘secondary territory of the Reich’ from the spring of 1941, and to make the small farming population of the German ‘emergency areas’ settle in the reorganised agricultural and settlement landscapes. Since, however, the transfer of the small farming families from the emergency areas was only possible after the ‘Final Victory’ and the return of their demobilised breadwinners, for the time being the Germans had to make do with the ‘resettlement’ of the foreign German diaspora from Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Broadly speaking, these were the terms in which the planners thought. In doing so, they made the fatal mistake of viewing a country as densely populated as Poland, which is marked by numerous historical cultural landscapes, as a ‘formless entity’ in which they could ruthlessly implement their efficiency-oriented plans for reorganisation. While they were not responsible for the ‘rough’ treatment of the country – the expropriations, the mass expulsions and the inclusion of their planning area in the overall framework of Germanization policy – they not only supported the occupation administration unreservedly in its barbaric practices (such as the establishment of the ghettos) but, when it came to personnel, they were also closely intertwined with the SS staffs. As a result, they provided efficient support at the levels of settlement and regional and urban planning, where scientific and technical expertise was required. This led to a significant overlap between extermination practices and development planning, which was shaped by three outstanding programmes and institutions of Germanisation policy: the extermination plans of the Reich Main Security Office (RMSO); the settlement policy framework planning conducted by the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood (RKF); and the detailed work of the state planners who were recruited from the Reich Working Group for Spatial Research and the Reich Office for Spatial Planning in the administrations of the individual Reich districts and of those in the General Government.66

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  55

* The RMSO was responsible for implementing the concept of a tabula rasa in population policy. I have already highlighted the first steps taken in this direction in the form of the ghettoisation of the Jewish communities, the massacres of the Polish intelligentsia and the ‘wild’ resettlements. At the end of October 1939, the leader of the SS, Himmler, ordered that the expulsions from the annexed territories be systematised: by February 1940, all Jews, all Poles who had moved into the district of Danzig-West Prussia after 1918, and a ‘number of particularly hostile Polish people’ from the remaining annexed territories, who were to be specified in more detail, were to be deported.67 In response, the RMSO set up a central camp in Poznań to prepare for the deportations, which was later renamed the ‘Central Bureau for Resettlement’ (UWZ), moved its headquarters to Łódź and coordinated its plans with the ‘Central Bureau for Immigration Centre’ (EWZ), which was responsible for the complementary settlement of foreign German settlers. The first mass deportation took place in December 1939 (the ‘First Local Plan’). Three further mass expulsions had followed by March 1941, but were replaced by forced expulsions within the Wartheland after the General Government stopped accepting them. By the end of 1942, in the Wartheland 110,000 non-German inhabitants of the annexed territories had fallen victim to ‘wild’ deportations, 360,000 to systematic resettlements and 250,000 to expulsions.68 Most of the deportees came from this district. From spring 1941 onwards, the RMSO was forced to modify its ‘longdistance planning’, which had been updated against the backdrop of several ‘local plans’. This was due not only to the congestion of rail transport caused by the deployment of troops against the USSR, but also to the shortage of manpower and the reservoir of recruits. For this reason, the ‘re-Germanization’ of part of the Polish population now took priority.69 A ‘German People’s List’ was introduced in the annexed territories. Its function was to regulate the citizenship of the German minority, to divide the Polish population by privileging a stratum declared to be ‘incapable of Germanisation’, and to attribute to the rest the status of a lawless and expropriated helot stratum. Four different sections were formed for this purpose. The first two were identical with the German minority (about one million people). In contrast, those declared to be ‘incapable of Germanisation’ in Section III were granted German citizenship upon revocation. They were spared expropriation, but subject to compulsory military service. Tellingly, by some margin they comprised the largest group in the most developed regions with particularly high labour demand – Upper Silesia and GdanskWest Prussia – whereas the number of ‘protected people’ was particularly high in the Wartheland.70 All in all, this social-racist cadastre in the annexed territories Germanised about two million Polish people, incorporated them

56  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

into the German labour and collective-bargaining laws of the territory of the Reich, and protected them from further expropriation and deportations.71 However, this was by no means merely the SS planners making a concession to the priority of the accelerated inclusion of the annexed territories within the German war machine. Rather, ‘ethnicity conversion’ measures became an integral part of their instruments of ‘folkdom policy’, which they rapidly developed further. Later on, they did not even shy away from systematically abducting Polish children and secretly ‘Germanizing’ them.72 That these macabre learning processes by no means prevented the folkdom planners of the RMSO from further radicalising their programmes for ‘ethnic land consolidation’ in Poland and Eastern Europe becomes evident in their ‘General Plan East’, which was shot down in January 1942. In contrast to the constantly updated ‘long-distance plans’ for resettlements from the annexed territories, this planning framework now included the entire Slavic population of the previously conquered East European territories.73 It was based on the target projection that, first of all, the entire Jewish population would be deported and murdered; then, two-thirds of the Slavic population would follow as columns of forced labourers into the ‘reconstruction regions’ and the planned ‘mandate area of Western Siberia’ in order to be ‘exterminated by labour’ as well. A total of 31 million people suffered this fate, including 80–85 per cent of all Poles (i.e. the 16 to 20 million inhabitants of the annexed territories, the General Government and the district of Białystok). In contrast, the quota of Belarusians and Ukrainians to be annihilated was set at 75 and 65 per cent respectively. In the early summer of 1942, the extermination planners of the RMSO expanded their murder programme once again in territorial terms. The intentions with regard to Poland did not change in this ‘Overall Plan East’, but the timeframe, which had previously been set at thirty years, was reduced to twenty years. A few weeks after the conclusion of the RMSO’s overall plan, Himmler ordered that large-scale action for the mass expulsion of Polish farmers be initiated in the Lublin district. For various reasons, this region was considered to be the first testing ground for the ‘ethnic conversion’ of the General Government.74 It formed an important bridge to the Ukraine, and for this reason the SS had acquired numerous properties there from the spring of 1941 in order to make a network of SS estates the core of the future ‘large settlement area’. In addition, the SS presided over numerous Jewish forced labour camps here, whose inmates could be used for settlement and infrastructure work at an extremely low cost. A first ‘trial resettlement’ had already taken place, with the SS and police leader of the district having ‘evacuated’ seven villages in the district of Zamość. Himmler’s first General

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  57

Plan East had also already identified the district of Zamość as the first focus for settlement (see below). At the end of November 1942, SS, police and Wehrmacht units surrounded numerous villages in the district of Zamość, drove the inhabitants out of their houses and deported them to collective camps, where experts from the Central Bureau for Resettlement divided them up into four groups.75 The members of groups I and II were sent for ‘re-Germanisation’ via Litzmannstadt. Those remaining who were able to work (Group III) were handed over to the labour authorities for forced labour in the Reich. Those who resisted this (Group IV – about 22 per cent of all prisoners) were ‘transported’ directly to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Children and the elderly, however, were sent to ‘pension villages’. These were Jewish communities whose inhabitants had previously been transported to the extermination camps. These events made it clear to the non-Jewish population of the General Government what fate awaited them too. Zamość became the trigger for, and a beacon of, a comprehensive resistance movement, which at this point united all political camps. As a result, the progress of the resettlements was interrupted several times and could finally only be further pursued in the context of anti-partisan actions. By August 1943, the Germans extended their campaign for ‘repopulation’ to three more districts of the Lublin district, and settled about 9,000 Germans from Bessarabia. In total, the inhabitants of three hundred villages – 110,000 people – were displaced. However, only about 51,000 of them were deported to the collection and concentration camps; the majority fled, disappeared or joined the partisan movement. * On 7 October 1939, Hitler appointed Himmler as Reich Commissar for the Consolidation of German Nationhood, and tasked him with bringing the foreign German diaspora back into the expanding ‘Greater German Reich’, with resettling the ‘alien section of the population’ living in the Reich, and with shaping ‘German settlement areas’ for the foreign German returnees.76 This amounted to unrestricted general power of attorney for the ‘Germanisation of the soil’, which provided the RMSO’s deportation programmes with a basis for settlement policy. Himmler immediately gave the go-ahead for the establishment of a special apparatus within the SS, whose planning department he staffed with experts in agricultural, settlement and development policy. From the very beginning, the population policy guidelines of the RMSO served as their basis. By the end of 1942, they had drawn up several variants of ‘general plans’ that, analogous to the RMSO’s procedure, initially referred to the Germanisation of the annexed territories in terms of settlement policy, then expanded this to the whole of

58  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

occupied Poland, then also included strategically important regions of the occupied USSR and, finally, resulted in a ‘general settlement plan’, which reconciled the Germanisation of Nazi-dominated Europe with the previously postponed plans for the transformation of the ‘Old Reich’.77 In the context of this introduction, I will restrict myself to those components of the general plan that relate to occupied Poland. In January 1940, the Reich Commissar for the Consolidation of German Nationhood’s planning department presented a first draft plan for the Germanisation of the annexed territories in terms of settlement policy.78 It was based on the RMSO’s cumulative ‘remote planning’. It assumed that Polish Jews had already been completely deported and that an additional 3.4 million Poles would be expelled to the General Government. In return, the number of Germans, estimated at 1.1 million at that time, was to be increased by 3.4 million to 4.5 million, so that the situation before the First World War (50 per cent Germans and 50 per cent Poles) was restored. Further ‘Germanization’ would be ensured through the biological and economic dynamics of settler colonialism. Moreover, it would then not be difficult to orient the ‘Germanisation of the soil’ towards specific geopolitical priorities. With the help of ‘first order settlement zones’, a ‘wall of German folkdom’ was to be created along the border of the General Government, the hinterland of the larger cities was to be populated with German farmers, and two ‘German folkdom bridges’ were to be created as an East–West axis to the ‘Old Reich’ in order to isolate the ‘remnants of Polish folkdom’ situated in between. These parameters were followed by detailed information on the localisation and internal structure of the ‘first order settlement zones’. A few days after the invasion of the USSR, the Reich commissar’s planning department received an order to extend the first ‘planning foundations’ into a ‘general plan’.79 The plans were available in the middle of July, but could not yet be applied locally.80 What is certain is that for the first time it included a part of the General Government and envisaged a ‘German People’s Bridge’ in the south-east in the area of Zamość that would create safe access to the Ukraine. In all probability, the MemelNarew area, Białystok and Galicia were also included. When it came to settlement policy, the aim was thus to isolate ‘residual Poland’ from all sides, and to create a German corridor into Ukraine. This was to happen within thirty years. Since the Reich commissar’s planners were also aware of the preliminary work carried out by the RMSO on the mass deportation of the entire Jewish population and over 80 per cent of the Polish population, they were able to limit the ‘demand for German settlers’ to 4.55 million Germans living in the Reich and abroad. Just under a year later, the Reich Commissar for the Consolidation of German Nationhood’s planning department submitted a revised version

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  59

of the ‘General Plan East’, which it completed to become the ‘General Settlement Plan’ by the end of 1942. In both iterations, occupied Poland was only to play a secondary role as a transit country to Northern Russia and Western Siberia (‘Ingria’), the Ukraine and the ‘Gotengau’ (the Crimea and Tauria). In the planning paper of 28 May, thirteen further ‘settlement bases’ were projected. In addition to the district of Zamość, they included Warsaw, Częstochowa, Radom, Kielce, Lublin, Krakow, Tarnow and Lwów; on top of this, extensive cost estimates were made, which now also included the expansion of the transport infrastructure. In the ‘General Settlement Plan’ presented on 23 December 1942, the General Government was finally included in the group of territories that had to be ‘completely Germanised’. This is how the synchronisation of the development planning conducted by the staff of the Reich Commissar for the Consolidation of German Nationhood and the extermination programme of the RMSO was achieved. * While the two central SS planning staffs continued to radicalise their overlapping extermination and development programmes until the strategic turnaround of the war in the winter of 1942/43, the specialists from the regional planning authorities delegated to the civilian administrations of the annexed territories and the General Government set about their detailed work. In doing so, they adhered unconditionally to the guidelines of the SS staffs, with whom they were closely connected both institutionally and in terms of personnel. However, they also set up their own communication network, which they used for the internal coordination of planning work throughout occupied Poland, and which they synchronised centrally with the help of the Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit (Institute for German work in the eastern territories), founded in the spring of 1940 in Krakow, and the Reich office for regional planning. In doing so, they were able to proceed from the methodologically proven paradigms of population economics, administrative theory and regional development planning, which had prevailed among them since the beginning of the 1930s, and had gradually merged with the hierarchical structural concepts of Nazi landscape, settlement and urban planning: the concepts of optimal population density, agricultural land use, rural–urban weighting and location distribution of ‘central places’, the implementation of which was to result in a rational, easily controllable and highly efficient regional planning structure. It was the vision of a hierarchically ordered ‘ethnic and meritocratic community’ (Volks- und Leistungsgemeinschaft), to which the conversion of the historic city centres into ‘district forums’, district towers and huge marching squares in front of the official seats of the ‘district leaders’ was just as much

60  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

subject as the conversion of the urban quarters into the hierarchically categorised ‘settlement cells’ of the NSDAP local groups. All these standardised stereotypes – regional planning sketches, urban development plans, priority lists of ‘central places’, and so on – were created by the state and city planners on their drawing boards and in their model workshops in the tens of thousands until the middle of 1943.81 They integrated all political guidelines into them without any problems. Before its real destruction, Warsaw was planned to be rebuilt into a German provincial city with 40–45,000 inhabitants, which was criss-crossed by huge traffic axes. In comparison, the plans for the redesign of Posen or Litzmannstadt seemed less amateurish, but by no means less violent. The reconstruction of Litzmannstadt alone required the deportation of 300,000 Jewish and 50,000 Polish inhabitants.82 Thus, the experts of the Reich Office for Regional Planning made themselves useful wherever the strong arm of the SS staffs focused on agricultural restructuring could not reach: the redesign of the towns, transport and infrastructure, as well as regional landscaping. It was precisely at this level that the terrifying effects of the synergy between emigration and settlement, concentration and extermination camps, industrial concentration and urban redevelopment assumed haunting proportions, especially in the planning of the Auschwitz site.83 The monstrousness of the SS’s overlapping extermination and development plans only becomes apparent to us when we compare them with the ‘General Spatial Planning’ drawn up by experts at the Reich Office for Spatial Planning. * Fortunately, the furore of the development and redesign experts sent to Poland was limited to just a short period in which they were able to translate the results of the extermination policy into action. If they had been able to act unhindered for ten years, Poland would indeed have disappeared from the map as a historical cultural nation. Moreover, we must not forget the legitimising function that the visions of reorganisation played in the occupiers’ policy of annihilation. It enabled them to combine terror and genocide with an efficiency-oriented development model. The result was a cumulative increase in excessive violence, without which the tabula rasa required for reorganisation could not be achieved. For this leap in development dictated by the occupiers, 80–85 per cent of all Poles – 16 to 20 million people – were supposed to be killed. We should never forget that the Germans managed to achieve one-third of this ‘final goal’ during the occupation.

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  61

Notes   1. This overview provides a summary of research conducted in the past few decades on the occupation of Poland in the Second World War. There is a rich amount of source material and literature on this topic. The following publications were particularly important points of reference: Präg and Jacobmeyer, Das Diensttagebuch; Instytut Zachodni, Documenta Occupationis Vol. I–XIII; Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 8; Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 2; Kleßmann, Die Selbstbehauptung einer Nation; Lehnstaedt, Imperiale Polenpolitik in den Weltkriegen; Łuczak, Polityka ludnościowa; Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands; Matusak, Przemysl na ziemiach polskich; Röhr, Occupatio Poloniae. In what follows, I will merely substantiate those events and contexts that draw upon less well-known studies.   2 On these war crimes, see Łuczak, Polityka ludnościowa, 68 ff.; Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands, 3 ff.; Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg; Röhr, Vom Annaberg nach Gleiwitz. Zur Vorgeschichte des deutschen Überfalls auf Polen am 1. September 1939, 79 ff.  3. Cf. the list of the mass executions of Polish civilians between 1 Sep and 25 Oct 1939 in Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 2, 22 ff.  4. Łuczak, Polityka ludnościowa, 218 ff.; Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 2, 22 ff.  5. Documented in: Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik 1918–1945 (ADAP), Series D, vols. VII and VIII.  6. Two days prior to this, the French government had rejected the German offer. Knowing that a rejection was on the cards, Hitler had, on 9 Oct, already issued his chief commanders with the instruction to prepare for the attack in the west.  7. The coalmining districts of Krakow and Dąbrowa Górnicza, as well as the Olsa territory, which had been annexed by Poland in 1938.  8. This course of events corresponded to the agreements of the German–Soviet Border and Friendship Treaty of 28 Sep 1939. In the secret additional agreements to the Non-Aggression Treaty of 23 Aug 1939, the line of demarcation of the German–Soviet ‘sphere of interest’ that was Poland had been defined much further to the west – roughly along the Vistula. Cf. ADAP, Series D, Vol. VII, Document 229, p. 206 f.  9. Präg and Jacobmeyer, Das Diensttagebuch, 25 Mar 1941, p. 335 f. 10. In reality, this category also included the ‘renegades’ included in Section IV on the German People’s List who were classified as being ‘incapable of re-Germanisation’. 11. Extensively documented in Instytut Zachodni, Documenta Occupationis, Vol. XII, 1986. 12. See Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, Ch. 8, p. 186 ff.; Röhr, ‘Terror und Politik’, in Röhr, Occupatio Poloniae, 143–72. 13. The sole exceptions were the Main Aid Committee (RGO) and a few cooperatives. 14. Cf. Pilichowski (ed.), Obozy hitlerowskie na ziemiach polskich 1939–1945. 15. See the extensive discussion in Materski and Szarota, Polska 1939–1945, Part II, 87 ff.; Röhr, ‘Terror und Politik’, in Röhr, Occupatio Poloniae, 152 ff. 16. For an overall balance of the expulsions, which were halted in March 1941 and replaced with ‘internal resettlements from the annexed territories, see Instytut Zachodni, Documenta Occupationis, Vol. VIIII; additionally, see the Overview Table in Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 2, Table 4, 356 f. 17. Büro für Kriegsentschädigung, Bericht über Polens Verluste und Kriegsschäden (1947), Tables I, II, III, IV and V, pp. 24–28. There the losses as a percentage of the entire population are given as 22.2 per cent, because the eastern voivodeships annexed from

62  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

the Soviet Union were not taken into account. By contrast, we proceed from the assumption that the Polish population was 34.85 million people in 1938. Ibid. Cf. Łuczak, Polityka ludnościowa, 226 ff.; Puchert, ‘Fragen der Wirtschaftspolitik’, 35 ff., 85 ff., 122 ff., 142 ff. Röhr, Occupatio Poloniae, 60; Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 2, p. 42. Rosenkötter, Treuhandpolitik. Puchert, ‘Fragen der Wirtschaftspolitik’, 62 ff.; Röhr, ‘Zur Wirtschaftspolitik der deutschen Okkupanten in Polen’, in Röhr, Occupatio Poloniae, 53 ff. Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, 548 ff.; Röhr, ‘Wirtschaftspolitik’, 55 f. One of which was in operation, namely the Oberschlesische Hydrierwerke AG Blechhammer. Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik, 334 ff.; Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 2, p. 46 f. Büro für Kriegsentschädigungen, Bericht über Polens Verluste und Kriegsschäden (1947), tables 17 and 18, pp. 78 f. See Instytut Zachodni, Documenta Occupationis, Vol. IX; Łuczak, ‘Polnische Arbeiter’, 90–105. Cf. Łuczak, ‘Polnische Arbeiter’, 96 f. See Instytut Zachodni, Documenta Occupationis, Vol. XI, Part III, 231 ff.; Sułik, ‘Volkstumspolitik und Arbeitseinsatz, 106–26; Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, 216 ff., 233 ff. See Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, 365 ff., 372 ff.; Röhr, ‘Der Zusammenhang von nazistischer Okkupationspolitik in Polen und dem Völkermord an den polnischen Juden’, in Röhr, Occupatio Poloniae, 173–84. Konieczny, ‘Die Zwangsarbeit’. Madajczyk, Zamojszczyzna – Sonderlaboratorium SS. Zbiór dokumentów polskich I niemieckich z okressu okupacji hitlerowskiej, vols. I and II. Cf. Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 2, Table 6, p. 360. See Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord; Łuczak, Polityka ludnościowa, 535 ff. See Eisenblätter, ‘Grundlinien der Politik’, 339 ff.; Gerlach, ‘Die Bedeutung der deutschen Ernährungspolitik für die Beschleunigung des Mordes an den Juden 1942. Das Generalgouvernement und die Westukraine’, in Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord, 167–257. Gerlach, ‘Die Bedeutung der deutschen Ernährungspolitik für die Beschleunigung des Mordes an den Juden 1942. Das Generalgouvernement und die Westukraine’, in Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord 181 ff. Präg and Jacobmeyer, Diensttagebuch, 20 Nov and 7 Dec 1942, pp. 582 f. Cf. Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, Table 8, p. 267. Compiled in accordance with Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 2, Table 8, p. 361. See Loose, Kredite für NS-Verbrechen; Eisenblätter, ‘Grundlinien der Politik’, 305 ff.; Kilian, Krieg auf Kosten anderer, 155 ff. ‘Erlass über die Verwaltung der besetzten polnischen Gebiete’, 12 Oct 1939, in: RGBl. 1939 I, pp. 2077 f. Formally it received a Polish president, but this was a mere facade. There was not a single Polish institution that would have been in a position to reduce the German plundering, even minimally. The wage and income taxes of the Polish population – but not those of the German minority – were increased by between 20 and 25 per cent, whereas the minimum free premium was significantly reduced. Cf. Kilian, Krieg auf Kosten anderer, 165 f. Ibid., Table 15, p. 171.

The Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)  •  63

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

According to ibid., Table 18, p. 176. Cf. ibid., Table 16, p. 172. According to Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 2, Table 11, p. 377. Ibid., Table 14, p. 380; on the incorporation of the steel industry into the German arms economy, see the extensive discussion in Matusak, Przemysl na ziemiach polskich w latach ii wojny Swiatowej. Vol. II, 71 ff., 130 ff. Röhr, ‘Zur Wirtschaftspolitik der deutschen Okkupanten in Polen’, in Röhr, Occupatio Poloniae, 45–66, here 57 f. Ibid., 63 ff.; Eisenblätter, ‘Grundlinien der Politik’, 312 ff.; on the development of arms production in the General Government, see the extensive discussion in Matusak, Przemysl na ziemiach polskich w latach ii wojny Swiatowej. Vol. II, 193 ff., 325 ff., 380 ff., 986 ff. Previously, in most cases they had been ‘arianised’ during the ghettoisation and internment of the Jewish population. See Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, 465 ff. Eichholtz, Geschichte der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft, Vol. II, 344 ff. According to Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, Table 9, p. 281. Similar price increases were also reported in other cities, and even in regional areas as well. The economic historians Hein Klemann and Sergei Kudryashov were the first to recognise the significance of this phenomenon and to attempt to quantify it: Klemann and Kudryashov, Occupied Economies, 269 ff., 307 ff., 378 ff. Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord, 46 ff., 49 ff. See the theorisation of this phenomenon in Klemann and Kudryashov, Occupied Economies, 307 ff., 315 f. Cf. Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, Chapter 30, 596 ff. Klemann and Kudryashov, Occupied Economies, 313. Ibid., Table 15.4, p. 330; see also Table 2 in the Introduction. From autumn 1944, the authority of the army groups or the army supreme command was transferred to the command of the military administration districts in the annexed territories. See Instytut Zachodni, Documenta Occupationis, vols X, XII. Cf. Lötzsch, ‘Zerstörung und Aufbau in den polnischen Westgebieten’, in Goguel, Polen, Deutschland und die Oder-Neiße-Grenze, 953 ff. Büro für Kriegsentschädigungen, Bericht über Polens Verluste und Kriegsschäden (Reprint 2007), Table VIII, 157. Lötzsch, ‘Zerstörungen und Aufbau’, 955. Ibid., 974. See Rössler and Schleiermacher, Der ‘Generalplan Ost’. See Roth, ‘“Generalplan Ost” – “Gesamtplan Ost”. Forschungsstand, Quellenprobleme, neue Ergebnisse’, in Rössler and Schleiermacher, Der ‘Generalplan Ost’, 48–95; Eichholtz, ‘Der “Generalplan Ost” als genozidale Variante der imperialistischen Ostexpansion’, in ibid., 118–24. Printed in Instytut Zachodni, Documenta Occupationis, Vol. VIII, Doc. 1, pp. 1 f. Calculated following Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 2, Table 4, pp. 356 f. See Documenta Occupationis, Vol. XI; Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, 454 ff., 479 ff. Cf. the statistical overview in Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 2, Table 17, p. 385. But there were so many exceptions in Section 4 that they were effectively treated as ‘protected people’. Nevertheless, they were a clear minority. According to Polish estimates made after the Second World War, between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish children (orphans, those in children’s homes and so on) were kidnapped and subjected to Germanisation programmes.

64  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

73. Cf. Madajczyk, Vom Generalplan Ost, Doc. 16, pp. 50 ff.; Roth, ‘“Generalplan Ost” – “Gesamtplan Ost”’, 40 ff. 74. Wasser, Himmlers Raumplanung im Osten, 133 ff. 75. Ibid., 135 ff. 76. ‘Erlass Hitlers zur Festigung deutschen Volkstums, 7. 10. 1939. Nürnberger Dokument PS-686’, printed in: Der Prozeß gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof Nürnberg (IMG), Vol. XXVI, pp. 255 f. 77. Madajczyk, Vom Generalplan Ost, docs. 70 and 71, pp. 234 ff. 78. Ibid., Doc. 1, pp. 3–14 (incorrectly dated as April–May 1940). 79. Roth, ‘“Generalplan Ost” – “Gesamtplan Ost”’, 59 f. 80. Only Konrad Meyer’s accompanying letter to Himmler from 15 July 1941 has been preserved. Cf. Madajczyk, Vom Generalplan Ost, Doc. 2, pp. 14 f. 81. See Esch, “Ohne Rücksicht auf historisch Gewordenes”. 82. Gutschow, ‘Stadtplanung im Warthegau 1939–1944’, in Rössler and Schleiermacher, Der ‘Generalplan Ost’, 232–58, here 239 ff. 83. Gutschow and Klain, Vernichtung und Utopie, 87 ff.

Chapter 2

The Occupation and Plunder of Greece (1941–1944)

Eighteen months after the attack on Poland, the German Wehrmacht launched its ‘Balkans campaign’ against Greece and Yugoslavia.1 When the motorized infantry divisions of the 12th Army attacked from Bulgaria and southern Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, the Greeks could mount only little resistance. Their military capacity had been exhausted by an Italian offensive launched on 28 October 1940.2 On 9 April, German troops occupied Thessaloniki. On 27 April, they marched into Athens, and three days later they reached the southern tip of the Peloponnese mountains. On 20 May, German airborne units touched down in Crete and, despite suffering heavy losses, were able to conquer the island by the end of the month. King George II fled to Egypt with the government. The British Expeditionary Force, which had fought alongside the Greek army, also withdrew to Egypt from both mainland Greece and Crete.

The Aims of the Operation, the Beginning of the Occupation and the Installation of a Collaborationist Government The Germans had been planning this last successful Blitzkrieg since the autumn of 1940, and scheduled it for the spring of 1941. They were pursuing several aims. The immediate objective was to save the Italian invaders

66  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

from defeat and to stabilise Italian–German control over the Balkans. On 27 March 1941 this control had been further challenged by a military putsch against Yugoslavia’s accession to the Tripartite Pact of the Axis Powers, which had been announced two days before. In addition to this, there was the task of strengthening the impending foray into the Soviet Union on its south-eastern flank. Ever since the British Expeditionary Force had been operating in Greece, the Romanian oil fields, the Danube and the whole deployment area of South Eastern Europe had been within the reach of the Royal Air Force. But geostrategic ambitions played an important role too. The Nazis planned, after conquering the Soviet Union, to focus their expansionist policies on the Near and Middle East. Greece was thus viewed as a critical stepping stone and supply hub for these plans. Thessaloniki, Piraeus and Crete were to be developed into German air and naval bases. The occupation policies agreed upon before and during the invasion pursued these short- and medium-term war aims.3 After the ceasefire, the Germans withdrew to two small but strategically dominant occupation zones: the first was the territory under the military commander in the Salonika-Aegean area, which included Thessaloniki and the central Macedonian hinterland, as well as some islands in the north-east Aegean; the second was the zone under the military commander in Southern Greece, which included the port city and bay of Piraeus, the western part of Crete and some islands along the route between Piraeus and Crete. These two zones accounted for just 11 per cent of Greek territory. The Germans left the majority of Thrace and later also East Macedonia – about 17 per cent of Greek territory – to be annexed by their Bulgarian partners. On the other hand, they ceded the bulk of the mainland and the archipelagos to Italy, which at the same time was awarded political and administrative supremacy. By doing so, the German military presence could be reduced to a minimum. From May 1941, most motorized infantry divisions were withdrawn from Greece and deployed in the Soviet Union. At first glance, this approach was in keeping with German calculations of both the existing balance of power and the tactical-operational and strategic options available to them. Splitting up the occupation administration into a civil and military division initially seemed well thought through too. The two zones under the military commanders in the Salonika-Aegean and Southern Greece, which in turn were subordinate to the commanderin-chief in South Eastern Europe, were completed by their civilian counterpart: the office the Reich Plenipotentiary in Greece. This was based in Athens and run by the diplomat Günther Altenburg. Altenburg’s task mainly consisted in directing the collaborationist government. This

The Occupation and Plunder of Greece (1941–1944)  •  67

government had been announced on 28 April at the behest of Georgios Tsolakoglou, the commander of the Epirus army section. This guaranteed an informal political priority over the Italians, who brought their civilian administration apparatus in line with German standards at all levels. On the other hand, the Economic Department of the Reich plenipotentiary was responsible for controlling the commercial, monetary and financial sectors of the Greek economy. The mobilisation of the country’s economic resources for the occupying troops, the German armaments industry and the infrastructures supplying and replenishing the military towards Crete and North Africa were solely in the hands of the two military commanders. In the meantime, however, the social dynamics and socio-economic consequences of the occupation’s German-dominated practices soon thwarted the Germans’ plans.4 When German paratroopers landed on Crete, substantial parts of the peasant and rural civilian population took up arms and – in keeping with centuries-old traditions of anti-Ottoman struggle – defended themselves against the invaders. There were similar scenes in the early Autumn of 1941 in Macedonia and Bulgarian-occupied Western Thrace. The uprisings were suppressed by cruel massacres and the killing of hostages. These uprisings destroyed the Germans’ hopes of gaining sympathy from the population, which they had felt could result from their ‘honourable’ treatment of the defeated Greek army5 and the formation of the collaborationist regime of the ‘Metaxás Generals’.6 The suppression of the first elemental forms of resistance was followed in the beginning of 1942 by a second phase of organisation on the part of the resistance. This saw the National Liberation Front (EAM) and its front organisations secure a dominant position in the resistance. The EAM had been founded by the Communist Party and several left-republican organisations. The EAM’s most important front organisations were the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) and National Solidarity (EA), which was responsible for the material survival of those persecuted. This unexpected confrontation with the peasant and proletarian subordinate classes precipitated a further development that was structurally embedded within the occupation practice itself: the destruction of the Greek economy at several levels at the same time. Although the Germans dominated the key strategic positions of the Greek economy, they had no interest in economically stabilising an occupation regime that they had largely ceded to their Axis partners Italy and Bulgaria. This lack of interest then prompted them to take everything out of Greece that could serve their economic and military-operational objectives before the establishment of the Italian and Bulgarian occupation zones.7

68  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

From Plunder to Exploitation The Germans took the first step towards this ruinous practice while the fighting was still underway. The Wehrmacht and Armaments Office of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) had delegated a liaison officer to the General Staff of the 12th Army, who deployed a whole series of special units – economic commandos and technical battalions – to ‘loot booty’. Using specially prepared lists, these commandos located and confiscated anything that was important to the German armaments economy or to the provision of its troops. Accordingly, the range of ‘bottleneck products’ confiscated in ports and railway stations, on merchant ships, and in public food depots and warehouses was extensive. The most important agricultural export products – olive oil, above all – were confiscated and used to supply the troops. In the warehouses of the textile industry, wool, cotton supplies and several hundred tons of silk cocoons were collected and readied for transport. On the basis of a decree passed on 18 April 1941,8 experts from the German cigarette industry – especially the Reemtsma Group – had the tobacco harvest of 1940 confiscated and, following that, the crops from 1939 and earlier years too. In so doing they were able to ‘secure’ (Document 3) 85,000 tons of oriental tobacco worth 175 million Reichsmarks, as well as an expected tax income of 1.4 billion Reichsmarks. The economic officers took machine tools from the Bodossaki Group, the largest armaments manufacturer in Greece, and shipped them to Germany (Document 1). But their booty lists also included stocks of industrial metals and primary products stacked up in the Greek mines and shipment ports, such as chrome ore, nickel, molybdenum, pyrites and bauxite (Documents 2, 3). In the process, the distinction between looting and the forced purchase of goods far below their value became blurred. For example, the confiscated raw tobacco was ‘purchased’ at pre-war prices. However, since the goods were not purchased until they were being loaded, and since inflation ensured that prices rose at a rapid rate, this ‘purchase’ also amounted to expropriation with almost no compensation. In addition, payments were made in a special occupation currency (the Reichskreditkassescheine, the so-called Reich’s credit treasury notes), which had to be redeemed from the Greek central bank after the end of the first phase of plunder (Document 31). The result was that the Greek taxpayer ultimately had to pay for this variant of disguised looting. Other special units were also active in the wake of the 12th Army’s economic staff. Among these were the units of the Einsatzgruppe Griechenland (Task Force Greece) from the Security Police and the Nazi intelligence agency SD, who assisted the Wehrmacht’s specialists and Sonderführer (special civilian officers) in confiscating Greek goods. These groups also collaborated closely with the Foreign Exchange Protection Commando. These special units were

The Occupation and Plunder of Greece (1941–1944)  •  69

part of the Four-Year Plan Authority, which worked in the Thessaloniki area until June. How many precious metals and foreign currencies were captured in this first phase of plunder is unknown. What is certain, however, is that in its hunt for Greek trophies in Crete, the ‘Künsberg Special Unit’, which had been mobilised by the Foreign Office, looted enough precious metals and jewels to cover the nation’s defence budget (Document 4). We also know that a special unit of the military administration confiscated deposits of gold and foreign currencies held in a branch of the Greek Central Bank in Heraklion.9 Moreover, it is evident that the ‘Rosenberg Special Unit’, which was active in the German occupation zone, not only robbed the Jewish communities and associations of their manuscript collections, libraries and cult objects, but that it also ransacked the bank safes of 2,300 Jewish individuals.10 Immediately after the ceasefire and the establishment of the Greek collaboration government, the 12th Army Economic Command widened its access to Greek resources (Document 7). Its goal was Greece’s productive potential itself, insofar as this was significant to the German war economy’s interests and the tactical-operational warfare in the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. This too was a matter of urgency: the Germans needed to be one step ahead of their occupation partners – particularly Italy – so as to expand their control over the key positions of the Greek economy to all areas of the occupation. As a first step, they confiscated the Greek merchant fleet and bought it up at half the price of its actual value. Managers from Krupp got their hands on the entire mining industry by acquiring capital majors, by concluding lease agreements and by extorting from their bargaining partners long-term supply contracts with preferential terms (Document 2). After protracted negotiations, Nordische Aluminium AG gained control over the Greek bauxite mines, which until then had been in French possession (Document 3). A consortium led by the AEG Group took control of the power plants and private railway companies in Athens and Thessaloniki. The factory halls of the Bodossaki Group and the shipyards located in Piraeus were converted into repair facilities for the Luftwaffe and the German navy. The one-sided flow of goods and capital towards Germany left a lasting mark on German–Greek trade. As this trade had, since 1932, been concluded on the basis of a bilateral switch-trading clearing agreement,11 it resulted in a huge credit for Greece, because the forced exports came up against only a small quantity of deliveries from Germany. By the end of 1942, the German negative balance reached 68 million Reichsmarks,12 although the extremely squeezed Greek commodity prices were met with excessively high German prices. In this way, Greece was drawn into providing compulsory credit13 for the German hegemonic power at the level of trade policy too (Document 11).

70  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

The Ruin of the Greek Economy The loss of surplus production available for export, the removal of the merchant fleet and the fact that Greeks abroad no longer sent some of their wages back to Greece hit the very substance of the Greek economy. Its budget fell into a severe deficit, and the resulting shrinkage in tax and customs revenue further pushed the Greek budget into negative figures, having already been exhausted by the cost of the defensive effort against Italy. This by no means prevented the occupying powers from imposing the entire cost of the occupation on the Greek economy (Document 31).14 The occupying powers brought occupation currencies – the Reich’s credit treasury notes and Italian occupation drachmas – into circulation by the end of the first phase of plunder. When converted, these currencies amounted to 220 million Reichsmarks, and from August 1941 they had to be mainly redeemed by the Greek Central Bank and exchanged into drachmas. This was followed by a diktat, agreed between the Germans and the Italians on 5 and 6 August, regarding their direct reimbursement for the costs of the occupation in Greek currency: initially this was set at 1.5 billion drachmas for each occupier per month, but this sum soon increased (Documents 6, 31). When, as a consequence, the collaboration government threatened to resign a few months later, the German–Italian plenipotentiaries split these tribute payments by limiting monthly payments to 750 million drachmas and backdating them to January 1942. The remainder of the costs were converted into compulsory credit to be provided by the Greek Central Bank.15 However, since the debt burden of the Italians and Germans was rising rapidly due to the ever-expanding occupation costs, from December 1942 the monthly compulsory credit that the Greeks had to provide was adjusted to the rate of inflation and thus increased hugely (Document 14). In this way, the ruin of the Greek national economy, which had been deprived of its essential sources of income, spread to its monetary and financial sectors. By the end of 1941, the occupation costs rose to 40 per cent of Greek national income. In 1942, this figure had already reached 90 per cent.16 As things stood, the Greek government had only one instrument at its disposal to cover these costs – the money press. Under pressure from the two occupying powers, the Greek government made lasting use of it. The quantity of drachmas in circulation rose from 24 billion in July 1941 to 49 billion in December 1941. By December 1942 this figure was 306 billion; by July 1943 it was 550 billion, and it reached the trillion mark shortly afterwards.17 As becomes clear from a glance at the price trends in staple foods, inflation had a drastic impact on everyday life: whereas in 1940 the Greeks had paid 10 drachmas for an oka (1280 grams) of bread and 50 drachmas for an oka of olive oil, as early as September 1942 they

The Occupation and Plunder of Greece (1941–1944)  •  71

had to pay 7,000 and 30,000 drachmas respectively. Eventually, in October 1943, these prices rose to 13,000 and 80,000 drachmas respectively.18 Shortly after the beginning of the German occupation, it was already evident that Greece was in the throes of a socio-economic catastrophe (Document 10). The dire situation caused by the factors outlined earlier – the plunder of stock, the elimination of the budget surplus, the conquering of the country’s economic capacity, the transformation of foreign trade into a source of tribute, and the imposition of the costs of the occupation onto Greece itself – was further compounded by the fragmentation of the country and the resulting breakdown of market relations at a national level. Bulgaria’s territorial annexations cut Greece off from the main areas that produced an agricultural surplus. But even what was left of the country – ‘rump Greece’, as it was known – was divided up once more. In addition, the two occupying powers proceeded to prevent the movement of people and goods between the provinces assigned to them (Document 50, Map 16). These factors combined to ensure that the Greek tragedy reached its first zenith in the winter of 1941/42. Food supplies collapsed for the urban lower classes. In Athens, people broke down on the street and died (Document 8).19 Urban centres became overcrowded with demobilised soldiers and those who had been driven out of the Bulgarian occupation zones.20 These homeless people were the first to die from the effects of malnutrition; the next victims were mainly young children and the elderly. Around seventy thousand people died of starvation that winter. Contrary to what German-language literature almost unanimously claims, this situation was not only the result of the British blockade and crop failure. Rather, the starvation had a series of related causes: the confiscation of food supplies by the occupiers, the fragmentation of the country and the consequent separation of metropolitan areas from their hinterlands, the lack of transport and fuel, and the lack of a functioning rationing system.21 Only the International Red Cross’s aid and distribution efforts, which began in spring 1942, prevented this from happening again, but the diseases caused by chronic malnutrition became a mass phenomenon, and by the end of the war had caused another seventy thousand deaths. From the autumn of 1942, the Greek crisis also threatened the German–Italian occupation’s scope for military action, especially because other internal and external factors came into effect. In September 1942, for instance, mass strikes in the Athens-Piraeus region put the collaborationist government under pressure for the first time, and in Italian-occupied Thessaly the first tendencies towards the formation of a ‘Free Greece’ began to emerge. But the position of Greece within German-dominated Europe changed dramatically too: in North Africa a large-scale British offensive against the German–Italian Expeditionary Force began in October, and in November

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the landing of Anglo-American troops in Morocco and Algeria signalled the imminent end of the ‘North African Campaign’. Now a potential Allied offensive against Greece and the Balkans became a real possibility. Greece lost its role as a stepping stone and supply hub for further military expansion. From the point of view of the German war effort, it had become a cornerstone of ‘Fortress Europe’, which had to be held at all costs. This altered strategic framework made it necessary to revamp occupation policy considerably, because the collapse of the Greek economy – until then more or less consciously accepted – could no longer be justified. In mid-October 1942, Hermann Neubacher, the new special representative of the Foreign Office for Economic and Financial Affairs, took up his post in Greece. The Nazi leadership tasked him with squaring the circle: on the one hand he was supposed to satisfy the growing demands of the military occupation apparatus, but on the other he had to curb runaway inflation and save the Greek economy from collapse.22 Neubacher, the former mayor of Vienna, set about his new task with verve. He issued a temporary ban on the export of food, boosted imports of some foods from the Balkans and tried to stem inflation by temporarily stopping Wehrmacht payments to Greek suppliers. The infrastructure projects of the various sections of the Wehrmacht were limited to the essentials, and reorganised. In the medium term, however, the only tools available to Neubacher to try to turn things around were trade and monetary policy. He was unable to prevent the decline of the economy as a whole. At the same time, a German–Greek foreign trade monopoly (the German–Greek Commodity Equalisation Company Ltd – DEGRIGES), founded in September 1942 under the direction of the Reich Ministry of Economics, acquired particular significance (Document 13).23 Its task was to get the bilateral trade in goods moving again after it had become increasingly difficult as a result of inflation and a rigid adherence to the exchange rate of 60 drachmas to 1 Reichsmark. The exorbitant increase in extra profits made by the Greek importers were capped by a special import duty. Four-sevenths of this was used to subsidise German exports. The remaining three-sevenths covered some of the occupation costs. Since the German importers did not pay their bills – they forced the payments they were supposed to pay to the Greek suppliers onto the Greek Central Bank – they thus came to benefit from an interest-free compulsory credit. At the end of this macabre transaction, German importers and exporters benefited in equal measure, while Greek hyperinflation accelerated. In addition to this, there were targeted individual actions to repay in part the compulsory credit imposed on the Greek central bank. At the turn of 1943, Neubacher ordered the extensive re-sale of raw tobacco to the Greek cigarette industry.

The Occupation and Plunder of Greece (1941–1944)  •  73

In the spring of 1943 he proceeded to sell, in small tranches across several days, gold and foreign currency reserves on the Athens Stock Exchange. These reserves had been accumulated in a special deposit of the Greek Central Bank under the direction of the banking commissioner, Paul Hahn (Document 31, Appendix 5).24 What is more, Neubacher reinforced and built upon Reich Plenipotentiary for Greece Altenburg’s crisis management vis-à-vis the collaboration government. In November 1942, Neubacher and Altenburg removed the ‘Metaxás Generals’ and arranged for a new collaborationist cabinet under the leadership of Konstantinos Logothetopoulos.25 Using these measures, Neubacher managed to stabilise the situation temporarily; however, the tide began to turn again from the spring of 1943. By this point, the Nazi leadership and the commander-in-chief in South Eastern Europe feared an Allied invasion in Greece, and therefore reversed the temporary reduction in the occupation costs. This trend intensified during the year with the arrest of Mussolini at the end of July and then the ceasefire agreement between Italy and the Allies on 8 September 1943, which saw Italy step down from the German–Italian war coalition. The Italian occupation army was disarmed, interned and for the most part deported to the Reich to conduct forced labour. Now the Germans were the sole masters of ‘Rump Greece’. The military command zones of Salonika-Aegean and Southern Greece were merged together under the Military Commander of Greece, and subordinated to the newly formed Army Group E. The agencies of the Military Economy Officers in Thessaloniki and Athens also merged to form the Military Economic Staff in Greece. More and more combat troops were transferred to Greece, and the total strength of the German occupation forces grew to over 200,000 soldiers – that was a marked increase compared with 1941 (60,000) and the end of 1942 (110,000). The apparatus of the Secret Field Police, which had hitherto existed alongside the Wehrmacht-Abwehr (the Wehrmacht’s secret service) and had only a rudimentary presence, was now massively expanded upon, and subordinated to the Higher SS and Police Leader; the commander of the Security Police and SD, who lived in Athens, set up a central concentration camp in Haidari near Athens.26 By contrast, the diplomatic components of the German occupation administration were considerably weakened. Altenburg left Athens in the autumn of 1943, even though until April he had worked alongside Neubacher in establishing the third coalition government under Ioannis Rallis. Neubacher, on the other hand, became the Special Plenipotentiary of the Foreign Office for the South East, headquartered in Belgrade. Kurt-Fritz von Graevenitz was appointed chargé d’affaires for its office in Athens.

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The Last Chapter of the Greek Tragedy It was against this backdrop that the final, darkest chapter of the Greek tragedy of the Second World War began. A special factor now came into play: the tremendous burgeoning of the organised resistance, which had become a mass phenomenon since the spring of 1943.27 The EAM now controlled the strike and protest movements in the urban areas, while their armed wing in Thessaly succeeded in gaining control of the first liberated areas, laying the foundations for ‘Free Greece’. It is true that the Communist-dominated Republican left soon received competition from a second resistance organisation called the EDES (National Republican Greek League), which in the spring of 1943 adopted a royalist course, and began to fight the ELAS formations. However, the EDES remained confined to the western Epirus area and ultimately only managed to survive by leading a ‘neutral’ coexistence alongside the German occupation forces.28 The organisations of EAM and ELAS, by contrast, enjoyed a rapid upturn. In the autumn of 1943, these groups were able to upgrade their equipment by seizing the Italian army’s large arsenals. Their supporters soon numbered over one million. In the spring of 1944, after ELAS had survived a major confrontation with its ‘national’ antagonist during the preceding months, a provisional National Congress created the legitimising basis for Free Greece, in consultation with the Allied Military Mission in February 1944.29 The political programme of the Republican-left resistance alliance was a thoroughly moderate one. It rejected the return of the king, wanted to free itself from British influence, and strove to pursue a neutral course after the Second World War. It sought to bring about extensive social reforms that broke with the patriarchal ways of the ‘old politicians’, and envisaged women playing an important role in shaping this process. In the autumn of 1943, the consolidation of the resistance, the continued absence of a British invasion and the loss of its Italian partner caused the Germans to embark on a momentous change of course politically. They put aside the anti-British propaganda they had previously conducted and played the anti-communism card. Although all the German occupation officers were aware that the Greek Communist Party (KKE), which dominated the liberation movement, had meanwhile transformed itself from a cadre party that had been deprived of its leading members into a left-wing pluralist mass organization, this did not prevent the Germans from invoking anticommunism in order to justify the upcoming crusade against the left-wing Republican camp. As a result, the traditional power and business elites behind the third collaboration government became serious allies.30 But the third collaboration regime, led by Rallis, also moved decisively to the side of the Germans and military collaboration out of fear of a popular uprising.31

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With German support, it established or reactivated a number of paramilitary formations – especially the security battalions and cadres of the Security Police – and placed them under the command of the Higher SS and Police Leader in Greece. This resulted in a considerable strengthening of the repressive apparatus. The newly forged anti-Communist alliance was unable to force ELAS onto the defensive, however. Eventually, after several operations to eliminate the ELAS brigades had failed, the combat troops provided by the Wehrmacht – the 117th Jäger Division and the 22nd Mountain Army Corps in particular,32 but also the counter-revolutionary paramilitaries – had to restrict themselves to clearing out the urban centres, the most important rural cities and central transport routes. Those sent to fight the partisans were all the more ruthless in their treatment of the civilian population in Free Greece.33 They regarded these people as fair game. They took tens of thousands of defenceless people hostage, abused them as human shields to protect transport convoys,34 and murdered between fifty and a hundred Greeks for every dead German, even after the smallest of losses. On top of this, from the summer of 1943 it became commonplace to burn down all the villages in the vicinity of skirmishes with the ELAS fighters and to slaughter their inhabitants – regularly including women, children and the elderly – and often in an inhumane fashion. By the time the troops were withdrawn in the autumn of 1944, around a hundred villages had been completely destroyed. The resulting annihilation of the inhabitants in these villages – such as the massacres of Kommeno, Lyngiades, Kalavryta, Distomo and Klissura – caused a sensation, even in these brutal times. While these actions generally amounted to indiscriminate acts of repression, there was nonetheless a method behind the cruel practices with which the militias of the collaborators tortured and then killed striking workers, suspected partisans and political activists of the resistance movement. The Germans gladly sent these people to their deaths in order to deepen the hatred between different groups of the Greek population, and to ensure that, after they left Greece following a bloody civil war, the emergence of the Republican-left resistance would be nipped in the bud. From the turn of 1943 onwards, the occupiers’ economic and labour policies also underwent a strategic change of course. While the Greek national economy was, following a brief period of stabilisation, once again heading for ruin, the military commander’s Military Economy Staff focused on a number of areas of activity deemed particularly ‘important to the war’.35 These activities included the accelerated expansion of military infrastructure, with emphasis on port and airport upgrades, the expansion of operationally important road and rail links, the improvement of industrial repair capacity, the stabilisation of some 350 utilities that were particularly important to the Wehrmacht, and the construction of military ramparts in

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the coastal zones. In addition, mining alloying metals, in particular chrome ore, became a top priority, as by this time the German armaments industry had become dependent on Greece for more than one-fifth of its materials.36 Chrome ore mining was assigned to a newly appointed commissioner for metal ore mining in the south-east, who set up a partly private, partly public company (the South-East-Montan GmbH). In Greece, however, this organisation did not challenge the dominant position of the Krupp group. The officers of the Military Economy Staff were responsible for locating and supplying the ore mines, as well as for providing military security. They recruited the workforce, procured the necessary auxiliary materials, regulated the energy supply and arranged for the transport of the extracted ore.37 In 1943, however, the production peak of 1942 was missed by some margin. As a result, the economic staff focused on the development of a few central ore mines, where they also deployed the special forces of a technical battalion. The access roads to the mines were also expanded upon. As a result of this, production volume was able to be increased once again before the withdrawal of the troops in October 1944 (Document 25). The forced recruitment of workers was at the heart of what – in light of the glum overall economic situation – could be called this economic success.38 The ore mines were all located in rural areas where there was no labour market due to the prevalence of small-scale production industry. In these areas, therefore, from the outset the Germans began to force the peasants to perform corvée labour from time to time. This model of forced recruitment for the construction of roads and airfields, which had first been tested in Crete, was gradually used on the mainland and then widely applied by the task forces of Organisation Todt when carrying out military infrastructure projects. From the turn of the year 1943, the officers of the Wehrmacht economic staff also submitted their claims for labourers. But since the potential for rural recruitment had become exhausted or inaccessible due to the expansion of Free Greece, the economic staff had to resort to mobilising other human resources. They began ‘combing out’ the poor quarters of Thessaloniki and the larger provincial towns, and recruited political prisoners. Eventually, they resorted to using Jewish forced labourers. Because of the high priority of these measures, the forced mobilisation for ‘Reich deployment’ remained relatively limited; only about 23,000 people – whether voluntarily or under coercion – boarded transport trains to Germany. In the metropolitan area of Athens-Piraeus, by contrast, industrial wage labour was predominant. But since workers in industry and the utilities companies had been suffering from chronic hunger from the summer of 1941, and because they could no longer support their families with their near-worthless wages, these workers seized every opportunity they could

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to stay away from the workplace and to seek alternative means of subsistence. At first, the economic officers of the Wehrmacht tried to undermine this trend by introducing food rations and factory catering in the most important firms. Ultimately, however, they did not have sufficient resources to do so, and so at the end of January 1943 the military commander ordered the compulsory recruitment of all male workers between the ages of 17 and 45.39 This measure turned out to be a failure: the workers of Athens and Piraeus considered the decree to be the beginning of forced internment and deportation, and so responded with a militant general strike, during which they destroyed the records of the labour authorities. Despite bloody reprisals, they continued this struggle for two months.40 Their passive (and often active) resistance could never be restrained during the occupation – not even through the raids and excessive acts of violence conducted by the collaborating militias, who repeatedly haunted the workers’ quarters.

The Annihilation of the Jewish Communities There were, however, areas of social life in which the occupiers were largely unchallenged when implementing their inhumane policies. One example was the annihilation of the Jewish communities in Thessaloniki and in the neighbouring provinces annexed by Bulgaria.41 The Jews in Thessaloniki were Sephardic Jews of Spanish origin. They maintained their cultural and linguistic identity under Ottoman rule, and asserted this identity even after the ‘Hellenization’ of the Northern Greek metropolis that began in 1912. At the beginning of the German occupation, one-fifth of the population was Jewish. Following this, however, there was a rapid exodus, because quite a few were able to understand the true significance of the violence conducted by the Rosenberg Special Unit.42 In April 1942, the German military administration reacted to the flight of the Jews by issuing a decree that restricted the Jewish population’s freedom of movement, and threatened to punish any violations severely. Three months later, the administration proceeded to humiliate the Jewish community publicly, and to subordinate it to the interests of the military apparatus and war economy. In July, the male Jewish population was subjected to a compulsory medical examination in Freedom Square, one of the biggest squares in Thessaloniki. Following this, the 3,500 members of the Jewish community deemed fit for work were either sent to work on the large-scale regional construction projects (such as the building of streets and airport expansions) run by the Todt Organisation,43 or they were transported to the ore mines in Northern Greece to become ‘Jews for work’. Their working, housing and nutritional conditions were so catastrophic that several hundred had died of exhaustion

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by the autumn.44 On top of this, the productivity of those who survived was low, and the whole project eventually proved to be a failure (Document 12). Max Merten, head of the military administration in the ThessalonikiAegean region, turned the realisation that this plan was not working into the basis of a predatory blackmail: he arranged for the Jewish community to buy the surviving forced labourers for a ransom of 3.5 billion drachmas. Since this horrendous amount could not be paid in the short term, Merten settled for two billion drachmas. In addition, he confiscated the centrally located cemetery of the Jewish community. He then had it destroyed, and handed over the 40 hectares of land owned by the local government of Thessaloniki to a development project.45 These actions, however, merely represented another stage on the path to the extermination and expropriation of the Sephardic Jews in Thessaloniki. In February 1943, a special unit of the Security Police and the Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS, which had since arrived in the city, took over. In close consultation with the diplomats living in Athens and Thessaloniki (Document 15),46 as well as with the military administration, it declared that all Jewish members of the community must identify themselves by wearing the Star of David, and forced them to move into several ghettos within their former residential quarters. Moreover, it established a central transit camp (Quartier de Hirsch) in a poor neighbourhood near the train station. The camp readied the deportation trains for departure. At the same time, Merten stepped into action too.47 Before announcing compulsory ghettoisation, he ordered that all Jews declare both their mobile and fixed assets. He then proceeded to confiscate them. He sent the gold, foreign exchange and jewels to a special depot of the Economic Department of the Reich Plenipotentiary based at the Greek Central Bank. He transferred the remaining assets, businesses and real estate of the approximately 13,000 Jewish families to a newly created Jewish property management authority, which was run by the governor-general of the Province of Macedonia. As of mid-March, the ghettoised Jews who had been interned in the transit camp were taken away to Auschwitz in nineteen deportation trains. Most were immediately murdered in the gas chambers of Birkenau.48 The deportation of the Jews living in the neighbouring provinces annexed by Bulgaria had begun a few days earlier. Only 2,000 of the roughly 53,000 deportees survived and returned to Greece after the end of the war.49 There they encountered several hundred younger members of the Jewish community who had fled from the ghettos into the mountains to join the liberation movement. In Autumn 1943, after disarming the Italian occupation army and assuming control over its occupied territories, the Germans began preparations for the registration and deportation of the remaining Jewish communities in Greece. The Germans did not have such an easy time doing

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this, however.50 There were a variety of reasons why this was the case, but the main factor behind the partial failure of the second wave of persecution and annihilation was probably that the Jewish communities living in ‘Old Greece’51 were largely assimilated and spoke Greek. It was easier for them to escape or go into hiding with the help of the non-Jewish population. In October 1943, the military commander issued an obligation for all Jews living mainly in Athens and Ioannina, as well as on the islands of Corfu and Rhodes, to present themselves. The reason for this was that, unlike in Thessaloniki, the Sonderkommando (SS special unit) had not seized the lists of all registered members of the Jewish community. Those affected by this measure were far from forthcoming in meeting his request. In Athens, for example, only 1,200 of around 8,000 Jews responded. Neubacher therefore arranged for the deportation to be postponed in order to get closer to this group of objectors, who had now been classified as ‘more interesting politically’.52 At the end of November, the military commander stepped up the pressure and confiscated the assets of all the Jews who had fled or disappeared (Document 21). On 24–25 March 1944, the special units then struck. They rounded up the victims in Athens and those who had been taken to the Haidari concentration camp, and shortly afterwards deported them to the death camps. As late as August 1944, the last transport train completed its journey from Rhodes to Auschwitz via Athens; previously 132 Spanish Jews had been deported from Haidari to Bergen-Belsen (Document 22).53 In May 1944, the military commander issued a second decree expropriating all the deported Greek Jews;54 their assets were transferred to the centralised Department for the Administration of Jewish Property at the Greek Ministry of Finance. Around 59,000 of the approximately 72,000 Greek Jews were killed during the German occupation, 53,000 of whom came from Thessaloniki and the northern provinces, and around 6,000 from the rest of Greece. All authorities and staffs of the German Occupation Administration were involved in coordinating and safeguarding this crime against humanity;55 Neubacher and Gravenitz were too, as was Altenburg in the first phase of persecution. In addition, the Athens office of the special plenipotentiary played a crucial role in integrating the paramilitary political collaborators in the front lines of the struggle against Free Greece. By this time, numerous Jews who had fled persecution were active in Free Greece’s military and self-administrative bodies.56 Neubacher tried, with varying success, to steer politically the terror of the German–Greek repressive apparatus, and to protect the ‘national’ initiatives and organisations from ‘collateral damage’.57 However, the Neubacher administration remained focused on its most important task: preventing the Greek monetary and financial system from completely collapsing until shortly before the German withdrawal. But

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the administration had virtually no resources left at its disposal, and this increased its ingenuity in manipulating currency and inventing new trade policy tricks. For example, when setting up DEGRIGES, it used its power of disposition over the foreign trade monopoly to charge the Greeks, whose current account balance had just been set to zero, for imports from Germany. Over two-thirds of these imports went not to Greek buyers, but to the economic and administrative entities of the German occupation apparatus. By doing so, in spite of the increase in Greek raw materials, it even managed to turn the deficit in Germany’s foreign trade balance – at least in the accounts – into an artificial surplus which eventually reached 220 million Reichsmarks in July 1944.58 Alongside this, Neubacher and his economic policy chief Paul Hahn expended considerable effort in slowing down the accelerating collapse in the currency by deploying stolen gold reserves.59 In the first phase of the intervention, the gold coin used for this purpose came exclusively from the plundering carried out by the occupying authorities – in particular the coins taken from the Jewish community in Thessaloniki and from the looting of Crete in 1941.60 Since these reserves eventually ran out in the autumn of 1943, Neubacher deployed additional gold coin in Berlin. Following extensive ministerial discussions, which also involved the Foreign Office-controlled Trade Policy Committee,61 Neubacher was granted additional gold coin. This came from the looted gold deposits held by the Four-Year Plan Authority, and on this occasion were compensated by resources from the Reichsbank’s main fund (Document 31).62 These deposits consisted of British and French gold coin worth 30 million Reichsmarks. They made up around two-fifths of the gold coin confiscated and deployed in the first phase of intervention between March and September 1943. Hahn had the gold coin sold in small tranches across several days by ‘trusted’ brokers on the Athens Stock Exchange through to the early summer of 1944. The aim was to stabilise the price of the gold pound linked to the drachma and, at the same time, to get hold of drachmas to finance the Wehrmacht.

‘Scorched Earth’ At the end of August 1944, the Red Army’s Balkan offensive saw it cross the eastern border of Romania. A few days later it reached Bulgaria. The days of the German occupation in Greece were thus numbered, and initial preparations began for a retreat in order to defend a central zone in the Balkans. The Germans had already prepared for this ‘Day X’ in the summer of 1943, when they had anticipated an invasion by the Americans and the British. As a result, they were able to proceed calmly in their retreat, especially since the strategy of forced collaboration had paid off in full. The retreat from the

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Peloponnese mountains was secured by the Greek security battalions. The EDES units holed up in the Epirus mountains played a largely passive role. In northern Greece, the Germans managed to mobilise additional ‘national’ militias and thus neutralise the ELAS here too. The anti-Communist policy of splitting the resistance (Spaltpolitik) had been successful: right through until the final days of the occupation, the collaborative associations proved to be reliable and battle-ready allies who had prepared themselves for the continuation of the struggle against Free Greece and for the restoration of the monarchy alongside the British. These political factors not only eased the Germans’ retreat, but also enabled them, despite the likely fall of their regime, to deprive, at the eleventh hour, the Greek economy of the foundations it would have needed for a fresh start. From the early summer of 1943 the Germans had been elaborating on the sophisticated concepts of ‘scorched earth’ policies (Document 17). During October, the pioneer troops of Army Group E implemented these plans step-by-step.63 They destroyed almost the entirety of Greece’s traffic infrastructure, including the ports and rolling stock. They sank threequarters of the merchant fleet, and completely destroyed the postal and telecommunications infrastructure. They did a good job of this: for example, they made the Corinth canal so thoroughly impassable that it could not be used again until 1949. In this way, the ruin of the Greek economy spread to the very foundations of its infrastructure too.

A Balance Sheet of the Occupation After the liberation there was no reprieve for Greece. As a result of the catastrophic policies of the British, as well as of the Greek royal house they supported, the old Greek elites saw their chance once again and began to draw those in the camp of the collaborators into the front lines of the struggle against Free Greece. It was therefore difficult to take stock of, and document, the destruction caused by the Germans during the 3.5-year occupation. Several authorities deployed by the unstable post-occupation transitional governments nonetheless attempted to do so (Documents 39, 40, 45). The data they collected are incomplete, sometimes contradictory and, in some cases, so overly detailed that they appear to be barely credible. These reservations notwithstanding, the reports provide an initial overview of the predatory and destructive dimensions of German occupation. Let us first look at the losses and damages suffered by the civilian population.64 Almost 330,000 civilians were violently killed during the German occupation – around 4.8 per cent of the total population of 6.9 million:65 140,000 died as a result of malnutrition; 91,000 fell victim to massacres,

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the murder of hostages and other forms of repression; more than 2,000 died in the Haidari concentration camp; and 59,000 Jews were murdered in the death camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka. The remaining casualties were those who had been interned, prison inmates, forced labourers and those who were killed during the air war. When looking at these numbers, we should not forget how hard life was for those who survived. Since a quarter of Greece’s housing infrastructure had been destroyed by the time the Germans withdrew, according to estimates by international aid organisations there were over 650,000 homeless people in Greece. Half of these were invalids.66 About one-third of the population was malnourished and chronically ill. In some regions, up to 60 per cent of the survivors suffered from tuberculosis, typhus, malaria or serious skin diseases. Besides the consequences of the German policy of ‘scorched earth’ discussed above, this mass misery was compounded by the predatory plunder of the country. It is astounding just how much the Germans were able to seize from the comparatively small Greek economy. At least two-thirds of the tobacco harvests confiscated in April and May 1941 had, despite the difficulties encountered in transporting them out of the country, been distributed in Germany and in German-dominated Europe.67 In Germany, the stock was enough to provide six months’ worth of production in the tobacco sector. This amount clearly outstripped the other stolen consignments from the Greek agricultural sector and agricultural fibre production. But the transport of wool, hides and skins, cotton, silk cocoons, olive oil and olives, figs, raisins and currants to the occupying forces or the Reich authorities also reached considerable proportions. On top of this came the large amount of raw materials transported to the German armaments industry: by September 1944, 126,800 tons of chrome ore had found their way to the Reich, as well as 91,000 tons of bauxite, 71,000 tons of nickel ore, 44,000 tons of pyrite and 71 tons of molybdenum concentrate (Document 25). To this day, the most severe and controversial aspect of the German plunder was the operations in financial, monetary and trade policy. Numerous indicators point to the fact that, in the autumn of 1944, the German–Greek clearing balance saw the Germans in debt to a sum that came close to the surplus of 220 million Reichsmarks they had produced when cooking the books for their accounts.68 Nonetheless, the fact that the Germans made the Greeks pay for the costs of the occupation was, alongside the fragmentation of the country and the fact that all surplus products were transported out of the country, probably the most important contributing factor to the ruin of the Greek economy. But even before the end of the war, estimates of the amount of occupation tribute that Germany squeezed out of Greece varied widely, since hyperinflation made it impossible to arrive at an exact figure. Various estimates circulated among the central authorities

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of the Nazi dictatorship, the highest of which was 3.8 billion Reichsmarks. The German Research Office for Military Economy, which worked for the Four-Year Plan Authority, lowered this estimate to 500 million Reichsmarks (Document 26). An official from the Reich Ministry of Finance who had been delegated to the Reich plenipotentiary’s Economic Department in Athens settled for a share of the Reich’s debt (compulsory credit) of 476 million Reichsmarks, after he had deducted the partial repayments already made by the Germans (Document 32).69 However, we can arrive at a reliable way of calculating this sum by taking into account the troop strengths for each occupation period, as well as the costs of the construction and expansion of the military infrastructure paid for by the Greeks. By doing so, we arrive at a converted sum of 30 million Reichsmarks per month for the first occupation period. By taking into account the payments made by the Germans to repay, in part, the compulsory credit, we arrive at a total sum of about 1.2 billion Reichsmarks (with the Reich debt making up around 720 million Reichsmarks).70 But the plunder of gold and foreign currency reserves also reached considerable proportions. The precise amount involved here is uncertain, but we do know that in the period between February and September 1943 alone, the German Central Bank commissioner sold 455,000 British gold pounds and 9.34 million gold francs on the Athens Stock Exchange, most of which had been stolen from Greece (Document 31, Appendix 5). Most of these reserves had been extorted from the Jewish population – particularly from the Jewish community in Thessaloniki – in the form of gold coin worth a total of 1.7 million gold pounds.71

Notes  1. The second target was Yugoslavia, which was attacked on the same day. On Germany’s war aims in Yugsolavia, the run-up to the invasion and the events during it, see Hondros, Occupation and Resistance; Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece; Militärgeschichtliche Forschungsamt (ed.), Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, Vol. 3, pp. 419 ff., 458 ff. and 485 ff.  2. The 11th Italian Army had attacked Greece from the southern Albanian border. In the months that followed, it was driven back to southern Albania by the Epirus Army Section.  3. See Fleischer, ‘The German Military Administration in Greece’, in Benz, Houwink ten Cate and Otto, Die Bürokratie der Okkupation, 63–92; Nessou, Griechenland 1941– 1944, 67 ff., 85 ff., 131 ff.; Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 6, pp. 63 ff.  4. See Hondros, Occupation and Resistance, Chapter 4, 95ff.; Fleischer, ‘Die “Viehmenschen” und das “Sauvolk”’, 135–69.

84  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

 5. The Greek prisoners of war had been set free again, and the officers had had their weapons returned.  6. The cabinet that led the first collaborationist government consisted mainly of generals who had made their careers under the dictatorship of General Ioannis Metaxas, who came to power on the back of a putsch in 1936. He died in January 1941.  7. See Eckert, Vom ‘Fall Marita’, 85 ff.; Hondros, Occupation and Resistance, 61 ff.; Olshausen, Zwischenspiel auf dem Balkan, 271 ff., 298 ff.  8. ‘Verordnung des Oberbefehlshabers der 12. Armee über den Aufkauf griechischer Tabake’ [Decree of the supreme commander of the 12th Army regarding the acquisition of Greek tobacco], 18 Apr 1941, BArch R 2/59019, p. 6.  9. Among other things, nearly 83 kg of pure gold was taken. Greek Gold, o. D., NARA, RG 260 OMGUS, Prop. Div. PVEA 3 / 70-3 / 13. 10. ‘Abschlussbericht des Sonderkommandos Rosenberg in Griechenland’ [Final report of the Rosenberg Special Unit in Greece], 15 Nov 1941, BArch NS 30/75, pp. 21 f. 11. The standard work on the history of German–Greek trade relations before 1941 is Pelt, Tobacco, Arms and Politics. 12. Statements on the changes in the German–Greek clearing balances can be found, among other places, in BArch R 3101/33636. 13. Translator’s footnote: In English, the German terms ‘Zwangsanleihe’ and ‘Zwangskredit’ both tend to be translated as ‘forced loan’. In the case of Greece, however, compulsory credit (Zwangskredit) was something completely different to a forced loan (Zwangsanleihe). The Greek Central Bank automatically had to provide, as credit, the costs incurred by the occupation that went beyond the payments made by the collaborationist regime. The credit was cleared in a separate account, and after a certain time was partly repayed by the Germans – even if only to a limited degree. A forced state loan was, by contrast, never imposed on the collaborationist government. The distinction between the two terms plays a central role in the discussion of Greek reparations, and thus should not be blurred in English-language discussions. For this reason, ‘Zwangsanleihe’ and ‘Zwangskredit’ will henceforth be translated as ‘compulsory credit’. 14. See, in addition to this, Document 31 BArchB R 2, no. 310, 311, 312, 314, 315, 14569, 21779, 21781. In addition, see the statistics in: PA AA, R 27320. 15. The compulsory credit was interest free, and there was no repayment agreement. So it was not – as often assumed in the public debate on this – a forced loan. On the current state of research, see Kilian, ‘The Greek “Forced Loan”’. 16. Hondros, Occupation and Resistance, 64 ff. See also the detailed statements on the development of prices and living costs in the final reports of the Plenipotentiary Representative Neubacher’s Economic Division: PA AA, R 27320. 17. Hondros, Occupation and Resistance, 65 (Table). 18. Ibid.; in addition, see the statistics in: PA AA, R 27320. 19. Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, 23 ff. Hondros, Occupation and Resistance, 67 ff. 20. Immediately after they had occupied the territories next to their country, the Bulgarians began ‘ethnic cleansing’. 21. Hionidou, Famine and Death, passim. 22. Ernennungsschreiben des Reichsaußenministers Joachim von Ribbentrop an Neubacher [Appointment letter from Joachim von Ribbentrop to Neubacher, 16 Oct 1942], PA AA, R 29613. 23. Freytag, “Alles war in wirrer Bewegung auf ein vollkommenes Chaos hin” [Everything was moving confusedly towards complete chaos]. 24. Hahn, the director of the Reichsbank, omitted to discuss this first phase of intervention in his concluding report. He did, however, calculate the gold coin and arrived at a sum

The Occupation and Plunder of Greece (1941–1944)  •  85

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45.

of 455,000 gold pounds and 9.34 million gold francs, which according to his statements were also sold on the Athens Stock Exchange, as were the coins taken from the main fund of the Reichsbank from December 1943 onwards. Extensively documented in: PA AA, R 29614. See also the biographical data for Logothetopoulos in the Appendix. Klein, ‘Chaidari’, in Benz and Distel, Der Ort des Terrors, 559–72. Hondros, Occupation and Resistance, 115 ff., 144 ff. and 171ff.; Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, 265 ff.; Fleischer, ‘Griechenland’; Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte, 2 vols, Vol. 1 128 ff., 162 ff., 241 ff. and 275 ff. Hondros, Occupation and Resistance, 171 ff., 183 ff., 197 ff. The battles lasting between October 1943 and February 1944 subsequently came to be known as the ‘first round’ of the Greek civil war. Loulos, ‘Politische, wirtschaftliche und soziale Aspekte’; Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte, Vol. 1., 458 ff. Papadimitriou/Paschos, ‘Kollaboration und Bürgerkrieg’; Loulos, ‘Vergeltungsmaßnahmen’; Koussouris, ‘Kollaboration’. Meyer, Von Wien nach Kalavryta; Meyer, Blutiges Edelweiß. Dimitris Kostopoulos (Leiter der Nationalen Kriegsverbrecherkommission Griechenlands), Offizieller Bericht der Nationalen Kriegsverbrecherkommission Griechenlands an das Nürnberger Kriegsverbrechertribunal über die in Griechenland von den deutschen Besatzungstruppen begangenen Greueltaten, April 1941 – Oktober 1944. Nürnberg, Juni 1947, BArch All.Proz. 1, Rep. 501 XXXII B/26 ad; for more on this see Rondholz, “Schärfste Maßnahmen”; Fleischer, ‘Deutsche “Ordnung”’. An open railway wagon was clamped directly to the back of the train’s engine and filled with hostages. Extensively documented in the status and activity reports of the Wehrmacht’s economic officers in Thessaloniki and Athens and, from 1943, by the economic staff of Greece: BArch-MA, Bestand RW 29. On the significance of the deliveries of chrome ore from South Eastern Europe to the German arms industry after 1942, see Eichholtz, Geschichte der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft, Bd. III, 349 ff. To do this, the Organisation Todt needed to the develop the road networks – especially in Northern Greece. Hadziiossif, ‘Griechen in der deutschen Kriegsproduktion’. ‘Verordnung über die allgemeine Arbeitspflicht der griechischen Zivilbevölkerung [Decreee on universal labour conscription for the Greek civilian population]’, in: Verordnungsblatt für das besetzte griechische Gebiet. Edited by the Oberbefehlshaber Südost, January 30 1943. A duplicate is available in: BArch-MA, RW 29/100, slide 10. Hadziiossif, ‘Griechen in der deutschen Kriegsproduktion’, 223 f. See Molho, Der Holocaust; Die Verfolgung und Ermordung, ed. Berger et al., 527–686; Mazower, Salonica, 392 ff.; Hilberg, Die Vernichtung, 475 ff.; Fleischer, ‘Griechenland’. The most favoured emigration destinations were the Italian occupation zone and Palestine. But there were also many young people who preferred to escape to Free Greece, which was coming into existence. See Synagonistis, ‘Greek Jews in the National Resistance’. Most Jewish forced labourers were used to expand the transport routes to the chrome ore mines in Northern Greece. See /BArch R 3101/31040, 31041. Molho, Israelitische Gemeinde Thessaloniki, 69 ff., 78 ff. Ibid., 80 f.; Molho, Der Holocaust, 56 ff., 59 ff.

86  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

46. See, in addition, Document 15: Schreiben des SS-Sturmbannführers Rolf Günther an das Auswärtige Amt, 25 Jan 1943, PA AA, R 100870. 47. See Molho, Israelitische Gemeinde Thessaloniki, 105 ff., 114 ff., 424 ff., 454 ff.; ‘Greece – Delegation Statement’, in ‘Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets: Proceedings’, 265–70, here 269 f. 48. Czech, ‘Deportation und Vernichtung’. 49. See Benveniste, Die Überlebenden. 50. One exception to this was the Jewish community in Ioannina. It was concentrated in an easily controlled district, and lived within the royalist-conservative EDES’s sphere of influence. In contrast to the EAM-ELAS movement that dominated the resistance, the EDES was antisemitic and this made it more difficult for the Jews to escape from this territory. On the annihilation of the Jewish community in Ioannina, see SchminckGustavus, Winter in Griechenland, 147 ff. 51. That is to say, Greece as of its borders from 1911, without the territorial expansions that came in the wake of the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. 52. Telegramm des Sonderbevollmächtigten des Auswärtigen Amts für den Südosten, Neubacher, an das Auswärtige Amt [Telegram to the Foreign Office from Neubacher, Special Plenipotentiary of the Foreign Office for South Eastern Europe], 27/28 Nov 1943, PA AA, R 100870, slide 243. 53. Most of them survived the war and returned. 54. Zweite Verordnung des Militärbefehlshabers Griechenland betreffend das jüdische Vermögen [Second decree of the military commander regarding Jewish wealth], 18 May 1944, PA AA, R 27318, slide 33. 55. Above all, this concerned ongoing communications with the affected foreign diplomatic representatives, who represented the interests of the non-Greek Jews. 56. For many decades, the active participation of many Greek Jews in the liberation movement was taboo, and unknown even in historical research. The extent of their involvement was only discovered in 2013 following an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Athens. See the Exhibition Catalogue: Synagonistis, ‘Greek Jews in the National Resistance’. See also Benveniste, Die Überlebenden, 40 ff., 47 ff. 57. Extensively documented in: PA AA, R 27301. 58. See the clearing statistics of the Deutsche Verrechnungskasse (German settlement account) between 1943 and 1954 in: BArch R 3101/33636. 59. The German banking commissioner in Greece, Abschließende Übersicht über den Einsatz von Reichsgold in Griechenland [Concluding overview of the use of Reich gold in Greece], Vienna, 31 Dec 1944, PA AA, R 27320, slides 56–69. 60. The most important indication is the fact that these assets in the special depots managed by Paul Hahn do not make an appearance either in the gold balance sheets of the Reich Main Fund (Finance Ministry) nor in the precious metals and foreign exchange department of the Reichsbank (Main Office). On the otherwise common central recycling of the looted gold, see the essential study by Banken, Edelmetallmangel and Großraubwirtschaft, 643 ff. Götz Aly was the first to draw attention to this state of affairs, but drew the erroneous conclusion that the stocks of gold seized in Greece were exclusively taken from the Jewish community in Thessaloniki; see Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat, 281 ff., 290 ff. 61. Minutes of the meeting of the Trade Policy Committee, 12 Nov 1943, BArch R 3101/33648, slide 104 ff. By contrast, Jürgen Kilian denies the first gold operation established by Aly: Kilian thinks that Aly misconstrued a typo in the German bank commissioner’s final report. This argument does not add up, however, because we are not dealing with a one-off entry, but a larger column of numbers and data for the period

The Occupation and Plunder of Greece (1941–1944)  •  87

62. 63. 64.

65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71.

between February and September 1943. It is not possible that all of this data could have been mistyped. Moreover, this column immediately precedes the list of figures for the second gold operation. See PA AA, R 27320, p. 57; Kilian, Krieg auf Kosten anderer, 315, fn. 767. See, in addition, the notes on the individual gold deliveries in: BArch R 2/14553. Extensively documented in: BArch-MA, RH 19 VII / 60a; BArch-MA, RW 29/103; NARA, microfilm holdings/collection T-501, Roll 264. See Hellenic Department for Reconstruction, The Sacrifice of Greece; Dimitrios K. Apostolopoulos, Die griechisch-deutschen Nachkriegsbeziehungen, 18 ff.; Fleischer, Griechenland, 170 ff.; as well as the 2014 report by the Special Commission of the Greek Court of Audit on Reparations claims against Germany: ‘Ellinikí Dimokratía. Ipourio Ikonomikón, Jeniko Lotisirio tou Kratouus; Prosdiorismoós axioseon apo tis jermanikés epanorthosis kai to katochikó dáneio. Aporiti ekthesi idikis voitropis’ [The Republic of Greece, Ministry of Finance, General State Audit Office; Determination of claims for German reparations and from occupation credit. Secret report of the Special Commission], Athens 30 Dec 2014 (available in a special edition of the newspaper To Vima under the title of ‘Posa mas chrostai i Jermanía’ [How much Germany owes us], Athens, January 2015). At the Inter-Allied Reparations Conference held in Paris November–December 1945, the Greek government reported significantly higher numbers of victims: 558,000 dead and 880,000 disabled. According to the current state of research, these estimates were too high. On the problem of calculating the number of Greek casualties, see the remarks in Chapter 14, entitled of this introduction entitled ‘The Extent of Germany’s Reparations Debts’. Especially the estimates of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In the archives of both institutions there are extensive records about Greece. Extensively documented in: BArch R 901/110486; PA AA, Reich Plenipotentiary in Greece (Athens Envoy/Ambassador), No. 73. A much higher sum was charged to the German Reich in the documentation of the Greek Ministry of Reconstruction, as well as in the final report of the Greek Court of Audit (Document 123). It was the senior government official Sigfried Nestler who, under the direction of his superior Paul Hahn, coordinated the financial plunder of Greece. Nestler was charged with the supervision of the Greek Ministry of Finance. Calculated from the records passed on by the Reich Ministry of Finance, the head office of the Reich Credit Offices and the Reich Chancellery: BArchB, R 2, Nr. 315, 330, 544, 5260, 13502, 13503, 14132, 14552, 14569, 21779, 21781, 30674; R 29, No. 2, 4, 196; R 43 II, No. 624 a. This calculation is broadly in line with the figures recently compiled by Jürgen Kilian on the basis of a systematic analysis of the sources, which uses a combination of several indices – the most important of which is the wholesale price index. See Kilian, Krieg auf Kosten anderer, 318 ff., here table 51, p. 316. ‘Claims of the Greek Jewish Organizations’, in: ‘Greece – Delegation Statement’, in ‘Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets: Proceedings’, 269 f., here 270.

Chapter 3

Testing Grounds of Occupation Policy Poland and Greece in Comparison with the Rest of Nazi-Occupied Europe

For a long time, historical research has been unanimous in the view that the Germans mistreated Poland and Greece as testing grounds of their occupation policy in Europe.1 To date, however, this phenomenon has not been systematically investigated, despite the fact that the two extremes of systematic planning and reactive improvisation seemed an obvious starting point for a comparative analysis. Such an analysis is not possible in the framework of this overview either. Nevertheless, I would like to try to use the examples of Poland and Greece in order to bring out the differences and similarities in the Nazi occupation of the various European countries. In doing so, I will follow the thread that I developed in my overview of the occupations of Poland and Greece. I will examine seventeen comparative parameters so as eventually to discuss the question of the extent to which a synthesis of these parameters can allow for the development of a typology of Nazi occupation. The aim will be to locate the appropriate places of both Poland and Greece within the broad spectrum of German occupation policy.

The Destruction of the Nation State Poland was the first country that the Germans strove to eliminate as a state and nation.2 We have shown that they tried to realise this aim immediately,

Testing Grounds of Occupation Policy  •  89

using extreme violence. The Nazi leadership also intended this to be the fate of other countries too. When, at the end of March 1941, it decided at short notice to include Yugoslavia in the war of aggression against Greece,3 which had been planned for some time, it decided to take a radical ‘punitive action’ that destroyed the kingdom of Yugoslavia and split it up into its various nationality groups. In contrast to Poland, however, this action was linked to a different attribution of functions in the planned ‘Greater Germanic Empire’ or ‘Greater European Economic Area’: while non-annexed Poland was assigned the role of a ‘home’ for lawless migrant workers, denationalised Yugoslavia was above all supposed to provide unrestricted access to the strategically important raw materials for armaments production it contained. Two-and-a-half months later, the German attack on the Soviet Union began. It too was to be wiped out as a multinational federation of states, and dissolved into several Reich commissariats, two of which – ‘Ost’ and ‘Ukraine’ – went into action, while the East Polish territories annexed by the USSR in September 1939 were either integrated into the General Government (Galicia) or partitioned into a civil administration (Białystok). This action too created the prospect of a war of extermination based on the experiences of Poland and Yugoslavia.4 Although the military offensive came to a halt in autumn 1941, the ruling layers of the Nazi dictatorship did not draw back from this destructive option. The USSR, like the General Government, was only assigned the role of a deindustrialised ‘German settlement area in the East’. The industrialisation of Yugoslavia was also to be halted and limited to the exploitation of raw materials and the expansion of its strategic transport routes. In their actual occupation policy, the Germans restricted their concept of denationalisation to these three countries in their dominion – their visions of the future, however, extended far beyond. In the medium term, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, like the annexed Polish northern and western territories, were to be incorporated into the ‘Greater Germanic Empire’, albeit in a silent process of assimilation that would guarantee the undisturbed integration of the industrial capacity of these areas. Much more controversial, however, was the position of France in the structure of the future ‘Greater Germanic Empire’, and the division of Belgium was also on the German planners’ agenda until the end of the occupation. While the regional planning experts of ‘West Research’ were swamped with expert opinions and counter-opinions for further clarification,5 at the same time hard facts emerged: Alsace and Lorraine were de facto annexed in the autumn of 1940, and in the spring of 1941 the north-west of Slovenia suffered the same fate. While the ‘reclaiming’ of the old Habsburg military border in the spring of 1941 appeared to be the logical consequence of the denationalisation of Yugoslavia, the annexation of the départements on the French border was an event that was rightly understood as a foreshadowing of the Grande

90  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

Nation’s removal from the map of German-dominated Europe. Greece was excluded from such intentions. But ultimately, its existence as a nation state was also on the line because of Germany’s aggression partners Bulgaria and Italy, who openly pursued plans for annexation, and in some cases put them into practice.

Territorial Dismemberment Let us now discuss the practical implementation of the concept of denationalisation in more detail. Here too we can begin with Poland: the republic was dissolved by the Germans and the Soviets in September–October 1939. The USSR government annexed the provinces to the east of the Curzon Line, while the Germans annexed the northern and western provinces, and established a colonial regime in central Poland. The speediest possible dismemberment and division of the conquered nation state in cooperation with one or more of the aggression partners became a fundamental paradigm of German occupation policy. The Nazi leadership would have preferred to continue in this way after the defeat of France too, but its Axis partner Italy hesitated and only became active in the final phase of the war of aggression, so that just a small area in the south-east was given to it as a zone for occupation. As a result, the Germans were left to their own devices when France was carved up.6 They used the same method as in Poland, separating the economic centres, either by annexing them (Alsace and Lorraine) or by attacking a highly developed neighbouring country – Belgium – and placing the northern departments under the military command of Belgium and northern France. France thereby lost its centres of heavy industry, but had not yet sunk to the status of a non-viable nation state in political or economic terms, especially since it still had access to the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. That is why it was again divided into a northern and southern zone: Paris became the seat of the German Military Commander in France, and the government of a ‘national France’ was established in Vichy, which was soon to become an important economic partner. At the same time, the process of denationalisation was temporarily halted. When it came to the dismemberment of the conquered Balkan states of Yugoslavia and Greece, on the other hand, the Germans were once again able to fall back on willing, expansionist aggression partners. The interests of these partners had to be served accordingly, but only to the extent that German supremacy was maintained, especially in military and economic terms:7 Bulgaria was given Macedonia; Hungary annexed a neighbouring region that it had long claimed; and Italy was given Dalmatia, the

Testing Grounds of Occupation Policy  •  91

southern part of Slovenia, Kosovo (to round off its rule over Albania) and Montenegro. Croatia, on the other hand, was transformed into a German– Italian satellite state and divided into two corresponding military zones. The former Habsburg north-western Slovenia, on the other hand, fell to the ‘Greater Germanic Empire’, and in central Yugoslavia a German military commander and a general representative for the economy in Serbia took office. With its copper and chrome ore mines, Serbia was indispensable to the German armaments industry, and was criss-crossed by strategically important north–south connections. Together with the capital Belgrade, it formed the economic and political heart of Yugoslavia. At the same time, Germany secured access to the economic resources in these areas, such as Croatia’s bauxite deposits, through a series of unequal treaties with its aggression partners. By contrast, Greece was not on the list of nation states that were undesired when it came to the geostrategic map of ‘reorganisation’. On the contrary, the country was to be transformed into a south-eastern cornerstone of the new empire, providing a number of smaller exclaves for naval and air force bases, and was to serve as a springboard towards North Africa and the Middle East. Nevertheless, Greece was also territorially dismembered. The Italians, who had attacked the country at the end of October 1940 and suffered considerable setbacks in the process, were given the main part of the country (central Greece and Peloponnesia). The aggression partner Bulgaria received Western Macedonia and Eastern Thrace as booty, and the Germans concentrated on the strategically important regions in Central Macedonia (Thessaloniki), Piraeus and Attica, as well as on some important island groups and the mainland of Crete. As in Yugoslavia, however, they secured access to all the country’s resources that were essential to the German war economy and military logistics. When the occupied Soviet territories were carved up, the Germans were once again left to their own devices, aside from a few small transfers of territory that it made to its aggression partner Finland. In the process, the separation of the black earth areas of the Ukraine and the southern Soviet Union from the agricultural subsidy areas of central and northern Russia attained strategic importance for the German food industry: months earlier, the German planning staffs had already committed themselves to this separation and had consciously factored in the starvation genocide of millions of people.8 Territorial dismemberment thus turned out to be a decisive step towards the dissolution of the conquered nation states, regardless of whether the process of ‘nation building’ was long behind these nations – such as France and Greece – or whether these countries had only come into existence as nations towards the end of the First World War or in the wake of the

92  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

Paris peace negotiations – such as the USSR, Poland and Yugoslavia. The Germans had first learned this shock-like approach from Poland, and elaborated upon it in various countries thereafter. This approach not only affected the countries that were to disappear immediately from the map of the ‘new European order’, such as Poland, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. It also affected nation states whose future remained in limbo, at least in the medium term. As in the case of the Polish model, the territorial dismemberment of the countries conquered by the Germans had far-reaching consequences, regardless of whether the immediate aim of dismemberment was denationalisation or whether this was only a medium-term aspiration (as in the case of Greece). The material productive and distributive base of the nation states was destroyed, and this occurred within an extremely short time. The socio-economic division of labour lay in ruins, relations between town and country were shattered, and surplus agricultural areas were cut off from industrial conglomerations. This caused structural damage to the productive and market capacity of the affected economies, which often had more serious implications than did the raids or the withdrawals from current value production. It is therefore no coincidence that the countries discussed here belong to the group of nations that particularly suffered under German occupation.

‘Folkdom Policy’ Another grave effect of denationalisation and subjugation to the German Empire were the population policy measures implemented by the Germans. These came into play wherever neighbouring regions of the occupied countries were formally or de facto incorporated into the ‘Greater Germanic Empire’. Occupied Poland served as a testing ground in this respect too. The ‘ethnicity conversion’ measures that were first tested in the annexed northern and western territories were gradually transferred to several neighbouring territories in the west and south-east. For this purpose, it was necessary to relocate the special staffs of the Security Police and the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German Nation, which had been established in the annexed Polish territories, to their new places of deployment. They often confined themselves to replicating the practices that had previously been developed. However, certain modifications could also be observed, which – especially in France – reflected the different circumstances. The départements in the east of France were first in line. Two months after the beginning of the occupation, a decision was made to ‘Germanise’ the civil administrations of Alsace and Lorraine, which had been cut off

Testing Grounds of Occupation Policy  •  93

from France.9 By the end of September 1940, 54,000 people – mainly French Jews, administrative officials and other undesired people – had been deported across the French border. In the course of November, a further 100,000 ‘foreign elements’ were expropriated and deported; and by the end of the occupation, another 15,000 French citizens from Alsace had followed them. As in the annexed Polish territories, the land had thus become ‘abandoned’ and was used for the ‘reconstitution of the German peasantry’, and the waves of deportations were followed by the introduction of an amended ‘German People’s List’, with about 90 per cent of the remaining inhabitants being granted ‘German citizenship upon revocation’. However, this was a double-edged sword, because the men who had thus been ‘Germanised’ were now subject to compulsory military service: 40,000 of them fled to France before being forcibly conscripted, and about 200,000 were drafted into the Wehrmacht. In contrast to their actions in the annexed Polish territories, the SS staffs in Metz and Strasbourg refrained from massacres but spread their deportation programmes across ‘daily quotas’ of a maximum of about 4,000 resettled people. In annexed north-west Slovenia, such tactical considerations were no longer necessary.10 Just three days after the beginning of the attack, the Nazi leadership agreed with the newly appointed heads of the civil administration to treat the approximately 750,000 Slovenes as ‘enemies of the people’. First of all, the particularly exposed layers – some 260,000 people – were to be expropriated and resettled as quickly as possible; then ‘ethnic German repatriates’ from the rest of Yugoslavia were to take over their farms and businesses. Deportations to Croatia and Serbia began at the end of May 1941,11 and as in the annexed Polish territories, these mass deportations were then followed by a campaign of ‘racial sifting’ and the ‘splitting up’ of the remaining population based on the ‘German People’s List’. When the USSR was again shaken by the Wehrmacht’s summer offensive of 1942, the ‘Resettlement Planners’ thought that the time was ripe to apply the experience they had gained in the meantime to the ‘settlement marks’ outlined in the second ‘General Plan East’. These were the regions south of Leningrad (‘Ingria’), eastern Ukraine and the claimed Crimean-Taurian area known as ‘Gotengau’. This time, the experts of all SS offices worked together and once again developed radical perspectives. In the Crimea, for example, a ‘first-order settlement zone’ was identified in the steppe zone around Simferopol, to which the German minority of the Alto Adige (South Tyrol) and later the Russian-Germans were to be resettled.12 However, this was merely intended to be the starting signal for a large-scale Germanisation of the Crimea, which was set in motion as soon as the expulsion of its entire multinational population had begun.

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The SS staffs were still adhering to this plan when the Wehrmacht units had long been preparing for withdrawal. In this way the circle was complete, and its radius can be read in the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood Planning Office’s ‘General Settlement Plan’.13 It combined the ‘Germanisation’ of Eastern Europe and ‘ethnic land consolidation’ in the west and south-east of the ‘Greater Germanic Empire’ with the prospect of the mass extermination of two-thirds of the Slavic population, which was to follow the genocide of the Jews. This planning, too, had begun with the occupation of Poland, and was subsequently extended to the occupied territories of the USSR. This plan also included carte blanche to destroy the productive potential of these countries. The most economically developed countries of the German sphere of occupation in Western, Northern and Central Europe (Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) were spared of these disastrous perspectives. Following this introductory overview of the German experts’ programmes for ‘ethnicity conversion’ (Umvolkung), it would seem logical to focus on the genocide of the Jews who were linked to these concepts, as well as to discuss the first steps taken in this direction. However, this genocide was not only conditioned by ideological and racist stereotypes, but was also embedded in very real contexts that favoured, accelerated or even slowed down its implementation. In order to understand and assess them adequately, it is therefore necessary to reflect on the other parameters of occupation policy that the Germans first attempted to put into practice in Poland. The main aim is to establish the internal connection between the practices of the Nazi genocide and the destructive effects of its looting and exploitation policies. As we will soon establish, it was once again in Poland where the Germans took their first steps in this regard.

The Ruin of the Economy The First Phase of Plunder There were several factors that resulted in a significant decline in the valuecreating capacity in a particular group of the German occupation sphere. These factors mutually and cumulatively reinforced each other in the period that followed, even if their effects were in some cases limited to a certain period of time and later mitigated by the occupying forces. The most obvious phenomenon here was at the beginning of the occupation, when all raw materials, food supplies, semi-finished products, machinery and factory equipment were confiscated. These were either used as ‘spoils’ to provide for the occupying troops or were transported to the Reich. The first testing ground for this was Poland, and the activities of the special command units

Testing Grounds of Occupation Policy  •  95

formed for this purpose did not cease until June 1940, and even then did not do so altogether. At the same time, however, these operations were switched to France, which had just been occupied, and there was a remarkable continuity in the practices of the responsible actors and military staffs. The raids carried out in France assumed astonishing proportions too.14 They were so extensive that the recording companies (primarily the Economic Research Company – WiFo), which were staffed by the loot commandos and technical troops, were unable to keep up with the registration and distribution of deliveries to their clients in the arms industry. All the while, the spectrum of economic special command units expanded considerably, because in highly developed Western Europe – the Benelux countries and France – not only could the ‘bottleneck lists’ for alloy metals, petroleum products, fuels, natural rubber and special machinery be fulfilled, but considerable stocks of precious metals, gold and foreign exchange were also attracted. The ‘foreign exchange protection squads’ of the Four-Year Plan Authority and the specialists of the major banks endeavoured to ‘secure’ them. Simultaneously, this process became increasingly systematic. At the very latest, this process became apparent during the attack on Yugoslavia and Greece, where the Military Economic Staff of the OKW assigned a special organisation under its command to the Army economic leaders. These staffs were mainly made up of ‘special leaders’ from big industry.15 This organisational perfection led to an enormous increase in output, which at least temporarily overcame the bottlenecks in the German war economy. In preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht’s loot organisation was institutionalized for the long term.16 Throughout the entire occupation, the ‘Economic Staff East’ (Wirtschaftsstab Ost) was busy confiscating ‘secured’ raw materials, semi-finished products and food supplies for the maintenance of the three army groups and, if possible, for delivery to the Reich.17 Simultaneously, as in Greece and Yugoslavia, it trained stationary economic commandos, who reorganised the still-intact remnants of the industrial sector, recruited forced labourers and skimmed products for the benefit of the occupying forces. Despite this increase in organisational efficiency in ‘clearing out’ the economies that had been conquered, there were considerable differences from case to case.18 In the General Government, looting was only stopped when the industrial and agricultural capital stock had already been permanently damaged. In the Scandinavian and West European countries, with the exception of France, looting was limited from the outset so as not to jeopardise the extensive withdrawals from current production that were envisaged; eventually, this priority also prevailed in France. In contrast, the occupied countries of South Eastern Europe assumed something of a middle position, since here the withdrawals from production were limited

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to the extraction of raw materials, typical agricultural surplus products and to those products required for the upkeep of the Wehrmacht’s enterprises. As a result, plundering for the purposes of deindustrialisation, which was practised for the first time in the General Government, only came into effect once again in the occupied territories of the USSR.

Excessive Withdrawals from Current Production The economic ruin of an occupied economy can be brought about by the fact that the siphoning off of industrial, commercial and agricultural products for the benefit of the occupying forces and the aggressor’s war economy structurally damages the occupied country’s productive capacity, and largely prevents consumer goods and food being supplied to their own population. Since, from 1942 onwards, this development was further exacerbated in the particularly hard-hit countries of Eastern Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe by the German arms industry unilaterally appropriating what was left of the productive capacity in these countries, the result was a marked shortage of food, clothing, medicines and consumer goods for daily needs. To a certain extent, this shortage situation spread to all the territories of Nazi-occupied Europe. However, it assumed dramatic proportions in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe.19 Hunger, malnutrition and the mass diseases associated with them (tuberculosis, typhus, skin diseases and so on) became endemic in these regions, resulting in rapidly rising mortality rates and plummeting birth rates. There were also periodic famines, which the occupiers either condoned – as in Greece in the winter of 1941/42 – or explicitly embraced. The starvation of 2.8 million Soviet prisoners of war was, at least initially, in line with German calculations, and the mass deaths of Jewish people in the ghettos and forced labour camps in the General Government and the occupied territories of the USSR, which began in the summer of 1941, was very much desired. The Germans could only afford such an approach in the areas of their dominion that were not yet fully developed industrially. In Western Europe, Scandinavia and in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia they had to maintain certain standards of food and provision so as not to endanger the labour supply required to exploit the industrial capacity in these regions.

Forced Labour The German occupation administrations’ access to the ‘human capital’ of the occupied countries also had ruinous consequences for these economies.

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Two essential components must be distinguished here: first, the recruitment of forced labourers for ‘Reich deployment’ and, second, the enforcement of the obligation to work in the occupied country itself. Recruitment practices and the working conditions of ‘Reich deployment’, which followed a strict hierarchy based on ethnic-racist criteria, have been the subject of intensive research in recent decades.20 By contrast, with the exception of some initial studies of the activities of the Todt Organisation in the occupied countries, there are as yet no comparative analyses of the conditions of exploitation in the occupied countries themselves.21 Nevertheless, some conclusions can be drawn in this area too. First of all, it is certain that Poland was the first field of experimentation here – both in quantitative and qualitative terms. Due to the different approaches in the annexed territories and in the General Government, this occurred on two different operational levels, which made it possible for the German labour administrations to learn much about the specific conditions very quickly.22 In the annexed territories and in the General Government, they experimented with specific tactics for the identification, recruitment and management of the workforce. In both instances, they combined the obligation to work, which was instituted at the very beginning of the occupation, and the associated obligation to declare oneself available for work, with the allocation of food ration cards. On the basis of these ration cards, then, the registration and availability of the labour force became a physical question of survival. Socio-economic coercion became the decisive instrument of access to labour. As a rule, however, this was not sufficient to oblige the individuals concerned to opt for ‘Reich deployment’ or to take up work with the Eastern Railway, the Todt Organisation, or in a Wehrmacht repair shop. At this level, economic violence had to be combined with the executive resources of the police – in the annexed territories from the very beginning, and then a few months later in the General Government. In addition, both in the Reich and in the annexed territories, the Polish forced labourers were categorised as belonging to the lowest ranks of the social-racist hierarchy of labour relations, which had been worked out down to the finest detail. The labour administrations in the General Government, by contrast, began to differentiate between the ethnic minorities within the labour market, which was overwhelmingly made up of Polish workers, in a socially racist fashion: Germans living abroad and Ukrainians formed an upper strata, whereas Jewish forced labourers formed a pariah caste. The German labour administrations subsequently transferred these methodological and organisational learning processes to the other occupied countries of Eastern and South Eastern Europe. From the second half of 1942, the labour administrations were granted special authority and became known as the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment, and this

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procedure was then extended to the entirety of occupied Europe.23 This ensured that the ‘manhunts’ became even more brutal, but it also led to remarkable differentiations, such as the introduction of periodic corvée labour to mobilise the small peasant population for military infrastructure work in Greece,24 or the de-collectivisation of Soviet agriculture. In quantitative terms, too, the exploitation of the Polish labour force clearly set the pace. Shortly before the beginning of the war, the German war economy experienced a shortage of 1.2 million workers. This gap was quickly filled both by the deportation of workers from the annexed territories – who were completely stripped of rights, racially stigmatised and socially discriminated against – and by the ‘labour reservation’ that was the General Government. By March 1941, there were already more than one million Poles working mainly in German agriculture, and by autumn 1941 they made up the bulk of all foreign civilian workers.25 After the turn of the year 1942, Soviet forced labourers made up the majority of foreign workers,26 but Polish workers continued to form the second largest group. From the official statistics of the labour authorities for autumn 1944, it is possible to draw conclusions about the varying extent of the economic damage that the forced transfer of workers inflicted on the economies under German occupation. The damage amounted to 2.8 million Soviet, 1.7 million Polish, 1.25 million French and 715,000 Italian civilian workers and prisoners of war, plus those from another twenty-two European countries, albeit with much lower numbers.27 Thus, in this area of economic decline too, the USSR and Poland were particularly hard hit. France and Italy, by contrast, assumed a middle position, although they only did so after the German occupation from autumn 1943 onwards.28

Financial Exploitation Historical research has discussed the financial exploitation of the occupied countries particularly intensively, but only recently has it been possible to obtain sufficiently reliable data on this issue.29 Here too, it has been shown that the Germans first tested their techniques of transferring financial and monetary resources in Poland and then gradually extended these to the other occupied countries. As in Poland, an exchange rate between the national currency and the German reserve currency was fixed at the very beginning of the raid, which gave the Reichsmark a considerable advantage; moreover, after this the respective currency of the occupied country was always retained. The improvised introduction of the Wehrmacht’s money – the credit treasury notes that in Poland came about as a result of the failure of Bank Polski – became a routine measure in the other countries too, as

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it made it possible for the economy of the conquered nation to be used to finance the occupying forces during the first phase of occupation. There were striking differences in the way the Germans dealt with the central banks of the other occupied countries. In the occupied territories of the USSR, as in the General Government, new central banks were established that were fully integrated into the occupation administration. In the occupied countries of South Eastern Europe, however, an interim solution was found. The central banks were formally in the hands of the collaborating governments and had minimal room for manoeuvre, although the fundamental decisions were taken by the German banking commissioners. By contrast, the central banks in the occupied Scandinavian and West European countries, as well as in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, were able to curb German intervention in the economy by working alongside the financial administrations of their respective governments to such an extent that these economies were prevented from being squeezed by ruinous and highly inflationary policies. Nevertheless, in the last instance, the methods deployed by the Germans were ultimately identical. In all cases, the occupied countries had to bear the costs of occupation, including the costs of expanding the military infrastructure. The amounts squeezed out in the process were to a large extent declared to be interest-free compulsory credit, the remainder being current ‘advance payments’. In addition, there were so-called matriculation and military contributions to finance the war directly and to cover other services that were hidden in the state budgets. The largest compulsory contributions to the financing of the Wehrmacht and the war came from the occupied Scandinavian and West European countries. France was by some margin the biggest contributor, with 45.2 billion RM, followed by the Netherlands with 16.3 billion RM and Belgium with 10.2 billion RM.30 Nevertheless, the inflationary consequences were limited, since a considerable portion of the financial contributions were covered by increased production and its concomitant financial and fiscal effects, so that the circulation of money and price increases did not reach uncontrollable proportions. The situation was quite different in the General Government, which in spite of its catastrophic overall economic situation was actually not far behind the West European countries in terms of the tribute it provided.31 The occupied countries of South Eastern Europe also shared this fate. Above all, Greece’s financial tributes bore no relation to its already extremely reduced economic capacity.32 The result was an extreme variant of hyperinflation on a scale not seen in any other occupied country. Overall, the financial exploitation of the occupied countries reached astonishing proportions. Taking into account all open and hidden individual components, it amounted to 131 billion RM.33 Since between 1939

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and 1945 the Wehrmacht’s outgoings amounted to 430.8 billion RM, the occupied countries were effectively coerced into raising 30 per cent of this total.34

Compulsory Commercial Credit (Clearing) In addition, the commercial trade of the occupied countries was exploited by bilateral import and export relations being paid for without the need to use foreign currency. By doing this, the Reich authorities were able to fall back on a procedure that had prevailed since the Great Depression: imports and exports were settled against each other, and periodically cleared. The Germans got rid of these trade policy obligations after overpowering their previous contractual partners militarily. They then forced these countries to continue to export to Germany even when German counter-deliveries increasingly failed to materialise. As a result, exports from the occupied countries turned into forced credits that they had to guarantee to the German clearing bank within the framework of so-called central clearing. The more their clearing debts increased during the war years, the more intensively the Germans tried to cover them up. One of the most important procedures involved here was the recording of German arms and reinforcement supplies to the military administrations of the occupied countries on German credit accounts, even though these deliveries took place completely outside of regular import–export relations.35 This enabled the Germans to turn the negative clearing balances with Greece and other countries into a fictitious positive balance.36 They set up bilateral trade monopolies as soon as inflation began to paralyse trade and siphoned off the excess profits of foreign importers to subsidise German exports – here too, hyperinflationary Greece was the model.37 The Germans dispensed with such subtleties wherever they had sole control over trade relations and thus had no need to show any consideration – however limited – to the collaborationist governments. Moreover, the point of departure was different. The military economic staffs of the General Government and the Reich commissariats ‘Ostland’ and ‘Ukraine’ received hardly any supplies from the Reich. Instead, economic goods and infrastructure services were squeezed out of ‘residual Poland’ for the benefit of the Reich and the occupied Soviet territories, which, had they been recorded at the German Clearing Office, would have resulted in a Reich deficit of billions. The German experts thus took a different path. They hid these tribute payments in the clearing account of the Reich Main Treasury with the issuing banks, which in turn invested these assets – they ultimately attained a volume of 9.4 billion RM at the issuing bank of the General

Testing Grounds of Occupation Policy  •  101

Government – in Reich bonds.38 As a result of this manipulation, the official clearing balance of the General Government recorded a deficit of only 37.9 million Reichsmark towards the end of the occupation.39 The case studies of Greece and the General Government chosen here make it plausible that the German clearing debt of 30.7 billion Reichsmark,40 as shown in the statistics of the Nazi authorities and often uncritically taken as read in the secondary literature, is far too low.

The Theft of Art and Cultural Assets A notable feature of German occupation policy was the theft of art treasures and cultural assets in the occupied territories.41 In this case, too, Poland was the first field of experimentation, and the race between Göring and Hitler’s special envoys and the staffs of the SS and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party formations sent to locate and seize the loot was to recur on several occasions. There were, however, remarkable modifications too; on the one hand, they led to disputes about the legitimacy of the unbridled theft of art, but on the other they resulted in a considerable increase in the efficiency of the seizure of art. The most important example of this was art theft in France, which began a few days after the French surrender.42 In the wake of the general looting campaign, a working group of the German ambassador in Paris, Otto Abetz, searched the state museums and the art collections of the upper-middle-class Jewish families in order to ‘secure’ numerous objects that had stirred the desires of the Nazi leadership. In November 1940, the Rosenberg Special Unit stepped into action and, in the months that followed, conducted raids of the apartments, depots and galleries of the displaced Jewish upper classes. It confiscated twenty-one thousand works of art, the value of which was estimated at around one billion RM. The classic works of art approved by the Nazi leadership passed into their private possession, while the artefacts classified as ‘degenerate’ were sold in neutral countries, especially Switzerland, to generate foreign exchange currency. However, these practices did not go unchallenged. Unlike in Poland, a ‘Department for the Protection of Art’ was deployed in occupied France and was under the command of the General Quartermaster of the Army. It resisted the all-too-obvious disregard for the international law of war, and, just like the ‘Archive Protection’ alongside which it worked, campaigned for a moderation of looting practices. Ultimately, however, the Wehrmacht’s interventions had no effect, and its special staffs eventually went over to forms of illegitimate appropriation themselves, albeit ones that were more concealed.43 What is more, the activities of the ‘art protection’ group ensured

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that even the openly conducted raids were disguised as normal commercial transactions. The Germans paid for their ‘acquisitions’ in the respective national currency. The Reich Credit Treasury then charged these transactions to the budgets of the occupied countries. After the conquest of Greece, the Germans further perfected the duplicitous combination of overt and covert looting techniques. Before they did so, they had shown no consideration for the numerous ancient monuments carefully being protected by the Greek Archaeological Service, with many of them seriously damaged as the Germans advanced.44 After the surrender of the Greek army, the special staffs then went into action here too, as we have seen in the case of the actions taken by the Rosenberg Special Unit against the Jewish community of Thessaloniki.45 The Künsberg Special Unit began a hunt for the archives of the Greek Foreign Ministry and confiscated numerous ‘collateral finds’, such as the National Bank of Greece’s gold and foreign exchange portfolio, some of which had been transferred to Iraklio. The hunt for archaeological cultural assets and ancient works of art then began.46 Right through until the end of the occupation, German soldiers – mainly officers – stole numerous individual objects without the Wehrmacht’s ‘Department for the Protection of Art’, which was housed in the Athens branch of the German Archaeological Institute, doing anything to stop them.47 Instead, the Department for the Protection of Art concentrated its efforts on compiling a thorough inventory of all ancient art treasures, and supported the institute in the initiation of archaeological excavations, which its staff – committed Nazis48 – pressed ahead with in competition with the special staffs of the Nazi leadership. All these excavations were illegal, as Metaxás had banned them in 1940. The objects recovered from these excavations were therefore looted, as were the reliefs, vases and statues that were discovered during the military construction work. Despite the intensive restitution efforts of the Greek military mission in the years immediately after the Second World War, many looted objects are most likely still hidden in the antique collections of universities and museums. The tragic culmination of this cultural-political barbarism was achieved in the occupied territories of the USSR.49 It was here that the ‘art protection’ and ‘archive protection’ departments of the Wehrmacht threw off their last inhibitions and went over to blatant looting, as did the special staffs of the leadership of the NSDAP and the SS. They scoured all the archives, libraries, museums and art collections, and transported their loot in large wagonloads to the Reich. In doing so, however, they proceeded in a highly selective manner. While in Poland there were isolated cases in which works of Polish artists had been destroyed for being the product of ‘inferior’ individuals, the works of the Russian avant-garde and Soviet political art were systematically destroyed.

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When it comes to contemporary speculations regarding the whereabouts of the cultural assets captured by the Germans before Leningrad – such as the Amber Room – this fact should not be overlooked.

Expropriation and Cross Holding Let us now turn to the question of the methods by which the Germans acquired the economic resources of the occupied countries, and why they did so. The techniques they developed varied considerably from country to country, but they had certain underlying features in common. They had already gained their first experience in this respect during the annexation of Austria and the destruction of Czechoslovakia, and from this they developed a basic procedural pattern that, above all, was to shape the practices involved in the economic penetration of the occupied Scandinavian and West European countries. However, this restrained course of action became more radical immediately after the conquest of Poland. In the annexed territories, there was the summary mass expropriation of all Polish public and private property, which was driven on by a special institution of the Four-Year Plan Authority, the Main Trust Office East (Haupttreuhandstelle Ost – HTO).50 The outcome was a radical transfer of property to Reich and foreign German ‘trustees’, with no fundamental distinction made between the nationality status of the previous owners (Jews or non-Jews). In the General Government, this process was slower and less uncompromising.51 Here, too, a ‘trusteeship’ was established, but its powers were essentially limited to the confiscation of state property; in addition to this, special institutions were set up for the ‘Aryanisation’ of Jewish property. Despite these differences, the Germans had considerably greater scope for action when it came to expropriations and the transfer of property. This enabled them to impose drastic measures when addressing the structural socio-economic problems in the conquered territories. In the process, they further developed some of the procedures they had first learned during the ‘Aryanisation’ of the economy of annexed Austria.52 They took advantage of the mass expropriation of small agricultural, commercial and handicraft enterprises and the resulting expulsion of the ‘superfluous’ population, mainly in order to shut these enterprises down, to merge those that were left over and to integrate them into regional development concepts. Due to the war conditions, the resulting increases in industrial productivity, fuelled by the mass expropriations, remained meagre. But it is unmistakable that the excessive violence and the logic of the annihilation of ‘those that were wasting air’ set in motion by the expropriations was an essential prerequisite for the justification of ruthless development planning. In this respect, too, the interplay of destruction and development first tested by the Germans in Poland

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set a precedent, and became a structural component of eastern expansion and rationalisation programmes in the annexed areas of Western and South Eastern Europe. In the other occupied countries, on the other hand, when it came to property ownership, the Germans continued along the path they had taken during the annexation of Austria and the occupation of Czechoslovakia. The strategy of forcefully penetrating the highly developed economies played a prominent role in this process, as from 1942 that strategy could be drawn upon in order to transfer Wehrmacht arms contracts to the occupied territories.53 Under the flanking protection of Berlin’s central economic ministries and trade associations, major German companies reactivated their claims to equity stakes, cartel quotas and market shares, which they had lost after the First World War. In doing so, they came into their own whenever they succeeded in winning over their more or less enormously pressurised negotiating partners to the agenda of a German-dominated ‘Greater European Economic Area’. In some instances they were quite successful, as in France.54 In other countries, they used the levers of proven sector-specific structural planning – for example, in the case of the ‘Light Metal Expansion in Norway’.55 A further lever at their disposal was the deliberate surpassing of the provisions laid out in the international law of war on the administration of industrial ‘enemy assets’ in order to penetrate the branches of multinational corporations based in the Benelux countries. In all these cases, German economic leaders exerted considerable pressure. They could not, however, use brute force, and their attempts at penetration continued until the end of the occupation. In East Central and South Eastern Europe, on the other hand, such considerations did not apply even when British or French branches were involved,56 and here all conceivable methods were developed to gain control of the strategically important companies and mines through blackmailing takeover agreements, leases and asymmetrical supply agreements.57 Here the transition to outright confiscation was fluid, and on occasion – as with the expropriation of the Greek merchant navy – was clear for all to see. However, all these more or less ‘crude’ techniques were eclipsed by an extremely violent approach that was deployed in all occupied territories: the ‘Aryanisation’ of Jewish property. It began everywhere immediately, and the hunt for Jewish assets, precious metals and foreign exchange intensified this process to a frightening extent in the countries of Western Europe too.58 In addition, there was often a macabre division of labour between the occupiers and their domestic collaborators: the Germans retained the strategically important securities, gold, foreign exchange holdings and bottleneck products for themselves; to their collaborators they transferred the land, small- and medium-sized enterprises and insurance policies. In many

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occupied countries of Western and South Eastern Europe, special authorities were established to manage Jewish property, and they constituted an important material basis for mutual complicity.59

The Annihilation of the European Jews In the historiography of the transatlantic region, a tendency has prevailed that detaches the mass extermination of the European Jews from the surrounding context, and treats this phenomenon as self-sustaining and selfdetermined. I do not share this view. Of the six million murdered, three million were Polish and 2.1 million were Soviet citizens. The other victims came from other regions and countries of Nazi-dominated Europe, and had been deported from there to the extermination sites established by the Germans in Poland and Belarus. This fact alone makes it evident that the genocide of the European Jews is closely tied to the occupation crimes committed by the Germans in Poland and the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. These connections also explain the phases that paved the way for the Shoah – they accelerated, radicalised and occasionally delayed it.60 During the German invasion of Poland, the decision-making centres of the Nazi leadership and the SS opted to deport the Polish Jews from the territories earmarked for annexation to ‘Residual Poland’, and to have the Jewish minority stuck in the ‘Greater Germanic Empire’ follow them as soon as possible. When, in March 1941, the General Government was declared to be a future ‘German settlement area’ as part of preparations for the invasion of the USSR, it was decided that all Polish Jews living there would be deported to the soon-to-be occupied territories of the USSR. These plans became concrete in the autumn of 1941, after the Reich Security Main Office had been given the task of finding the ‘Final Solution to the European Jewish Question’ and the SS task forces had completed the first stage of the mass murder on their advance into the USSR: all East European Jews were to be ‘exterminated by labour’ during the expansion of the transport system of the occupied Soviet territories and in the future West Siberian mandate area of the SS. However, the further course of the war thwarted the implementation of this ‘territorial final solution’.61 The deportation plans had failed, while a famine catastrophe was looming in the General Government, and the Nazi dictatorship’s food crisis was worsening. In this situation, the decision makers and planners of the ‘Final Solution’ decided to take the ultimate step: mass extermination at special extermination sites. They had first become familiar with the industrial technology involved in killing in

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gas chambers when murdering the mentally ill and disabled within the German Reich itself (‘Action T4’).62 In this way, racialised antisemitism, deeply rooted in German fascism, combined with cynical crisis management. The annihilation of the most discriminated, marginalised and devalued social group was seen as a particularly problem-free and cost-effective way of overcoming the crisis, which could also rely on a certain degree of social consensus. It is no coincidence that the persecution of the Jews escalated whenever the occupiers were confronted with serious problems and contradictions, such as when a pariah caste of slave labourers replaced the underclass of Polish forced labourers as the lowest social layer, when unprofitable trade and craft enterprises were restructured, when productivity-oriented regional planning was put into practice and, last but not least, when the starvation genocide of the majority of the Polish population was averted by the extermination of three million fellow citizens of Jewish nationality. This genocidal ‘triage’ was facilitated by the widespread hostility towards Jews in Poland.63 Antisemitic stereotypes were widespread in the underground press. After the Wehrmacht had invaded the district of Białystok, Polish citizens committed massacres of members of some Jewish communities in July 1941.64 The fascist wing of the nationalist right, the ‘National Armed Forces’ (Narodowe Siły Zbrojne – NSZ), founded in September 1942, murdered numerous Jews and non-Jewish escapees in central, eastern and southern Poland. For them, the fight against the Jews and Communists took priority over resistance against the Germans, because their post-war plans hinged on the map of an ethnically homogenous and authoritarian ‘Greater Poland’. In Greece, the occupiers could not rely on such widespread anti-Jewish resentment. Only in Macedonia and Thessaloniki did they find right-wing nationalist partners and profiteers, who in 1943 approved of the ghettoisation and deportation of the Sephardic Jews; the actions carried out a year later against the remaining Jewish communities met with the passive – and in some cases active – resistance of the Greek population. In Poland, and partly in Greece too, antisemitism encouraged the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’ with which the German occupiers were pressing ahead. As has been shown by numerous regional studies during the past two decades, widespread hostility towards the Jews in Europe made it easier for the murder programme to be implemented, albeit to varying degrees. However, we should always bear in mind that the Germans were the main culprits. The right-wing nationalist and fascist organisations in the occupied territories were not involved in the planning or instrumentalisation of the German programme of annihilation, which stemmed from the crisis management of occupation policy.

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Terror as the Main Instrument of Occupation Policy Political terror was a prominent instrument in the rule of German fascism. It involved the systematic use of excessive violence, which deliberately transgressed the state’s legally restrained monopoly on the use of force in order to prevent the negotiation of socio-economic, political and cultural compromises between the various social groups, and to subject them, as a ‘national community’, to the Nazi dictatorship’s strategic aim of expansion. Anyone who did not follow these guidelines or who resisted against them became the subject of administrative terror practices, which were carried out by the Security Police, the special judiciary and the Nazi administration in a division of labour. This administrative terrorism was extended to the occupied countries from the beginning of Nazi expansionist policy. As we have seen, from the day of the attack, in Poland it assumed hitherto unseen forms. At the same time, the institutions involved – the Security Police and the SS, the Wehrmacht and the judiciary – developed terror in many different ways, so that extreme violence developed into routine administrative treatment, which was underpinned by all the important official proceedings – registration for work, work enforcement, expropriation, forced resettlement, setting quotas for the delivery of agricultural products and so on. Furthermore, depending on the level of resistance, the Security Police engaged either in pre-emptive or reactive terror. While it used excessive violence specifically against resistance organisations, it also launched general acts of terror against whole social groups – especially the Jewish communities, the Polish intelligentsia and the Polish administrative class. Here the terror gradually escalated into genocide, which resulted in a qualitative leap: genocide was no longer to be understood as the main political instrument wielded in the terror of occupation, but was rather committed to the ultimate strategic aim of an ‘ethnically cleansed Greater Germanic Empire’. This conceptual-historical reflection makes clear just how significant Poland was as a testing ground when transferring the excessive violence inscribed in the Nazi dictatorship to the terror of occupation. This does not mean, however, that the arsenal of violent acts developed in the process was transferred entirely, or without restrictions, to the other occupied countries. Administrative terror was practised by the German occupation authorities responsible for it in all occupied countries, and everywhere there was the same division of labour between the associations commanded by the Higher SS and Police Leader, the Wehrmacht and the special justice system. However, this occurred in very different ways. In the Scandinavian and West European countries, as well as in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the focus was on a specific, largely preventative campaign of

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‘combatting the enemy’, which sought to eliminate the resistance groups anchored in the working-class left, and parts of the middle class. This basic condition within the terror of occupation was, however, periodically broken in these countries too, and now here too the occupation authorities no longer relied on the deterrent provided by the death sentences issued in their local courts. Instead, from autumn 1941 onwards, the authorities switched to killing hostages in France, which mainly targeted prominent Communists and Jews.65 When even this stage of escalation no longer proved to be sufficient, a further step followed, namely the secret deportation of suspected opponents of the occupation to German concentration camps (the ‘Night and Fog Actions’). The uncertain fate of these individuals aimed to demoralise those close to them. Moreover, the occupiers demonstrated time and again that the limits of their readiness for terror had by no means been reached, as in the case of Lidice after the assassination of deputy Reich protector Heydrich at the end of May 1942.66 But these were isolated cases; only when the resistance gained a mass character when German defeat loomed on the horizon did the occupiers resort to collective ‘atonement measures’ in this sphere of rule too. When the Wehrmacht invaded Greece and Yugoslavia in April 1941, it unexpectedly advanced to become the main player in the policy of terrorism, with the Security Police and the paramilitary units of the Higher SS and Police Leader only stepping into action after a considerable delay. In the process, the responsible staffs and special forces (the Wehrmacht Military Intelligence and the Secret Field Police) developed operational tactics that initially were considerably different in Yugoslavia and Greece. In Yugoslavia, terror under the occupation escalated rapidly, with historically racist stereotypes against the (especially Serbian) southern Slavs and the rapid growth of armed resistance playing an important role. As a result, the terror practices escalated within a few months, and in autumn 1941 it was the units of the Wehrmacht – not the SS – that murdered the Jewish population of Serbia.67 In Greece, on the other hand, the Wehrmacht, in agreement with the Nazi leadership, initially banked on the smooth cooperation of the ‘Metaxás generals’, who had offered to form a collaborative government during the ceasefire negotiations.68 However, these hopes were soon dashed. When German airborne troops occupied Crete in late May 1941, they encountered armed resistance from the small peasant population, which they met with brutal massacres. Further uprisings in northern Greece followed in the autumn, and a year later the first liberated areas were established in the Italian-occupied central regions of Greece, which expanded considerably until the Italian occupying forces were decommissioned in September

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1943. Despite massive troop reinforcements and despite the paramilitary apparatus of the Higher SS and Police Leader, which had become functional in the meantime, the occupiers were no longer able to break up the Liberation Army. In the meantime, a similar balance of forces emerged within occupied Yugoslavia. As a result, both countries now became the scene of a brutal occupation terror that took advantage of the civilian population. In Greece alone, a thousand villages were burnt to the ground, more than a hundred of them completely, and their inhabitants were murdered, sometimes in bestial circumstances. Despite the tendency to apply the practices first tested in Poland to South Eastern Europe, the extreme variant of occupation terror in Poland was not seen again until the German invasion of the Soviet Union.69 The terror was radicalised once more: from the outset, the SS task forces tied their collective reprisals to the mass murder of the Jewish communities and the Soviet elite functionaries, and the Wehrmacht attack units also implemented a similar ‘Commissar Order’ from the outset.70 This was a war of annihilation that had been systematically planned for months, so that the occupation terror was combined with genocidal objectives from the very beginning. The time factor was mainly responsible for this further radicalisation. When Poland was invaded, the decision to implement the physical extermination of the European Jews had not yet been made, and the Nazi leadership had reached an agreement with the USSR regarding their mutual spheres of interest. The USSR now had to pay for this catastrophic mistake on the part of its political leadership. Its prisoners of war fell victim to a starvation genocide, and the inhabitants of the metropolises and of central and northern Russia would also die of malnutrition. These plans could not be fully realised, however. Despite the unbridled terror of the occupation, a broad and well-organised armed resistance developed behind the front lines, which could not be broken even by the most extreme repressive measures – mass deportations and the depopulation of whole swathes of land, mass executions and the burning of tens of thousands of villages.

Occupation Policy and Collaboration Let us be clear at the outset: Poland was no testing ground for collaboration. The Germans gained experience in this area in other countries. First, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, then in the occupied countries of Scandinavia and Western Europe, and finally – and especially so – in Greece. The moral connotations of the term collaboration must also be considered. Since there is an increasing tendency in today’s historical debates to relegate the occupiers, as the actual actors, to the background

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when it comes to a discussion of voluntary or even pragmatically driven collaborators, it seems worthwhile to consider replacing this term with another one.71 In this way, we will make it easier to examine the interactions between the occupiers and their cooperation partners without prejudice and to arrive at a better understanding of the motives behind the actions of the latter. However, the fact that occupied Poland was not a pilot project for winning over more or less compliant cooperation partners does not in any way rule out the possibility that such cooperation projects did actually exist to a certain extent.72 However, they were in no way representative, neither of specific social strata nor of politically active groups. There were undoubtedly some fascist groups that served the Germans, such as the extremely anti-Communist and antisemitic ‘National Armed Forces’ (NSZ). There were some publicists who were pro-German, and even the leadership of the Polish Main Welfare Council did not refrain from making overtures to the administration of the General Government. However, these remained marginal phenomena, and the occupiers made no attempt to deal with them or to take them seriously. Moreover, such an approach would have thoroughly thwarted their preliminary strategic decisions and the actions informed by them. Anyone who seeks to destroy a nation state politically and culturally, and declares its ruling classes and intellectual elite functionaries to be its main enemy alongside the Jews, cannot include them in any occupation policy. Consequently, there was no room for such approaches, and the Germans therefore seized control of the whole occupation administration. Cooperation thus took place only at the lowest levels of administration: with the heads of municipalities, local authorities, the ‘blue’ police and the Jewish councils. The Germans treated them as mere recipients of orders, and as a result these forces were in constant danger of being crushed between the demands of the occupiers and the counterdemands of the resistance. In addition, another cultural and historical factor played a part: the pronounced patriotism of the Poles. As a result, any group that openly engaged with the Germans would have committed political suicide. Moreover, all those who considered collaborating with the Germans were confronted with the verdict of the Polish ‘underground state’, which imposed draconian sentences on collaborators and did not wait until liberation to enforce them.73 As a result, relations between the German ‘supervisory administrations’ and the cabinets of the Scandinavian and West European countries, which were essentially left in office, became a model case in their search for cooperation partners.74 But here, too, the path was thorny, especially because Norway and the Netherlands left only their secretary generals in the

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country, with their governments going into exile in Britain. The willingness to cooperate thus remained limited to aspects of administrative and socioeconomic policy. The main purpose of this willingness was to preserve the continuity of the nation state and to limit the suffering of the population. The German Reich commissioners and plenipotentiaries quickly became aware of this, and tried to counter it by using the pro-Nazi movements that were active in all these countries as leverage, or by gradually incorporating them into the supervisory governments. However, this only occurred at the beginning of the strategic turn in the war, and only then did Quisling, Mussert and Co succeed as political actors who could be taken seriously and who were accordingly despised. However, there were also governments that, following their country’s capitulation, emerged from the national conservative spectrum in their countries and moved closer to the occupiers politically. The typical case was the Vichy Regime of Marshal Pétain.75 These collaborators, too, wanted first and foremost to save their ‘Grande Nation’ – but at the price of a fairly extensive adaptation to the supposedly emerging ‘Greater European Economic Area’ under German leadership. This resulted in a remarkable willingness to cooperate politically, but also facilitated the subordination of the economic elite to the concepts of cross holding and the outsourcing of production contracts. Finally, cooperation also took place in policing, and now the emigrants, the Jewish minority, the workers compelled to work in the Reich and the resistance groups were the ones who suffered. The cooperation of Vichy’s national-conservative elites thus crossed the red line of a pragmatic arrangement with the occupiers, and led to the polarisation of society, which provided the resistance with a mass base that properly settled accounts with the miscalculations of Pétain, Bichelonne and Co. In the occupied countries of South Eastern Europe, a third component of cooperation came into play, which had a considerable impact on the development and polarisation of the resistance. In dismembered Yugoslavia, the Germans relied on a double variant of cooperation: the complicity of the fascist Ustaša regime in Croatia and the regime of the Serbian prime minister Nedić,76 which was subordinated to its military administration. Both regimes were a mere shadow of their former selves after the Serbian popular uprising in autumn 1941. This prompted the Germans to supplement the ethnic conflict between the Croats and the Serbs, which had flared up earlier, with an inner-Serbian civil war component by drawing the conservative Mihailović wing of the resistance to their side. But even this move failed, and from summer 1943 the Germans were confronted by a united front of resistance in the form of the Yugoslavian People’s Liberation Army, which was fully recognised by the Allies. Thus the Germans failed in their

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attempts to bolster their unpopular cooperation partners by fomenting ethnic conflict and by dividing the resistance. In Greece, this tactic proved to be more successful because the occupiers had won over reliable cooperation partners despite the initial mass uprisings and the catastrophic famine of the winter of 1941/42.77 However, the rather pragmatically oriented first government of the ‘Metaxás generals’ was worn out in autumn 1942 and was replaced by an interim government that helped to open the floodgates of hyperinflation, and failed in initial attempts to ‘Hellenise’ the Nazi concept of Gleichschaltung, according to which all aspects of society were to be brought under central control and coordination. This government was followed in spring 1943 by the Rallis cabinet, and now things were getting serious, for the resistance had by then, as it had in Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe, grown into a mass movement that additionally benefited from Italy’s withdrawal from the war in the autumn and could no longer be suppressed with the forces of the military and the police at its disposal. In this situation, the Germans decided to upgrade the Rallis government and to play off the pro-British, royalist wing of the resistance against the dominant left-wing Republican current. This ‘policy of splitting the resistance’ largely failed, even though the royalists agreed to a ‘neutral’ coexistence until shortly before the German withdrawal. By contrast, the Germans succeeded in winning over the Rallis cabinet to their side due to the favourable impression the successes of the People’s Liberation Army had had on the cabinet. The Germans also managed to reactivate the Greek Security Police and to build up paramilitary units that subordinated themselves to the Higher SS and Police Leader, and took coordinated action against the liberation movement. Thus, on the eve of their retreat, the Germans had succeeded, just as they had already by establishing Salò’s neo-fascist regime in Italy in autumn 1943, in dividing the Greek nation and burdening it with what was probably the most serious legacy of their occupation – the civil war.78 As these examples show, the problems of cooperation and collaboration only become fully apparent to us when we think of them in conjunction with the history of the resistance movement. These problems often led to serious inner-societal conflicts that could escalate into civil war. In addition, they were often accompanied by profound polarisation within the resistance, because its protagonists, just like the actors of collaboration, were ultimately motivated by what they thought might happen to their societies after the war. And since these post-war scenarios varied greatly, it was inevitable that domestic conflict was sometimes considered to be more important than a common front against the occupiers. As a result, the interplay between cooperation and resistance, provoked and exploited by the Germans, cast long shadows that persisted for decades.

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‘Scorched Earth’ The Germans not only left behind various civil war scenarios – in some regions of their occupying power they also did everything possible to make it more difficult for the already largely ruined economies to be rebuilt. In this case too, Poland was not the first occupied country in which the policy of ‘scorched earth’ was practised. In the actions taken by the Germans in Poland, outlined above, its army staffs, economic commandos and pioneer units were able to draw on experience gained elsewhere.79 The first steps in this direction were obviously taken in the winter of 1941/42 after the failure of the attack on Moscow. In the course of the retreat operations by the Army Group Centre, the Army Group South and finally the Army Group North, they ratcheted up their destructive power; already in early summer 1943, the timetable and the intensification of the measures of destruction linked to it appear to have been standardised. This was also the time when the concepts of ‘stripping bare’ (Kahlfraß) and the ‘loosening, clearance, paralysis and destruction measures’ (the so-called ARLZ measures) spread to the other theatres of war. When the Germans mistakenly expected an Allied invasion of Greece in the early summer of 1943, they devised a programme of destruction that would devastate the whole of the country’s infrastructure.80 This was then meticulously carried out in the autumn of 1944 during the weeks of retreat, and then transferred to the central Balkans. In autumn 1943, however, it was also Italy’s turn, after the Badoglio government had concluded an armistice with the Western Allies following the latter’s crossing from Sicily to southern Italy. Now the Nazi leadership saw an opportunity to use its renegade coalition partner’s highly developed armaments industry and workforce to stimulate its own military potential on a massive scale.81 The Wehrmacht occupied Italy in a surprise attack, decommissioned its army, including the troops stationed in the Balkans, and coerced more than seven hundred thousand ‘military internees’ who did not hold prisoner-of-war status into forced labour in the Reich.82 In the ‘clearing’ of southern and central Italy, however, the ‘scorched earth’ techniques that had been developed up to that point had to be modified, because the aim here was to transfer as much as possible of the available raw materials, semi-finished products, machines and industrial plants to northern Italy’s industrial centre, and to restrict destructive measures to the transport infrastructure and other measures to hinder the advance of the Allied troops. In order to ensure this, the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production formed an ‘RuK-Staff’ (Staff of the Reich Ministry for Armaments and War Production) consisting of high-calibre industrial managers, who coordinated the destructive actions of the army’s economic leaders with the dismantling of industry,

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and subsequently incorporated northern Italy’s industrial capacity into the German war economy. Such subtleties, however, played no role in the withdrawal operations from the USSR.83 The extermination plans were carried out with barbaric routine, and then continued in the direction of Poland via Białystok and the Ukraine. However, since the Germans were being pursued by the Red Army, there was often no time to load the dismantled and piled-up industrial plant and economic goods into the wagons, and numerous treks were stopped by Soviet advance units. As a result, the destruction conducted in this theatre of war far outweighed the transport operations. But even where the Germans were able to carry out their destruction in peace and quiet (as in northern Norway and Finland), or were able to act completely unhindered (as in Greece), the consequences of the ‘scorched earth’ policy were particularly severe.

The Fate of the Capital Cities and the Metropoles The systematic destruction of Warsaw was also part of the policy of ‘scorched earth’. However, when the German pioneer troops reduced the historic Old Town and other districts west of the Vistula to rubble with their flamethrowers and explosives in the autumn of 1944, this was merely the final act.84 Even before the beginning of the attack, the Germans had planned that after its ‘deconstruction’ it would become a German provincial town traversed by major traffic routes. In September 1939, their air raids and artillery fire had destroyed a tenth of the city’s building stock. The destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto reduced this by a further 15 per cent. When the Warsaw Uprising was crushed, a further 25 per cent went up in flames in August–September 1944. After the deportation of the surviving 650,000 inhabitants to the Pruszków transit camp, the Germans incinerated a further 35 per cent, and integrated the city ruins into the defensive position of the Army Group Central on the Vistula. When the Red Army and the Polish troops attached to it liberated the capital in January 1945, 85 per cent of it was destroyed. At least the German plans to transform Warsaw into a supply centre for the Wehrmacht, or to sink it to become a lake landscape, were thwarted. Was the near-complete destruction of Warsaw a singular event, or was it also in this case a field of experimentation that was repeated, at least in individual components, in the other capitals and metropolises of Nazioccupied Europe? This question is important because the process of destruction driven by the Germans did not at all go according to plan, but was modified by a series of unexpected events – only then to be largely realised

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after all. For example, how did the occupiers deal with popular uprisings in the metropolises of other countries? Did they also use them as a vehicle to accelerate their project of destruction? Did the insurgents fail to coordinate with the Allied troops that were advancing on the metropolises or had already partially occupied them in other cases too? In the case of the Polish capital, these questions still give rise to fierce historical-political controversy today.85 We do not intend to comment on them because we lack detailed historical knowledge, but we believe that a comparative look at the fate of some of the other capitals could bring out some new insights. First of all, we would like to highlight how some of what the Germans had learned was directly implemented in their operations against other capitals. The most important example is the bombing of Belgrade in the first days of the invasion of Yugoslavia.86 Here, too, Air Fleet 4 of the Wehrmacht was deployed. It attacked Belgrade in four waves on 6 and 7 April 1941. First, it set fire to numerous residential quarters, and then it destroyed the city centre, the government quarter and the nodes of the transport system. As in the case of Warsaw, the Luftwaffe wanted to eliminate the administrative and logistical centre of the attacked country in this ‘Operation Retribution’. In Belgrade it succeeded completely. The government lost all contact with the army staffs and the regional administrations, so that the military resistance quickly collapsed. Almost half of Belgrade was destroyed and there are no reliable figures on the extent of the human loss of life. In the period from April to September 1944, Belgrade was attacked several times by Allied bomber units because it was the logistical and political-military centre of German rule over the Balkans. This was followed in October by a joint offensive of the Red Army and the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Army to liberate Belgrade. Their main military objective was the destruction of the German Army Group E. This plan failed. However, it had an important side effect: the German units threatened by encirclement lacked the time to destroy the Yugoslavian capital completely. But there were also metropolises that the Germans not only wanted to ‘reconstruct’ into provincial towns like Warsaw, but to destroy completely immediately after conquest. Among these were Moscow and Leningrad. The attack on Moscow came to a halt in December 1941, shortly before the gates of the capital. Leningrad, on the other hand, had been surrounded by German and Finnish units in early September.87 While the Finnish attackers stopped in Karelia when they reached the old Finnish–Soviet border of 1939, the army corps of the Army Group North continued their attacks until October 1941. After that, they had to surrender units to attack Moscow, and proceeded to the siege of Leningrad. However, this was also a decision to oversee starvation genocide.

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The metropolises were consequently bombed on an almost daily basis, and the food-laden warehouses became the main target of the Luftwaffe’s incendiary and demolition bombs, which also repeatedly attacked the supply deliveries organised via Lake Ladoga. As a result, food rations had to be reduced several times. In the end, they fell below the level of the average rations distributed in Warsaw, but the resources of the underground economy were also exhausted after a few weeks. A catastrophic famine ensued, which claimed 470,000 victims by the spring of 1942. When the Red Army finally managed to break the siege ring at the end of January 1944, one-third of the population – about 1.1 million people – had died of malnutrition. They had perished because the Germans had barbarously modified their extermination plan to wipe out Leningrad and its environs, turning it into a depopulated settlement zone (‘Ingria’) in accordance with the possibilities of their conduct of the war. Other metropolises of the USSR also experienced terrible tragedies, such as Stalingrad, which like Leningrad was completely destroyed, and Kharkov, which was twice conquered by the Germans and twice liberated by the Red Army.88 But here, in addition to the everyday terror of the occupation, the priority was the imperatives of unfettered warfare, not the extermination of the population or the eradication of the metropolis from the map of the German colonial empire in the East. Let us now turn our attention to some other metropolises outside Eastern Europe where the Germans were confronted with insurgency movements, the leaders of which did not want to wait to be liberated by the approaching Allied troops. Three case studies will suffice here: Naples, Paris and Prague. On 3 September 1943, Allied troops landed in Calabria. Six days later, their main invasion began in the Gulf of Salerno shortly after the announcement of Italy’s withdrawal from the war.89 A strategically decisive defensive battle ensued, which the 10th Army, subordinated to the German Army Group South, lost after ten days of fighting. It withdrew to a first defensive position, which it abandoned on 25 September in favour of a barrier line between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Adriatic Sea. Naples thus came within the Allies’ reach. In southern Italy, too, the Germans combined their withdrawal operations with systematic looting, disassembly, destruction and mass raids to deport forced labourers. This did not go unnoticed by the inhabitants of Naples, and even before the German withdrawal had begun they were directly affected by it.90 On 12 September, when the German military commander wanted to have 4,000 captured Italian soldiers and civilians deported, the first gunfights and street battles broke out. The Germans responded to them with hostage taking and mass executions. Soon afterwards, 30,000 young men were recruited for forced labour, and some 240,000 inhabitants left their quarters near the port. These were the

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vital elements that triggered a spontaneous uprising. This assumed a mass character on 27 September, forcing the Germans to retreat four days later. The expansion of the concept of ‘scorched earth’ to Naples had failed, but it came at the cost of the extensive destruction of the city centre. For the Allies, this insurgency movement came as a complete surprise. It was only when they moved into Naples on 1 October that they contacted the Liberation Committee, which had been formed in the meantime. After the Allies had broken through the German defensive positions in Normandy two months after the start of the invasion and enclosed two German armies near Falaise, Paris also represented a gap in Allied operational thinking. Since mid-August 1944, the Allies had been planning to cut off the retreat of the remaining German forces west of the Seine and force them to surrender there. In these operations, Paris was to be circumvented by some distance. But things turned out differently.91 A general strike began in the French capital in mid-August, which was spontaneously joined by a population threatened by acute famine. On 19 August the open revolt began. Although the resistance was barely able to control it and had few usable weapons, it managed to liberate about three-quarters of Greater Paris within a few days. This development took the Allied military staff by surprise, exactly as the Naples Uprising had done just a year before. However, it did not fit into Allied calculations, and certainly not into the plans of Charles de Gaulle, the representative of ‘Free France’, who had meanwhile arrived from Algiers. He intervened with the high commanders and persuaded them to correct their operational plans in order to bring the insurgency under control. A French armoured division was deployed to conquer the city centre, which was still held by the Germans. There was some intense fighting, but the losses and damage were limited. On 25 August, the German city commander capitulated before the commanders of the resistance and the French 1st Armoured Division, although he had received orders to hold Paris at all costs and turn it into a ‘heap of rubble’. One day later, General de Gaulle also arrived in Paris and used the first opportunity to put the leaders of the resistance in their place. In the last days of the war, this scenario was repeated under completely different circumstances in the capital of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.92 The territories of the former Czechoslovak state had already been largely liberated. US Army combat troops and the Red Army moved towards the capital from the west and the east respectively. The liberation of Prague was thus only a matter of days away, but nobody knew the current location of the Allied troops or their plans for the location of the demarcation line that had been agreed between them. In their advance, the Allied armies were supported by numerous partisan units, which concentrated on sabotaging the Germans’ supply lines. But the majority of these units were

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under the command of the National Liberation Committee, which had not drawn up any concrete plans for the liberation of Prague. Consequently, an event that nobody had expected proved to be the catalyst of the uprising that was in the air – a Czechoslovak radio presenter breaking the rules of radio broadcasting in Prague. The German head of the radio station immediately called for German soldiers, and spontaneous fights over the radio station occurred, culminating in the victory of the resistance group. This was the signal for a mass uprising. The people of Prague liberated several parts of the city, disarmed smaller German units and cut off the water, electricity and communication links to the garrisons scattered throughout the city. On 5 May, the National Resistance Committee moved into the Town Hall and took over the coordination of the uprising. During the early hours of 6 May, motorized German units began their counter-attack. They advanced from the suburbs with tanks and heavy weapons to put down the uprising and to clear the railway connections and communication centres for the planned retreat to the west, but were only partially successful. It was just a day later, when Waffen-SS units also intervened in the fighting and set themselves the goal of destroying the historic city centre, that the tide began to turn. In this situation, the National Liberation Committee turned to the US Army to persuade it to intervene; corresponding appeals were also read out on Prague radio. However, the demarcation line agreed between the US troops and the Red Army ran 70 kilometres to the west of Prague, and the American reconnaissance units, which had advanced into the western suburbs of the city, did not intervene in the fighting. Now the insurgent leadership realized that their ‘American’ option was an illusion. Therefore, on 8 May, they entered into negotiations with the German City Commander with a view to stopping the destruction caused by the reckless actions of the combat troops. The Germans acquired safe passage to surrender to the Americans, and in return renounced further destruction measures. One day later, the Red Army entered Prague. Further research will need to classify the balance of forces here, which in many respects are paradigmatic, but in part also quite different, within the framework of a comparative study of the history of the occupation and liberation of the metropolises. The fate of Warsaw will undoubtedly play a key role in this.93 But perhaps we should also refer to a counter-example, where systematic destruction was lacking, even though administrative terror, economic exploitation and the deportation of Jews also had serious consequences. The most likely example of this would be a capital city whose status as an ‘open city’ was respected by the Germans – for example Rome, which the commander of the 5th US Army took in a kind of coup d’état on 4 June 1944, against the orders he had been given;94 or Athens, which the Germans struck from their destruction programme at the eleventh hour.

Testing Grounds of Occupation Policy  •  119

The Underground Economy In discussing the underground economy, we return to a problem area that first arose, and with particular intensity at that, in occupied Poland. After only a few months, a state of ‘quasi-life’ developed in the General Government, forcing the broad mass of the population to seek a third way between starvation and deportation for forced labour. In this way, there developed a sector of the informal sphere of production and distribution – but one not covered by the statistics of the occupation administration, which grew from year to year and finally reached almost 40 per cent of total economic output. Similar developments occurred in all subsequently occupied countries, albeit to very different degrees.95 The structural conditions were the same everywhere. The Germans imposed a rigid regulatory system on the occupied economies, confronting the affected populations with massive tax increases, wage cuts and food rationing. As a result, these peoples had to shoulder the consequences of the economic plundering directly. At the same time, the actions of the occupiers had direct repercussions for the real prices of food and consumer goods, which, as in the Reich, were nonetheless concealed by the administration’s fixing of prices (price freezes). The result was an increasing gulf between the official and the actual cost of living. Ever higher prices had to be paid in the emerging informal markets of the subsistence and shadow economy. As a result, the national currency eventually lost the quality of a functioning exchange value. It was therefore replaced in some countries by ‘hard’ parallel currencies (in South Eastern Europe it was the British gold pound). Ultimately, exchange in kind came to dominate the informal markets. Towards the end of the war, similar developments could be observed in the Reich itself, where a ‘cigarette currency’ emerged as a neutral substitute currency. So much for the structural conditions. The extent to which people escaped into the life-supporting underground economy in each country, however, was determined by the quantity of resources forcefully taken by the occupiers. Where withdrawals were only made from current production and combined with an occupation tribute adjusted to a medium inflation rate, the underground economy was less pronounced than in situations where the Germans deliberately pushed ahead with removing the country’s basis for survival (Poland, the occupied territories of the USSR) or approvingly condoned such withdrawal (South Eastern Europe). The following table shows the extent to which these situations varied. This table summarises the situation in seven of the countries in the German occupation sphere in which the underground economy was most pronounced. Unfortunately, no data is available for the occupied territories

120  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

of the USSR, but we can assume that the underground economy was at least as prominent there as it was in the General Government. The informal sector’s percentage share of gross domestic product is an important indicator of the intensity of the destructive effects of German occupation on the affected populations. Three groups can be distinguished in this respect: first, the countries in Eastern and South Eastern Europe; second, the middle position occupied by France; and, third, the occupied countries of Western Europe and Scandinavia, as well as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

Population Losses and Demographic Consequences In concluding, let us turn to the most bitter legacy of Germany’s policies of war and occupation: the population losses and demographic consequences. In our study, we must limit ourselves to the civilian victims of the occupation crimes because of the restrictions imposed by international humanitarian law on the right to compensation. At this point in our comparative analysis, however, we will briefly cross this line and deal with all victims of German aggression policy – combatants and non-combatants alike. Broadening our perspective in this way is also justified by the fact that Germany acted as the sole aggressor during the Second World War. The Germans attacked their neighbouring countries in a series of wars of aggression in line with their expansionist policy, starting in 1938, and mostly did so without declaring war. This was a blatant violation of the Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928, which Germany had also ratified and never revoked. As a result, it seems inappropriate to exclude the combatants96 who died during their resistance against the aggressors from the balance of German war debts. Table 3.1 The underground economy’s share of total economic output in seven of the countries in the German occupation sphere (by percentage) Date

General Yugoslavia Greece France Belgium Netherlands Protectorate Government

1939

7

0

0

0

0

0

1

1940

24

0

0

11

8

1

8

1941

24

16

10

19

17

7

13

1942

39

34

23

25

19

11

13

1943

37

38

36

26

16

11

13

1944

39

38

39

17

13

18

13

Source: Klemann and Kudryashov, Occupied Economies, Table 15.4, p. 330.

Testing Grounds of Occupation Policy  •  121

Until a few years ago, it was impossible to gain a reasonably reliable overview of the human losses for which the Germans were responsible, or of the medium-term demographic consequences of their policy of aggression and occupation. Since 1946, reliable data has been available from the Western hemisphere and Poland, which has been assessed at several international conferences. The only problem was the figures provided by the USSR, although it was clear to everyone involved that the official figures – seven million Soviet combatants and civilians killed – were far too low.97 They were first called into question in the ‘Khruschev thaw’ period of the late 1950s and 1960s, and after several attempts have been brought closer to historical reality. Today, historical research agrees that between 26 and 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives to the German war of extermination, including 13.2 million civilians and prisoners of war. In the following table, we have compiled the number of victims acknowledged by the International Reparations Conference in December 1945, corrected some of these figures and adjusted the Soviet figures to the current state of knowledge. In order to do justice to the compensation claims laid out in international humanitarian law, we have separately identified the killed combatants, the civilians and the prisoners of war; in addition, we have provided separate evidence for the civilian victims of occupation who were Jewish. Within the framework of these comparative considerations, we have restricted ourselves to the seven countries with the highest number of victims. These figures speak for themselves and do not require further elaboration. Nonetheless, they only express the long-term consequences of the German occupation terror to a very limited extent, as they do not provide any information about those victims who, due to permanent invalidity, chronic – and at that time hardly curable – illnesses, or severe traumatisation, were absent as actors in the reconstruction of their countries, and had to receive permanent treatment. We must also bear in mind that the majority of those killed or disabled were men in the decades of their lives when they were professionally and sexually active (i.e. between 18 and 45 years of age). Only when we consider the resulting socio-economic and demographic consequences – the contraction of the labour market with a simultaneous increase in expenditure on welfare provision, the rise in mortality with a simultaneous decline in birth rates, and so on – does the full extent of these consequences become clear.

On the Typology of German Occupation Policy In historical research, there have so far been many attempts to derive a typology from the analysis of the similarities and differences between the

15.2

Czechoslovakia

0.02

0.25 0.23

0.4

0.2

0.33

1.1

13.2

5.1

Civilians*

0.18

0.1

0.1

0.06

0.07

2.1

3.0

0.25

0.65

0.2

0.5

1.7

26.2

5.7

Of which were Total Jews losses

1.5

1.0

2.3

4.8

7.0

6.8

14.6

% share of civilian population (1938)

1.6

1.6

2.3

7.2

10.8

13.5

16.4

% share of entire population (1938)

Note: * Including the murdered prisoners of war

Source: Composed in line with: Büro für Kriegsentschädigungen, Bericht über Verluste und Kriegsschäden, Table VI, p. 155; Klemann and Kudryashov, Occupied Economies, Table 18.1, p. 418; Kropačev and Krinko, Poteri naselenija. Our own calculations.

41.2

France

0.01

0.17

6.9

8.8

Greece

13.0

0.6

194.1

15.7

USSR

Yugoslavia

Netherlands

0.6

34.85

Poland

Combatants

Population (1938)

Country

Table 3.2 The loss of life caused by the Germans during the Second World War in seven countries (figures in millions)

122  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

Testing Grounds of Occupation Policy  •  123

German occupation regimes that adequately takes into account the situation in each and every occupied country.98 Initially, research foregrounded the administrative aspects of the occupying regime, which was oriented to the varying degrees to which the regimes had been breached politically (‘supervisory administrations’, direct German military and civil administrations, ‘colonial administrations’, and so on). However, it soon turned out that this approach predominantly reproduced the perspective of the occupiers,99 and ignored crucial questions of comparative analysis. This is why some historians took a different path in the 1970s and early 1980s. Czesław Madajczyk first took the occupiers at their word and asked what strategic options they pursued in the various countries with their occupation policies – whether these countries should disappear completely as nation states or what place they should occupy within the hierarchy of the envisaged ‘Greater Germanic Empire’ or the ‘Greater European Economic Area’.100 This revealed the real aims of German occupation policy, and made it possible to link them to reflections on the resulting depth of demographic and socio-economic structural change in the respective occupied territories. We owe this decisive breakthrough to Wacław Długoborski – not coincidentally, a Polish historian too.101 He set new standards. Only a few years ago was this work supplemented by that of the economic historians Hein Klemann and Sergei Kudryashov, who, within the framework of a quantification analysis, examined the effects of German exploitation and plundering methods on the capital stock of the occupied economies.102 In developing the seventeen parameters presented above, I combined the methodological guidelines of Madajczyk, Długoborskis, Klemann and Kudryashov. It turned out that the consequences of the occupation varied greatly from country to country. However, it is possible to form groups of countries that largely overlap when it comes to the extent of their demographic, socio-economic and cultural loss of capacity. Further research is required to differentiate these findings further. In the context of this study, we must confine ourselves – also for reasons of space – to presenting the most important results. In all, four groups of countries must be distinguished. The first group includes the countries of Eastern Europe (Poland and the occupied territories of the USSR), which the Germans intended to destroy, wipe off the map and Germanise; these countries lost about 30 per cent of their demographic and economic fabric. The second group comprises the Balkan countries, Yugoslavia and Greece. They were also severely damaged, and their long-term economic development was hindered, even though the Germans did not pursue comprehensive Germanisation programmes in these countries, and integrated them into their reorganisation plans as suppliers of strategic raw materials. France and Italy (from September 1943

124  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

onwards) make up the third group, as both countries occupied a middle position. In them, as in the fourth group, an efficiently organised absorption of financial and production output dominated, but at the same time, their overall economic capacity was undermined by excessive food deliveries and the recruitment of workers for ‘labour duty’. The fourth group – the occupied Scandinavian countries, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Benelux countries – hardly suffered from these adverse effects. They too were subjected to the terror of occupation and the ‘Aryanisations’, but their economic capacity increased overall as a result of production for the German arms industry being relocated abroad.

Notes   1. See, for example, Madajczyk, Faszyzm i okupacje; Długoborski and Madajczyk, ‘Ausbeutungssysteme’, here 404 ff.; Röhr, Occupatio Poloniae, 21 ff.   2. The immediate destruction of all nation-state structures (the political system and the administration, the economy, culture, education and so on) had also been considered during the occupation of Czechoslovakia between October 1938 and March 1939 before the outbreak of war. The occupation was broken up in two stages into the annexed Sudetenland, a ‘protectorate’ of the ‘Greater Germanic Empire’ and the Slovak satellite state. However, these considerations were discarded for several reasons. First and foremost, the smooth integration of the highly developed industrial capacity of the protectorate took priority. In addition, about half of its population was considered to be ‘incapable of Germanisation’, so that assimilation was only envisaged in the medium term.   3. On 27 March 1941, the Yugoslav army had staged a coup against the country joining the Anti-Comintern Pact, which had taken place just a few days earlier. The attack on Yugoslavia began at the same time as the attack on Greece on 6 April 1941.   4. Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg und die deutsche Siedlungspolitik. Die Zusammenarbeit von Wehrmacht, Wirtschaft und SS; Müller, Wehrmacht und Okkupation 1941–1944. Zur Rolle der Wehrmacht und ihrer Führungsorgane im Okkupationsregime des faschistischen deutschen Imperialismus auf sowjetischem Territorium.   5. Müller, ‘Grundzüge der Westforschung’, in Fahlbusch and Haar (eds), Völkische Wissenschaften und Politikberatung im 20. Jahrhundert, 87–118.   6. Umbreit, ‘Deutsche Herrschaft über Frankreich. Pläne und Methoden zur Unterdrückung und wirtschaftlichen Ausbeutung des Landes 1940–1944’, in Joseph Jurt (ed.), Von der Besatzungszeit zur deutsch-französischen Kooperation, 32–47.   7. Seckendorf, ‘Zur Okkupation Jugoslawiens durch Deutschland (1941–1945)’, in Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, Vol. 6, pp. 30 ff., 60 ff.   8. See Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord, 13 ff.; Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde. Nationalsozialistische Volkstumspolitik im Elsaß; Röhr,   9. Kettenacker, ‘Forschungsprobleme’, 272 ff.

Testing Grounds of Occupation Policy  •  125

10. On what follows, see Ferenc, ‘Die Massenvertreibung der Bevölkerung Jugoslawiens während des Zweiten Weltkrieges und der mißglückte Plan einer Ansiedlung von Slowenen in Polen’, in Studia historiae oeconomicae, 51–76. 11. After the outbreak of the Yugoslavian popular uprising, these deportations were stopped. Later on, the deportations began again towards Lower Silesia and the Sudetenland. 12. See Roth and Abraham, Reemtsma auf der Krim, 113 ff., 118 ff. 13. Madajczyk, Vom Generalplan Ost zum Generalsiedlungsplan, Doc. 27, pp. 133 f.; Doc. 35, pp. 152 f.; Doc. 45, pp. 170; Doc. 61, pp. 208 f.; Doc. 70, pp. 234 f.; Doc. 71, pp. 235 ff. 14. Paillat, Dossiers secrets de la France contemporaine, Vol. 6: L’occupation, t. 1: Le pillage de la France, 25 juin 1940 – 8 novembre 1942. 15. Roth and Rübner, Reparationsschuld, 26 ff. 16. Müller, Okkupation – Raub – Vernichtung. Dokumente zur Besatzungspolitik der faschistischen Wehrmacht auf sowjetischem Territorium 1941 bis 1944; RolfDieter Müller, ‘Von der Wirtschaftsallianz zum kolonialen Ausbeutungskrieg’, in Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (ed.), Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, Vol. 4, pp. 98–189. 17. Rolf-Dieter Müller, ‘Von der Wirtschaftsallianz zum kolonialen Ausbeutungskrieg’, in Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (ed.), Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, Vol. 4, pp.129 ff. 18. Cf. Klemann and Kudryashov, Occupied Economies, 53 ff., 61 ff. 19. Ibid., 61 ff., 75 ff. 20. Cf. Herbert, Europa und der ‘Reichseinsatz’. 21. Lemmes, ‘Zwangsarbeit im besetzten Europa. Die Organisation Todt in Frankreich und Italien, 1940–1945’, in Heusler (ed.), Rüstung, Kriegswirtschaft und Zwangsarbeit im ‘Dritten Reich’, 219–52. 22. See Documenta occupationis, Vol. VI, pp. 276 ff.; Documenta occupationis, Vol. IX, Part IV, pp. 317 ff. 23. Greve, ‘Der Generalbevollmächtigte’. 24. Hadziiossif, ‘Griechen in der deutschen Kriegsproduktion’, 214 ff. 25. Cf. Röhr, Forschungsprobleme zur deutschen Okkupationspolitik, Table 38, p. 249. 26. Müller, ‘Die Rekrutierung sowjetischer Zwangsarbeiter für die deutsche Kriegswirtschaft’, in Herbert, Europa und der ‘Reichseinsatz’, 234–50; Keller and Petry, Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im Arbeitseinsatz 1941–1945: Dokumente zu den Lebensund Arbeitsbedingungen in Norddeutschland. 27. Röhr, Forschungsprobleme zur deutschen Okkupationspolitik, Table 40, p. 251. 28. Durand, ‘Vichy und der “Reichseinsatz”’, in Herbert (ed.), Europa und der “Reichseinsatz”, 184–99; Cajani, ‘Die italienischen Militärinternierten im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland’, in ibid., 51–89. 29. See Scherner and White, Paying for Hitler’s War; on Poland specifically, see Loose, Kredite für NS-Verbrechen. 30. Kilian, Krieg auf Kosten anderer, Table 60, p. 386; Oosterlinck, ‘Sovereign Debts and War Finance in Belgium, France and the Netherlands’, in Buchheim and Boldorf (eds), Europäische Volkswirtschaften unter deutscher Hegemonie, 993–1006. 31. Cf. Kilian, Krieg auf Kosten anderer, Table 60, and pp. 155 ff. 32. Cf. ibid., 294 ff. 33. Ibid., Table 64, p. 395. 34. Ibid., Table 58, p. 400.

126  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

35. See Scherner, ‘Der deutsche Importboom’; Röhr, Forschungsprobleme zur deutschen Okkupationspolitik, 228 ff.; Boelcke, Die Kosten von Hitlers Krieg, 108 ff. 36. Republik Griechenland, ‘Allgemeiner Staatlicher Rechnungshof, Bestimmung der deutschen Ansprüche auf Reparationen und aus dem Besatzungskredit’, 30 Dec 2014, Chapter 10: ‘Schäden aus den Handelsgeschäften im Rahmen der bilateralen Handelsverträge (Clearing)’, 123 ff. (Translated from Greek into German in Roth and Rübner, Reparationsschuld, Doc. 100, p. 536 ff., here p. 543 ff). 37. Cf. Roth and Rübner, Reparationsschuld, 31 ff., and Doc. 12, 252 f. 38. Kilian, Krieg auf Kosten anderer, Table 16, p. 172. 39. In Boelcke’s study, Die Kosten von Hitlers Krieg, Table 31a, p. 111, the figure is set at a mere 26.7 million RM. 40. Ibid., Table 31a and 31b, p. 111. As a result of his reassessment of the German trade balance between 1940 and 1944, Jonas Scherner arrives at a German trade deficit of 42.599 billion RM; Scherner, ‘Der deutsche Importboom’, Table 3, p. 106. 41. Löhr, Das Braune Haus der Kunst. Hitler und der ‘Sonderauftrag Linz’; Löhr, Kunst als Waffe – Der Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. Ideologie und Kunstraub im ‘Dritten Reich’. 42. Heuß, Kunst- und Kulturraub. Eine vergleichende Studie zur Besatzungspolitik der Nationalsozialisten in Frankreich und der Sowjetunion. 43. Karl Heinz Roth, ‘Eine höhere Form des Plünderns. Der Abschlußbericht der “Gruppe Archivwesen” der deutschen Militärverwaltung in Frankreich 1940–1944’, in 1999. Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. Und 21. Jahrhunderts, 4 (1989), Vol. 2, pp. 79–112. 44. Republik Griechenland, ‘Allgemeiner Staatlicher Rechnungshof ’, Chapter 11.3, pp. 143 ff. 45. Roth and Rübner, Reparationsschuld, 27 f. 46. Ibid., Doc. 4, pp. 235 f. 47. However, it appears that the number of thefts in Greece had been limited to a certain extent. Cf. Kankeleit, Archäologische Aktivitäten in Griechenland während der deutschen Besatzungszeit, 1941–1944. In Italy, by contrast, this was not the case. Following the occupation of the country in autumn 1943, the theft of cultural goods and artistic treasures by German officers became a mass phenomenon. 48. Walther Wrede (1893–1990), the director of the institute, was head of the National Group Greece, the organisation of the Nazi Party abroad. 49. Heuß, Kunst- und Kulturraub; Müller, Die faschistische Okkupationspolitik in den zeitweilig besetzten Gebieten der Sowjetunion (1941–1944), 89 ff. 50. Rosenkötter, Treuhandpolitik, 271 ff. 51. Długoborski, ‘Die deutsche Besatzungspolitik und die Veränderungen der sozialen Struktur Polens 1939–1945’, in Długoborski, Zweiter Weltkrieg und sozialer Wandel, 303–63, here 317 ff. 52. See Aly and Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung; Heim and Aly (eds), Bevölkerungsstruktur und Massenmord. Neue Dokumente zur deutschen Politik der Jahre 1938-1945 (Beiträge zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik, Vol. 9); Meyer and Meinen, ‘Jüdische Immigranten’. 53. See Scherner, ‘Europas Beitrag zu Hitlers Krieg’. 54. See Lacroix-Riz, Industriels et banquiers français sous l’Occupation. 55. Petrick, Der ‘Leichtmetallausbau Norwegen’. 56. See Puchert, ‘Fragen der Wirtschaftspolitik’, 179 ff.; Röhr, ‘Forschungsprobleme’, 259 ff. 57. For an example of this, see the actions taken by the Krupp Group in occupied Greece: Roth and Rübner, Reparationsschuld, 27 f.; Doc. 2, p. 221 f.

Testing Grounds of Occupation Policy  •  127

58. On the example case of the Netherlands, see Aalders, Roof. De ontvreemding van joods bezit tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. 59. Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz. Die Zusammenarbeit der deutschen und französischen Behörden bei der ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’ in Frankreich; Molho, Der Holocaust. 60. See Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord. 61. Browning and Krause, Der Weg zur Endlösung. Entscheidungen und Täter; Gilbert, Endlösung. Ein Atlas: Die Vertreibung und Vernichtung der Juden. 62. Aly et al., Aussonderung und Tod. Die klinische Hinrichtung der Unbrauchbaren (Beiträge zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik, Vol. 1), Friedländer, Der Weg zum NS-Genozid. Von der Euthanasie zur Endlösung. 63. See Grabowski, Hunt for the Jews; Engel, ‘Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence’; for more on the discussion of the problem in contemporary Polish political discourse on the past, see Lehnstaedt, ‘Historischer Antisemitismus’. 64. Dimitrow et al., Der Beginn der Vernichtung. Zum Mord an den Juden in Jedwabne und Umgebung im Sommer 1941. Neue Forschungsergebnisse polnischer Historiker; Gross, Nachbarn. Der Mord an den Juden von Jedwabne. 65. Röhr, Forschungsprobleme zur Okkupationspolitik, 296 ff. 66. Kemp, ‘Rücksichtslos ausgemerzt’. Die Ordnungspolizei und das Massaker von Lidice; Naumann (ed.), Lidice. Ein böhmisches Dorf. 67. Manoschek, ‘Serbien ist judenfrei’. Militärische Besatzungspolitik und Judenvernichtung in Serbien 1941/42. 68. Fleischer, ‘Kollaboration und deutsche Politik im besetzten Griechenland’, in Röhr (ed.), Okkupation und Kollaboration, 377–96. 69. Müller, Die faschistische Okkupationspolitik, 40 ff., 76 ff. 70. Klein (ed.), Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/42. Die Tätigkeit- und Lageberichte des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD; Jacobsen, ‘Kommissarbefehl und Massenexekutionen sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener’, in Buchheim et al., Anatomie des SS-Staates, Vol. 2, pp. 447–544. 71. On this, see the methodological considerations in Kooperation und Verbrechen. Formen der “Kollaboration” im östlichen Europa 1939–1945 (Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus, Vol. 19), Editorial pp. 9–21. 72. Madajczyk, ‘Kann man in Polen 1939–1945 von Kollaboration sprechen?’, in Röhr, Okkupation und Kollaboration, 133–48. On the other hand, it seems to me that KlausPeter Friedrich ascribes too much importance to this marginal phenomenon; see Friedrich, ‘Zusammenarbeit und Mittäterschaft in Polen 1939–1945’, in Kooperation und Verbrechen, 113–50. 73. Madajczyk, ‘Kann man in Polen 1939–1945 von Kollaboration sprechen?’, 148. 74. For an overall view of the relations between occupation and collaboration, see Röhr, Okkupation und Kollaboration. 75. Azéma, La collaboration (1940–1944); Rousso, La collaboration. 76. Sundhausen, ‘Okkupation, Kollaboration und Widerstand in den Ländern Jugoslawiens 1941–1945’, in Röhr, Okkupation und Kollaboration, 349–65. 77. Loulos, ‘Politische, wirtschaftliche und soziale Aspekte’. 78. Pavone, Una guerra civile. Saggio storico sulla moralità nella Resistenza. 79. Wegner, ‘Die Aporie des Krieges’, 256 ff.; Müller, Die faschistische Okkupationspolitik, 83 ff. 80. Roth and Rübner, Reparationsschuld, 40 f., Doc. 15, pp. 258 ff. 81. Klinkhammer, Zwischen Bündnis und Besatzung. Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland und die Republik von Salò 1943–1945; Rieder, Deutsch-italienische Wirtschaftsbeziehungen. Kontinuitäten und Brüche 1936–1957, pp. 265 ff.

128  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

82. Schreiber, Die Italienischen Militärinternierten. 83. Müller, Wehrmacht und Okkupation, 258 ff., 270 ff. 84. See Gutschow and Klain, Vernichtung und Utopie, 21 ff., 103 ff.; Büro für Kriegsentschädigungen, Bericht über Polens Verluste und Kriegsschäden (Reprint 2007), 145 ff. 85. For an example of a most critical approach towards the military and political options available to the leadership of the Warsaw Uprising, see Röhr, ‘Gewittersturm über Warschau. Politische Akzente des Aufstandes 1944’, in Occupatio Poloniae, 45–281. 86. Vogel, ‘Operation “Strafgericht”. Die rücksichtslose Bombardierung Belgrads durch die Luftwaffe am 5. April 1941’, in Ueberschär and Wette (eds), Kriegsverbrechen im 20. Jahrhundert, 303–08. 87. See Ganzenmüller, Das belagerte Leningrad 1941 bis 1944. Die Stadt in den Strategien von Angreifern und Verteidigern; Ginzburg, Aufzeichnungen eines Blockademenschen. 88. Margry, The Four Battles for Kharkov. 89. Schreiber, ‘Der Krieg in Italien (September 1943 bis Juni 1944)’, in Das Dritte Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, Vol. 8, pp. 1126 ff. 90. Aragno, Le Quattro Giornate di Napoli – Storie di Antifascisti; Artieri (ed), Le Quattro Giornate. Scritti e testimonianze, Napoli 1963. 91. See Müller, ‘Die Befreiung von Paris und die deutsche Führung an der Westfront’, in Salewski and Schulze-Wegener (eds), Kriegsjahr 1944: Im Großen und im Kleinen, 45–60; Brooks, The Normandy Campaign. From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris. 92. Kokoska, Prag im Mai 1945. Die Geschichte eines Aufstandes; Bartošek, The Prague Uprising. 93. The beginnings of a comparative approach can be found in Lehnstaedt, Okkupation im Osten. Besatzeralltag in Warschau und Minsk 1939–1944. 94. Schreiber, Der Krieg in Italien, p. 1252; Katz, Roma, città aperta. 95. See Klemann and Kudryashov, Occupied Economies, 267 ff., 307 ff. These differences were predominantly determined by the respective intensity of the food crisis and starvation. See Tönsmeyer, Haslinger and Laba, Coping with Hunger and Shortage. 96. They are collected in Table VI of the Polish Office for War Compensation. See Coping with Hunger and Shortage, 155. 97. See Kropačev and Krinko, Poteri naselenija. 98. See the presentation of the typology debate up until this point in Röhr, Forschungsprobleme der Okkupationspolitik, 136 ff. 99. This ‘administrative’ typology was, in fact, based on the deliberations of a prominent practitioner of Nazi occupation policy. See Best, ‘Die deutschen Aufsichtsverwaltungen’. BArch-MA, RW 36, No. 219; Best, ‘Grundfragen einer deutschen GroßraumVerwaltung’, in Festgabe für Heinrich Himmler, 33–60. 100. Madajczyk, ‘Die Besatzungssysteme der Achsenmächte’. 101. Długoborski, ‘Einleitung: Faschismus, Besatzung und sozialer Wandel’. 102. Klemann and Kudryashov, Occupied Economies, 367 ff.

Part II

The Failure of the Allies

Chapter 4

Allied Reparations Policies From Joint Planning to the Cold War

The Experts’ Debates The examples of Poland and Greece were just two of the many gloomy scenarios that forced the elite intellectual functionaries of the Allies to wonder how Germany would be called upon, after the end of the war, to compensate for the enormous economic, social and humanitarian destruction it had caused in Europe since 1938. The experts exchanged their initial thoughts on this subject from the autumn of 1941, when the German offensive came to a halt before Moscow and Leningrad. In 1942, several discussion circles came together and the first memoranda were drafted. These discussed the question of what should be avoided during the run-up the twentieth century’s second round of reparations in order to prevent a repetition of the Versailles disaster.1 This orientation phase led to the creation of official advisory bodies in London, Washington and Moscow. At their meetings, the Allies’ leading economic experts presented their views to top officials who had been delegated from a variety of departments. John Maynard Keynes provided the decisive impetus for the formation of the British Malkin Committee; the US State Department was assured of the expertise of Jacob Viner and Alvin Hansen; and in the Soviet Union a special committee headed by the diplomat Ivan M. Maiski co-opted the economist Eugen Varga as chief adviser.2 This is not the place to trace the history of these committees or the genesis of their concepts. We must limit

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ourselves to reconstructing their main hypotheses, the results of their work and their recommendations for reparations. The discussions focused on a complex of problems that was fundamental to the reparations debate: how great was the destruction in Nazi-dominated Europe expected to be after the end of the hostilities? To what extent would Germany then actually be in a position to pay appropriate compensation? And how should one proceed in order to raise and distribute the reparations? Only rough estimates were possible for all three questions. By contrast, the expected framework within which these decisions were to be made was reasonably clear, since they had been established following the proclamation of the Atlantic Charter and the conferences in Casablanca and Tehran: Germany would capitulate unconditionally; it would have to cede territories on its eastern border; and it would be militarily occupied by the Allied great powers, divided into occupation zones and simultaneously placed under a common Allied administration. These assumptions were decisive for the reparations debate, which got underway seriously during 1943. The assumptions made it easier for the experts to shed their reservations about the imponderables of the reparations question, and to face the challenge. The biggest problem was estimating the damage expected as a result of the German occupation. In the end, it was only a comparison with the consequences of the First World War that helped here. Two phenomena of the occupation particularly stood out: first, the escalation of the massacres of the civilian population and certain ethnic groups to the point of systematic genocide; and second, the extreme extent of the destruction of the fabric of the occupied economies. Both had been particularly prominent in the occupied territories of Eastern and South Eastern Europe. It is therefore no coincidence that it was primarily East European intellectuals who analysed these horrendous developments. The Polish international law expert Raphael Lemkin, who fled to the United States via Sweden in 1941, coined the term ‘genocide’ for the destruction of entire nations and, since 1943, advocated its prohibition in international criminal law;3 this provided a decisive impulse for the extension of the international law of war to international humanitarian law. At the same time, the Soviet economist Varga was one of the first to highlight the enormous destruction of economic capacity in the occupied countries (Document 19).4 The territories devastated by the Germans were much larger than those they had destroyed in the First World War: they included the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, but also Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, and even some regions in Western and Northern Europe. Nor was this devastation solely the outcome of military action, but had assumed the character of ‘scorched earth’ and escalated to entail the destruction of all the mobile and immobile economic resources that could be acquired.

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Even if, like those made by Keynes, the estimates of the destruction wrought in France and Belgium during the First World War were exaggerated and the amount of reparations provided halved, this time, due to destruction that was thirty to forty times greater than it had been in the First World War, one would have to reckon with a total of 200 billion gold rubels – about 100 billion US dollars according to the purchasing power of the dollar in 1938. On this basis, Varga drew up an overall estimate in which he included the other key variables – the tribute taken from the occupations, the impact of the air raids, the sinking of merchant fleets, the deportations of millions of people for forced labour, and the consequences of the physical destruction and mutilation of the civilian population. Varga came to the conclusion that, all in all, the Germans and their vassal states had to foot a total reparations bill of between 800 and 1,000 billion gold rubels (400 to 500 billion US dollars). As we now know, this prognosis, published in October 1943, was by no means inflated. It was also supported in the camp of the Western Allies and, moreover, discussed publicly a few months after the end of the war.5 If we add the estimates made by the post-war reparations commissions that were set up, following the liberation from Nazi rule, in Yugoslavia, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Norway to the balance sheet of damage drawn up by the Soviet Union (Document 54)6 and Poland (Document 51) submitted in the years 1945 to 1947, we arrive at an amount that is not too far away from our own calculations. We will deal with this at the end of this introductory section. Thus, one thing became clear: it was utterly inconceivable that defeated Germany would ever be able to pay the full cost of the devastation it had wrought. As a result, the reparations to be extracted from foreign assets, national wealth and current production had to be limited: in the eyes of the economic experts, reparations were not a criminal court. The Germans were merely supposed to make available their productive and labour capacity for the reconstruction of Europe in such a way that brought their standard of living in line with the European average. All the expert panels agreed on this. They also agreed that the bulk of the reparations should be taken from dismantling and from current production so as to avoid, at the outset, the problems that arose during the implementation of the Versailles reparations commitments. This time Germany was to be sustainably disarmed. Larger cash payments were also to be avoided in order to prevent the transfer problems that inevitably accompany monetary transactions. This initial consensus went even further, although until the Yalta Conference (February 1945) there was obviously no working contact between the Anglo-American and Soviet planning groups. They were unanimous in the view that, despite the strategic aerial warfare conducted

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by the Western Allies, Germany presided over highly developed economic potential after its surrender. Further, they agreed that if this economic potential could be successfully redirected towards a peace economy, then it would be capable of making extensive reparations. A sub-commission of the planning committee of the US Department of State provided by the Federal Reserve, for example, used Germany’s net national product between 1925 and 1938 as the basis of its calculations, and came to the conclusion that, following a ‘grace period’ in the first phase of reconstruction, Germany would be in a position to provide reparations to the tune of 120 billion Reichsmarks across the following twelve years. By contrast, the British Malkin Committee7 did not want to commit itself to an absolute total amount; however, it also left no doubt that the Germans would have to be prepared to pay substantial reparations payments as soon as the components listed in its recommendations were added up.8 Interestingly, the largest estimation of German reparations came from the research department of the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS).9 In a memorandum written in preparation for the Yalta Conference, it based its calculations on the German gross national product of 1938, which it estimated at 110 billion Reichsmarks. Of this, 26 billion Reichsmarks had been spent on military and armaments expenditure in that year. In the opinion of the OSS analysts, this amount could be fully used to raise reparations from current production following the demilitarisation of the German economic apparatus and the conversion of its production, which would amount to 260 billion Reichsmarks within ten years (so 104 billion US dollars based on prices in 1938, at an exchange rate of 2.5 RM:1 USD). In comparison, the Soviet expert Eugen Varga’s proposal seemed rather modest. He accepted Hitler’s statement that Nazi Germany had invested 90 billion RM in rearmament up to the beginning of the war, and so proposed that after dismantling the arms industry, Germany should make available 90 billion RM for reparations. Thus, in the initial planning phase there was a surprisingly broad consensus on the fundamental issues of Allied reparations policy. Differences of opinion existed only when it came to the problem of distribution. The American and British experts recommended that an international authority should distribute the reparations to the Allied nations according to the extent of the material and humanitarian damage they had suffered during the occupation, separating the restitution of stolen property off from the reparations.10 In contrast, Eugen Varga argued for a different emphasis (Document 19). He argued that the material damage should be compensated first, and only in a second step should compensation for the civilian victims be offered.11 In addition, he emphasised that reparations should first be delivered – as quickly as possible – to those countries that, like the

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Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, and several others, had suffered the greatest losses in relation to their national wealth. While it was true, he said, that Great Britain and the United States had also suffered considerable losses as a result of the German air and naval war, unlike this group of countries, they were in a position to compensate for these losses by converting their war economies without any outside assistance. By contrast, the reconstruction of the economies of Eastern and South Eastern Europe was crucially dependent on German reparations. The differences of opinion on the distribution issue were a clear indication that the experts were also bound by the various national interests of the ‘Big Three’. Nevertheless, consensus clearly prevailed. In addition, Varga also argued convincingly on the question of distribution: with the exception of providing immediate and indispensable aid, the surviving victims could only be effectively compensated when economic reconstruction got underway. There was no question that the most severely destroyed economies on the European continent were in particularly urgent need of reparations.

The Reparations Question at the War Conferences of the Allied Great Powers The consensus among the evaluators was one thing, but the implementation of their proposals at the political level was another. At first, a smooth transition between the two seemed an absolute certainty. When the foreign ministers of the major Allied powers met in Moscow in October 1943, US Secretary of State Cordell Hull presented the Soviets with a declaration in which the United States acknowledged the reparations claims of the Soviet Union and the other Allied countries occupied by the Germans, and proposed that an Allied Commission be set up to determine the form and extent of the reparations.12 At the same time, however, the United States was also making provisions in pursuit of its own interests, with a particular focus on German foreign assets and gold and foreign currency holdings. For this reason, at the Bretton Woods International Finance Conference in July 1944, they put forward a resolution warning the neutral countries of Europe – Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and Spain – not to oblige the Germans in transferring their capital assets to the ‘safe harbours’ of neutral foreign countries – something that had begun just before this (Document 23). By contrast, the Soviet Union’s starting conditions were completely different. It was the only country on the European continent that withstood Nazi aggression, but it had to pay an enormous price for it. Since the turn of the year 1942, reports of German atrocities against the civilian

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population, combined with looting, systematic destruction, and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of people for forced labour had been piling up (Document 16). These developments were not hidden from the Soviet government. In November 1942, it set up an Extraordinary State Commission for Ascertaining and Investigating Crimes Perpetrated by the German-Fascist Invaders and their Accomplices to continuously document, and account for, the German war crimes, mass murders, raids, and acts of destruction.13 In July 1943, an ad hoc commission to coordinate Soviet armistice preparations with the Allied war partners took the first steps towards reparations planning at the level of government.14 This was followed in November – after the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers – by the establishment of the Reparations Commission, with which we have already become familiar above. This body took stock of the reports prepared by the extraordinary state commission, and combined them with a comprehensive compensation programme based on the principles laid out by Varga. This basic reparations plan was available at the end of July 1944 and circulated among the political leadership of the USSR without ever being formally adopted (Document 24). Its authors estimated the extent of the German-inflicted material destruction alone at between 130 and 140 billion US dollars (here, and in what follows, these estimates are based on 1938 prices). Since this figure alone far exceeded the German economy’s capacity for compensation, it made the commissioners regard the calculation of the other categories of damage – including human losses – as a secondary matter. For since they assumed that the standard of living of the German population would be reduced to that of the average in Central Europe, post-war Germany could at best provide compensation to the tune of between 70 and 75 billion US dollars, of which at least half would go to the USSR. The reparations were to consist of three central components: first, an initial dismantling of the entire arms industry and 80 per cent of heavy industry; second, ten years of withdrawals from current production; and third, the extensive use of German labour to rebuild the destroyed factories, towns and villages in the formerly occupied territories. In the run-up to the Yalta Conference, Maiski reaffirmed the basic principles of this plan on several occasions, and prepared the USSR leadership with arguments against the reservations he expected to encounter from the Western Allies (Docs. 28, 29). The forced mobilisation of up to five million German workers of all skill levels for the reconstruction of the Soviet Union was also retained, but the associated value of the expected volume of work was not mentioned. As a result, the Yalta Conference was only presented with industrial dismantling and deliveries of goods worth no less than 20 billion US dollars; the USSR was to receive at least half of this amount, so no less than 10 billion US dollars (Document 29). With this, from July 1944, the USSR too had defined its strategic

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options. While the United States targeted both Germany’s flight capital that was spreading across Europe and the high-tech sectors of the militaryindustrial complex of the Nazi dictatorship as reparations items, the Soviets concentrated their compensation planning on the most sustainable elimination of Germany’s armaments potential, which they also intended to use as a key resource for the rapid reconstruction of their own industrial capacity. In the further course of 1944, however, the reparations debates came to a standstill again. The expertise of the evaluators was overshadowed by the dramatic military events in Europe and in the Pacific. Their memoranda ended up in the drawers of their desks, and with this the consensus fell into oblivion. In addition, there were unexpected interventions at the level of political decision making, which fundamentally called into question the proposals drawn up by the reparations commissions. The most significant initiative in this regard came from the US Treasury Department; in August 1944, the department’s steering committee arrived at the impression that the War Department and the State Department were preparing for a ‘soft’ occupation of Germany, which jeopardised the long-term removal of Germany’s capacity for war and thus created the danger of a new German revanchist war.15 According to the proposals up to that point, German industry was to be called upon to make extensive and long-term reparations. Even if the arms industry had been completely dismantled beforehand, it was inevitable that Germany’s overall economic capacity would be preserved, and that there would be an initial period of reconstruction. But this vision horrified Henry Morgenthau and his deputy Harry Dexter White. They therefore decided on a radical counterproposal, combining what they saw as the indispensable territorial dismemberment of the German Empire with proposals for the comprehensive dismantling of all of its heavy industry (Document 27). The core zone – the Ruhr and Rhineland – was even to be completely deindustrialised and placed under international control. The ‘Morgenthau Plan’ went through several drafts, and unfortunately cannot be discussed here in detail.16 Without doubt, the fear of a restoration of Germany’s military potential was understandable, given the monstrous war crimes and crimes against humanity that the Germans had committed in their second grab for world power. In this respect, many passages and arguments seemed convincing.17 Nevertheless, from the perspective of reparations policy, the weaknesses of their arguments were obvious. Completely deindustrialising the Ruhr and Rhineland would have destroyed the most significant economic powerhouse for the reconstruction of Europe, because the fastest possible transfer of dismantled industry to the most damaged European countries, as proposed by Morgenthau and White, would necessarily have been limited to the industrial components that could be taken – factories, machines, motor vehicles, merchant ships,

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locomotives and wagons – and this would not have been feasible on such an enormous scale due to the lack of skilled workers and the infrastructure needed to transfer these goods. Second, Germany’s standard of living would have fallen far below the European average; the population surviving in the largely deindustrialised northern and southern states would have either been dependent on long-term Allied supplies, or they would have had to emigrate en masse, especially since some ten million refugees or displaced persons had recently arrived in these regions from the east. Third, it was precisely the most severely damaged economies in Europe that would have been least able to integrate the industrial capacity supplied to them from Germany into an infrastructural framework – transport networks, energy supplies, qualified employment relations – all of which were indispensable for their recovery. They would thus have largely failed in their attempt to generate German reparations from current production itself. The decisive ‘exogenous’ economic stimulus for reconstruction could thus not be replaced by anything else. Ultimately, Morgenthau and White were also aware of this. In order to bridge this weakness, they proposed to support the medium-term reconstruction of the Soviet Union with a generous US loan, but this was a hopeless undertaking vis-à-vis the political balance of power in the United States.18 From the perspective of reparations, the Morgenthau–White Plan was thus counterproductive. It even had a pronounced boomerang effect, since it played – contrary to their intentions – into the hands of the anti-Soviet camp forming in the United States. For the advocates of an anti-Soviet ‘containment policy’, German reparation deliveries from current production were also frowned upon because they represented the most efficient external vehicle for the reconstruction of the economies in the emerging Soviet sphere of influence. And so it was that an unholy alliance of supporters of a policy of solely dismantling the German economy emerged – among Morgenthau’s followers out of conviction, but among the protagonists of anti-Soviet ‘containment’ for the purposes of covering their backs. Meanwhile, Morgenthau’s intervention had a fatal outcome at the highest level of political decision making too: it blocked the reparations initiative that had begun so promisingly. The problem was postponed by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, after they had initially agreed, to a certain extent, with the ideas of the US Treasury Department at the second Quebec conference in September 1944, only then to distance themselves from them once again. After that, the blueprints of the AngloAmerican experts were finally forgotten, and the far-reaching plans of the Maiski Commission were also up in the air. Meanwhile, in Washington and London, the old prejudices and resentments informed by the fiasco of Versailles were being challenged.

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This became apparent in February 1945 at the conference of the ‘Big Three’ in Yalta.19 Roosevelt and Churchill were completely unprepared when Stalin raised the question of reparations at the second plenary session.20 First, he gave Maiski the floor to present the Soviet reparations plans. According to Maiski, within the first two years after the German surrender its armaments industry was to be completely dismantled, as well as 80 per cent of its heavy industry. This was to be followed by a ten-year period during which Germany was obliged to provide goods from current production; in addition, German labour was to be called upon for reconstruction of the former occupied countries. For the first time, the total value of the reparations to be raised and the distribution ratio associated with it were also discussed: Germany was to provide reparations worth 20 billion US dollars. Half of this was to go to the Soviet Union, whereas Great Britain and the United States were to receive 40 per cent. The other Allies entitled to reparations were to receive the remaining 10 per cent. Churchill and Roosevelt were confused and helpless in reaction to these proposals.21 In their objections, they raised the prejudices against reparations which we discussed above, and which they had formed back in the 1920s. The US president argued that the US taxpayer should not be once again exploited to pay for German reparations. The British prime minister claimed that the total sum Maiski was presenting for discussion was far too high, since, after all, the Germans had paid very little even after the First World War. However, their advisory staff saw things differently, at least in part. The planned reparations they sought to withdraw from Germany were certainly considerable, but at 20 billion US dollars they were comparatively modest. In the end, the conference accepted the Soviet proposal as a basis for discussion. They decided to establish an Allied Reparations Commission based in Moscow, but the British delegation put on record its reservations about the total sum approved by the United States as a basis for discussion (Document 30). In the months that followed, confusion continued in the Allied camp over the reparations question.22 Even at this point, the British War Cabinet saw no reason to take note of the Malkin Committee’s recommendations and simply rejected the agreements reached at Yalta. It therefore played for time: it postponed the appointment of a British chief negotiator to the Allied Reparations Commission and hoped for a change of heart in the United States. This happened more quickly than they had hoped: after the death of Roosevelt, his successor Harry S. Truman made the reparations issue his own personal affair. He appointed Texas oil industrialist and former Democratic Party treasurer Edwin W. Pauley as the new head of the US delegation,23 placed him under his personal authority and authorised him to negotiate with the Soviets on an equal footing. Pauley was certainly

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not wrong to interpret his mandate as a carte blanche to renegotiate the Yalta reparations agreements. When the representatives of the United States and Great Britain finally arrived in Moscow in the third week of June 1945,24 they sabotaged any attempt to put into practice the mandate to draw up a concrete reparations plan that had been given to the Allied Reparations Commission. Instead, they embroiled their Soviet negotiating partners in matters of principle, and made it clear to them that the reparations issue was no longer a priority. In doing so, they played the card of the American taxpayer and the concerns raised by the rigorous budget committees in their parliaments, which were opposed to financing the costs of the German occupation. They emphasised how Germany must first be placed in a position to pay for its own imports of food and other goods; the planning of reparations must be subordinated to this priority. It was only the objection of the Western Allies, namely that the other European victims of occupation – above all France – also had to be considered, that was sound. Maiski, who headed the commission, had great difficulty in reaching a consensus on at least some of the fundamental issues and in keeping the outcome open-ended; to this effect, he recommended that the Soviet plans should now be disclosed and that negotiations commence on the basis of the American proposals.25 When the Allied Reparations Commission presented its report at the beginning of the Potsdam Conference, the only partially positive result it achieved was the vote to change the rate of distribution for future reparations from 50:40:10 to 56:22:22.26

The Potsdam Conference and the Establishment of an Eastern and Western Reparations Zone The Potsdam Conference began on 17 July 1945.27 The controversy deepened further. The Americans and the British insisted on the ‘primacy’ of the Germans financing imports from their own resources in order to portray their opposition to a generous reparations solution as an unavoidable necessity. In addition, they pointed to the supposedly desolate state of Germany’s economic capacity, and rejected the total reparations sum for the USSR agreed in Yalta as a basis for discussion (10 billion US dollars) as being far too high; the Western Allies were also well aware that Germany’s productive capacity had survived the strategic air war surprisingly well, with a loss of only 13 to 15 per cent.28 Another central bone of contention was the definition of the term ‘spoils of war’. There was no doubt that a consensus on this was particularly urgent, because once they had arrived on German territory, all the Allied armies carried out well-prepared actions to get their hands on particularly coveted ‘trophies’. On the one hand, there

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were the Anglo-American ‘target teams’ (BIOS, FIAT etc.), and on the other there were the Red Army’s dismantling commissions. After the end of February 1945, both were centrally managed by a special committee of the State Committee for Defence (GKO).29 In the disputes surrounding this complex of issues, the scarcely reconcilable conflicts of interest became particularly evident. While the Western Allies systematically acquired technical and scientific know-how after crossing the German borders and, when withdrawing from the regions earmarked for the Soviets, transported special installations, equipment, instruments and blueprints westwards in ten thousand railway wagons,30 Soviet ‘trophy brigades’ cleared out the industrial plants located in the future western sectors of Berlin.31 These measures did not exactly build confidence. In fact, they permanently poisoned the atmosphere of the conference, which eventually nearly floundered due to the reparations question. After Truman cancelled the generous US war supplies (lend-lease credits) immediately after the German surrender, and the negotiations over a reconstruction loan of 10 billion US dollars brought into play by Roosevelt had failed,32 Molotov was unable to make it clear to his US counterpart Byrnes that access to extensive German reparations had become an existential question for the reconstruction of the Soviet economy.33 In the end, the ‘Big Three’ eventually managed to arrive at a compromise.34 On 23 July, the US delegation presented a new reparations plan, which the British also went along with after some hesitation. The compromise it contained seemed plausible, but it proved to have enormous consequences. Occupied Germany was to be divided into two reparations zones: the Soviet Union was to satisfy its claims from the zone it had occupied, taking into account Poland’s demands, since – or so the US delegation claimed – half of Germany’s economic capacity was located in the Soviet zone. At the same time, the remaining occupation zones were to be merged to form a Western reparations area that would provide reparations to all the other claimants. The Soviet delegation initially rejected this proposal, but then it became involved in a discussion of the modalities. It rejected the assertion, linked to the American proposal, that German industrial potential was divided equally between West and East, and called for this difference to be made up accordingly. This fact remained undisputed. It was therefore agreed that, within two years, 10 per cent of West Germany’s industrial capacity would be credited to the Soviet reparations account, and a further 15 per cent would be transferred in exchange for Soviet raw materials and food supplies. Access to the foreign assets to be confiscated was also divided between the Western and Eastern reparations zones, and in addition, the Soviets waived their share of Germany’s gold reserves that the US Army had

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seized during the final weeks of the war (Document 34). Thus, the last-minute compromise reached corresponded exactly to the divergent interests. For the Western Allies, only the high-tech sectors of German industry, German foreign assets, and German gold and foreign currency holdings were coveted reparations goods. For the Soviets, on the other hand, the priority was the rapid reconstruction of their largely destroyed industrial capacity. In addition, another key aspect of the reparations question – the dispute over withdrawals from current production – was set to one side.

The Failure of Allied Reparations Policy The compromise was fragile.35 Ultimately, it only lasted until March 1946, when the Allied Control Council agreed on a plan to determine the capacity of German industry and thus the supplies to be removed from the Western occupation zones (Document 47). This was intended to limit the German economy permanently and to maintain it at a level of peacetime production equivalent to 50 to 55 per cent of the capacity achieved in 1938. As a result, between 1,800 and 2,000 industrial plants – including the key enterprises of the arms industry – were viewed as superfluous to the peacetime economy and to ensuring a standard of living in line with the European average. This industrial plan was not implemented, however, because the French occupying force, which had meanwhile established itself as a co-actor, refused to monitor the foreign trade that occurred across the zones.36 This was a welcome occasion for the US military government to stop the entire dismantling process in May 1946 and to halt the plant transfers to the Soviet Occupation Zone that had been agreed upon in Potsdam (Document 48).37 The Soviets responded immediately (Document 49). They demanded that the entire Allied reparations policy be redirected to supplies from current production. At the same time, in their own zone, they ended the practice of dismantling, which was inefficient and reduced the value of the materials. They transferred the most important companies to ‘Soviet Joint Stock Companies’ in order to boost supplies from current production. Now the gulf between reparation policy in the East and the West became irreparable. Initially, the Allied Council of Foreign Ministers attempted to repair the damage. However, in the spring of 1947 the rupture occurred. The fronts had hardened to such an extent that Molotov’s impressive speech on the immense destruction that the Germans had wrought in the occupied Soviet territories fell on deaf ears (Document 53).38 All attempts by Molotov and the Soviet delegation to persuade the Western Allies to agree to a peace treaty, and for a reparations settlement to be embedded

Allied Reparations Policies  •  143

with it by making concessions on the issue of an all-German economic administration and other concessions, were in vain.39 After the failure of the Moscow conference, the US government decided to continue with, and seal, the division of Germany that had begun with the dispute over reparations. It took the decisive step in this direction at the end of June 1948 in the form of a separate currency reform in the Western occupied zones and the Western sectors of Berlin. Three months later, British foreign minister Bevin issued an urgent warning about the consequences of revising the reparations policy and of openly breaching the Potsdam Agreement. But there was no turning back. The momentum of the Cold War had long since taken hold (Document 55).

Soviet Reparations Policy in the Soviet Occupation Zone/the GDR When the failure of the Moscow Foreign Ministers’ Conference became apparent in March 1947, the Soviets declared that they would seize, from their occupation zone, their claimed reparations of an equivalent of 10 billion US dollars. As we now know, they exceeded this by a considerable margin, even though they stopped withdrawals less than six years later.40 In fact, they had set out at a tremendous pace right from the outset. During the first phase of occupation, the Red Army, brutalised by long periods of privation and bitter final battles, threatened to spiral out of control. A phase of savage looting began, which many local commanders used to conduct extensive ‘trophy actions’. This period was followed by five largescale waves of dismantling to address for the worst bottlenecks in Soviet construction and heavy industry. They continued until the turn of 1947, and led to enormous losses due to a lack of coordination and of skilled workers, with more than two thousand industrial plants being completely or partially transported to the Soviet Union. A turnaround in the systematic reparations policy only occurred after the Soviet Military Administration (SMAD) had consolidated itself and the Moscow headquarters had decided to adopt a more flexible approach. From spring 1946, priority had been given to withdrawals from current production. On the basis of the initial reparation plans, the state-owned companies had to provide certain quotas; they were supported by the centrally controlled Soviet Joint Stock Companies (SAGs), which at times comprised over two hundred enterprises. They controlled the key sectors of heavy industry, and accounted for some 16 per cent of total industrial capacity. The SAGs formed the technological backbone of Soviet reparations policy. Since the founding of the GDR in the autumn of 1949, the

144  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

SAG headquarters coordinated the management of its thirty-five sectoral administrations alongside the Office for Reparations, which had been established in the meantime, and the Central State Planning Commission, which had previously only handled the areas of Soviet reconstruction that were suffering from shortages. In May 1950, the Soviet government waived half of its outstanding reparations claims (Document 57).41 In the years that followed, the SAGs became GDR property in several stages and in return for occasionally substantial payments. Finally, in August 1953, the Soviet Union waived all of its reparations claims as part of its initiative for an all-German unification process and the conclusion of a peace treaty with the major Allied powers (Document 70). The reparations taken from the Soviet Occupation Zone/the GDR were by no means limited to the taking of loot, dismantling, and withdrawals from current production. There were also considerable occupation costs, personnel and material know-how transfers, covert reparations deliveries to Soviet foreign trade companies and extensive transport services. According to Rainer Karlsch, they amounted to 54 billion Reichsmarks or GDR marks based on prices at the time, or 14 billion US dollars.42 By contrast, compensation payments for those persecuted by the Nazi dictatorship, and activities to recover looted property, evidently faded into the background. As they differed markedly – in both qualitative and structural terms43 – from the development of compensation and restitution practices in the Western zones and in the Federal Republic of Germany, we will not discuss these practices until we have first analysed their West German counterparts.

Notes   1. See Moggridge, Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, 328 ff.; Penrose, Economic Planning for the Peace; Maiski, Memoiren eines sowjetischen Botschafters; Backer, Die Entscheidung zur Teilung Deutschlands; Cairncross, The Price of War; Jerchow, Deutschland in der Weltwirtschaft.   2. Maiski [sic], Memoiren eines sowjetischen Botschafters, 838 ff.; Backer, Die Entscheidung zur Teilung Deutschlands, 63 ff.  3. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, 79 ff., 90 ff.   4. See the overview of all five publications by Laufer, ‘Politik und Bilanz der Demontagen in der SBZ/DDR 1945–1950’, in Karlsch and Laufer, Sowjetische Demontage, 31–77, here fn 12, p. 35.  5. See, above all, Robertson, ‘Problems of European Reconstruction’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 60(1), 1–55.  6. See, in addition to Document 54, Molotow, ‘Deutschland und die Reparationen. Rede auf der Sitzung des Außenministerrats in Moskau am 17. 3. 1946’, in Molotow,

Allied Reparations Policies  •  145

Fragen der Aussenpolitik, 387 ff., here 394. According to Molotov, the civil and material damage of the occupation amounted to 128 billion US dollars (based on prices in 1938). Detailed information that concurs with Molotov’s statements can be found in Wosnessenski, Die Kriegswirtschaft, 133 ff. They are based on a final revision of the estimates published in the government newspaper Izvestija on 13 Sep 1945 by the ‘Extraordinary State Commission for Ascertaining and Investigating Crimes Perpetrated by the German-Fascist Invaders and their Accomplices’, which was established in 1942.   7. Cited in Backer, Die Entscheidung zur Teilung Deutschlands, 35.  8. Keynes, ‘Restitution and Reparation. The Declaration to be Made by Germany. Memorandum for the Inter-Departmental Committee on Reparations and Economic Security for the British Government (Malkin Committee), [1943]’, in Moggridge, Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, Vol. XXVI, 341–46.   9. Office of Strategic Services, Problems of German Reparations. Research and Analysis Report 2350, December 1944, cited in Backer, Die Entscheidung zur Teilung Deutschlands, 39 f. and 186 (fn 21). 10. Keynes, ‘Restitution and Reparation’, 341 ff. 11. Varga, ‘Entschädigungen, die Deutschland und seine Bündnispartner zu entrichten haben’, in Roth and Rüber, Reparationsschuld, Doc. 16, p. 265. 12. ‘U.S. Proposal with Regard to the Treatment of Germany, Conference Document No. 20’, in: Foreign Relations of the United States. Diplomatic Papers (hereafter FRUS), 1943, Vol. I: General, Washington 1963, pp. 720–23, here p. 722 (under the point entitled ‘Reparations’). 13. ‘Beschluss des Präsidiums des Obersten Sowjets der UdSSR, 2. 11. 1941’, reproduced as Doc. 31 in Laufer and Kynin, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, Vol. 1, pp. 67 ff. In addition to this, see – despite the partially uneven assessment of the sources – Laufer, Pax Sovietica, 539 ff. 14. ‘Bericht der Ad-hoc-Kommission über den Zeitpunkt des Waffenstillstands und die Aufnahme politischer Punkte in das Waffenstillstandsdokument, Juli 1943’. Reproduced as Doc. 48 in: Laufer and Kynin, Die UdSR und die deutsche Frage, Vol. I, pp. 123 ff. 15. Morgenthau Diary (Germany), Vols I and II; Morgenthau, Germany is our Problem. In November 1944, Morgenthau entrusted the most concise summary and explanation of his concept to the Soviet ambassador in Washington, Andrej Gromyko. 16. The most important variants of the plan and comments on them can be found in: FRUS, The Conference at Quebec, 1944. 17. This is also how Keynes saw it: ‘Keynes to Sir John Anderson, 6. 10. 1944’, in Moggridge, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, 380–82. For more on the overall background to the disputes, see Kimball, Swords or Ploughshares? 18. See Herring, Aid to Russia, 237 ff.; Kuklick, American Policy, 47 ff. 19. FRUS, The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945; Fischer, Teheran – Jalta – Potsdam, 95 ff.; Clemens, Yalta. 20. Fischer, Teheran – Yalta – Potsdam, 106 ff., here 115 ff. 21. Ibid., 117 ff.; Seventh plenary session on 10 February 1945, pp. 173 ff. 22. Backer, Die Entscheidung zur Teilung Deutschlands, 87 ff.; Kuklick, American Policy, 74 ff., 114 ff.; Webb, ‘Britain and the Future of Germany’, 271 ff. 23. The first head of the US delegation was Isador Lubin, an official of the Treasury Department. His dismissal was interpreted as an indication that the previous willingness to compromise with the Soviets on the reparations issue was now over.

146  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

24. In the meantime, the British had appointed Sir Walter Monckton, a high-ranking lawyer, as head of its delegation; see Cairncross, The Price of War, 60, 80 ff. 25. ‘Majskiy an Molotow, 2. 7. 1945’. Reproduced as Doc. 12 in: Laufer and Kynin, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, Vol. II, pp. 36 ff. 26. ‘Memorandum by the Delegation to the Allied Commission on Reparations, 14. 7. 1945’, in: FRUS, The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945, Vol. I, Doc. 376, pp. 538 ff. 27. FRUS, The Conference of Berlin, Vols. I and II; Fischer, Teheran – Yalta – Potsdam, 199 ff; Deuerlein, Potsdam 1945. 28. All the Allied intelligence services and special task forces, such as the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), shared this assessment. 29. Gimbel, Science, Technology, and Reparations; Laufer, ‘Politik und Bilanz der Soviet Demontagen in der SBZ/DDR 1945–1950’, in Karlsch and Laufer, Sowjetische Demontagen, 45 ff. 30. ‘Bericht des Marschalls Shukow über die Entnahme von rollendem Material aus der sowjetischen Besatzungszone‘, not dated [July 1945], in FRUS, The Conference of Berlin, Vol. II, Doc. 950, pp. 903 f.; ‘Memorandum Edwin H. Pauley’s an Präsident Truman über den Bericht Shukows, 29. 7. 1945’, in ibid., Doc. 951, pp. 904–12. 31. Lucien Gulick and J. Howard Marshall, ‘Russian Machinery Removals from Berlin, 25 July 1945; with accompanying letter from Pauley to US President Truman, July 25, 1945’, in ibid., Doc. 929, pp. 873–76. 32. Herring, Aid to Russia, 179 ff., 213 ff., 237 ff. 33. This took place at the 9th Meeting of the Foreign Ministers on 27 July 1945; see the German version of the minutes in Deuerlein, Potsdam 1945, pp. 273–79. 34. ‘United States Delegation Working Paper, Memorandum on Reparations, 23. 7. 1945’, in FRUS, The Conference of Berlin, Vol. 2, Doc. 815, pp. 856–58; also see the follow-up documents in ibid. 35. Gimbel, The Origins of the Marshall Plan, 53 ff., 67 ff., 82 ff. 36. Gimbel, ‘Administrative Konflikte in der amerikanischen Deutschlandpolitik’ [Administrative conflicts in American politics on Germany], in Foschepoth, Kalter Krieg und Deutsche Frage, 111–29, here 119 f. 37. In addition to Doc. 48, ‘Clay an Echols zum Reparationsstopp’, 2 May and 8 May 1946, printed in Smith, Papers of General Lucius D. Clay, Vol. I, Docs. 115 and 116, pp. 203–5; Gimbel, Amerikanische Besatzungspolitik, 89 ff. 38. ‘Erklärung des sowjetischen Außenministers Molotow auf der Sitzung des alliierten Außenministerrats, 17. März 1947’, in Molotow, Fragen der Außenpolitik, 387–408, here 392–96 and 405–8. 39. ‘Entwurf eines Vorschlags der sowjetischen Delegation, 26. 3. 1947’. Reproduced in Laufer and Kynin, UdSSR und deutsche Frage, Vol. III, Doc. 55, pp. 219 ff.; ‘Entwurf einer Zusatzdirektive an die sowjetische Delegation, 29. 3. 1947’, reproduced as Doc. 57 in ibid., 227 f. 40. See Karlsch, Allein bezahlt?; Karlsch and Laufer, Sowjetische Demontagen. 41. The Polish government also followed this course of action, and halved its remaining reparations claims. See the next chapter for more on this. 42. Karlsch, Allein bezahlt?, 228 ff. 43. See Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 112 ff.; Goschler, ‘Zwei Wege der Wiedergutmachung?’.

Chapter 5

Poland as Part of the Eastern Reparations Zone (1945–1953)

The Relinquishment of the Areas East of the Oder–Neisse Line as an Indirect Reparations Payment At the Potsdam Conference, it was not only the reparations issue that proved to be controversial – Poland’s future western borders also became a bone of contention. This was astonishing, because until that point the ‘Big Three’ had agreed on Poland’s post-war borders at their war conferences – much to the annoyance of the Polish government in exile. At their first summit, held in Tehran in November 1943, the three powers had agreed in principle to fall back on the Curzon Line when determining Poland’s borders. This line had first been agreed upon at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 when Poland was refounded, and it functioned as the eastern border of the General Government until the German invasion of the USSR. In return for using this line, Poland was to be entitled to the Oder as its new Western border.1 At Yalta, the three big Allied powers had confirmed and concretised this plan: in areas with a predominantly Polish population, the Curzon Line was to be corrected in favour of Poland. In the west, the areas of East Prussia to the south of Königsberg, the former Free City of Danzig, West Pomerania and Upper Silesia were to fall to Poland. In contrast to their reservations over the reparations question, the British supported this plan too, and Churchill had declared his intent to implement this decision against the wishes of the exiled government in London. It was further

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agreed to place the Provisional Government of National Unity – formed shortly before the conference and diplomatically recognised by the USSR – on a broader footing by also including representatives of the exiled government.2 After a long tug of war, this provisional government was formed in June 1945 and recognised the borders of the newly created Polish nation state negotiated by the big three Allied powers. Nevertheless, the Potsdam Conference once again led to differences of opinion over Poland’s western borders. These differences were not as serious as the controversies over the reparations issue, where the US delegation distanced itself from the commitments it had made that were recorded in the minutes of the Yalta Conference, refused to set a concrete amount of compensation, and pushed through the division of Germany and formerly Nazi-occupied Europe into two separate reparations zones. These differences did have a certain significance, however, especially since they were indirectly linked to the reparations issue. When the Soviet delegation proposed the line immediately west of Swinoujscie along the Oder to the mouth of the western Neisse and, from there, along the western Neisse to the Czechoslovakian border as the line between Poland and its own occupation zone in Germany, the Americans and the British objected. They favoured the eastern Neisse as the border, which would have required Poland to give up a considerable part of the Silesian industrial centre. The Americans and the British only conceded after, on the initiative of Stalin,3 they had consulted with a delegation of the Polish provisional government. The areas to the east of the Lusatian Neisse were removed from the Soviet Occupation Zone – and thus from the sovereignty of the Allied Control Council – and placed under Polish administration. Under the direction of the Allied Control Council, all Germans were also to be resettled from these areas – just as they would be from the other areas of Poland. However, in the final minutes of the conference, the Western Allies left a small loophole, the explosive nature of which only became apparent in the context of the escalating Cold War: Poland’s western border could only be defined once and for all within the framework of a peace treaty between the Allied powers and Germany.4 The Soviets and the Poles rightly understood this to refer merely to the final topographic details, since the areas separated from Germany were beyond the control of the Allied Control Council, as well as of the envisaged – but never installed – all-German administration. Added to this were the forced expulsions of the Germans into the Soviet and British zones, which the Allied Control Council carried out from February 1946. This was an irreversible event, and shows just how absurd are the subsequent claims of the Federal Republic of Germany and its Western partners that the agreement of the border was simply a temporary interim solution.

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The Polish–Soviet Reparations Agreement In the Soviet camp too, it was by no means the case that everyone agreed with the joint actions of their leadership and the Provisional Government of National Unity. Here, the hidden link between the reparations issue and the problem of Poland’s western border revealed itself from a completely different angle. One day before the Potsdam Conference came to a conclusion, Maiski presented his foreign minister with a concept paper drafted by the Soviet Reparations Commission, in which the commission demanded substantial supplies of raw materials and food from Poland in return for the territories that had been removed from the Soviet Occupation Zone and handed over to Poland (Document 33). According to this agreement, Poland was to be obliged to supply the USSR with goods worth 60 million US dollars per year (according to prices in 1938) over a period of five years. These goods amounted to 6 million tons of fuel (coal, briquettes and coke), 1 million tons of grain, 1 million tons of potatoes and 20,000 tons of zinc, free of charge per year. The Reparations Commission estimated that Poland could provide these without major difficulties. In addition, seventeen former German coalmines in Upper Silesia were to be merged into a mixed Polish– Soviet holding company, in which the USSR took a 40 per cent share of the total value of the holdings. This was an astonishing proposal, but the basis on which it had been calculated was quite plausible from the perspective of the Soviet experts around Varga and Smirnov. Reparation goods worth 10 billion US dollars were to be taken from the Soviet Occupation Zone and shared with Poland, with the precise distribution ratio to be agreed in the future. As we know from another source, Soviet experts estimated the value of German territory to be ceded to Poland at 9.5 billion US dollars.5 In arriving at this calculation, they had fully taken into account the costs of both the destruction and the equipment dismantled by the Soviet trophy squads, because the common estimates in economic theory put this amount 2.5 times higher, at around 23.85 billion dollars.6 From the point of view of the experts around Varga and Smirnov, this territorial increase ensured that Poland had almost caught up with the USSR when it came to fulfilling its reparation claims, and that is why their memorandum addressed to Molotov demanded substantial compensation. But this time, the Soviet government did not fully follow its experts’ recommendations either. When, in the second week of August 1945, it entered into negotiations with the Provisional Government of National Unity regarding the share of the reparations Poland would receive from the Soviet Occupation Zone and the Western zones, it was not guided by abstract macroeconomic considerations. Rather, the agreement signed on

150  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

16 August demonstrated a certain willingness to make concessions. Of the reparations that the Soviets were to take from the Soviet Occupation Zone, 15 per cent would be given to Poland, alongside 15 per cent of what had been dismantled in the Western Zone. Another 15 per cent of the Western Zone’s machinery and industrial equipment that had been transferred to the USSR and passed on to Poland would be offset by goods supplied from Poland (Document 36).7 In addition, the USSR agreed to cede to Poland 15 per cent of the German merchant fleet that it had acquired. Up to this point, this represented a fair agreement, in which the relative value share of the countries that had been worst hit by the German occupiers (15:85) was adequately taken into account. Furthermore, the very first article of the agreement made it clear that, in the view of the contracting parties, the territories ceded to Poland formed an integral aspect of the reparations. In the agreement, the USSR waived the assets left behind by the Germans in Poland, as they did all economic assets in ‘that part of German territory that is to be transferred to Poland’.8 However, as outlined in the treaty’s first two articles, Poland was to provide a quid pro quo for being left the German assets in the territories it had acquired, and for participating in the reparations from the Western zones. Here, the Soviet negotiators followed their experts, albeit in a weakened form. It was agreed in the final paragraph of Article 2 of the treaty, and in an additional protocol to it, that during the occupation of Germany, Poland was to supply substantial amounts of coal and coke to the USSR on special terms: 8 million tonnes in the first year, 13 million tonnes in the following four years, and thereafter 12 million tonnes per year. The price – 1.22 US dollars for a ton of hard coal and 1.44 US dollars for a ton of coke – did not even cover production costs, and merely amounted to around 10 per cent of the world market price.9 This made it clear that the Soviets paid dearly for formally handing over the areas east of the Oder–Neisse line from their occupation zone. As a result, a reasonably fair reparations relationship between Poland and the USSR over reparations depended on the latter properly honouring its own commitments. We shall soon see that this was by no means the case. Until now, Poland has only appeared as a subaltern actor in the Eastern reparations zone. On the question of the western border, the USSR consistently represented the interests of the provisional government. The Polish reparations quota also seemed appropriate, but the quid pro quo it had to provide for the transfer of German assets and for participating in reparations from the Western zones made it clear that the tone was set by the leading power in the Eastern reparations zone too. We will deal with the US approach in the Western reparations zone in the next chapter.

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Reparations from the Perspective of the Polish Resistance and the First Provisional Government Meanwhile, Polish institutions were by no means passive when it came to the reparations issue – quite the opposite. Since the beginning of the German invasion, groups from across the entire spectrum of the resistance had been collecting testimony and documents in order to record the destruction and to prepare corresponding claims for compensation. The Polish government in exile’s Ministry for Congress Affairs became the most important actor in this process. It systematised the gathering of information and began to evaluate it in 1942. The extent to which it cooperated with the Anglo-American commissions of experts in this is not known. However, the reports it submitted in 1944 demonstrate a remarkable overlap with those conducted by the experts. To date, five of these reports have been located.10 The economic, demographic and financial consequences for the Polish economy were examined with increasing accuracy, and estimated at a minimum of 60 billion złoty during the first four years of the war alone.11 In a report completed in February 1944, not only were the Polish population mentioned as victims of the Nazi terror, but – for the first time – the Jews were too. Similar concretisations could also be found in the reflections on the preconditions of international law and Allied policy for future reparation demands. The Polish experts highlighted the special situation in which their country found itself: Poland had been the first to offer armed resistance against the aggressors and had suffered the longest, and most gravely, under German occupation. For this reason, they said, the country should assume priority status when it came to reparations. The concept of reparations, they continued, must also be as broad as possible in order to take account of not only the direct consequences of the war, but also the occupation crimes committed by the Germans. This was important, they added: not least because post-war Germany would never be able to pay for all the damage it had caused. In addition, in the post-war period, the experts felt that a level playing field had to be established between Poland and Germany, thus making it necessary for German territories to be handed over to Poland.12 At the beginning of October 1944, the Ministry for Congress Affairs submitted its final report. In it the ministry summarised, in the form of several theses, its earlier reflections on the economic compensation payments that should be demanded from Germany.13 Once again, Poland’s special position and the necessity of an expanded reparations concept were emphasised, which above all had to take into account the extent of the destruction caused by the occupation. Poland, the report asserted, had a priority claim, especially to those goods that had been lost to German

152  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

looting or destruction measures: the agricultural sector’s livestock and equipment, and the means of transport and traffic infrastructure, as well as machines and tools. On 5 October 1944, the government in exile’s Council of Ministers adopted these proposals. Meanwhile, the London government in exile had long faced competition in reparations policy too. When a Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) – dominated by the Polish Workers’ Party – was formed on 22 July 1944 in the now liberated Polish territories, it declared in its founding manifesto that it would identify all the losses for which the Germans were responsible, and would work to achieve compensation for them.14 In fact, immediately after its foundation in January 1945, the first Provisional Government of National Unity established a War Compensation Office with the task of coordinating the activities of all ministries working on this issue. It took an inventory of the material and personnel losses caused by the war and prepared a compensation initiative.15 In July, the office presented a first biannual report in which it announced the principles on which the experts working on it had since agreed.16 First, they expressed their conviction that all Germans should be liable under civil law because they had done nothing about the crimes committed by their leadership and had benefited from the results of these crimes; in this context, the destruction caused should be fully compensated. Second, the assets taken over in the territories ceded by Germany should not be included in compensation calculations, because here the historically founded claims to these territories should take precedence. Third, the experts decided on reparations in the form of dismantling goods and supplies from current production, which were to be based on the changed socio-economic situation in Germany. In addition, however, financial benefits were to be provided that could be used as pensions for those who had become incapacitated and unable to work, as well as for the families who had been deprived of their breadwinner. In order to underscore these programmatic commitments, the Compensation Office demanded that it be admitted to the Moscowbased Allied Reparations Commission, and that a Polish military mission be established at the Allied Control Council in Berlin. These were rigorous specifications, which can probably only be explained by the impression that the immense devastation had on the survivors struggling for prospects of reconstruction. However, they ignored the fact that 2.1 million people in Germany had also fallen victim to the Nazi dictatorship and that the anti-fascist resistance, which was anchored in about 6–8 per cent of the German population, could not simply be undone – despite its failure. Moreover, the exclusion of the assets that had become available from the ‘reclaimed territories’ contradicted not only the reparations provisions in international law, but also the clear provisions on this matter

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outlined in the Polish–Soviet reparations agreement that was concluded shortly afterwards. And third, the experts of the Compensation Office discounted the unanimous assessment of all Allied reparations staffs, who stated that it would be impossible for the Germans to provide full compensation for the damage they had caused. This notwithstanding, the Compensation Office made an enormous contribution to the documentation of the material and personnel losses in Poland. It launched a large-scale questionnaire campaign, which was addressed not only to local and regional authorities and the ministries involved, but also reached the broad mass of individuals who had suffered under the occupation, and was only completed in the course of 1946. The office summarised the results of this campaign in a report on Polish war losses, which it published in January 1947 (Document 51).17 After preliminary remarks on their methodical approach to data collection, the authors began by discussing the consequences of the war, the devastating effects of the occupation, the destruction of Polish culture, the Germanisation of the national economy and the flattening of Warsaw. In the second and third parts of the report, these statements were supported by statistical overviews that provided a summary of the extent of the population losses and material destruction, which were then quantified in a section that went into more detail. This approach was convincing. The differentiation between war damage and the consequences of occupation chosen in the quantifying analysis of the human losses and material damage also revealed a well-thought-out cooperation between international law experts, economists and statisticians. The results achieved remain of great significance today, despite the fact that the authors were unable to compare their results with the documents of the occupation authorities, which was unfeasible at the time and thus made further differentiations impossible. Restricting the investigation to damage to public property also proved to be disadvantageous, since it overlooked the catastrophic consequences of the mass expropriation of the Polish people’s private property.

The Initiatives of the Associations of the Occupation Victims and the Resistance Fighters A further hub of action that was resolutely committed to the Polish demands for reparations were the victims’ associations. Since the War Damages Office systematically collected reports from the relatives of the victims and the survivors of the German occupation terror, and quantified them in its statistical overviews, the associations of occupation victims that had been emerging since the liberation initially assumed that their claims

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for compensation would also be vigorously represented and enforced at the institutional level. However, they were mistaken in this assumption. Therefore, at the end of December 1946, the board of the Association of Former Political Prisoners of Nazi Prisons and Concentration Camps wrote to the Polish Foreign Ministry, which was preparing for a conference of the Council of Allied Foreign Ministers on concluding a peace treaty with Germany, scheduled for January 1947.18 In this letter, the board demanded that the pension claims of those who had become disabled as a result of their imprisonment, as well as the claims of the widows and orphans of concentration camp victims, be included in the compensation provisions of the forthcoming peace treaty. In order to underline these requests, the board attached to its letter a draft of a corresponding motion for the peace conference.19 In the first part of the letter, it described the various victim groups of the German occupation terror and their claims for compensation. These legitimate demands, it stated, had to be met by the Germans in concrete terms, because it was not comprehensible to the Nazi victims living in Poland how generously Germany had been treated when it came to the compensation issue after the end of the war. This was unacceptable, it further claimed, because Germany must not only be punished for the wars and occupation crimes that it had unleashed, but must also foot the bill for the consequences of these crimes in civil law too. For this reason, the compensation of these victims should in no way be excluded from the reparations proceedings. After all, the letter continued, the Polish state was ultimately responsible for providing the necessary pensions and other benefits, and it was therefore obliged to obtain the necessary sums within the framework of the peace treaty. The letter demanded not only that the German state budget be used to raise the necessary transfer payments but, in addition, that each individual German should share the burden in the form of a ‘special head tax’. These fundamental considerations led to a concrete catalogue of demands for the future peace conference. First, the letter demanded that Germany should fully reimburse the profits made from forced labour. Second, it should pay for the upkeep of invalids, widows and orphans. Third, it should pay the treatment costs of those who were chronically ill as a result of their incarceration in concentration camps or prisons. The amounts to be raised in this connection had to be so high that they could ensure a minimum subsistence level for those entitled to the benefit in each and every case. In our opinion, this intervention by the Polish association of victims has a significance that goes far beyond the concrete occasion – the preparation of the peace conference with Germany. The authors rightly proceeded from a universal concept of reparations, which also included individual claims for compensation, and made it an agenda of bilateral

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or multilateral intergovernmental agreements binding under international law. Furthermore, they rightly called for the establishment of a supreme decision-making authority, which they themselves would sustain. This authority would preside over a compensation fund that was soon to be established, and it would decide on individual applications. Additionally, they demanded the establishment of an appropriate compensation centre at the Allied Control Council, which would enforce the compensation claims outlined in the peace treaties in the face of the German administration. The Polish government only half-heartedly followed these ground-breaking proposals. At the conference of the Deputies of the Council of Foreign Ministers held in London in January 1947, it presented a memorandum on future relations with Germany in which it addressed the problems of reparations and the restitution of stolen property.20 In it, the Polish government referred to some unresolved points – in particular, outstanding wage payments and compensation for Polish forced labourers. It also reserved the right to put forward further motions on this subject, citing the decisions of the Potsdam Conference as justification. However, the overall settlement of the compensation issue demanded by the Association of Prison and Concentration Camp Victims, and the related proposal to establish a centre to coordinate compensation at the Allied Control Council, obviously did not come up for discussion.

Forced Resettlement and the Reconstruction of the Territories to the East of the Oder–Neisse Line Poland was the dominant actor in the areas to the east of the Oder and Neisse rivers that had been separated from Germany. When it came to the issue of resettling the Germans in these territories, the Polish authorities had to take into account the provisions outlined in the Potsdam Agreement. However, a long time passed before these came into force in early August 1945.21 By spring, hundreds of thousands of Germans had joined the Wehrmacht’s withdrawal from the areas east of the Oder–Neisse line, although they often returned in the following months, for at that time the future prospects for post-war Germany appeared to be bleaker than for Poland; but alongside those who remained behind, they fell into a state of chaos and lawlessness.22 As citizens of a state that no longer existed, they had lost their rights. In this ominous situation, they became an object of hatred and revenge for those whom the German occupiers had treated as ‘sub-human’ and as a helot group for more than five years. They were often mistreated, put into prisons and camps, robbed, and coerced into forced labour without any legal basis. In this situation, the Polish Army carried

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out mass expulsions of around three hundred thousand Germans across the Oder from June onwards. When the Potsdam Conference then agreed on an orderly implementation of the forced expulsions under the direction of the Allied Control Council, and decided on a temporary moratorium in order to prepare for these more orderly actions, the Polish authorities switched to a deportation practice that was declared to be ‘voluntary’; some half million Germans were subjected to it. This was followed in February 1946 by regulated resettlement operations, the planning of which the Allied Control Council had begun in November 1945.23 Until the large-scale resettlement operations were halted, a further 1.2 million Germans were deported from the ‘reclaimed territories’ east of the Oder and the Lausitzer Neisse into the British Zone, and 1.9 million into the Soviet Zone. These were mainly women, children, invalids and the elderly, because men in the active years of their lives had either been killed or remained prisoners of war. It would be unreasonable to play down or hide away these dark aspects of reparations policy. Nevertheless, there is no reason to point the finger at Poland. Anyone who comments on the forced expulsions should always bear in mind the context: the hatred that had been sown by the German occupation crimes and the elementary feelings of revenge that had made the expulsion of all Germans a necessity for the mass of the Polish population. The same was true in all other countries from which the German minorities were expelled after the end of the war, their organisations having also actively participated in occupation crimes. It should be remembered that in Poland there was no publicly visible resistance offered by the Germans in Poland to the atrocities committed. Furthermore, the resettlement actions were covered by international law: in their war conferences, the Allied powers had agreed on this procedure early on (at the end of 1943) and anchored it in the Potsdam Agreement. Polish settlements began spontaneously at first. Uprooted small farming families from the former East Polish voivodeships and the western territories annexed by the Germans particularly tried their luck in the districts east of the Oder and Neisse rivers. This was followed in the early summer of 1945 by the first official attempts to move as many Poles as possible to the ‘reclaimed areas’ so that the forthcoming harvest would not be lost.24 In order to coordinate these measures in the four new administrative districts of Masuria, West Pomerania, Lower Silesia and Opole, a chief representative for the reclaimed territories was appointed, subordinate to the Ministry of Public Administration, the authority of which was upgraded to an independent ministry in November 1945. He was assisted by an Office for Settlement and Resettlement Issues, which was established in mid-July to create the scientific prerequisites for social reconstruction and the accelerated integration of the new provinces into the Polish economy. While the

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forced resettlement of the Germans reached its peak, additional measures began to ‘verify’ and ‘rehabilitate’ those left behind whose Polish citizenship had not yet been verified or had been called into question by their earlier inclusion on the ‘German People’s List’.25 In addition, plans for socio-economic restructuring began. A national land fund was created from the expropriated German property, which handed farmland of between 7 and 15 hectares, as well as cooperatively farmed parcel property, to the new Polish settlers. Later, small and mediumsized commercial enterprises would follow, while large-scale industry would be transferred into state ownership. In this situation, the Office for War Compensation became involved in further work.26 This was not easy, because it had originally wanted to keep the ‘reclaimed territories’ out of the reparations issue. However, by pointing out that the state was responsible for its citizens’ compensation claims not only at the level of international relations but also in a domestic political context, the experts found an argumentative bridge that amounted to an unacknowledged modification of their earlier approach. In 1946, they submitted a study to the Ministry of Reclaimed Territories in which they established a connection between the impending property transfers and the war reparations.27 This study argued that the compensation claims of the survivors of the Nazi occupation terror should, in the future, be settled by the purchase price of the land and businesses transferred to them, with priority being given to those who had been disabled during the war, widows and orphans, and people who had lost their land, workshops, farms and movable property during the occupation. At that time, the document stated, the Polish state had no other means of helping its war victims. If the Polish government failed to take this step, it added, it would risk serious sociopolitical consequences in this existential question, because ‘the victims demand such a solution’.28 In the following months, these demands were largely put into practice. They first found expression in the ‘Decree on the Structure of Agriculture and the Settlement of the Reclaimed Territories and the Former Free City of Gdansk’, adopted on 6 September 1946.29 Three months later another decree followed, which regulated the state taking into possession, and subsequently selling, non-agricultural property in the areas east of the Oder and Neisse rivers.30 In both cases, in addition to the invalids of the military and security apparatus, the descendants and survivors of German occupation terror were given preferential treatment, with price reductions and low-interest loans. In this way, the territories separated from Germany not only became included in the reparations bill as the most important item, but also functioned as a source of revenue, which was a first attempt to enable the German occupation crimes to be partially compensated. The

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targets set by the Polish government in January 1947, when it published the first three-year plan for the western territories, were certainly unrealistic.31 Nevertheless, they provide a glimpse of the importance of the areas east of the Oder and Neisse for the first stage of the reconstruction of the Polish economy, which should not be underestimated. Despite this progress, there was little cause for optimism. The vast majority of the newly settled workers in the former German provinces were not fully employable. The farms and small and medium-sized commercial enterprises left to them also required enormous economic start-up aid, which the Polish government did not have at its disposal. However, this was also true of the reconstruction of large industry, which lacked the necessary investment funds.

Soviet Reparations Consignments to Poland The only help that could be provided to Poland was from the dismantled goods and reparations consignments diverted from the Soviets. Although these were contractually guaranteed, the reality was quite different. And while an additional protocol to the reparations treaty of 16 August 1945 provided for the establishment of a Polish–Soviet commission with equal representation and a rotating presidency to ensure the correct implementation of the treaty,32 relations between the two sides were asymmetrical. This first became apparent in September 1945, when the Soviets concluded an agreement with their Polish negotiating partners for the transfer of steam locomotives belonging to the Soviet Union that were located on the territory of the Republic of Poland to be included as part of the reparations bill.33 Although the Polish delegation of the Joint Commission was entitled under the reparations agreement to hand over the locomotives confiscated on Polish territory free of charge, it had to pay for them. This was despite the fact that most of the locomotives were obsolete or in need of repair. Such asymmetries occurred over and over again in the following period. No progress was made at the Joint Commission meetings.34 The Polish delegation, however, had the least leverage, and the negotiating climate deteriorated further after the US military government stopped supplying disassembled goods to the USSR and Poland in May 1946. This decision resulted in the loss of highly developed industrial technologies, which from that point on the Soviets could only obtain from their own occupation zone. As a result, the reparations goods handed over to Poland decreased in quality. Absurd substitute solutions were found which poisoned cooperation, such as the delivery of six million copies of the ‘classics’ of Marxism–Leninism in Polish

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translation, which accounted for about 10 per cent of the Polish reparations bill of 1949.35 In view of such arbitrary acts, the few constructive exceptions, such as the reasonably fair transfer of the share in the German merchant fleet to which Poland was entitled, failed to have any effect.36 The Soviets had no interest in cooperating on an equal footing.37 Due to this general imbalance, Polish coal deliveries linked to the reparations agreements increasingly turned out to produce a boomerang effect. The prices for coal and coke on the world market rose steadily in the post-war years, and the foreign exchange that could have been obtained from this would have considerably sped up the reconstruction of the country. However, this possibility was blocked by the immense volume of supplies to the USSR. What is more, since these supplies covered the cost price at most, they failed to act as a driving force for reconstruction. When, in 1956, the ‘Khruschev thaw’ set in within the Soviet-dominated sphere, it was possible for the first time to speak openly about this scandal. Poland’s losses were estimated at 586 or 733 million US dollars,38 depending on the calculation method.39 No less disadvantageous was the fact that the Soviets created a package deal between the coal supplies, which were detrimental to Poland, and the reparations agreements. This provided them with a means of exerting pressure that enabled them to make the Polish experts and politicians, who were quite stubborn in their stance on the reparations issue, compliant. This was most evident in the disputes over the reduction of reparations consignments from the Soviet Occupation Zone/the GDR. The USSR government coupled the cuts in reparations consignments it proposed to Poland with a corresponding cut in coal supplies. This was first done in 1947, when the USSR passed on to its ‘little ally’ the ban imposed by the United States on deliveries from the Western zones to the USSR by reducing its share of reparations withdrawals accordingly.40 In May 1950, it went a step further and now included the GDR: after prior ‘agreement’ with Poland, it declared its willingness to comply with the GDR leadership’s request to halve the outstanding reparations consignments and shorten the period of East German reparations obligations from twenty to sixteen years (Document 57). This time too, the Polish obligations to supply fuel, which were tied to the reparations, were halved.

The Polish Waiving of Reparations in August 1953 – a Declaration of Intent On the concrete level of action, Polish–Soviet reparations relations came to an end in August 1953 when the USSR, after prior ‘agreement’ with the Polish government, waived the reparations consignments from the GDR

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to which it was still contractually entitled, and simultaneously renounced its claim to further Polish coal deliveries far below the world market price. This last stage is particularly controversial, both historically and politically, and plays a special role in the current debates on Poland’s unresolved reparations claims. For this reason, we will conclude this chapter by presenting it in more detail. From the spring of 1953, there was a significant change of course in Soviet policy towards Germany.41 The USSR was now looking for ways to overcome the division of Germany, which was already at an advanced stage: the USSR wanted the two German states that had emerged in autumn 1949 to undergo a process of unification and position themselves in foreign policy as a neutral and demilitarised nation between the two major power blocs. This unification process was to be concluded by a peace treaty with the victorious Allied powers, which had been outstanding since the Potsdam Conference, and after this the Soviets would withdraw from Germany. In this context, the still unresolved reparations problem became acute. The USSR was now under considerable pressure to act. In May 1952, the Western Allies had concluded a transitional treaty with the government of the Federal Republic of Germany for the transfer of sovereignty rights, and on that occasion postponed dealing with the reparations question until the conclusion of a peace treaty.42 This was followed in late February 1953 by the London Debt Agreement between the FRG and its transatlantic creditors, and here too the contracting parties had agreed to postpone the still unresolved reparations issue until a ‘final’ settlement had been reached.43 In fact, these two clauses were tantamount to the Western Allies renouncing reparations towards the FRG, since a peace treaty between all the Allied powers and Germany could no longer be expected due to the escalation of the Cold War. It was thus clear that, when it came to the reparations issue, the USSR also had to move towards its own ally, the GDR. This agenda became all the more urgent because in June 1953 there was a workers’ uprising that was bloodily suppressed by Soviet troops. A medium-term stabilisation of the situation, on the other hand, was dependent on extensive measures to improve the economic situation and living conditions of the GDR’s population. In addition, the continuation of the change of course in German policy required a stable and self-confident GDR as a negotiating partner in the unification process. The USSR leadership thus had various – and, what is more, substantial – reasons for supporting the GDR. In the late summer of 1953, it adopted a comprehensive package of economic aid, in which the renunciation of all previous overt and covert reparation payments played a key role. In this spirit, the governments of the USSR and the GDR adopted a joint protocol on 22 August 1953, in which they first emphasised the

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foreign policy objectives of such a reparations decree (Document 70). This was to underpin a note addressed by the USSR to the three other Allied powers a week earlier, in which it had proposed a substantial reduction in Germany’s reparations obligations to the four Allied powers as a whole in order to promote the German–German unification process and the peace treaty linked to it. To strengthen this initiative, the USSR government declared its willingness to exempt its own reparations debtor – the GDR – from all reparations payments from 1 January 1954. At the same time, all ‘Soviet joint stock companies’ not yet transferred into the ownership of the GDR, which were worth a total of 2.7 billion marks, would be handed over free of charge, and the debts still pending from previous restitution actions cancelled. The occupation costs were also reduced to an amount not exceeding 5 per cent of current state revenues, as were all occupation loans in foreign currency still outstanding since 1945, and all post-war debts. All these provisions also had an impact on Poland, insofar as its reparations claims were affected. On 19 August, Head of State Bierut called a meeting with the members of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, the chairman of the Council of State, and other leading politicians of the Polish People’s Republic, informing them of the Soviet plans and the USSR government’s intention to include Poland in the waiver of reparations to be announced to the GDR (Document 69).44 At the same time, Poland’s obligations to guarantee preferential coal supplies would also be cancelled. No minutes of the discussion have been located. A brief record of the meeting merely stated that the Presidium unanimously agreed with the position of the USSR government, waived Polish claims to reparations from the GDR, and ‘gratefully’ noted the cancellation of the coal contract. The Presidium also declared itself willing to continue to supply the USSR with the agreed annual quantities ‘under normal trading conditions’. Four days after this fundamental decision, the Polish Council of Ministers also commented on the Soviet initiative.45 It was obviously not discussed or approved. Equally unanimously, the government adopted a ‘Declaration of the Government of the People’s Republic of Poland on the Waiver of Reparation Payments from Germany’ prepared by the Foreign Ministry, which focused primarily on the German policy aspirations of renouncing reparations (Document 71).46 In it, the Polish government said that it welcomed the USSR’s Germany policy initiative, which aimed to secure ‘peace in Europe’ and to ‘create a unified, democratic and peaceloving Germany’. Such a peaceful neighbour, it said, was of particular importance to Poland, which had been afflicted by the ‘invasion of German militarism’, and therefore the USSR’s action strengthened Poland’s security. It put the West German policy of revenge in its place, and strengthened the forces of peace throughout Germany, the ‘embodiment’ of which was

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the GDR. Since Germany had in the meantime largely fulfilled its reparations obligations and an improvement in its economic situation promoted this peaceful development, Poland would renounce its further reparations claims from 1 January 1954 ‘in order to make a further contribution to the solution of the German question’. In so doing, it shared the USSR government’s conviction that these decisions would help the German people to restore their unity and to build a peaceful and democratic state. This declaration is not exactly a model of polished government rhetoric, and is formulated in a rather unprofessional manner. In our view, however, its interpretation as a legally binding renunciation of Poland’s reparations claims from Germany is incorrect, for three reasons: (1) The decision-making competence in fundamental issues of reparations policy solely lay with the Presidium of the Council of Ministers and the Council of State of the Polish People’s Republic. The Council of Ministers merely had to ratify and implement these decisions. The fundamental decision made by the Presidium and the President of the Council of State on 19 August 1953, as well as its confirmation a few days later, complied with the norms prescribed by the Constitution of the People’s Republic. It was certainly a formal error that the Presidium and the Council of State themselves did not announce their decision, which related exclusively to the GDR, but left this to the government or the Foreign Ministry instead. However, the Council of State, the body that was responsible for declarations binding under international law, was at all times free to correct this formal error and, if necessary, to highlight the decision outlined in the Protocol of 19 August 1953, which restricted Poland’s waiver of reparations from GDR territory. (2) According to the decision made by the Potsdam Conference, Poland was part of the Eastern reparations zone. As a result, Poland was not sovereign in this area of its foreign policy relations, but dependent on the fundamental decisions made by the government of the USSR. This dependence was further increased by the package deal imposed on Poland between reparations consignments and Poland supplying the Soviet Union with coal at almost no cost. As a result, the USSR was also the sole master of proceedings when it came to declaring the renunciation of reparations claims. Moreover, as recorded in the minutes of 22 August 1953 in exclusive reference to the GDR, it was only the USSR government’s decision to waive reparations that was valid under international law. This was also evident in this declaration itself, since the USSR government explicitly announced that in this matter it was acting ‘in agreement with the People’s Republic of Poland’.47

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(3) By contrast, the Polish government’s proclamation of 23 August 1953 was a mere declaration of intent. Poland had reparation claims against the two successor states of the German Reich, namely the GDR and – through its share of the USSR’s claims – the FRG. The People’s Republic of Poland wanted to waive these claims under one specific and clearly formulated condition. Waiving its reparations claims was contingent on the two German states beginning a process of unification and concluding a peace treaty with the victorious Allied powers. As soon as this had been achieved, its outstanding reparation claims against ‘Germany’ would expire. The Polish declaration thus aimed to support the USSR’s German policy initiative, which was geared towards German reunification and a peace treaty associated with it – no more and no less. The Western powers and the FRG unreservedly rejected this concept, meaning that the Polish declaration of intent also lapsed. It was not followed by any treaties in which Poland’s willingness to renounce reparations was enshrined in international law.

Notes   1. Gelberg, Die Entstehung der Volksrepublik Polen. Die völkerrechtlichen Probleme; Goguel, ‘Die polnische Frage in den diplomatischen Verhandlungen des zweiten Weltkrieges’, in Goguel, Polen, Deutschland und die Oder-Neisse-Grenze, 221 ff.   2. ‘Entwurf eines Runderlasses Majskijs über die nicht veröffentlichten Entscheidungen der Krim-Konferenz’, reproduced as Document 144 in Laufer and Kynin, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, Vol. 1, pp. 524 ff.; for more information on this, see the documentation on the Yalta Conference in Goguel, Deutschland und die Oder-NeisseGrenze, 325 ff.   3. ‘Runderlass Molotovs an die Botschafter und Gesandten der UdSSR über die Ergebnisse der Potsdamer Konferenz, 5. 8. 1945’. Reproduced as Document 18 in Laufer and Kynin, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, Vol. 2, pp. 79–91, here pp. 82 ff.   4. ‘Department of State, Protocol of the Proceedings of the Berlin Conference’; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR (ed.), ‘The Potsdam Conference, A. Declaration on the Polish Question, B. The Western Border of Poland’, 393 f.   5. This had been announced by Bolesław Bierut, the president of the National Council of Poland (KRN), on 27 August 1945 at a press conference on the occasion of the signing of the Polish–Soviet reparations treaty. Cf. Laufer and Kynin, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, Vol. 3, Note 102 to Document 40, p. 63.   6. Roth and Rübner, Reparationsschuld, fn. 500, p. 191, and Table 1, p. 192.   7. ‘Polnisch-sowjetisches Abkommen über die Abgeltung von Schäden, die durch die deutsche Okkupation verursacht worden waren, mit drei Zusatzprotokollen, 16. 8. 1945’. The original Polish version is reproduced in Problem reparacji, Document 10, pp. 41–44.

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  8. Ibid., Article 1.   9. ‘Zweites Protokoll zum polnisch-sowjetischen Abkommen’, ibid., 43. 10. See Problem Reparacji, Vol. II: Dokumenty, Docs. 1–43, pp. 1 ff., 7 ff., 16 ff.; in addition, see Ruchniewicz, ‘Deutschland und das Problem der Nachkriegsentschädigungen’, 667– 739, here 668 ff. 11. Cited in Ruchniewicz, ‘Deutschland und das Problem der Nachkriegsentschädigungen’, 671. 12. Cf. ibid., 670 f. 13. Ibid., 671 f. 14. ‘Manifest Polskiego Komitetu Wyzwolenia Narodowego’, Reprint Warsaw 1974, p. 18. 15. Ruchniewicz, ‘Deutschland und das Problem der Nachkriegsentschädigungen’, 672 f. 16. ‘Bericht des Büros für Kriegsentschädigungen über das erste Halbjahr seiner Tätigkeit’, in Problem reparacji, Vol. II, Document 8, pp. 28 ff. 17. ‘Bericht des Büros für Kriegsentschädigungen, Bericht über Polens Verluste und Kriegsschäden in den Jahren 1939–1945’, January 1947. The original Polish version can be found in Problem reparacji Vol. II, Document 36, pp. 147 ff. 18. ‘Verband der ehemaligen politischen Häftlinge von NS-Gefängnissen und Konzentrationslagern, Schreiben an den stellvertretenden Außenminister Stanisław Leszczycki über den Friedensvertrag mit Deutschland (mit Anhang)’. Reproduced in Problem reparacji, Vol. II, Document 32, pp. 131–36. 19. Ibid. 20. ‘Memorandum über Deutschland. Vorgelegt durch die polnische Regierung für die Konferenz der stellvertretenden Außenminister, London, January 1947’. Reproduced in Problem reparacji, Vol. II, Document 37, pp. 190 ff. 21. See Borodziej and Lemberg, Die Deutschen östlich von Oder und Neiße, Vol. 1. 22. On the following, see Borodziej, ‘Introduction’, in ibid., 55 ff., 67 ff., 76 ff. 23. Ibid., 101 f. 24. See Lötzsch, ‘Zerstörungen und Wiederaufbau in den polnischen Westgebieten’, in Goguel, Polen, Deutschland und die Oder-Neisse-Grenze, 953–1032. 25. ‘Gesetz über die polnische Staatsbürgerschaft von Personen polnischer Nationalität die auf dem Territorium der Wiedergewonnenen Gebiete wohnen, 28. 4. 1946’, reprinted in Lötzsch, ‘Zerstörung und Wiederaufbau’, Document 7, pp. 983 f. 26. See Ruchniewicz, ‘Deutschland und das Problem der Nachkriegsentschädigungen’, 674 ff. 27. ‘Büro für Kriegsentschädigungen, These zur Verknüpfung der individuellen Entschädigung mit der Bewirtschaftung der Westgebiete’, reference in ibid., 674, fn 20. 28. Cited in Ruchniewicz, ibid., 675. 29. ‘Erlass über die Struktur der Landwirtschaft und die Besiedlung auf dem Territorium der Wiedergewonnenen Gebiete und der ehemaligen Freien Stadt Danzig, 6. 9. 1946’. Excerpts have been reproduced in Lötzsch, ‘Zerstörung und Wiederaufbau’, Document 8, pp. 984 ff. 30. ‘Erlass über die Übernahme des nichtlandwirtschaftlichen Besitzes durch den Staat in den Wiedergewonnenen Gebieten und der ehemaligen Freien Stadt Danzig (Auszug)’, ibid., Document 9, pp. 987 ff. 31. ‘Richtlinien des Dreijahrplans für die Westgebiete (1947 bis 1949)’. Extracts of this are reproduced in Lötzsch, ‘Zerstörung und Wiederaufbau’, Document 10, pp. 992–94. 32. ‘Protokoll Nr. 1 zum polnisch-sowjetischen Reparationsabkommen vom 16. 8. 1945’, reproduced in Problem reparacji, Vol. 2, Document 10, p. 42.

Poland as Part of the Eastern Reparations Zone (1945–1953)  •  165

33. ‘Polnisch-sowjetische Vereinbarung über die Übernahme von Dampflokomotiven auf dem Hoheitsgebiet der Republik Polen auf Reparationsrechnung (mit Anlage), 7. 9. 1945’, in Problem reparacji, Vol. 2, Document 12, pp. 46 f. 34. See the minutes of the meetings in Problem reparacji, Vol. II, Docs. 24, 25, 31, 45. 35. Żerko, ‘Reparationen und Entschädigungen’, 15. 36. ‘Polnisch-sowjetisches Abkommen über die Übergabe eines Teils der deutschen Handelsflotte an Polen (mit Anlagen), 5. 3. 1947’, in Problem reparacji, Vol. II, Document 40, pp. 211 ff. 37. ‘Bericht des Vorsitzenden der polnischen Delegation bei der Polnisch-Sowjetischen Gemischten Kommission an den Minister für Industrie und Handel, 13. 10. 1948’, in Problem reparacji, Vol. II, Document 49, p. 236. 38. Żerko, ‘Reparationen und Entschädigungen’, fn 13, pp. 14 f. 39. There were two possible methods of calculation: (1) the difference between Soviet payments and the average world market price, or (2) the difference between these payments and the contractual settlement rate of Polish–Soviet foreign trade between 1946 and 1953. 40. In parallel, Polish coal supplies to the USSR were also reduced. See the ‘Protokoll zum polnisch-sowjetischen Abkommen vom 16. 8. 1945 (Reduzierung der Kohlelieferungen aus Polen an die UdSSR)’, 5. 3. 1947, in Problem reparacji, Vol. 2, Document 42, p. 219. 41. See Wettig, ‘Sowjetische Wiedervereinigungsbemühungen im ausgehenden Jahr 1953’, Deutschland-Archiv 25 (1992), 943–58; Wettig, ‘Die beginnende Umorientierung der sowjetischen Deutschlandpolitik im Frühjahr und Sommer 1953’, Deutschland-Archiv 28 (1995), 495–507. 42. ‘Vertrag zur Regelung aus Krieg und Besatzung entstandener Fragen (“Überleitungsvertrag”), erste Fassung, 26. 5. 1952’. 43. ‘Abkommen über die deutschen Auslandsschulden, 27. 2. 1953’. Excerpts are reproduced as Document 68. 44. The original is reproduced as Document 60 in Problem reparacji, Vol. 2, pp. 263–65. 45. ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Ministerrats mit Erklärung zur deutschen Entschädigungsfrage, 23. 8. 1953’, in Problem reparacji, Vol. 2 II, Document 64, pp. 269 ff. 46. The following quotes are taken from the German translation of this declaration: ‘Erklärung der Regierung der Volksrepublik Polen über den Verzicht auf Reparationszahlungen Deutschlands, 23. 8. 1953’, in Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR and Polnische Akademie der Wissenschaften (eds), ‘Die Beziehungen zwischen der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik und der Volksrepublik Polen. Dokumente and Materialien 1949–1955’, Document 172, p. 266. 47. ‘Protokoll über den Erlass der deutschen Reparationsleistungen und über andere Maßnahmen zur Erleichterung der finanziellen wirtschaftlichen Verpflichtungen der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, die mit den Folgen des Krieges verbunden sind, 22. 8. 1953’, in Ministerium für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten der DDR (ed.), Beziehungen DDR-UdSSR 1949 bis 1955. Dokumentensammlung, Vol. 1, Document 174, pp. 462–64.

Chapter 6

Developments in the Western Reparations Zone (1945–1951) The Conceptual Guidelines of Britain and the United States

Compared with the rapid and at times tumultuous events in the Soviet Occupation Zone, reparations practices in the Western hemisphere developed slowly and hesitantly. At the end of August 1945, the US, British and French members of the Allied Reparations Commission approached the Allies in the anti-Hitler coalition whose reparations claims were, in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement, to be met by withdrawals from the economies of the Western occupation zones (Document 37). In addition to their own governments and the nine ‘small’ European allies – Albania, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Yugoslavia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Czechoslovakia – these included six (later seven) countries of the British Commonwealth, namely Egypt, Australia, India (later Pakistan too), Canada, New Zealand and the Union of South Africa. This internationalisation reflected a fundamental decision on the part of the three Western powers that would determine the whole procedure: alongside the classic personnel and material consequences of the German occupation and plundering policies that triggered reparations claims, the general costs of the war would also be compensated. These two aspects were conflated in the recommendations for formulating compensation claims (Document 37, Appendix A). The list contained all the categories of losses and damage that were to be compensated on the basis of

Developments in the Western Reparations Zone (1945–1951)  •  167

generally accepted international principles: the decline in industrial capacity as well as in agricultural production and stocks of goods; the losses to the merchant navy; the destruction of transport infrastructure, public facilities, and buildings and housing; the theft of precious metals and foreign currency; the financial exploitation resulting from the occupation costs, clearing credits, and the use of credit treasury notes; and the category of losses and damages suffered by the civilian population (fatalities, damage to health, disabilities, and the consequences of the deportations for forced labour). However, compensation items were also listed that could clearly be attributed to the general cost of war and had nothing to do with reparations claims. The governments involved in the reparations procedure were also supposed to demonstrate their budget expenditure on warfare, and the volume of civilian and military work (‘man-years’) expended on the war effort. The aim of this unprecedented expansion of the reparations complex was clear: the Western great powers, together with their overseas coalition partners, wanted to secure for themselves the lion’s share of the claims; meeting the needs of the victims of German occupation policy in Continental Europe was a mere secondary consideration. This prioritisation made it possible to include countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India and the Union of South Africa, which had only participated in the Allied warfare with troop contingents and aid supplies. Thus, three very different groups were formed in the Western reparations sphere: first, the two main Western Allied powers, whose civilian populations and economic fabric had by and large only been affected by the German air and sea war; second, the group of countries on the European Continent that had been occupied by Germany (with the exception of Poland and the Soviet Union); and, third, the overseas group of the British Dominions. The governments of this very heterogeneous group of addressees each received identical requests to register their reparations claims by 1 October 1945 and, in addition, to submit the specified Documents on the German foreign assets that were under their control.1 By the time the last government reports had been received at the beginning of October, the preparatory organisational work conducted by the three main occupying powers had progressed further. They were operating under the name of a preparatory committee for the establishment of what later became known as the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency (IARA). In a second circular, they set out the remainder of the procedure, ensuring that the reins were firmly in their hands at both the organisational and the procedural level (Document 38). The leadership of the InterAllied Reparations Agency consisted of a president, a secretary general, the chairman of a standing committee made up of representatives of the three occupying powers, and two bimonthly rotating delegates from the

168  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

other fifteen member states. These top committees made the preliminary decisions – to be approved by the General Assembly in each case – on the distribution of reparations goods, which consisted mainly of the confiscated German assets and the dismantled goods released by the Allied Control Council (or, since 1947, by the military commanders of the three Western zones). These were later joined by the US and British shares in the German merchant fleet, which the two countries ceded to the IARA for further distribution in 1946.

The Paris Reparations Conference (November–December 1945) After some preliminary discussions to assess the damage and losses that had been reported, the Inter-Allied Reparations Conference began in Paris on 9 November 1945. Claims for compensation totalling 389.49 billion US dollars (here, and in what follows, according to price levels in 1938) had been approved,2 but it was clear from the outset that only a fraction of this amount would be realised. As a result, the plenary and committee meetings were extremely conflict-ridden,3 but in the end the Preparatory Committee was able to enforce the fundamental decisions taken by its three governments on all essential points. As we can see from the final dossier4 adopted on 21 December 1945, and from the agreement published on 14 January 1946 (Document 46), the general cost of war, which was prohibited in international law, had been fully included in the distribution ratio. By contrast, reparations withdrawals were limited to Germany’s foreign assets (Category A), dismantled goods (Category B) and the distribution of the Anglo-American share of the German merchant fleet; withdrawals from current production remained taboo, and only France could afford to circumvent them.5 The IARA’s dependence on the decisions of the military commanders in the occupation zones – a dependence that was also prescribed by the three Western powers – had particularly grave implications. These only became apparent, however, when the Allied Control Council lost its leading function after the failure of the Foreign Ministers’ Conference in Moscow and when the military commanders in the Western zones, who were left to their own devices, increasingly restricted dismantling practices. The agreement amounted to little more than a slightly attenuated diktat imposed by the Anglo-American power bloc alongside France; it was a mirror image of the way in which the USSR treated Poland over reparations. This is particularly evident when looking at Article 2 of the agreement. Here, in Section A, it was stipulated that the agreement covered the reparation claims of the signatory states against Germany in their

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entirety; simultaneously, however, Section B emphasised the provisional nature of the agreement: the ‘determination of the forms, duration or total amount of reparations to be paid by Germany’ would only be decided later; all political, territorial and other claims were to be settled only within the framework of a peace treaty. In addition, each signatory state was free to exercise the ‘right to which it might be entitled regarding the final settlement of German reparations’ (Document 46). These were cumbersome concessions to the smaller signatory states that had clearly been neglected in the first round. At the same time, it was also in the interest of the three Western superpowers – especially France and Great Britain – to keep a door open to the implementation of further-reaching reparations claims.

The Work of the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency In February 1946, the IARA began its work in Brussels under its president, Jacques Rueff, and secretary general, Nigel E.P. Sutton.6 Rueff, Sutton and other leading exponents subsequently developed increasing sympathy for the concerns of the ‘small’ European member states, which were disadvantaged in every respect, but despite all appeals to their governments and the three Western military commanders, they could only get their way to a very limited extent. At the decisive levels of action, the results were thus to the detriment of those delegates whose countries had suffered most under German occupation. This was particularly evident in the distribution quotas (Document 46 and Document 89): almost two-thirds (63.35 per cent) of the confiscated German foreign assets went to the United States, Great Britain and the countries of the British Commonwealth; when it came to dismantled goods and merchant ships (Category B) this figure was just over half (51.25 per cent). This shift to the detriment of the most severely damaged countries also manifested itself in the reparations that were actually paid, where the countries not affected by German occupation divided 51.3 per cent (266.95 million US dollars) of all the reparations payments between themselves – here, too, the lion’s share went to the United States and Great Britain. Moreover, this imbalance was particularly grave because the actors of the three Allied Western powers – primarily the United States – continually reduced the volume of reparations to be distributed right until the point when the IARA effectively came to an end in 1951.7 The managers of the IARA had hoped that, with the help of US pressure, they would also be able to gather Germany’s foreign assets deposited in neutral European countries. But US involvement waned soon after the signing of the relevant agreements in 1946–47, and Switzerland and Sweden in particular resorted

170  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

to persistent filibustering tactics, so that the IARA was essentially only able to rely on German foreign assets held in the member countries (Document 88). The balance sheets of the accounts for dismantled goods were even more meagre. In March 1946, the Allied Control Council gave the IARA the prospect of delivering about 1,800 industrial plants as part of its industrial level plan; this would have corresponded to the equivalent of about 1.5 billion Reichsmarks. However, nothing came of these advances, and in the end the IARA actors could be happy that, despite the dismantling being halted repeatedly and quotas being reduced, by the end of 1950 they had been supplied with 667 factories – although many had deteriorated – to the value of 708 million Reichsmarks. Added to this were 254 ships from the German merchant fleet, with a total of 755,000 gross register tons. According to the IARA’s final report, German reparations goods with a total value of 520.38 million US dollars were distributed to the nineteen member nations it served (Document 89). Nevertheless, there were also some rays of hope. The IARA Assembly repeatedly approached the Council of Allied Foreign Ministers with resolutions and memoranda in order to exert indirect pressure on its own mentors – the three Western powers – as well as on the military commanders of the Western zones.8 This temporarily weakened the US tabula rasa approach towards reparations policy. Even more significant were some of the decisions made by the IARA Assembly on more marginal aspects of reparations policy, some of which continue to have an impact to this day. These included ground-breaking resolutions on the restitution of looted property (Document 43), on the establishment of, and support for, a Tripartite Commission to identify and restore the gold looted by the Germans,9 and on the founding of a Five-Power Group, in which the IARA members Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia supported the three big Western powers in their attempt to provide reparations to finance relief efforts for the now stateless Jewish and non-Jewish survivors of the Nazi’s extermination policies.10 To this end, under the Washington Agreement concluded in 1946, Switzerland was forced to surrender 5 million US dollars in advance – the equivalent of 10 per cent of the German foreign assets to be handed over to the IARA. In this way, the first United Nations humanitarian aid operation was linked to the IARA. By contrast, the activities of the Tripartite Commission on the restitution of German gold bullion dragged on until the end of the 1990s. In several tranches, 336.45 tonnes of gold bullion (bars and coins) were returned to the participating governments. However, the procedure was repeatedly – and especially in the second half of the 1990s – heavily criticised, because the Tripartite Commission had failed to identify separately the gold that had been stolen from European Jews before their extermination, and to make it available for separate restitution.11

Developments in the Western Reparations Zone (1945–1951)  •  171

Dismantling in the Western Zones While historians are yet to locate the IARA’s archives, the territory from which the Western Allies’ reparations agency obtained its slender dismantled supplies – the Western zones of defeated Germany – is quite well researched today. Special units dedicated to locating and confiscating the spoils of war were embedded in the Allied combat troops to the west of the Elbe too;12 and they defined the term ‘booty’ very broadly. But in contrast to the Soviets, the specialists at work here were systematically prepared for their task. Their targets were by no means just the development centres and prototype facilities of the secret weapons and weapons of mass destruction, but were also the most technically advanced sectors of heavy industry as a whole. The reports compiled by these ‘target teams’ numbered in the thousands,13 and there soon began a huge transfer of blueprints, patents, instruments, special machines and dismantled prototype plants. The gold and foreign currency stocks transferred from the German Reichsbank to the Thuringian potash mines were also captured by US Army specialists. Their special operations lasted until the autumn of 1945, and increasingly involved German engineers and scientists; these experts were deliberately taken out of the country in a race with the other Allies (‘Operation Paperclip’ and so on). For all the structural differences, this wave of looting could certainly be compared to its Soviet counterpart. Elements of the confiscation of military goods permitted under wartime law overlapped with the ‘savage’ reparations and acts of personal enrichment. Before the target teams’ reports became generally accessible in a publication series by the Library of Congress, the managers and engineers returning home had long applied the know-how they had acquired in the special missions within their own companies. At least 5 to 6 billion US dollars can be credited to the Western Zone reparations account from this first phase of compensation practices.14 From January 1946, the Allied Control Council began negotiations on a joint and administratively regulated continuation of reparations policy. At the end of March, these led to the adoption of the industrial level plan with which we became familiar above. This plan differentiated between prohibited, limited and permitted industrial capacities, set the production level at 50–55 per cent of the total output achieved in 1938, and linked it to an import–export control programme (Document 47). As a result, between eighteen hundred and two thousand industrial plants in the three Western zones, mainly in the mining, heavy engineering and chemical industries, became expendable and could be made available to the IARA for reparations. Two months later, this project was halted by US military governor Lucius D. Clay, because the four occupying powers could not agree on a joint economic administration for all four zones.

172  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

The consequences of this instrumentalisation of the already conflictladen reparations issue as a means of political pressure have already been described above.15 After a fierce protest by the IARA Assembly, the blockade, which the British and French had in the meantime also joined, was lifted in November 1946. Nevertheless, the dismantling only progressed slowly. By the end of the year, the secretary general of the IARA was able to offer 110 dismantled units for further distribution, and by the end of 1947 another 134 factory units followed. The total value of the dismantled goods delivered up to that point was 274 million Reichsmarks, on the basis of prices in 1938 (Document 88). In August 1947, another turning point occurred: the commanders of the American and British military governments, which had meanwhile merged to form the Bi-Zone, single-handedly and fundamentally revised the industrial plan.16 They argued that their economic area could only become selfsufficient if reparations withdrawals from the heavy industrial sectors were significantly reduced. The French also supported this vote. Modified dismantling lists were adopted in October/November, reducing the number of facilities to be dismantled and transferred by nearly a thousand (from 1,800 to 858) (Document 88). As a result, the pace of dismantling slowed again. Although 156 additional pieces of industrial equipment were transferred to the IARA in 1948, they were worn out and of poor quality, so the IARA Category B account (dismantling) increased to just 419 million Reichsmarks. The reparations creditors bordering the Western zones understood this veiled threat. The governments of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands recommenced their earlier efforts to improve their reparations accounts by means of German territorial cessions at the western borders. But the French government also annexed the Saar region economically, struck the key companies in the coal, iron and steel and chemical industries from its dismantling list, and allowed itself to profit covertly from their ongoing production after securing appropriate stakes in these companies.17 In early autumn 1948, the end of dismantling began to become apparent. The winds had changed definitively, and reparations policy was increasingly overshadowed by the US reconstruction programme for Europe – the Marshall Plan. This European Recovery Program (ERP) also included the Western occupied zones after the separate currency reform had made the division of Germany irreversible. From then on, the gradual abandonment of reparations policy depended solely on how quickly the politically influential Allied partner countries – above all Great Britain and France – bowed to the inevitable; no one took the concerns of the ‘small’ reparations creditors into consideration. The decisive test occurred in late autumn 1948. At the instigation of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), which was responsible for

Developments in the Western Reparations Zone (1945–1951)  •  173

the distribution of the Marshall Plan funds, an a committee of industrialists headed by George M. Humphrey was established to investigate which of the industrial facilities earmarked for reparations withdrawals at the time were important for the ERP project. After extensive investigation, the Humphrey Committee submitted a list of 159 industrial enterprises that it sought to remove from the reparations list and to claim for the ERP instead. In eight cases, the foreign ministers of Great Britain and France successfully resisted the deletion, but on 19 April 1949, as a result of another Washington Agreement, the most valued industrial plants of the dismantling programme were removed from the lists.18 During this final act in the history of Western reparations, the chancellor of the newly proclaimed Federal Republic of Germany also sat at the negotiating table for the first time. In November 1949, a remarkable deal was struck at Petersberg near Bonn (Document 56): Adenauer accepted placing the Ruhr Valley, the territorial security valve of all reparations programmes since the end of the First World War, under Western Allied control. In return, the three Allied high commissioners reduced the dismantling programme to a symbolic relic, namely to just eleven gasoline and rubber synthesis plants, seven steel mills and I.G. Farben’s Oppau plant.19 The removal of even these final, almost mythical, bastions of the Nazi armaments industry was then just a matter of time.

Greece Sidelined by the Western Allies’ Reparations Policy The faults at the heart of the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency and the American blockade in the German Western zones occupied the most unfavourable possible conditions for Greece, which as a typical ‘small ally’ was disadvantaged from the outset. Moreover, its negotiating position was further weakened by the civil war. Nevertheless, the Greek authorities faced up to their responsibilities on the question of reparations.20 Shortly after their return, the government in exile instructed prefectures to collect Documents on the war crimes and acts of destruction committed by the occupying powers in order to prepare for an appraisal of the German–Italian–Bulgarian occupation from the perspective of both civil and criminal law. On the basis of these two very different approaches, two central offices were established in the following months, as they had been everywhere else in the liberated countries. On the one hand, there was the Greek National Bureau on War Crimes, which worked closely with the UN War Crimes Commission (UNWCC);21 on the other hand, there was a group of experts working under the Foreign Ministry. This group took up its work after Greece received an invitation to participate in the Inter-Allied Reparations Conference at the

174  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

end of August. It was bound by the guidelines of the IARA Preparatory Committee in preparing an initial assessment of the damage. It listed a total of fourteen claim profiles in which the material damage of the occupation was combined with estimates of the loss of labour income and production suffered during the occupation, as well as those to be expected in the future; in addition, there were compensation claims for pensions for war victims and for future pension payments (Document 39). The mix-up of legitimate reparations claims and general wartime costs was entirely in keeping with the guidelines; it was merely adapted to the specific conditions in Greece. According to the figures calculated on a US dollar basis, in the first report just over 5 billion dollars were claimed as classic reparations, while the costs resulting from the war amounted to just under 5 billion dollars. The total sum thus came to just under 10.45 billion US dollars. On 1 October 1945, the Greek Foreign Ministry submitted this first summary to the embassies of the three Western powers by the due date (Document 39).22 A few days later, a second list followed, which was much more detailed:23 it now included twenty-nine reparations items that – with the exception of civilian victims – covered almost the entire extent of German robbery, exploitation and destruction; two further items in this list also referred to lost income and production, and thus to the costs of the war. In addition, reparations claims totalling 13,696 billion US dollars were spread among the three former occupying powers. Germany was at the top (almost 10 billion dollars), followed by Italy (3.116 billion dollars) and Bulgaria (almost 657 million dollars). Among the economic advisors accredited to the Athens embassies of Great Britain, the United States and France, the verdict on the Greek reparations memoranda was mixed (Document 42). They stated that the Greek Commission had kept within a reasonable limit, and that the inaccuracies found in their papers were primarily due to their inadequate database. However, they considered the projections of income and production losses, which totalled almost 6 billion US dollars, to be inappropriate. The Greek experts had obviously tried to introduce these points in an attempt to compensate for the fact that, following Greece’s capitulation, they could of course no longer claim personnel and arms-related war efforts as reparations demands, as the Anglo-American actors had; but the advisors in the three Western embassies did not want to let them get away with this. Since, on the other hand, the immense extent of the destruction could not be denied, the advisors later increased these points retroactively, and granted Greece a compensation claim of 7.181 billion US dollars.24 Looking back, considering that these calculations did not take into account the enormous losses among the civilian population or the harm inflicted on their health, this amount seems more than appropriate.

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* On 9 November 1945, the Greek delegation led by the economist Athanasios Sbarounis arrived at the Paris Reparations Conference.25 The delegation was in a difficult position from the outset, since it was insufficiently prepared and lacked competent diplomatic support. It was unable to forge tactical alliances with the other ‘small allies’ that equally had their backs to the wall. For this reason, it remained alone in its protests, for example in its attempt to keep the Albanian delegation – considered to represent the ‘fourth occupying power’ – away from the conference.26 In the end, in the face of the previously awarded real compensation sum of almost 7.2 billion US dollars, it was allocated an extremely small amount of the German foreign assets (Category A) and dismantled objects and merchant ships (Category B) that were intended for distribution: 2.7 per cent for Category A and 4.35 per cent for Category B. After Sbarounis had reported on this to Athens, Foreign Minister Ioannis Sofianopoulos instructed the delegation not to sign the agreement if this share was not increased.27 But all the protests failed, and even a memorandum on Greece’s catastrophic economic situation had no effect.28 Finally, shortly before the conference drew to a close, Sbarounis pulled the emergency brake, as instructed. He again protested formally against the distribution quotas (Document 44) and, citing the enormous damage inflicted on Greece by the Germans, refused to sign the final act. Ten days later, he actually did sign it after the Greek foreign minister’s meeting with the US ambassador to Greece, Lincoln MacVeagh, had achieved nothing.29 A lone ‘small ally’ blocking the publication of the Inter-Allied Reparations Agreement planned for 14 January 1946 would have been too risky. The Greek delegation, however, tied the consent imposed on it to an explosive condition that continues to drive European policy to this day: with reference to Article 1 Section B of the Reparations Agreement (Document 46), it removed from the reparations package Greece’s claim to reimbursement for the compulsory credit. It did so in order to expand its future negotiating power, and to be able to demand that the German occupying power absolutely fulfil this contractual obligation. This lastminute move made the Greek delegation, much to the displeasure of its Anglo-Saxon mentors, the forerunner of the duped Continental European Allies, and – this is the second major surprise – it was to remain so until the early 1990s. The Greek government did not ratify the agreement until ten years later. Following this incident, the IARA General Secretariat obviously had a guilty conscience when it came to Greece. The Greek delegation became entitled to dismantling goods in the form of the equipment of the large power station in Mannheim, a floating dock and a floating crane, as well

176  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

as plant components from the Kiel shipyard and mechanical engineering industry. These were quite respectable, at least in comparison with most dismantled goods, which were heavily worn out. The procurement quota for Category B was later increased to 4.62 per cent. Greece also achieved a quota of just under 5 per cent in the distribution of seafaring and inland waterway vessels (38 vessels with a total of 47,329 GRT), but these were a mere drop in the ocean in view of the tonnage losses of 1.178 million GRT.30 Of the total value of 520.377 million US dollars in reparations distributed, Greece was finally allocated a share of 13.498 million US dollars (Document 89), with the quota share in Category B being increased again to 5.51 per cent by 1950. Measured against the immense extent of the destruction, however, these small concessions were merely cosmetic in nature. * Greece was dealt particularly bad cards when it came to the restitution of stolen gold.31 As mentioned above, two categories had to be distinguished here: the Bank of Greece’s monetary gold and the gold coins stolen from the civilian population, particularly from the Jewish community of Thessaloniki. The Central Bank’s monetary gold captured on Crete was a comparatively small amount, almost 83 kilograms of fine gold, of which Greece received exactly 50 kilograms from the Trilateral Gold Commission in 1959. However, the amounts of gold that the Germans had robbed from the civilian population were of quite different dimensions: just under 6.6 tonnes (6,586 kg) had originally belonged to the Jewish population and 772 kg to the non-Jewish population. Since, at the beginning of its rule, the Metaxás dictatorship (1936) had decreed that all gold holdings had to be handed over to the Central Bank, it was illegal to own or trade in gold. For this reason, the Greek government also regarded these holdings as state property, and thus as currency gold, and demanded that they be reimbursed. However, the Tripartite Commission rejected this on the grounds that the Greek government could not prove that the Germans had also used this gold that was stolen from the victims of the occupation as currency gold – but this is exactly what the Germans had done. They had spent all of the stolen Greek gold, down to the very last ounce, on the procurement of drachmas to cover their occupation costs, before importing additional stolen gold from the holdings of the Four-Year Plan Authority, which they began in December 1943 (Document 23). However, neither the Greek government nor the Tripartite Commission was aware of this in the 1940s and 1950s. The gold experts of the three Western Allies continually rejected the Greek request, which they put forward on several occasions (Document 123). Of course, it is not clear whether the Greek government would have passed on the victims’ gold to the Jewish communities in the event of restitution,

Developments in the Western Reparations Zone (1945–1951)  •  177

but it would have come under increasing pressure in the following decades, as its legal basis for legitimacy was quite fragile. In view of the rampant hyperinflation, all those who had even minimal assets had to seek refuge in material assets during the occupation years. Gold coins were considered the first option, especially as they could be traded openly on the Athens Stock Exchange. Today, the value of stolen private Greek gold and that taken from the victims of the occupation amounts to 235.4 million euros; the main part of it – around 211 million euros – had been stolen from the Jewish community of Thessaloniki.32 Towards the end of the 1990s, the Greek government drew a line under the law, and transferred this restitution claim to the Central Council of the Jewish Communities of Greece.33 * At the end of July 1946, an international peace conference was held in Paris at which the nations of the anti-Hitler coalition, under the leadership of the four great victorious powers, negotiated a peace treaty with Nazi Germany’s former allies – Bulgaria, Finland, Italy, Romania and Hungary.34 The extremely conflict-laden procedure was attended by twenty-one government delegations with a total of fifteen hundred participants, including Greece. After months of conflict, in 1947 the ‘Big Four’ and their ‘small allies’ managed to reach an agreement that culminated in extensive peace treaties with the former Axis partners. In these agreements, the problem of reparations and restitution was dealt with in detail. In the peace treaty with Italy, Greece was granted reparations to the value of 105 million US dollars (on the basis of prices in 1946), which were to be paid for by dismantling factories, by deliveries from current production and by the provision of other capital goods.35 In addition, Italy was obliged to return to Greece36 the Dodecanese Islands in the south-eastern Aegean – including Rhodes, Kos and Leros, which had been annexed since 1912 – and for its part to waive reparations claims against Germany, despite the fact that the Germans had occupied it militarily, and had brutally exploited it after the Italian armistice with the Allies.37 Bulgaria, too, pledged to pay reparations to the tune of 45 million US dollars, which were to be mainly provided from agricultural production and from the products of basic industry; in addition, Bulgaria committed itself to the restitution of all looted goods and assets.38 Even when compared with Italy, these were quite lenient requirements; as in the case of Italy, they were justified by the fact that Bulgaria had sided with the Allies from September 1944 and was still actively participating in the fight against the Germans. Despite the mildness of these terms, Bulgaria hardly fulfilled its obligations in the following years or after the end of the Greek civil war. Italy,

178  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

by contrast, kept its promises. The Dodecanese islands were returned to Greece – this was a not insignificant indirect reparation payment. But the direct reparations balance was also dominated by Italian provisions. Towards the end of the 1950s, reparations amounted to 130 million US dollars (on the basis of prices in 1946), with West Germany’s amounting to around 25 million US dollars alongside the reimbursement of 50 kilograms of fine gold. Thus, not even 1 per cent of the Greek reparation claims had been satisfied by that point. Moreover, a mere fifth of those payments had come from West Germany.

Notes  1. Document 37, Appendix B.  2. Republik Griechenland, Finanzministerium, Allgemeiner Staatlicher Rechnungshof: ‘Bestimmung der Ansprüche auf deutsche Reparationen und aus dem Besatzungskredit. Geheimbericht der Sonderkommission’, Athens, 30. 12. 2014, Chapter 9.1; in To Vima under the title ‘Posa mas chrostai i Jermaní a’ [How much Germany owes us], Athens, June 2015, p. 79.  3. In the process, there were also considerable disputes between the three host powers over the extent of the reparations and the form that they should take. See, for example, the letter of the US ambassador in Paris, Caffery, to the Secretary of State, 14 November 1945, reproduced in: FRUS, 1945, Vol. III: European Advisory Commission; Austria, Germany, 1386 f.  4. Final Act of the Paris Conference on Reparations (9 November – 21 December 1945). Canada, Treaty Series. No. 23, SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72, printed material.  5. It did so by firing coal from the Saarland. See further below for more on this.  6. Cf. IARA, ‘First Report of the Secretary General for the Year 1946’, SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72, printed matter.  7. Formally, the IARA was dissolved in 1959 and its liquidators published their final report in 1961. Cf. IARA, ‘Final Report to Member Governments’, SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72, printed matter.  8. Cf., for example, the Resolution of the IARA Assembly of 8 October 1946, in IARA, ‘First Report of the Secretary General for the Year 1946’, Annex V; Memorandum of IARA to the Council of Foreign Ministers, Supplement to the Letter of the IARA Secretary General’s Letter to the Secretary General of the Council of Foreign Ministers, 29 January 1946, in: FRUS, 1947, Vol. II, pp. 392–94.  9. Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold, Final Report, Brussels 13. 9. 1998, SfS Archive, Bestand III.72, printed matter. 10. Agreement on a Plan for Allocation of Reparations Share to Non-Repatriable Victims of German Action, 14. 6. 1946, SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72, Druckschriften. 11. Eizenstat, US and Allied Efforts to Recover and Restore Gold; ‘Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets: Proceedings’; Bundesarchiv, ‘Der Verbleib der Unterlagen’. 12. See Gimbel, Science, Technology, and Reparations.

Developments in the Western Reparations Zone (1945–1951)  •  179

13. This was the series of BIOS, CIOS and FIAT reports, which later became first-rate historical sources because of their attention to detail and the fact that the primary records had often been destroyed. 14. At the Moscow conference of the Council of Foreign Ministers in March 1947, Molotov had estimated the amount of looting conducted by the Western Allies at 10 billion US dollars. Later, in his quintessential study of ‘savage’ reparations, the US historian Gimbel considered this estimate to be a realistic one. See Gimbel, Science, Technology, and Reparations, 170 f. 15. In addition, see Gimbel, The Origins of the Marshall Plan, 97 ff. 16. ‘Revidierter Plan für das Industrieniveau der britischen und amerikanischen Zone Deutschlands, 28. 8. 1947’, in Gustav W. Harmssen, Reparationen – Sozialprodukt – Lebensstandard, Vol. 1: Allgemeiner Teil, 95–98. 17. As a result, 17.5 million US dollars were added to the French reparations account. See the Federal Ministry of Finance’s unsigned note on the prehistory and history of reparations in the Western zones (supplement to an interdepartmental discussion paper on a constitutional complaint made by I.G. Farben i. L. against the Reparations Damage Act, 5 December 1972, in response to Question 1b raised there), 5 ff., BArch B 126/60653. 18. ‘Erklärung des US-Außenministeriums vom 13. April 1949 zum Washingtoner Abkommen’. German translation in Europa-Archiv 4 (5 May 1949), 2113 f.; also reprinted in Harmssen, Am Abend der Demontage, 174 f. 19. Federal Ministry of Finance’s unsigned note on the prehistory and history of reparations in the Western zones (supplement to an interdepartmental discussion paper due to a constitutional complaint by I.G. Farben i. L. against the Reparations Damage Act, 5 December 1972, in response to Question 1b raised there), p. 4, BArch B 126/60653. 20. See Radiopoulos, Η διεκδίκηση των γερμανικών οφειλών; Konstantinakou, Πολεμικές οφειλές και εγκληματίες πολέμου στην Ελλάδα. Ψάχνοντας την ηθική και υλική δικαίωση μετά τον Β› Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο [War criminals and war debts in Greece: The search for moral justification after the Second World War]; Fleischer and Konstantinakou, ‘Ad calendas graecas?’; Nessou, Griechenland 1941– 1944, Part 9, pp. 467 ff. 21. Konstantinakou, Πολεμικές οφειλές και εγκληματίες πολέμου στην Ελλάδα, Part B, 333 ff.; Fleischer, ‘“Endlösung” der Kriegsverbrecherfrage’. 22. Supplement to a verbal note of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1. 10. 1945. The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), FO/371/45793/18; the tables are printed in full as Document 4 in Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands auf Erstattung der deutschen Schulden aus dem Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg anhand von Dokumenten des Archivs des Griechischen Außenministeriums, 377–405. 23. Each item was individually listed in 31 tables. See Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands auf Erstattung der deutschen Schulden aus dem Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg anhand von Dokumenten des Archivs des Griechischen Außenministeriums, Document 4, pp. 366 ff.; Supplement to the verbal note of the Greek Foreign Ministry, 4. 10. 1945, TNA, FO/371/45793/18. 24. Fleischer and Constantinakou, ‘Ad calendas graecas?’, 381. 25. Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands auf Erstattung der deutschen Schulden aus dem Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg anhand von Dokumenten des Archivs des Griechischen Außenministeriums, 107 ff. 26. ‘US Ambasssador Caffery to the Secretary of State, 4. 12. 1945’, reprinted in FRUS, 1945, Vol. III: European Advisory Commission; Austria, Germany, p. 1440. Albanian

180  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

militias had participated in the Italian offensive, and some of those among the Albanian minority living in Epirus had collaborated with the Italians. Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands auf Erstattung der deutschen Schulden aus dem Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg anhand von Dokumenten des Archivs des Griechischen Außenministeriums, Document 8, p. 413. Ibid., Document 10, pp. 414 ff. Ibid., docs. 11 and 12, pp. 421 ff. IARA Report 1946, Appendix IX, p. 62; IARA Report 1951, Appendix Schedule 2 (b) (III). Cf. the Final Report of the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold, Brussels 13. 9. 1998, SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72, printed matter; Republic of Greece, Ministry of Finance, General State Audit Office: Determination of the Claims for German Reparations and from the Occupation Loan. Secret Report of the Special Commission, Athens, 30. 12. 2014, Chapters 10.4 and 10.5, pp. 111–15, SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72, printed matter (partial translation of the report). ‘Republik Griechenland, Finanzministerium, Allgemeiner Staatlicher Rechnungshof: Bestimmung der Ansprüche auf deutsche Reparationen und aus dem Besatzungskredit. Geheimbericht der Sonderkommission’, Athens, 30. 12. 2014, Chap. 10.5; in To Vima under the title ‘Posa mas chrostai i Jermanía’ [How much Germany owes us], Athens, January 2015, pp. 113–15. See the joint statement of the Greek government and Greek Jewish organisations, in ‘Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets: Proceedings’, 265 ff. FRUS, 1946, Vol. III: Paris Peace Conference: Proceedings; Vol. IV: The Paris Peace Conference: Documents. Friedensvertrag mit Italien, Teil VI, in Menzel, Die Friedensverträge, 65 ff., here 85 ff.; for more on the context of the Greek–Italian negotiations, see Konstantinakou, Kriegsschulden und Kriegsverbrecher, 213 ff. Konstantinakou, Kriegsschulden und Kriegsverbrecher, Article 14, p. 71. Focardi and Klinkhammer, ‘Wiedergutmachung für Partisanen?’ 458 ff. ‘Friedensvertrag mit Bulgarien’, ibid., 164 ff., here 169 f.; for more on the background to the negotiations, see Konstantinakou, Kriegsschulden und Kriegsverbrecher, 307 ff.

Part III

Divide et Impera

Chapter 7

The Reparations Policy of the West German Power Elite to the End of the 1980s

When, in the early 1950s, the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency effectively ceased its work, the leading politicians in Bonn saw their opportunity. They had good reasons to do so: the Cold War had now escalated to such an extent that the partially sovereign Federal Republic of Germany, proclaimed in September 1949, became a significant factor in the transatlantic power bloc. This not only strengthened the FRG’s self-confidence, but its negotiating power too. What is more, in June 1950, the confrontation between the two power blocs in Korea led to a regional proxy war, which made similar developments in Europe conceivable, especially over the German question. This dramatic deterioration of the global situation additionally led the promotion of tendencies that sought to seal the FRG’s political and economic integration into the camp of the ‘Free West’ through military means. The British and the Americans felt that West German troop contingents should be included in a ‘European Defence Community’ (EDC). This was a serious challenge to French security interests. In this situation, however, the French government had no choice but to take the bull by the horns after its economic policy had already seen it abandon the Ruhr Statute – alongside the Saarland, its last bargaining chip in reparations policy – in favour of a West European cartel alliance in the coal and steel sector (the ‘Schuman Plan’). The French government enforced the ‘denationalisation’

184  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

of future West German troop contingents, while the military units of the ECG were to be placed under the supreme command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), which was founded in 1949. The West German ruling classes knew how to use this development to their own advantage. Regardless of whether the troops were ‘denationalised’ or could continue to wear the German national symbol, the Western Allies’ change of course towards the remilitarisation of West Germany represented a qualitative leap forward for the West German ruling classes, and emboldened them to demand massive compensation. This included, first and foremost, the revision of the occupation statute that came into force with the founding of the FRG, which had guaranteed the three Western Allies extensive control and rights of reservation. In a memorandum written at the end of August 1950, German chancellor Konrad Adenauer summarised this general right of revision for the first time. He demanded that the foreign ministers of the three Western powers should, at their next conference, announce that they would now end the state of war with the Federal Republic, limit the remit of their occupation to defending the country from external threats and to replacing ‘step-by-step the occupation statute with a system of contractual agreements’.1 Just under three months later, he confided what he concretely meant by this in another aide-memoire that he personally handed to the Allied high commissioners on 16 November 1950.2 In order to win over the West Germans to making a ‘contribution to the defence of Europe’, not only would the occupation statute have to be revised and the future occupation and defence burdens balanced in a socially acceptable manner, but a few ‘specific issues’ would also have to be clarified. These included, above all, an immediate halt to all the dismantling operations that were underway at the time, the reauthorisation of the industries that had been forbidden or restricted (above all shipbuilding and the chemical industry’s hydrogenation plants), a speedy ‘adjustment to the restitution issue’, and the ‘cessation of all war crimes trials or their quickest possible completion’.3 That was plain language. In Adenauer’s secret paper, the German power elite’s aim of cancelling all the criminal and civil debts from the Second World War, without replacing them if possible, found unmistakable expression. In particular, those involved in the process of German restoration expected the Western Allies largely to waive the provisions outlined in their occupation statutes regarding compensation for those who had been persecuted by the Nazis, the protection of stateless refugees and the restitution of looted property. In some areas, they were able to score success surprisingly quickly: for instance, in halting the dismantling and in pardoning the war criminals who had been convicted in the Nuremberg follow-up trials. However, this was generally not the case. While it is true that international developments had begun to strengthen the negotiating power of

The Reparations Policy of the West German Power Elite   •  185

the Bonn ministerial bureaucracy considerably, their Allied partners knew exactly who they were dealing with, and they continued to distrust the ‘restless Germans’. Moreover, especially in the area of economic reparations, tangible self-interest was at stake. The result was an intensive and sometimes dramatic game of negotiation poker. This dragged on until 1954, when the West German delegations were required to make concessions – some of which were considerable.

Preliminary Work for Western Integration, Part I: The Transitional Agreement After the NATO Council had also come out in December 1950 in favour of the remilitarisation of the FRG within the framework of the European Defence Community, the first preliminary negotiations for the replacement of the occupation statutes began. In an aide-memoire presented to the Federal Government at the end of February 1951, the high commissioners of the three Western powers laid out the parameters:4 the commissions charged with negotiating an Armed Forces Agreement and with determining West Germany’s contribution to the EDC would be joined by negotiating bodies to take over Allied programmes in those areas of domestic and foreign policy in which, among other things, the entire spectrum of reparations policy was included: in the compensation of those persecuted by the Nazis, the internal and external restitution of looted property, the protection of stateless deportees and refugees, and the material-economic aspect of the reparations issue. The first preliminary negotiations took place in spring 1951 and saw fierce clashes of opinion. In the final phase of their occupation, the Western Allies had compensated for their withdrawal from the economic reparations sphere earmarked for dismantling by taking substantial action in favour of the victims of the Nazi dictatorship, with the US military government acting as the pacesetter.5 This action included a restitution law, announced in November 1947, which made those involved in the Nazi policies – particularly the institutional and private ‘Aryanisers’ – accountable, and which appointed Jewish non-governmental organisations as trustees of heirless Jewish assets. In addition, shortly before the founding of the FRG, laws for the compensation of those persecuted by the Nazis were introduced at a regional state level. Although they had considerable shortcomings, these laws were the first to establish compensation in public law within this particularly significant area of reparations policy. All these arrangements to compensate those persecuted by the Nazis displeased the representatives of the Bonn ministerial bureaucracy, especially

186  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

since they owed their existence to an alliance formed at the state level between progressive German compensation experts and a number of international Jewish aid organisations, which had strongly influenced the social component of the Western Allies’ reparations practices.6 As a result, the necessary willingness to compromise was lacking. The preliminary negotiations were either quickly broken off or adjourned indefinitely. This was also true of discussions surrounding the economic component of the reparations issue. After the representatives of the Allied High Commission had made it clear that, despite the fact that dismantling had since ceased, they did not consider this aspect of reparations policy to be over, the Germans presented them with a counter-paper, in which they demanded that the reparations issue be postponed until the upcoming peace treaty and that the confiscation of German foreign assets be withdrawn (Document 59). For the time being, the exploratory talks had failed on this issue too. At the end of September 1951, the Allied High Commission made a fresh attempt. Their foreign ministers had in the meantime agreed on a clear course of action to replace the occupation statutes with a ‘General Treaty’, which was to combine the FRG’s military and political integration into the West with a package of individual treaties to ‘transfer’ the Allied rights of reservation over domestic, economic and foreign policy to the Federal Government.7 In doing so, they expected that this time their negotiating partners would move on the issue of compensation and reparations, and accept the given parameters. Under these premises, numerous committees and sub-committees were formed, which began their work in November and December 1951.8 The West German ministerial bureaucracy was in fact now more willing to compromise, and by the spring of 1952 agreements on the protection of stateless deportees and refugees, the adoption of state compensation laws, and the restitution of looted cultural assets could be initialled. Negotiations on the restitution of looted property were less smooth, and the West German delegation finally succeeded in preventing the inclusion of East German and East European restitution claimants – as originally demanded by the Western Allies. Serious conflicts arose, however, during negotiations over the continuation of the economic aspects of reparations policy in the Western hemisphere. On 16 November 1951, the Western Allied experts submitted a first draft in which they again recommended continuing negotiations on the form, duration and amount of the final compensation payments to be made – as provided for in Article 2B of the Inter-Allied Reparations Agreement – as well continuing the liquidation of German foreign assets as regulated by Law No. 63 of the Allied High Commission.9 This was met with the resolute objection of the relevant West German supervisors in the committee negotiations: the banker

The Reparations Policy of the West German Power Elite   •  187

Hermann J. Abs, and the ministerial director of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Bernhard Wolff, pleaded for this to be rejected, along with any counterproposals (Document 60). However, Erich Kaufmann, a lawyer and advisor to the chancellor on international law issues who headed the German delegation, did not want to appear to be so uncompromising. Instead, he pushed through a counterproposal that partly took up the positions already presented in the first exploratory committee, but at the same time signalled a certain willingness to make concessions. According to this draft, the economic aspect of the reparations issue would in principle be postponed until a peace treaty between the four great victorious powers and a united Germany – a prospect that had since become illusory – had been concluded; however, it would be left to the Federal Government to settle these problems, including how to dispose of the frozen foreign assets, in a series of bilateral agreements before this treaty was concluded. This alternative draft was initially rejected by the delegation of the Western powers led by Eli W. Debevoise, who was the legal adviser to the Allied High Commission. However, a rapprochement then occurred on the basis of a second German counter-draft, and on 7 January 1952 the first official round of negotiations began at the seat of the US high commissioner in Deichmann House in Bad Godesberg.10 The meetings dragged on until the end of April. Several drafts and counter-drafts were exchanged, with the representatives of the Western Allies largely giving way. On 1 May 1952, a joint agreement on the reparations issue was finally adopted.11 This stated, first, that ‘the question of reparations’ would be ‘settled by a peace treaty between Germany and its former adversaries, or before that point by agreements to that effect’. Second, the Three Powers ‘committed’ never to ‘claim reparations from current production in the Federal Republic’. Third, until such a final settlement, the Federal Republic would amend Allied High Commission Law No. 63 on German Foreign Assets only with the consent of the Three Powers, would not raise any objections to the reparations and restitution measures carried out in the past, and would only conclude bilateral agreements on the provision of German foreign assets with the consent of the Three Powers. On 26 May 1952, the Convention on the Settlement of Matters Arising Out of the War and the Occupation (Document 63) was signed. As a ‘Transitional Treaty’, it was part of the overall complex of the Treaty on Germany, which in turn was linked to the treaty establishing the European Defence Community, also known as the Treaty of Paris, which was signed on the same day. However, since the French parliament brought down the Treaty of Paris in 1954, the ratification of the entire treaty was put on hold for the time being. It was only with a replacement structure – the creation of the Western European Union (WEU), which paved the way for the

188  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

direct admission of West German military contingents into NATO – that the entire package was reactivated, and with it the Transitional Treaty. It was signed on 23 October 1954 under the Paris Protocol to the Treaty on Germany in a slightly amended version. It incorporated all the components of the reparations policy compromise already listed in the previous version of 1952: internal restitution of looted property (Part Three), compensation for victims of National Socialist persecution (Part Four), external restitution of cultural property (Part Five), material and economic reparations (Part Six) and obligations to protect deported persons and refugees (Part Seven).

Preliminary Work for Western Integration, Part II: The Reparations Agreement There was, however, another negotiating partner that had played an important role in the reparations issue long before the founding of the FRG and that in this respect could be seen as the fourth Western Ally – the Jewish world. Since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, it has consisted of two international organisations: the Jewish Agency, which was active on behalf of Israeli interests, and the international diaspora represented by the World Jewish Congress. Nahum Goldmann, the leading exponent of the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress coordinated the strategic options of these two institutions, which did not always coincide.12 Several of Goldmann’s employees had held high positions in the US military government. As a result, they knew full well who they were dealing with when it came to the assertion of all compensation claims, as well as how the previous Western ‘reparations’ had been differentiated. However, Jewish survivors living outside the Western zones or the FRG had so far been excluded from these payments, because regulations on foreign exchange did not allow restitution or compensation payments to be transferred abroad. In April 1950, Kurt Yonah Mendelssohn, who worked as a department head in the Israeli Ministry of Finance, made his first appearance in Bonn after Adenauer, in a press interview a few months earlier, had circumvented the transfer problem by exporting 10 million Deutsche marks (DM) worth of goods to Israel free of charge. Mendelssohn placed a wide range of items on the agenda.13 He called for the improvement and nationwide standardisation of the compensation and restitution procedures, and claimed compensation payments of approximately 175 million DM for the fifty to sixty thousand Jewish survivors who had emigrated to Israel by that point. This figure would rise to 250 million DM if additional compensation were paid to Jewish communities, foundations and welfare institutions expropriated and plundered by the Nazi dictatorship. He also wanted to add to this individual claims

The Reparations Policy of the West German Power Elite   •  189

for the restitution of looted assets, which would probably amount to some 3 billion DM; however, this matter remained unresolved. The priority would be to compensate the Jewish victims of Nazi persecution who had emigrated to Israel and their communities. This would be best achieved, he claimed, by more free exports. After Mendelssohn had presented his final position paper on 19 May, Ministerial Director Wolff presented the Israeli proposals for discussion in a departmental meeting a week later. The German Federal Ministry of Finance was instructed to prepare a cabinet bill for a fundamental decision on whether to ‘respond to the proposal of using exports as reparations’.14 The Ministry of Finance also discussed what form such an agreement with Israel should take. Furthermore, documents on the individual claims in question would have to be obtained ‘in order to prevent us paying more for global compensation cases than for the settlement of individual claims’. Following these decisions, the compensation experts of the Federal Ministry of Finance got down to work. After weeks of deliberating, they arrived at a negative conclusion.15 In their opinion, the Israeli government lacked the legitimacy to conclude a global agreement, because there was no waiver on the part of those entitled to compensation and, in the event of an agreement, a dangerous precedent would be set for other states. At the beginning of June, the Federal Council’s Finance Committee also endorsed this negative vote because – according to the reasons given – the federal states’ compensation funds were not enough for the planned exports of goods. Moreover, federal funds were not available to pay for the free deliveries demanded by the Israelis. Neither the Israelis nor the Jewish aid organisations wanted to accept this rejection of their legitimate claims. The Jewish world was in an extremely precarious situation. It was doubtful whether the reconstruction of at least those Jewish communities in Europe that had not completely fallen victim to the annihilation policies of the Germans and their collaborators would succeed. Israel was also in a difficult situation.16 Despite mass immigration ebbing away towards the end of 1951 after seven hundred thousand refugees – including half a million Shoah survivors – had entered the country by that point, Israel still faced difficulties. Some of the refugees lived in camps, unemployment was high, the rate of inflation was rising and the food supply had to be rationed. It was clear that Israel would only be able to survive in the medium term if industrialisation could be accelerated. The human resources for this were abundant, but the necessary capital was lacking. Even Israel’s protecting power, the United States, only provided very limited resources: instead of the 1 billion dollar loan demanded at the end of 1950, it granted a mere 35 million dollars. In this situation, the Israeli government made a fresh attempt, but this time it appealed to the four victorious Allied powers. In March 1951, it

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presented them with a note in which it demanded 1.5 billion US dollars in compensation from the two successor states to the Nazi dictatorship in order to be able to integrate the half million Shoah survivors who had settled in Israel. The per capita amount demanded for this (3,000 US dollars) was quite modest, but the total sum – with 1 billion to be raised by the FRG and the remaining 0.5 billion by the GDR – seemed considerable. The Soviet Union did not reply to the Israeli démarche because the Potsdam Agreement merely obliged the GDR to provide compensation for the USSR and Poland. US diplomacy, on the other hand, made it clear to the German government that, as a reparations debtor of the Western hemisphere, it had a duty to pay if it did not want to jeopardise its integration into the transatlantic power bloc. At the end of September 1951, Adenauer finally came up with a government declaration to dispel the doubts of ‘world opinion’ regarding the ‘attitude of the Federal Republic towards the Jews’, which had arisen in light of the FRG’s restrictive actions up to that point. He made it clear that the FRG would ‘take into account the terrible crimes of a past era’.17 He promised further improvements on the issues of compensation and restitution, but also asked the ‘world public’ to respect the limited capacity of the FRG to provide for war victims and to integrate displaced persons. Under these conditions, the Federal Government declared its willingness ‘to seek ways to solve the reparations problem alongside representatives of the Jews and the State of Israel’.18 Here he had adopted a new tone. The FRG power elite’s front of rejection was crumbling. Before this, Adenauer had deleted a few passages from the draft of his speech, which combined a tirade against the thesis of collective guilt with references to the ‘unfortunately very strict limits’ of ‘reparation’ and the threat to the FRG ‘from the Communist onslaught’, which made it appear necessary ‘to maintain at least the present living standard of the population’.19 The exponents of the Jewish world reacted to this message immediately. Following consultations with the Israeli government, Nahum Goldmann convened a conference of Jewish aid organisations to discuss how to proceed.20 At the end of October 1951, a new umbrella organisation was founded in New York. Explicitly limiting itself to purely factual claims for compensation against the Germans, it called itself the ‘Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany’ (Claims Conference), and elected Goldmann as its president. In addition, it elected Saul Kagan as general secretary. Kagan was the former head of the US military government’s financial investigation department, and at that time was spokesman of the most important Jewish restitution organisation.21 The Claims Conference agreed to pursue its claims independently of the Israeli government, but to consult with it on an ongoing basis. Goldmann met Adenauer in December

The Reparations Policy of the West German Power Elite   •  191

1951 and February 1952, and obtained his willingness, in principle, to begin compensation negotiations on the basis of the Israeli note to the four victorious Allied powers from March 1951. At the time of these talks, additional negotiations with the international creditors of Germany’s pre- and post-war debts were underway in London – see below. The head of the German delegation, Hermann J. Abs, initially attempted to incorporate Adenauer’s pledges to the Jewish world into the London negotiating package.22 However, one day after his opening speech, the Israeli delegation confronted him with a public statement calling for separate negotiations and, in a subsequent discussion, presented him with their catalogue of demands, which covered the entire spectrum of the reparations problem: individual compensation and restitution, the restitution of heirless property, and the delivery of reparations goods to Israel from current production free of charge. As a result, on 8 March 1952 the Federal Government decided to enter into separate negotiations with Israel; but the German delegation confined itself to receiving and discussing the claims, and would not make any promises to the Israelis or to the Claims Conference.23 Under these restrictive premises, the German–Israeli–Jewish compensation negotiations began in Wassenaar near The Hague at the end of March 1952.24 During these negotiations, the Israeli delegation reiterated its central demand for compensation payments of 1 billion US dollars for the integration of the half million Shoah survivors, which were to be provided in annual deliveries of goods worth 200 million DM. The German delegation, led by the lawyer Franz Böhm and the Baden-Württemberg compensation commissioner Otto Küster, accepted this demand in principle. Their hands were tied, however, and they tried in vain to convince the front of rejection entrenched behind the banker Abs and the Federal Finance Ministry that a generous compromise offer of some 3 billion DM would also have a positive impact on the London debt negotiations.25 Abs, on the other hand, stressed the primacy of the London debt complex, and called for the annual deliveries to Israel to be limited to 10–15 million US dollars, while Adenauer emphasised the purely ‘reconciliatory character’ of these deliveries and declared that ‘Germany could not accept any demands from Israel’.26 Finally, the German delegation was allowed to bring a counteroffer of 3 billion DM into play in its own name; however, in addition it would explain that, in light of the claims of all the creditor states to be negotiated in London, the Federal Government was currently not in a position to make a proposal on the amount or duration of the payments to Israel. This would only be possible if the London negotiations were resumed in mid-May.27 With this statement, made on 7 April 1952, Böhm caused outrage among the Israeli delegation led by the diplomat Felix Eliezer Shinnar. The negotiations threatened to collapse.28

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In the course of several talks, US high commissioner John McCloy intervened at this critical juncture and made it clear to the German hardliners that the United States considered German compensation payments to be indispensable in the interest of the medium-term stabilisation of Israel. Moreover, he emphasised that the demands of the Claims Conference would also have to take a back seat. As a result, the German government finally accepted the compromise proposals that had been submitted by its own delegation since the beginning of April. On 10 June, an arrangement was finally negotiated, to which Abs and the representatives of the Federal Ministry of Finance now also agreed: a total amount of between 3.4 and 3.5 billion DM would be paid to Israel. How it was to be distributed was down to the Israeli government and the Claims Conference. This amount would be settled in the first two years after the conclusion of the contract, with deliveries of goods worth 200 million DM each. This would be followed by ten annual instalments of 250 million DM; the outstanding balance of 600 million DM would be raised by issuing bonds.29 In the course of the last round of negotiations, these basic figures were slightly modified once again: 3.45 billion DM would go to Israel, of which 450 million DM was to be transferred to the Claims Conference as a global amount for the restitution of heirless property (the Second Hague Protocol to the Israel Treaty). What is more, in a further protocol (Protocol I),30 the FRG strove to standardise the individual compensation and restitution laws of the individual German federal states in a ‘Federal Supplementary Act’ and, in so doing, to modify the cut-off date and residence requirements in such a way that those persecuted by the Nazis who had emigrated before the cut-off date could also be compensated. The agreement concluded with Israel and the Claims Conference was signed on 10 September 1952 in Luxembourg’s City Hall, and came into force on 27 March 1953. The so-called Israel Treaty was the most important bilateral reparations agreement that the FRG has hitherto concluded and implemented. It regulated how the German power elite and authorities dealt with one of the largest groups of those persecuted by the Nazis – the Jews in Germany and Europe as a whole. Of the 8.3 million Jews in Europe (as of September 1939), just under 6 million had been murdered; in 1950/51 the European Jewish communities had about 2.9 million members.31 Half a million survivors had emigrated to Palestine/Israel, and almost four hundred thousand had fled Continental Europe before the mass extermination began. The Jewish survivors accounted for about 80 to 85 per cent of all individual compensation and restitution claims settled by the Western zones/the FRG, to which was added the compensation of the ‘Aryanised’ assets that had become heirless as a result of the Shoah. These figures and data illustrate the significance of the struggle for the Israel Agreement and

The Reparations Policy of the West German Power Elite   •  193

its two additional protocols. They also show that the demands made by the Israeli government and the Claims Conference were extremely moderate, even though the total amount of 3.45 billion DM was quite substantial compared to the FRG’s then still rather small federal budget (just under 28 billion DM for 1952/53). The only serious problem was the lack of a general clause in the treaty, which, while acknowledging that compensation for the survivors of the Shoah should be prioritised, also committed the FRG to provide compensation for the non-Jewish persecuted groups living beyond its borders. The long-term effects of the agreement were considerable. Alongside its two protocols, it had two main repercussions. First, it contributed to confirming and expanding upon – both in a positive and negative sense – the agreements on the humanitarian components of reparations policy reached in the Transitional Treaty with the three Western Allies. Second, it stabilised the position of the US-based Jewish aid organisations, which until the mid-1960s had a secure annual income, had caught up with the major US foundations and, after completing their humanitarian aid operations, had made a significant contribution to reconstructing the Jewish communities in Western and South Eastern Europe. This focus on the Western world and the fact that other persecuted groups have been widely overlooked has been problematised on several occasions.32 There is no doubt that this criticism is partly understandable. However, from the perspective of a reparations policy based on international humanitarian law, this criticism would have to be countered by the fact that many other lobbies representing the interests of those persecuted by the Nazis would have been well advised to adopt the Jewish world’s soberly pragmatic and illusion-free view of their German negotiating partners, and to develop a long-term negotiating strategy. The most astonishing feature of the Luxembourg Agreement was that it was a ‘classic’ reparations treaty with Israel in every respect. Per se, it should not have been allowed to have been concluded at all, for the state of Israel was only founded three years after the German surrender; in addition, there was the ‘piggyback’ procedure with the Claims Conference, a typical NGO. Of course, all involved were fully aware of these ‘extraordinary’ facts. The Israelis therefore spoke of an ‘sui generis agreement’, and Bonn’s leading politicians repeatedly classified it as a voluntary ‘gesture of reconciliation’, which had nothing to do with a compensation payment guaranteed under international law. It was, nonetheless, a typical bilateral reparations treaty. From 1953 to 1965, the Israel Mission was permitted to choose, within the framework of the agreed annual instalments, withdrawals from West German production that were particularly needed in order to speed up Israel’s industrialisation:33 first, construction iron, rolling mill products

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and other products of the coal and steel industry for the construction of modern industrial complexes; these were followed at the beginning of the 1960s by machinery and other supplies from the capital goods industry to be used as factory equipment, which accounted for 55.3 per cent of Germany’s total compensation payments.34 Moreover, this reparations agreement was concluded at a point when the West German ministerial bureaucracy, while negotiating the Transitional Agreement with the three Allied Western powers, was just about to impose an explicit and permanent end to German reparations deliveries from current production.

Preliminary Work for Western Integration, Part III: The London Debt Agreement In September 1950, the foreign ministers of the three Western Allied great powers decided to prioritise making the FRG liable for the pre- and postwar debts of the German Reich/the Western occupation zones. The occupation statute would only be relaxed if the Federal Government made a corresponding commitment. In this way, the envisaged Transitional Treaty was supplemented by another aspect of reparations policy (Document 109), because the core of Germany’s pre-war national debt consisted of the reparations obligations outlined in the Treaty of Versailles. These obligations were then privatised in the form of the Dawes and Young loans, the repayment of which was explicitly upheld in the general waiver of reparations agreed upon in 1932. To this end, at the end of October, the acting Allied high commissioner made an appeal to the German government, making it blatantly clear that the replacement of the occupation statute could only take place after the FRG had taken over Germany’s pre- and post-war obligations to its creditors in the Western hemisphere.35 Bonn’s political class initially reacted with the delaying tactics that had now become habitual on these questions, but in mid-December the high commissioners demanded an immediate explanation, and stressed that further postponement or even rejection of these debt obligations would have ‘devastating consequences’.36 Adenauer was then prepared to make a half-hearted pledge on 21 December, but the Allied high commissioners refused to accept it.37 After further top-level talks, on 6 March 1951 Adenauer finally informed the Allied high commissioner André François-Poncet that the FRG was liable for the external pre-war debts of the Reich and its corporations, and that it would also pay for the economic aid provided by the Western Allies since 8 May 1945. For this purpose, an agreement on a payment plan would be concluded between the creditors and debtors in order to normalise foreign economic relations.

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However, the territorial restrictions, the loss of economic capacity and the FRG’s other burdens would have to be taken into account. Moreover, the agreement was merely to be of a provisional nature, and would need to be revised in the event of reunification and a peace settlement (Document 58). On the same day, a note written by the Allied high commissioners confirmed these proposals and promised an overall settlement of the issue in which all the German Reich’s creditors would be involved. This cleared the way for the negotiations. The Western Allies set up a Three-Power Committee, defined the aims of the negotiations and then informed all governments and creditor associations involved about the forthcoming conference. At the same time, the Federal Government put together a ‘German Delegation on External Debts’, with Adenauer’s financial adviser Hermann J. Abs as head. In June 1951, preliminary negotiations between these two bodies took place in Bad Godesberg on procedural issues and on how the government delegations and creditors would exactly be represented.38 This was followed by a preliminary conference held in London from 26 November to 10 December. At this conference, the Three-Power Committee and the German delegation were left to their own devices to negotiate the post-war debt. The Western Allies proved to be extremely generous. They largely waived German interest payments, extended the repayment period to twenty years and reduced the total amount to be repaid from the equivalent of 16.673 billion DM to 6.951 billion DM.39 This was a debt reduction of 58.4 per cent. With this gesture, the Americans in particular, who had reduced their Marshall Plan and other trade credits from 3.2 billion to 1.2 billion US dollars,40 wanted to ensure that the main conference was a success. The main conference for settling Germany’s pre-war debts was also held in London. It started at the end of February 1952 and lasted for over a year, with some lengthy interruptions. A planning paper written by the ThreePower Committee in November 1951, which largely anticipated the contractual provisions, served as the basis for the work. The main issues were the final repayment of, and the interest payments on, the two large reparation bonds from 1924 and 1930, a government bond taken up in 1930 by the Swedish matchstick group of the same name (the Kreugerbond), the bonds of the individual states and municipalities – including the state of Prussia – and the so-called standstill debts of the German banks. None of these liabilities had been maintained since 1932 or since the beginning of the war, and they originally amounted to the equivalent of 15.7 billion DM – 4.6 billion of which was interest in arrears.41 Taking into account the already agreed reduction of post-war debt, the German delegation thus had to negotiate a total amount of 22.6 billion DM. It was clear that the transatlantic creditors would only agree to a significant reduction

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of the pre-war debt if the Germans signalled their willingness to go to their own painful limits, but at the same time convinced their counterparts of the FRG’s limited capacity to pay, which was caused by its considerable post-war burdens. On the basis of this calculation, the German delegation submitted a payment proposal in May 1952 that amounted to 12 billion DM based on annual instalments of 400 million DM, which would later rise to 580 million DM.42 But the German delegation only considered even this significantly reduced amount to be feasible on the condition that the international creditors waived all further claims resulting from the two world wars – that is to say, if they were prepared to leave the reparations issue out of the equation. The German delegation had largely achieved this goal by the end of the first major round of negotiations in August. The pre-war debt to be repaid, as well as the interest to be paid on it, were reduced in two stages. In the end, the FRG only had to pay 14.452 billion DM within the space of thirty years; 7.501 billion DM of this was for Germany’s pre-war debts, and DM 6.951 billion DM for its post-war debts.43 Compared with the total claim of 29.336 billion DM, which itself had already been reduced, this amounted to a debt relief of just under 51 per cent. The German delegation also scored considerable successes on the margins of the London Debt Conference. This was particularly true of its negotiations with Switzerland,44 which was one of the main creditors of German bank debts from before 1932 (the ‘standstill debts’) and was thus an important player at the London Debt Conference. The Swiss delegation used this position to put the repayment of German clearing debts on the agenda, despite it having been agreed from the outset that all reparations claims resulting from the two world wars would be removed from the agenda of the main conference. Since Switzerland’s withdrawal would have jeopardised the London conference, the Three-Power Committee eventually had to agree to separate German–Swiss negotiations. In August 1952, these discussions led to a remarkable revision of the 1946 Washington Agreement,45 in which the repayment of the Nazi dictatorship’s clearing debts was linked to the release of German foreign assets in Switzerland. The Federal Republic paid a total sum of 650 million Swiss francs to settle the German clearing debts of 1.012 billion Swiss francs. At the same time, Switzerland concluded a so-called redemption agreement with the FRG: the blocked German assets were released to their owners in exchange for a payment to the Allies that amounted to a third of the assets’ value, with Switzerland waiving its share. In return, the FRG made a corresponding partial amount of 121.5 million francs available from the global sum of 650 million francs. Of all things, therefore, the ‘collaboration billion’ granted by Switzerland of its own free will during the Second World War was paid and also linked to the release of German assets, because this deal

The Reparations Policy of the West German Power Elite   •  197

was considered essential for the normalisation of economic relations and the ‘restoration of German credit abroad’. By contrast, the governments of the formerly occupied countries, which had been forced by Nazi Germany to grant clearing credits of more than 30 billion Reichsmarks, are still waiting for a repayment agreement. At the main conference the reparations issue remained taboo – much to the displeasure of the delegations of the ‘small allies’, who were repeatedly called to order by Sir George Rendel, the chair of the Three-Power Committee. The United States in particular attached great importance to a strict adherence to the line of march outlined in November 1951, which left to one side reparations demands arising from both world wars until a ‘final general settlement’ had been reached. The German delegation, too, repeatedly emphasised how leaving this issue to one side was an indispensable prerequisite for gaining its consent to an agreement on how to settle its debts. In the final phase of the conference, however, there was a revealing disagreement between the German delegation and the Three-Power Committee on how to formulate the postponement of universal reparation claims provided for in Article 5 (1) and (2) of the Convention. Adenauer and the Federal Government, under the influence of their international law adviser Erich Kaufmann, tended to believe that the wording envisaged by the Three-Power Committee – postponement until a final general arrangement had been reached – should be replaced by a passage that followed on from the corresponding provision in Part VI of the Transitional Agreement. There, the final reparations settlement was made contingent on reunification, and the peace treaty that would then become necessary as a result; at the same time, however, the Federal Government was permitted to conclude bilateral reparations agreements in advance. This question seemed so important to the Federal Government that it delegated Kaufmann to London and gave him the opportunity to present his position to the ThreePower Committee. At the end of October and beginning of November 1952, several meetings took place, but they did not arrive at an agreement.46 Moreover, the problem was further complicated by the fact that Hermann J. Abs also inclined to the view of the Tripartite Committee, because he considered it dangerous to include an option for bilateral agreements to be concluded prior to a final multilateral reparations agreement. Finally, on 8 November, the German delegation submitted the dispute to the Federal Cabinet to make a decision (Document 66). In doing so, Abs pointed out that the major powers were primarily concerned with protecting the FRG from future reparations demands originating from the ‘small countries’, and that the United States, Great Britain and France for their part implicitly waived all further reparations demands. Nonetheless,

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the German government insisted on the position advocated by Kaufmann, while in the German delegation uncertainty continued to grow about the pros and cons of possible early bilateral reparations arrangements (Document 67). In the end, the dispute was settled in line with the view of the Three-Power Committee, but at the same time the German government was granted a certain amount of room for interpretation. The draft of Article 5 (1) – reparations claims from the First World War – remained unchanged. In Article 5 (2), however, which outlined the postponement of reparations claims arising from the Second World War, the adjective ‘general’ was deleted and the phrase ‘reparations question’ was inserted. The passage now read as follows: An examination of the claims arising from the Second World War by states that were at war with Germany, or whose territory was occupied by Germany, as well as of the nationals of these states against the Reich, … including the costs of German occupation, the credit balances acquired on clearing accounts during the occupation and the claims against the Reich credit societies, shall be deferred until the final settlement of the reparations question.47

There was therefore no question of linking this to a peace treaty, and the question of whether the future settlement of the reparations problem should occur multilaterally or within the framework of bilateral agreements remained open. Thus, the three Western Allies and the Federal Government, after a number of errors and confusion, now agreed on how to proceed and jointly positioned themselves against the ‘small countries’. These countries did not agree with this de facto postponement of the reparations issue to an uncertain future. They registered their protest shortly before the agreement was signed, with the Dutch and Norwegian delegations acting as their spokespersons. At the end of January 1953, these delegations accused the Three-Power Committee and the German delegation of having exceeded the scope of competence of the Debt Conference by making statements on the reparations question. Their governments in no way agreed that the reparations question should be put on ice, and for this reason considered that this issue should not be mentioned at all in the debt agreement.48 This threatened to bring about exactly what the Three Powers, primarily pursuing the interests of the capital asset owners in the Western hemisphere, wanted to protect the Federal Government from. Of course, they could not openly say this to the resolutely insistent head of the Dutch delegation, Alexander Rinnooy Kan, but their excuses were not very convincing. After Kan had concretised his government’s demands for reparations – compensation for forced labour in concentration camps, for stolen assets and for war damage – further discussions took place. They finally led

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to a compromise solution, based on the observation that Article 5 (2) of the Debt Agreement, which remained unchanged, did not rule out those compensation claims coming from beyond the FRG’s borders that could be asserted in the FRG itself. This supplementary agreement was added to the Debt Agreement as Appendix VIII.49 The London Debt Agreement was then also co-signed by the ‘small allies’ on 27 February 1953, and came into force on 24 August 1953.

West German ‘Compensation’ After the ratification of the London Debt Agreement, the reparations experts of the Bonn ministerial bureaucracy drew up a first interim balance. They had three strenuous and hectic years of work behind them, which were marked by the interlocking negotiations on the Transitional Agreement, the Israel Agreement and the London Debt Agreement. After an initial phase of refusal, they had learned to adapt their fundamentally restrictive attitude to great power politics, which were marked by the priority of integrating the FRG into the West politically, economically and militarily. All the compromises they made on the reparations question between 1951 and 1953 flowed from this overriding concern. In their view, the resulting follow-up costs and payment plans were severe, even if they were mainly spread over annual instalments of between twelve and thirty years. According to calculations made by the Federal Ministry of Finance, the obligations resulting from the reparations provisions of the Transitional Agreement would amount to just under 6 billion DM;50 in addition, 3.45 billion DM was used to maintain the Israel Agreement and 14.45 billion DM to repay, and pay interest on, foreign debts: all together this amounted to 23.9 billion DM. This was a considerable increase when compared with previous inter-Allied reparations payments. In addition, there were a number of imponderables that worried the experts, namely the still unresolved extent of the repayment costs, estimated at no less than 8 to 10 billion DM, and the long-term pension payments to be expected from individual compensation claims. For the officials in the Federal Ministry of Finance, which was leading the way on the reparations issue, this was an unbearable idea, especially since their head of department, Fritz Schäffer, was pursuing a rigorous austerity course in all budgetary matters. His approach strove to support Germany’s export sector by prioritising monetary value and price stability. The restrictive course of fiscal policy was additionally reinforced by the psychological reservations of the reparations bureaucracy towards those persecuted by the Nazis. Almost all of the leading compensation experts

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in the Federal Ministry of Finance came from the Nazi dictatorship’s ministerial bureaucracy – and at all hierarchical levels, from the Government Council to the state secretary. Bernhard Wolff and Ernst Féaux de la Croix, to name just two of the most important figures, were representative of this trend. Both came from the international law department of the Reich Ministry of Justice, and both had worked on the ‘folkdom policy’ of classifying Germans and foreigners.51 For them and their subordinates, the encounter with the Nazi victims was thus a pronounced experience of déjà vu, and the power they had to define the victims – for the second time within fifteen years – strengthened their restrictive outlook. Their behaviour visibly rubbed off on the top authorities involved in the compensation issue – the Federal Chancellery, the Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry of Justice and the Federal Ministry of Economics. To all these institutions, ‘balancing the burden’ of those who had been expelled from the areas beyond the Oder–Neisse line, and the provision of care for the veterans of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS, were more important than the compensation for those persecuted by the Nazis. So it was that a secret community of compensation refusers emerged. Anyone who today leafs through the files of these fifty or so decision makers in the field of the FRG’s reparations policy52 rarely encounters diverging points of view after the few dissident figureheads in the international rounds of negotiation had been outmanoeuvred – such as the scholars Franz Böhm and Erich Kaufmann, who in spite of their conservative ordo-liberal approach were willing to make concessions, or the experts from the individual federal states who were well disposed towards those persecuted by the Nazis, above all Otto Küster.53 If one can at all speak of attempts to moderate the restrictive course in the period that followed, then these came from the Foreign Office, whose diplomats flinched back from all too openly snubbing the ‘small’ co-signatories of the international agreements and the foreign aid organisations, both of which had come off badly. On the basis of this coincidental overlapping of fiscal austerity and psychological anaesthesia, the course of action for the implementation of the compensation and restitution agreements was soon set. In the future, any legally binding commitment to reparations that went beyond the obligations agreed upon up to that point was to be rejected; if at all, only nonbinding ‘emergency aid’ or ‘humanitarian’ gestures to alleviate ‘hardship’ were possible. In principle, this definition made it necessary to undo tacitly the bilateral option clause outlined in the Transitional Agreement, and to postpone all claims for compensation under reparations law to a ‘final settlement’ within the framework of an all-German peace treaty – in other words, to delay it until never-never day. In addition, attempts were to be made to undermine the provisions for those entitled to compensation,

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as outlined in the three international treaties, and to reduce the financial benefits to which they were entitled to a form of charity. By contrast, in the decades that followed, the servicing of transatlantic capital asset owners, the delivery of goods to Israel and the global sum granted to the Claims Conference to settle heirless assets were all beyond the control of the Bonn reparations bureaucracy and were all handled correctly. The first, particularly costly, battlefield for the reparations bureaucracy was the individual ‘compensation’ for those persecuted by the Nazis.54 According to the first Hague Protocol of the Luxembourg Agreement, the FRG was obliged to bundle together the previous compensation arrangements made by the individual German states in a Federal Supplementary Act. This was a matter of urgency, as the Baden-Württemberg commissioner for compensation, Küster, was working on an amendment to the law as part of an initiative of the Bundesrat, the second chamber of the German parliament, which aimed at making significant improvements to the laws previously passed by the individual states; in particular, splitting up those persecuted by the Nazis into a hierarchy of four groups of recipients, based on civil service law, would be abolished.55 The civil servants of the Federal Ministry of Finance immediately outmanoeuvred Küster. In all haste, they cobbled together a Federal Supplementary Act that transferred the compensation legislation in the US occupied zone to the entire territory of the FRG, and hid the worsening of payments and provisions that had come about in the process behind a jumble of exceptions and reservations about restrictions. The Bundestag passed the Federal Supplementary Act on 19 June 1953, and it was published on 18 September 1953.56 It granted the right to compensation for all those who, during the Nazi era, had suffered physical harm or damage to their health, freedom, property or assets, or restrictions to their professional or economic advancement on account of their race, religion, ideology or political convictions. The prerequisite for this was that on 1 January 1947 they had either been resident in the Western occupied zones, had lived in a camp for stateless refugees or had emigrated before that date; in addition, those German victims of Nazi persecution who had been recognised as displaced persons, as returning home from the war, or as refugees in the Soviet Occupation Zone, were also eligible for compensation. If this was the case, the survivors of those killed or driven to their deaths were granted a pension of a minimum of between 50 and 200 DM per month. Those who were physically injured or whose health had been harmed received a pension of a minimum monthly rate of between 100 and 250 DM if their earning capacity had been reduced by 30 per cent or more as a result of their injuries. In addition, there were one-off payments for those who had been incarcerated (150 DM per month), compensation for the destruction of property or assets (up to 75,000 DM), compensation for

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the impairment of professional or economic advancement (up to 25,000 DM), in which case a pension payment was also possible as an alternative, and loans for the reintegration of the self-employed. The addressees of these transfers of purchasing power were primarily Germans, including those who had re-emigrated and emigrated by the cut-off date. In addition, in accordance with the provisions of the Transitional Treaty, compensation would also be paid to those who had been recognised as stateless refugees (‘displaced persons’) under the Geneva Convention, or who had been persecuted on account of their nationality. This small group of Polish and East European forced labourers who had remained in West Germany or had in the meantime emigrated to Great Britain were confronted with significantly bigger hurdles and were awarded lower benefits. The law was a bureaucratic monstrosity. It discriminated against those persecuted by the Nazis in various ways. First, with its cut-off date and residence rules, it excluded all those who had been subjected to Nazi persecution within the annexed and occupied territories; in addition, it excluded all Germans who had emigrated from the Western occupation zones after the cut-off date – 1 January 1947. Second, it limited eligibility for compensation to the ‘typical National Socialist’ crimes against humanity and human rights violations, while excluding all claims for damages relating to the war – such as those resulting from forced labour or other war crimes; forced labourers only received compensation if they had been imprisoned and if the wages taken from them had not been compensated. However, specific social groups in German society that were not granted persecution status were not taken into account: the gypsies (Sinti and Roma)57 and those categorised as ‘anti-social elements’ – the approximately eighty thousand people who had undergone forced sterilisation, the homosexuals and the Communists. Even though the latter no longer belonged to their party, they were deprived of persecuted status if they actively opposed the remilitarisation of the FRG and its integration into the West. So it was that the majority of the most active veterans of the German resistance against the Nazi dictatorship were excluded from ‘reparations’. This pre-selection was followed by an individualised sorting process.58 All those who had cleared the first hurdle and were now waiting in Germany or abroad for an additional income to make a new start in life, or to support their precarious elderly years, had to undergo this procedure. They were required to prove in detail that they had been officially defined as objects of Nazi persecution. When it came to possible pension claims, once they had successfully collected and submitted their papers and documents, an extensive medical examination followed that was based on the restrictive regulations of the German social security system. A whole army of ‘medical officers’ raided the applicants to assess the harm inflicted on them and – on

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top of the four-level hierarchy of civil service law – to divide them into highly differentiated categories of harm. In doing so, the experts had to proceed according to assessment criteria that still breathed the inhuman spirit of Nazi medicine, and generally excluded those who suffered psychological trauma from claiming compensation. At the end of these degrading and protracted procedures, the officials of the reparation offices finally decided on the services to be provided. At home and abroad, the Federal Supplementary Act triggered storms of protest. It was a considerable step backwards from the individual state laws that had previously been in force – all observers agreed on this. The precedence of the renewed recording, sorting and selection of those persecuted by the Nazis over the meagre compensation payments to be made in the end was laid out to the very last detail. As a result, the compensation proceedings dragged on for years. The experts of the Federal Ministry of Finance remained unmoved by all this. When pressure also increased at the parliamentary level, they set up a new working group, which three years later introduced an amendment to the law. The only significant concession they made was to amend the cut-off date for those entitled to apply – not those considered to be victims – to 31 December 1952, and to extend the group entitled to compensation to all emigrants who had been exposed to Nazi terror within the borders of the German Reich from 31 December 1937. Besides this, there were only minimal improvements and adjustments to the benefits, which are hardly worth mentioning. The Federal Compensation Act (FCA) was passed on 29 June 1956.59 In the years that followed, the reparations bureaucracy remained on course when it came to the compensation issue. In 1965, when it considered – somewhat hastily – that the end of individual ‘reparations’ had arrived, it proceeded to make a further amendment, which it called the ‘FCA Final Act’.60 But even on this occasion, it did not deviate at all from its fundamental positions, and only conceded ‘hardship provisions’ for those applicants who had immigrated to the FRG after the previous deadline. When the Federal Foreign Office subsequently called for a more flexible treatment of foreign critics, and in particular of the Claims Conference, Féaux de la Croix treated the diplomats with lengthy memoranda in which he rejected all calls for an expansion to the circle of those entitled to compensation, and emphasised that individual losses – forced labour, the massacres of the civilian population of the occupied territories, and the starvation of Soviet prisoners of war – constituted acts of war, compensation for which had been postponed by the reparations provisions of the London Debt Agreement.61 With this argumentation, the hardliners of the Federal Ministry of Finance once again prevailed. Even the FCA Final Act brought only gradual improvements, with the catalogue of demands of the

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persecuted associations being rejected. The FCA Final Act was published on 14 September 1965.62 The second field of battle on which of the Bonn reparations bureaucracy had to fight was provided by its obligation to restore looted property.63 Here too, it pursued an extremely restrictive course. There are signs that it was even more uncompromising in this area than when it came to individual compensation issues. There were several reasons for this. At the beginning of the 1950s, the Allied occupying powers were no longer in charge of restitution policy, as this had been transferred to the officials of the regional finance directorates. This move was asking for trouble, because now the same actors who had presided over one of the largest robbery and looting operations in modern history during the Nazi era were to be responsible for the restitution of what had been taken in those operations. It is hardly surprising, then, that they sabotaged these procedures wherever possible. To the best of its ability, the Federal Ministry of Finance supported the actions of these officials. To this end, Féaux de la Croix even constructed a bizarre legal basis of legitimacy: he assumed that the German Reich – alongside the tens of thousands of private ‘Aryanizers’, the main protagonists behind the robbery and looting operations within the Reich and the occupied territories – was identical to the Federal Republic of Germany in its current state. However, he claimed, since it had undergone state bankruptcy, bankruptcy law had to be applied to the restitution proceedings; those entitled to restitution could therefore only be served according to certain priorities and at fractions of the original assets, which were staggered accordingly. The tax officials working under him were only too happy to hear this message. Moreover, since the Transitional Treaty was placed on ice for three years due to the blockade of the treaty establishing the European Defence Community, and since they also acted as both litigant and decision maker in one function, the regional tax offices were constantly raising new hurdles to receiving compensation. They delayed the proceedings whenever they could; they imposed taxation on the assets that had been reimbursed – something that was explicitly forbidden in the laws of the occupying powers – and in addition, they shifted the burden of proof from the actors involved in the raids to those who had been robbed.64 All applications for compensation from the formerly occupied European countries were treated particularly restrictively. The Federal Office for Foreign Restitution, which was founded in 1955 in line with the Transitional Treaty, was in any case only responsible for the restitution of looted art and cultural assets; but even in this particularly sensitive area, the hard-handed approach of the Federal Ministry of Finance that oversaw this office was repeatedly evident.65

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This almost arbitrary practice did not come to an end until June 1957 with the passing of a Federal Restitution Act, which – like the compensation legislation – adopted the previous provisions of the relevant laws in the individual German states.66 As before, the restitution proceedings were limited to those looting operations that had taken place within the territory of the later FRG; however, assets that had demonstrably been transferred from Nazi-occupied Europe to the territory of the later FRG or West Berlin also had to be reimbursed. The previous condition of proving the exact place of transfer and the new owner was relaxed. In fact, it was now sufficient to show that the looted goods had been transported to the FRG or West Berlin; the West Berlin Regional Tax Office and, in the event of a dispute, the West Berlin Reparation Court (a special chamber of the Berlin Regional Court) became responsible for all proceedings. However, this extended legal regulation was by no means implemented. The regional tax offices used bankruptcy law to continue their restrictive practices, and, as before, demanded that the precise location of the looted goods be provided. Nevertheless, their strategy of minimising costs was only partially successful. The restitution proceedings became a mass phenomenon – one last reflection of the immense extent of the Nazi policy of robbery. By 1971, the regional tax offices and reparation chambers had processed around 1.2 million individual cases and approved compensation payments totalling some 4 billion DM.67 This was a mere fraction of the total value that the Nazi authorities and the Germans who privately enriched themselves had looted within the Reich and in the occupied European territories. Moreover, in these proceedings all those applicants who resided within the Soviet sphere of influence came away empty-handed. The ‘European opening’ of West German restitution policy remained limited to serving the Western hemisphere, as was the case with the individual compensation proceedings for Nazi victims. Such a rigorous reparation policy could only be sustained if it were combined with ‘tougher rules’ towards those who had been excluded. This was the case from the early 1950s. In the context of this chapter, we will limit ourselves to a few examples. Probably the most important event came with the aid payments for the victims of medical experiments, which were forced into existence by an intervention from the United Nations. An Inter-Ministerial Committee established by a cabinet decision of 26 July 1951 under the leadership of the Federal Ministry of Finance ruled on these payments.68 Following a further intervention – this time by the International Committee of the Red Cross – these one-off payments of between 1,000 DM and a maximum of 25,000 DM, graded according to the severity of the permanent harm to health of the victims, were extended in 1960 to include those experiment victims living in Eastern Europe.

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This was first time that this had happened within German compensation policy.69 At the same time, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) repeatedly made representations in Bonn to help the impoverished stateless refugees and ‘those harmed within the nation’ who had mainly been marginalised by the compensation legislation;70 he too was repeatedly fobbed off with meagre aid funds.71 But the Claims Conference also took the floor to speak out on behalf of those Jewish immigrants who had fled to the West after the application deadline, which had been rescheduled on several occasions. In 1980, a ‘Goldmann Fund’ of 400 million DM was awarded to the conference for these purposes.72 However, the Bonn reparations bureaucracy was only indirectly involved in what was probably the most spectacular case. In 1953, Norbert Wollheim, a surviving concentration camp slave labourer at I.G. Farben’s Auschwitz plant, won a private lawsuit against I.G. Farben’s liquidation company, in which he demanded payment of the wages that had been withheld from him.73 This set a precedent that alarmed both industry and the reparations bureaucracy alike, with the Claims Conference intervening in support of Wollheim. The appeal proceedings ended in 1956 with a settlement: Wollheim and the Claims Conference won a total sum of 30 million DM from I.G. Farben in liquidation, which they distributed on their own terms to those (predominantly Jewish) slave labourers from the Monowitz concentration camp.74 This was a remarkable success, especially since the Claims Conference subsequently succeeded in persuading other major companies – Krupp, AEG, Siemens and Rheinmetall – to make compensation payments to surviving Jewish slave labourers that eventually amounted to a total of 51.935 million DM.75 Ultimately, however, even those liable to pay compensation could live with this result. They too were able to present this action as a purely ‘humanitarian’ process, with the result that no legal claims could be derived from it – this avoided setting a potential precedent, and the export markets in the United States were secured.76 Finally, this result also applied to the 1980s, when a broad grassroots movement stood up for the ‘forgotten victims’ of Nazi terror whom the reparations bureaucracy had hitherto systematically excluded: the Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, those who underwent forced sterilisation, the ‘anti-social elements’ and the families whose relatives had been murdered in the psychiatric institutions. As a result, the reparations bureaucracy provided some of these groups with smaller one-off payments – for example, in 1980 those who suffered from forced sterilisation received 5,000 DM each.77 However, the principles of discrimination underlying the compensation practices did not change.

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The Compensation Agreement with the ‘Western States’ One week before the Bundestag passed the Federal Compensation Act, eight West European governments issued a verbal note calling for the countries that had been persecuted by the Nazis to be included in the compensation practices.78 To this end, they proposed the establishment of a joint working group. The démarche issued by Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Great Britain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway caused consternation among the Bonn ministerial bureaucracy, especially as these countries were later joined by Italy, Sweden and Switzerland. These countries had every reason to do so too: on the one hand, the verbal note of 21 June 1956 demonstrated that France and Great Britain had meanwhile freed themselves from the US tutelage on the reparations issue and had sided with the ‘small allies’ that until that point had hitherto been so marginalised; on the other hand, this unexpected advance called into question restricting the right to compensation to those persecuted by the Nazis with links to the FRG or to the German Reich (as of 1937). After a series of crisis meetings between the departments involved, on 21 February 1957 the Foreign Office replied with its own verbal note. This lengthily justified the exclusion of those persecuted outside of Germany by referring to the relevant international treaties and, in particular, hid behind the reparations protection clause of the London Debt Agreement (Document 73). In doing so, it disregarded – as it did in all subsequent statements – the fact that, during the final negotiations, the Netherlands and Norway had fought for the right for all European reparations creditors to have the FRG’s compensation practices being applied transnationally, something that had been added to the agreement as Appendix VIII. Nevertheless, the German reparations experts tried to soften their rejection of any negotiations by means of a ‘charitable’ offer of assistance: they proposed the establishment of a private assistance fund to take care of the particularly needy survivors and surviving dependants; this assistance fund would then be actively supported by the Federal Government. With this in mind, when handing over their note, the West German diplomats hinted at an amount of around 100 million DM. The West German reparations experts assumed that there would be about thirty thousand particularly needy people who would be compensated with a one-off payment of 3,500 DM each. This amount, however, would only be given to those persecuted by the Nazis who lived in the ‘free world’; survivors residing in the ‘Eastern bloc’ would be excluded. Five months later, the West European governments rejected this request, arguing that this was not a matter to be resolved by charitable welfare measures; rather, those persecuted by the Nazis in their respective countries

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had clearly defined legal claims. The Bonn reparations bureaucracy did not respond to this, and instead decided to clarify its reasons for rejecting it: the bureaucracy eventually rejected the possibility of bilateral compensation agreements that had been left open in the Transitional Treaty, and hid behind the reparations protection clause of the London Debt Agreement (Docs. 76, 77). Nevertheless, there was great uncertainty. Some criticism of the procedure thus far emerged within the Foreign Office, and it took months before the view advocated by Department 3, namely that forced labourers and resistance fighters should not be excluded and that a much larger volume of compensation was needed (Document 78), was off the table again. Following this, those involved once again agreed not to go beyond charitable gestures towards those who had been particularly severely harmed by Nazi persecution, and to offer a 100 million DM relief fund for this purpose. This restrictive attitude did not change in the following months either. As late as May 1958, in a cabinet bill the Foreign Office’s reparations experts emphasised that if the claims of the eleven governments were accepted, then the reservations regarding reparations outlined in the London Debt Agreement would have to remain intact in order to avoid prejudicial effects. The federal budget capacity also had to be kept in mind, they added. Further, ‘we must avoid giving the states in the Eastern bloc the grounds to invoke a settlement reached with the West’ (Document 81). Despite these provisos, the Federal Ministry of Finance delayed further clarification because it felt that even the 100 million DM aid fund went too far. The German government delayed its response to the West European governments for more than a year. It was only when, on 17 October 1958, these governments sent a verbal note asking for a response that it dawned on the German reparations experts that they would have to move a little bit further with their compensation offer if they wanted to uphold their fundamental position. Moreover, the delaying tactic was not without its costs. Relations with the former ‘small allies’ deteriorated in the second half of 1958, bringing the negotiations on the release of the blocked German foreign assets and the settlement of border issues to a standstill, many of which had been going on for years. By the time the eleven governments finally insisted on a reply to their démarche, the period of waiting things out was over. After extensive negotiations between the Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of Finance involving experts and ministers (Docs. 79, 80), the Foreign Office summarised the agreements reached on how to proceed in a cabinet draft on 8 November (Document 81): as before, only voluntary ‘humanitarian’ benefits were considered; citing the reparations protection provisions of the London Debt Agreement, the draft ruled out legal claims.

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For the same reason, all claims relating to the events in the war (resistance fighters, survivors of the massacre and forced labourers) were to be excluded. As with the Federal Compensation Act, only those persecuted on racial, religious or ideological grounds were to receive assistance; but due to ‘budgetary reasons’, this group would also be limited to those persecuted by the Nazis who had suffered severe physical harm during imprisonment. In addition, the global agreements would have to be shielded from the ‘Eastern bloc states’ by being concluded on a bilateral basis and, if possible, should be included in the ‘compensation negotiations’ that were already underway to settle the costs resulting from the war – for example with Luxembourg and the Netherlands. And finally, the governments concerned should distribute the voluntary benefits themselves, which were now estimated at a total negotiation sum of between 300 and 500 million DM. In the spring of 1959, the German reparations experts began negotiations with the eleven government delegations. Serious disputes ensued, but the German ministerial bureaucracy eventually succeeded in asserting its basic positions and in imposing on the bilateral agreements under discussion the character of a voluntary aid action, excluding legal claims and limiting the recipients of compensation to those who had been subjected to ‘typically Nazi’ persecution. As a result of this exclusion of all war-related reprisals and exploitation measures declared as requiring reparations, the government delegations were repeatedly forced to revise their lists of victims. However, this did not prevent them from defending their demands for compensation. The French delegation, for instance, insisted on a global payment of 400 million DM, leaving the calculations required for this mainly to the German side.79 The Dutch negotiating partners also unflinchingly insisted on a global sum of 125 million DM for the twenty-five thousand victims of the Nazis they represented. This sum was then included in the total sum of 280 million DM in the compensation agreement; this was a classic reparations agreement, which also settled the previously unresolved restitution issues and the return of border districts that were run by the Dutch.80 Similar agreements were also included in the global agreements with Belgium and Luxembourg, while the other agreements were purely compensation agreements for Nazi victims. But even in these cases, the Germans attached great importance to treating their various negotiation partners differently: while the other West European and Scandinavian countries each enforced a one-off payment of an average of 5,000 DM, the compensation payments to Greece were considerably lower (see below). However, due to the fact that the precise distribution of these funds would be left to the respective governments, Germany’s power to define who was entitled to compensation remained limited. In some cases, the foreign

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compensation authorities – openly or secretly – disregarded the restrictive conditions imposed by the Germans and included the associations of resistance fighters, so that the former active opponents of German occupation policy were also taken into account – but not the forced labourers.81 In the legal wording of the agreements, however, German sovereignty over the definition of who was entitled to compensation was safeguarded. In total, the Federal Government transferred a total of 1 billion DM to the eleven signatory states of the global agreements between 1959 and 1964 as compensation for those persecuted by the Nazis in those countries: 400 million DM went to France, 125 million DM to the Netherlands, 115 million DM to Greece, 80 million DM to Belgium, 60 million DM to Norway, 40 million DM to Italy, 18 million DM to Luxembourg, 16 million DM to Denmark, 11 million DM to Great Britain, 10 million DM to Switzerland and 1 million DM to Sweden.82

The ‘New Ostpolitik’ and the Compensation Issue Towards the end of the 1960s, there was a considerable shift in the parameters of the reparations issue. The FRG and the rest of Europe went through a phase of social awakening, which shook the foundations of the confrontation between East and West and opened up new perspectives on the German debts from the Second World War. New collections of historical documents and studies revealed the outrageous extent of the excessive violence with which the Germans had raided the continent and harmed entire social groups. The torpor on this question dissolved in the countries of the Soviet sphere of influence too. While the lionisation of the resistance as the legitimising basis for the founding myth of the various ‘people’s democracies’ had previously been at the fore, now, as in the first post-war months, the focus began to shift to the German practices of terror and destruction, and their terrible consequences for the broad mass of the civilian population. But the proportions also changed. It became obvious that the societies of Eastern Europe and the Balkans had suffered the greatest number of victims, and that it was precisely these societies that had been confronted with the most brutal acts of destruction of their material livelihood. So it was that, in the East, the overblown narratives of resistance that formed the refoundation of state socialism evaporated, while, in the West, the Hallstein Doctrine – the German claim to be the sole representative of the successor state to the Reich – was exposed as an empty phrase, which nonetheless helped claims for compensation from the East to be rejected en bloc until that point. Even the Jewish self-help organisations in Eastern Europe were affected by this verdict. As late as 1966, Féaux de la Croix

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rejected requests for talks with the Central Union of Hungarian Jewish Communities, arguing that the Federal Republic of Germany had no diplomatic representation in Budapest (Document 96). Only those Jewish victims of Nazi persecution who struck out for the West could hope for compensation.83 The German political class reacted with considerable uncertainty to the looming collapse of the Hallstein Doctrine and the erosion of the confrontation between East and West. In a letter addressed to the reparations experts of the German Foreign Office, the German ambassador to Luxembourg summed up their fears in a nutshell (Document 102): if the European security conference recently proffered by the Warsaw Pact states were to expand towards the settlement of a peace treaty, the protective wall built up with the help of the FRG’s ‘American friends’ under the London Debt Agreement could collapse in the face of ‘the enormous reparations demands from the enemy states’, he wrote. Only if it were possible to postpone such a peace treaty for as long as possible, he added, could the reparations issue be postponed further ad calendas Graecas. He therefore claimed that the priority must be to ‘let sleeping dogs lie’, to keep the ‘desires of our current partners and former opponents’ in check, and to prevent the emergence of a ‘front of creditors’. The Foreign Office’s reparations experts reassured the ambassador (Document 103): a peace treaty would always be linked to a process of the reunification of Germany, and such a development was still not to be expected. If, however, an all-German peace treaty were concluded, then the NATO partners would be able to count on reparations being waived, and the other creditors would be presented with an offset sum, in which the loss of territory and expulsions from the East, as well as the expropriation of foreign assets, would play a role. Moreover, so great were the differences between Germany’s erstwhile combatants in the war that the emergence of a ‘creditors’ front’ could easily be prevented. All the same, the previous exclusion of those persecuted by the Nazis but living in the Soviet sphere of influence and in Yugoslavia turned out to be an Achilles heel following the change of political power in Bonn in autumn 1969. The new social-liberal government officially abandoned the Hallstein Doctrine and opted for a ‘new Ostpolitik’, which aimed to erode the ‘Eastern bloc’ under the slogan of ‘change through rapprochement’. In light of this new doctrine, the previous exclusion of the East European victims of Nazi persecution had to be reviewed too. Therefore, at the end of April 1970, the state secretaries of the Brandt–Scheel government set up an Inter-Ministerial Working Group on ‘Reparations in Eastern Europe’ to explore all conceivable options for overcoming the FRG's loss of credibility as a result of the unresolved reparations issue.84 This group continued to be

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dominated by the old guard of the Federal Ministry of Finance, but it had to coordinate its work with the new actors from the Federal Chancellery and the Foreign Office more closely than had previously been the case. Once again, the reparations experts had their say. They saw – how could it be otherwise? – their first task as making it clear to the new political leadership that if, as that leadership envisaged, it included the reparations question as part of the hand that was being extended to the East, then this could unleash a tremendous avalanche of costs resulting from the estimated 18 to 20 million Nazi victims – those persecuted and their surviving dependants – and throw the entirety of previous reparations practices, which had been based on selection and exclusion, onto the scrap heap. These concerns did not fail to have an effect, and the Inter-Ministerial Working Group was commissioned to gauge the risks and limits of further action, using the example of the compensation negotiations with Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia presented an obvious field of experimentation for various reasons.85 As a leading exponent of the ‘non-aligned’ camp, the Federal Socialist Republic played an important role in international politics, but in terms of the enormity of the consequences of the German occupation it was one of those formerly occupied East European territories from which the most extensive claims for compensation could be expected. In addition, since the 1950s there had been repeated compensation negotiations with Yugoslav delegations, which in 1956 had led to the first ‘indirect’ reparations payment in the form of a preferential loan of 200 million DM,86 but which had repeatedly failed in the years that followed. Most recently, in 1969, the Yugoslav government had demanded compensation payments of 2 billion DM with reference to the 950,000 people it lost as a result of the German occupation terror, describing this amount as the minimum it would expect. It also emphasised that it felt particularly discriminated against because of its exclusion from the West European global agreements at the time. In June and August 1970, Ministerial Director Féaux de la Croix met with the Yugoslav Ambassador Extraordinary Perišić for initial specialist discussions (Document 104). In doing so, Féaux de la Croix was largely receptive, and merely attempted to dissuade his interlocutor from making these supposedly excessive demands. Besides this, his only concern was to sound out the chances of limiting the compensation payments, the amount of which could set a precedent for possible follow-up negotiations with Poland and the Soviet Union. On 20 August he presented his findings to a departmental meeting and recommended that the line taken ten years earlier in the negotiation of bilateral global agreements with West European countries be extended in a number of ways: first, the victims and survivors of the most extreme massacres and hostage killings should

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be included in the canon of the typically Nazi persecuted groups, but should be treated as restrictively as the previous Polish ‘national victims’ had been, with only around 10 per cent of them being recognised as eligible for compensation; and second, the ‘Yalta formula’ should be reactivated, according to which the reparations ratio of 50:50 between East and West (10 billion US dollars each) had been established in February 1945. Under these premises, Féaux de la Croix considered it appropriate to make a counter-offer of 400 million DM to the Yugoslavs, simultaneously setting a precedent for the negotiations with the ‘Eastern bloc states’ – especially Poland and the Soviet Union. This was intended to enable the political leadership to include the reparations complex as part of its ‘new Eastern policy’, and to get through the expected rounds of negotiations with a total compensation volume of between 2.2 and 2.4 billion DM. Poland and the Soviet Union would then receive between 1.6 and 1.7 billion DM from this sum.87 At the same time, preliminary talks with Yugoslavia were postponed until the Inter-Ministerial Working Group had submitted its final report (Document 105). At the end of November 1970, the Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Reparations in Eastern Europe presented its report, after months of negotiations, on a wide variety of proposals about how to limit the enormous volume of reparations they dreaded (Document 106). However, it was unable to reach agreement on any priority course of action, and instead confronted the political leadership with five alternative options:88 first, a ‘grand reparation’ that included partisans, forced labourers, and the civilian victims of terrorism (amounting to between 12.5 billion and to 17.5 billion DM); second, a variant oriented towards the West European global agreements, which also included the most severely affected group of civilian victims (the ‘nationally injured’ described above) and which would amount to between 1.3 billion and 2.1 billion DM; third, a ‘small reparations’ variant that was limited to providing compensation for the ‘typical’ Nazi victims (the ‘racially’, religiously and ideologically persecuted), and that would amount to between 0.4 and 1.6 billion DM); fourth, the provision of economic aid and low-interest loans as reparations compensation; and fifth, an uncompromising rejection of all compensation claims (the ‘no-cost solution’). Thus, the buck stopped with the new political leadership once again, which now had to decide how to balance the aims of its ‘new Ostpolitik’ with the primacy of domestic economic stability and the political difficulties that were expected in Germany (Document 107). At the same time, however, it was clear that the experts were inclined towards a minimalist variant so as not to disavow their previous practice themselves, and to spare the ‘new Eastern policy’ follow-up costs that could no longer be contained within its scope.

214  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

After months of arguing, the decision was finally made at the highest political level. On 5 May 1971, a round of ministerial talks chaired by Chancellor Willy Brandt and attended by the leaders of the coalition parties decided ‘to reject the reparation demands from the East at all costs’; only the compensation payments for the victims of the Nazi human experiments and the negotiations with Yugoslavia were to be continued as an ‘absolute exception’.89 The strategic opening to overcome the scandalous marginalisation of the East European victims of National Socialism had therefore already closed again, and even reconciliation with internationally influential Yugoslavia was no longer a priority.90 Official negotiations began a few days after the historic meeting in the Federal Chancellery. The West German delegation presented its compensation proposals, as already outlined by Féaux de la Croix in August of the previous year, and offered 100 million DM in compensation payments as well as a low-interest loan of 300 million DM. Taking into account the years of preliminary negotiations, the Yugoslav delegation rightly regarded this offer as a provocation, and returned to its initial demand of 2 billion DM. The negotiations thus failed. In the two years that followed, however, it became increasingly clear that stubborn adherence to the rejectionist attitude in the field of reparations policy was jeopardising the strategic aims of the ‘new Ostpolitik’. This realisation prompted the leading political decision makers – Willy Brandt and, from 1974, his successor Helmut Schmidt and the foreign minister who succeeded Walter Scheel, Hans-Dietrich Genscher – increasingly to turn to the fourth option outlined in the expert paper of November 1970, namely economic aid and low-interest loans for the development of infrastructure as replacements for reparations, or as ‘indirect’ reparations. Following this fundamental decision, negotiations with Yugoslavia resumed in April 1973. During his talks with Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito on the Adriatic island of Brijuni, Brandt put the following vague words into Tito’s mouth on 18 April 1973: ‘Both sides came to the conclusion that relations had reached a level that allows long-term cooperation in the economic sphere to replace previously considered solutions to open questions of the past’.91 This phrase, later stylised as the ‘Brijuni formula’, succinctly expressed the German power elite’s new line on reparations policy vis-à-vis its East European negotiating partners. The appropriate arguments were also quickly found: thirty years after the end of the war, the memory of the policies of terror and robbery had faded. In the meantime, a new generation was emerging in the FRG that no longer had anything to do with it and no longer wanted to take responsibility for it. It thus seemed more than appropriate only to look ahead and to build a better future together. In their discussions with leading politicians from Eastern Europe

The Reparations Policy of the West German Power Elite   •  215

in the years that followed, Brandt, Schmidt, Genscher and their state secretaries repeated these lines of argument. To be on the safe side, however, they also made use of the formal legal constructions that the reparations bureaucracy had always drawn on from the international treaties of the early 1950s onwards. In doing so, they mainly kept things under control. However, they sometimes got the tone wrong, and threatened to take countermeasures on the reparations issue, as Willy Brandt did at a meeting with the secretary general of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Gustav Husák, in December 1973 in Prague.92 All in all, the period of ‘indirect reparations’ turned out to be quite shortlived. After the Brandt–Tito talks, Yugoslavia was granted aid payments of 1 billion DM, 300 million DM of which was declared to be economic aid and 700 million DM of which was as a low-interest loan for the development of infrastructure to be repaid in the long term – and thus declared to be a covert form of reparations payment.93 The compensation claims of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, fell on deaf ears among the exponents of the ‘new Eastern policy’;94 only the requests for assistance for the victims of the Nazi human medicine experiments were answered.

The Disputes with the People’s Republic of Poland over Compensation since 1970 However, the probing in Poland could not be carried out in such an abrupt manner because of Warsaw’s centrality to the ‘new Ostpolitik’ agenda.95 When the Polish government concluded a basic treaty with the FRG in 1970 to normalise bilateral relations, it initially excluded the compensation issue so as not to jeopardise the agreement. But already in December of the same year, Włsdysław Gomułka, the first secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party, raised the issue with Chancellor Brandt during the latter’s visit to Warsaw.96 He explained that if the Federal Compensation Act were applied to Poland, ten million Polish victims of Nazi persecution would be entitled to claim compensation, and Polish claims for compensation would amount to 180 billion DM in the field of humanitarian compensation alone. These figures were well founded, because two highly qualified documentation centres – the Warsaw Main Commission for the Investigation of Hitler’s Crimes in Poland and the Instytut Zachodni (West Institute) based in Poznań – had been investigating German occupation crimes since the 1950s.97 The Germans carefully prepared their counter-estimates and have repeated them ever since: first, the payments were compensation for the consequences of wartime actions, as agreed by the London Reparation Protection Clause for a final all-German settlement; second, the loss of

216  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

German territory and the expropriations resulting from the expulsions had to be offset; and third, in August 1953, Poland had formally renounced further reparation payments from both parts of Germany.98 Polish politicians were, of course, most familiar with these lines of argument. They reacted to them as they had done since the 1950s: they contended that a sharp distinction had to be drawn between compensation for material destruction, which had to be settled by international or intergovernmental agreements, and the humanitarian consequences of the occupation, the compensation for which also had to be agreed in bilateral agreements. As numerous diplomatic papers show, in the years that followed, both parties stuck to these contradictory lines of argument.99 Moreover, they were overshadowed by an ugly tug of war over the ‘resettlement’ of Polish citizens of German nationality to the FRG.100 A first breach of the stand-off then came in 1972 when the Federal Government safeguarded the longrunning aid payments to Polish victims of Nazi human experimentation by setting up a Global Fund of 100 million DM. However, rapprochement at the highest political level only came three years later, after years of expert negotiations.101 This rapprochement took place on the margins of the CSCE Final Conference in Helsinki (Document 108).102 Poland received a long-term loan of 1 billion DM at a favourable rate of interest. In addition, a bilateral social security agreement was concluded, under which the Federal Republic of Germany paid a lump sum of 1.3 billion DM to the institutions of the German Reich insurance scheme to cover the pension claims of the Polish civilian population and the former Polish forced labourers that had arisen during the occupation years.103 Of this amount, 700 million DM was intended as a lump-sum pension. The remainder – 600 million DM – was described by the German side as a ‘political component’, whereas the Polish government regarded it as a compensation payment which, after the contract concluded, enabled it to raise the monthly support rates for concentration camp survivors and disabled resistance fighters somewhat.104 Constantin Goschler’s and Krzysztof Ruchniewicz’s view that this ‘political component’ of the 2.3 billion DM package from Germany amounted to a ‘secret compensation agreement’ is thus somewhat overblown.105 In fact, the Germans made a good bargain. Between 1939 and 1945, some 4.7 million Polish civilians who had lived in the annexed Polish western provinces and the General Government had acquired pension entitlements to the social security institutions in Germany, with an average duration of five years; in addition, there were 2.8 million Polish former forced labourers who qualified for a period of four years on average. The individual compensation of these entitlements would have cost the German treasury 8 to 12 billion DM, because between 350 and 450 million DM

The Reparations Policy of the West German Power Elite   •  217

would have had to be transferred to Poland each year.106 In Poland, of all countries, the Germans had not only managed to keep humanitarian reparations policy in line with their political and foreign trade interests, but had also managed to cheat their negotiating partners on the pension issue. This example is most revealing. By adapting to the new political style of the social-liberal government at the beginning of the 1970s, the reparations bureaucracy learned pragmatic techniques that really brought out the mental anaesthesia that was inherent within it from the outset. How routinely the experts have proceeded since then was last demonstrated in June 1987, when they rejected a note from the Polish envoy on the compensation issue.107 While the Polish concentration camp victims continued to come away empty-handed, initial attempts were made to bring their central memorial sites under the control of the FRG.108 The instrumentalisation of the culture of remembrance for the purpose of denying compensation became an important part of the German foreign policy agenda.

The GDR’s Individual Compensation Payments Without exceeding the scope of our study, at the end of this chapter let us now take a comparative look at compensation and restitution practices in the GDR so as to see what could have been done differently.109 In the Soviet Occupation Zone/the GDR, too, these problems were handled rather shabbily, and in some areas the regulations were even more restrictive than in West Germany. In the Soviet Occupied Zone/GDR, only those who were resident there were entitled to compensation or restitution. There were therefore only around forty-five thousand beneficiaries in total. The former East European forced labourers and prisoners of war were excluded, especially since the ‘Eastern workers’ and Soviet prisoners of war in the USSR were discriminated against until the 1960s as alleged collaborators – there was no room for surviving victims in the heroic panorama of the ‘Great Patriotic War’. On the question of restitution, too, the SED leadership lacked any sensitivity, and marginalised the group of functionaries around Paul Merker that had returned from the West in an attempt to restructure the restitution practices that had already begun in Thuringia in the summer of 1945 in such a way that the expropriated Jewish families received back their ‘Aryanised’ property without this leading to a restoration of the large capital assets. But there were also rays of hope. The application and decisionmaking procedures on which the compensation was based were remarkably simple: they were carried out by commissions on which those persecuted by the Nazis themselves sat and had a vote. In addition, standardised benefits

218  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

were awarded that largely prevented the emergence of a hierarchy among the recipients.110 Since the Principles for Compensation of those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime, which were adopted in 1949, remuneration consisted of a package of improved social benefits, namely the privileged allocation of housing and food, improved health care, extended holidays and appropriate protection from dismissal for the severely disabled. In addition, an honorary pension was granted from 1965, which began five years before the normal age limit was reached, and was significantly higher than the average pension. Undoubtedly, there was also hidden social and especially political discrimination in these standardised basic rules. Nevertheless, despite the exclusion of the foreign victims of Nazi persecution, which was also practised there, compensation procedures in East Germany were an alternative to the opaque, individualising and bureaucratic procedures in West Germany. In the case of an all-German initiative, the application of the GDR’s procedures could have inspired the idea of allowing the Jewish world, and all those persecuted by the Nazis in Europe, to participate in a socially just compensation procedure.

Notes  1. ‘Memorandum des Bundeskanzlers Adenauer, 29. 7. 1950’, reproduced as Document 114 in Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (AAPD), 328 f.  2. ‘Aide-Mémoire des Bundeskanzlers Adenauer, 16. 11. 1950’, reproduced as Document 146 in ibid., 416–19.  3. Ibid., 418 f.  4. ‘Aide-Mémoire und Fragenkatalog der Drei Mächte, Anlage 1 und 2 zu einer Aufzeichnung des Vortragenden Legationsrats Dittmann, 28. 2. 1951’, reproduced as Document 38, in AAPD 1951, pp. 145–48.  5. See Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 61 ff; Kreikamp, ‘Zur Entstehung des Entschädigungsgesetzes’; Lillteicher, Raub, Recht und Restitution.  6. Pross, Wiedergutmachung. Der Kleinkrieg gegen die Opfer, 51 ff., 73 ff., 78 ff.; Hockerts, ‘Anwälte der Verfolgten’.  7. See the meeting with the representatives of the Allied High Commission. 25. 9. 1951, reproduced as Document 157 in: AAPD 1951, pp. 504–10.  8. ‘Rundschreiben des Staatssekretärs Hallstein, Betr. Stand der Verhandlungen für die Ablösung des Besatzungsstatuts, 18. 12. 1951’, reproduced as Document 209 in: AAPD 1951, pp. 688–95.  9. ‘All. Entwurf Teil VI, Reparationen – übergeben 17. 11. 1951’, BArch B 141/9096, fol. 2–3. 10. BArch B 141/9096, fol. 25–28; the minutes of the subsequent meetings can also be found there. The file also contains the drafts and counter-drafts and the final

The Reparations Policy of the West German Power Elite   •  219

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

compromise formula, which was then incorporated as Part VI of the Transitional Treaty of 25 May 1952. Überleitungsvertrag. Sechster Teil: Reparationen. Endgültiger deutsch-alliierter Berichterstatterentwurf in der vom Redaktionsausschuss überarbeiteten Fassung, 1. Mai 1952, ibid. Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World, Chapter 2, pp. 26 ff. See ‘Ressortbesprechung im Bundesministerium der Finanzen, Betr. Globale Abfindung von Wiedergutmachungsansprüchen durch Exporte nach Israel, 26. 5. 1950’, reproduced as Document 64 in: AAPD 1950, pp. 161–63. Ibid., 163. Ibid. for the following quote too. ‘Aufzeichnung des Legationsrats a. D. Steeg, Betr. Israel und die Bundesrepublik, 8. 1. 1951’, reproduced as Document 5 in: AAPD 1951, pp. 20–26. Balabkins, West German Reparations to Israel, Chapter 5, pp. 96 ff. ‘Erklärung der Bundesregierung (Entwurf ), 25. 8. 1951’, reproduced as Document 45 in, AAPD 1951, pp. 469–72. Adenauer presented the declaration to the Bundestag on 27 September 1951. Ibid., 471. Ibid., 472, fn 11. See Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World, 26 ff., 67 ff. Namely the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO). Cf. ‘Ressortbesprechung, 8. 3. 1952’, reproduced as Document 72 in AAPD 1952, pp. 207–13. Ibid., 212 f. Zweig, German Reparations and the JewishWorld, 36 ff.; Balabkins, West German Reparations to Israel, Chapter 6, pp. 119 ff.; Huhn, ‘Die Wiedergutmachungsverhandlungen’, 139– 60. ‘Aufzeichnung des Delegationsleiters Böhm und des stellvertretenden Delegationsleiters Küster, 1. 4. 1952’, reproduced as Document 92 in AAPD 1952, pp. 247–53. ‘Besprechung unter Vorsitz des Bundeskanzlers Adenauer, 5. 4. 1952’, reproduced as Document 95 in AAPD 1952, pp. 261–67; quote from p. 263. ‘Aufzeichnung des Delegationsleiters Böhm, Wassenaar, 7. 4. 1952’, reproduced as Document 97 in AAPD 1952, pp. 270–72. ‘Aufzeichnung des Delegationsleiters Böhm, Betr. Fortführung der Verhandlungen mit Israel, 15. 5. 1952’, reproduced as Document 135 in AAPD 1952, pp. 375–78. ‘Aufzeichnung des Referenten Frowein über eine Besprechung zwischen den Herren Goldmann, Shinnar, Staatssekretär Hallstein, Prof. Böhm, Dr. Frowein und Herrn Abs am 10. Juni 1952, 13. 6. 1952’, reproduced as Document 153 in: AAPD 1952, pp. 461 f. ‘Haager Protokoll I zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Claims Conference, 10. 9. 1952’, in BGBl. 1953 II, p. 85. Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World, Table on p. 41. And this has also taken place within the Jewish world. See, most recently, Finkelstein, Die Holocaust-Industrie. There was even a clause stating that the Israel Mission could, at the FRG treasury’s expense, also order goods and services from other countries, insofar as they were unavailable in West Germany, such as oil supplies and other oil products. Ebeling, ‘Bericht über die Durchführung’. See ‘Bundeskanzler Adenauer an den Geschäftsführenden Vorsitzenden der Alliierten Hohen Kommission François-Poncet (Entwurf ), 22. 12. 1950’, reproduced as Document 172 in AAPD 1949/50, pp. 500 f; AAPD 1951, p. 9, fn 17.

220  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

36. AAPD 1951, Document 1, p. 9, fn 17. 37. AAPD 1950, p. 501, fn 7. 38. ‘Aufzeichnung des Gesandtschaftsrats a. D. Weiz, 11. 6. 1951’, reproduced as Document 102 in AAPD 1951, pp. 317, 326. 39. ‘Der Staatssekretär des Auswärtigen Hallstein an den Staatssekretär des Bundeskanzleramtes, Betr. Kabinettsbeschluss zur Genehmigung der Unterzeichnung der Abkommen über die deutschen Auslandsschulden, 19. 2. 1953’, Beilage Bl. 4, PA AA, B 86/177. 40. ‘Bericht des Leiters der Delegation für Auslandsschulden Abs über die Besprechungen zur Regelung der Nachkriegsschulden in London vom 26. November bis 10. Dezember 1951, 19. 12. 1951’, reproduced as Document 210 in: AAPD 1951, pp. 696–705, here p. 701. However, the debt bore interest of 2.5 per cent, and had to be repaid in 35 annual instalments. 41. ‘Aufzeichnung der Delegation für Auslandsschulden, Betr. Deutscher Vorschlag zur Regelung der Auslandsschulden für die Schuldenkonferenz in London, 15. 5. 1952’, reproduced as Document 134 in: AAPD 1952, pp. 370–74, here p. 371. These initial data were revised downwards in the course of the conference; see the table in ‘Der Staatssekretär des Auswärtigen Hallstein an den Staatssekretär des Bundeskanzleramtes, Betr. Kabinettsbeschluss zur Genehmigung der Unterzeichnung der Abkommen über die deutschen Auslandsschulden, 19. 2. 1953’, Beilage Bl. 4. 42. ‘Aufzeichnung der Delegation für Auslandsschulden, Betr. Deutscher Vorschlag zur Regelung der Auslandsschulden für die Schuldenkonferenz in London, 15. 5. 1952’, reproduced as Document 134 in AAPD 1952, pp. 371 f.; on the discussion of the proposal, see Rombeck-Jaschinski, Das Londoner Schuldenabkommen, 290 ff. 43. Table in: ‘Der Staatssekretär des Auswärtigen Hallstein an den Staatssekretär des Bundeskanzleramtes, Betr. Kabinettsbeschluss zur Genehmigung der Unterzeichnung der Abkommen über die deutschen Auslandsschulden, 19. 2. 1953’, Beilage Bl. 4, PA AA, B 86/177. 44. Cf. Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz Zweiter Weltkrieg, Vol. 9: Uhlig et al., Tarnung, Transfer, Transit; Rombeck-Jaschinski, Das Londoner Schuldenabkommen, 262 ff.; Abs, Entscheidungen, 224 ff. 45. In the Washington Agreement of 25 May 1946, Switzerland had undertaken to liquidate the German assets in its country and to make half of the proceeds available for interAllied reparations; the other half was to be collected as compensation for the payment of 250 million francs, which it had to pay to the Western Allies as compensation for its transactions with the German Reichsbank in looted Nazi gold. However, Switzerland delayed the implementation of this agreement. Although it blocked German assets, it did not liquidate them. 46. The minutes of the meetings can be found in BArch B 146/1203. 47. ‘Abkommen über deutsche Auslandsschulden, Artikel 5: Nicht unter das Abkommen fallende Forderungen’, in: BGBl. 1953 II, Nr. 15, 27. 8. 1953, pp. 340 f. 48. ‘Aufzeichnung des Legationsrats I. Klasse Weiz, Betr. Forderungen aus dem Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg; Artikel 5 des Schuldenabkommens, 30. 1. 1953’, reproduced as Document 42 in: AAPD 1953, 1. Teil-Bd., pp. 125–28. 49. ‘Abkommen über deutsche Auslandschulden, Anlage VIII: Vereinbarte Auslegung des Artikels 5 Absatz 2 des Abkommens über deutsche Auslandschulden’, in: BGBl. 1953 II, Nr. 15, 27. 8. 1953, p. 463. 50. Übersicht über die voraussichtliche finanzielle Auswirkung des Überleitungsvertrages, o. D. [1955], 2 Bl., BArch B 126/68326.

The Reparations Policy of the West German Power Elite   •  221

51. Cf. their personnel files in Bundesarchiv Berlin (formerly the BDC); for more information, see Klee, Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich, 145 (Féaux de la Croix); Pross, Wiedergutmachung, 46 f. (Féaux de la Croix), 66 f. (Wolff). 52. See the biographical sketches of these figures in the German-language edition's appendix. 53. Philipp Auerbach, a remigrated Jewish Nazi persecutor and head of the Bavarian compensation authority, had already been dismissed in 1951. On this, as well as on Otto Küster and Franz Böhm, see Pross, Wiedergutmachung, 27 f., 73 ff., 78 ff. For more information on Erich Kaufmann, see Partsch, ‘Der Rechtsberater’; Liermann, ‘Erich Kaufmann’. 54. See Pross, Wiedergutmachung, 92 ff.; 99 ff., 110 ff.; for the perspective of those persecuted by the National Socialists, see Schulz and Urbitsch, Spiel auf Zeit; Frei, Brunner and Goschler, Die Praxis der Wiedergutmachung. For more information see Goschler, Schuld und Schulden; Herbst and Goschler, Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. 55. Küster wanted to abolish the four groups – simple, middle, higher and upper service – in favour of a general standard rate. 56. ‘Bundesergänzungsgesetz zur Entschädigung für Opfer der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung vom 18. September 1953’, in: BGBl. 1953 I, Nr. 62, pp. 1387 ff. 57. It was only in 1963 that a decision by the Federal Court of Justice granted the Sinti and Roma the status of being ‘racially persecuted’. 58. Impressively outlined in Pross, Wiedergutmachung, 131 ff., 185 ff. 59. ‘Bundesgesetz zur Entschädigung der Opfer der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung vom 29. 6. 1956’, in BGBl. 1956 I, pp. 559 ff. 60. ‘Zweites Gesetz zur Änderung des Bundesentschädigungsgesetzes (BEG-Schlussgesetz) vom 14. 9. 1965’, in BGBl. 1965 I, pp. 1315 ff. 61. Féaux de la Croix, ‘Bundesministerium der Finanzen, Zusammenfassende Darstellung über die Wiedergutmachungsgesetzgebung (Bundesentschädigungsgesetz), 30. 4. 1965, 7 Bl’; Féaux de la Croix ‘an den Botschafter der BRD in London, Betr. Schlussgesetz zum Bundesentschädigungsgesetz, 1. 6. 1965’, 5 Bl, PA AA, B 81/416. 62. ‘Zweites Gesetz zur Änderung des Bundesentschädigungsgesetzes (BEG-Schlussgesetz) vom 14. September 1965’, in; BGBl. 1965 I. Nr. 52, pp. 1315 ff. 63. See Lillteicher, Raub, Recht und Restitution. 64. Whereas previously every business transaction involving Jewish property since the Nuremberg Race Laws of September 1935 had been subject to the justified general suspicion of having been carried out under persecution, this principle was now revoked. 65. Extensively documented in BArch B 126/19141. 66. ‘Bundesgesetz zur Regelung der rückerstattungsrechtlichen Geldverbindlichkeiten des Deutschen Reichs und gleichgestellter Rechtsträger (Bundesrückerstattungsgesetz – BrüG) vom 19. Juli 1957’, in BGBl. 1957 I, pp. 734 ff. 67. In the preceding years – between the enactment of the US zone’s restitution law in November 1947 and the uniform settlement across the FRG – an additional 3.5 billion DM had been mobilised; on top of this, further property and asset transfers amounting to 1.26 billion DM had been carried out under the auspices of the Federal Compensation Act. See Lillteicher, ‘Die Rückerstattung in Westdeutschland’, 61 f. 68. See Baumann, Menschenversuche und Wiedergutmachung. 69. From 1961 onwards, global agreements were concluded with several East European countries (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia), which amounted to a total of 121.75 million DM by the end of the 1970s. In addition, the evaluation procedures were delegated to the ICRC, which appointed medical officers for the various countries. This procedure put an end to the ludicrous situation from the 1950s in which German

222  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

70.

71.

72.

73. 74. 75. 76.

77.

78. 79. 80. 81.

82. 83.

ministry officials had assigned individual applicants their ‘emergency aid’ according to their assessment – thus disregarding the Hippocratic oath. With this conceptual innovation, the Bonn reparations experts circumvented the fact that they had to compensate – and were obliged to do so under the Transitional Agreement – some fifty thousand homeless foreigners living in the FRG. These were mainly Polish former forced labourers and resistance fighters who had not returned to their homeland. They were largely excluded from the compensation payments, so that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had to administer to their needs time and time again. See Ulrich Herbert, ‘Nicht entschädigungsfähig?’ ‘Abkommen mit dem Hohen Kommissar der Vereinten Nationen für Flüchtlinge – UNHCR – über die Einrichtung eines Fonds für Nationalgeschädigte vom 15. 10. 1960’, in Bundesanzeiger 3 (1961); ‘Vereinbarung der Regierung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland mit dem Hohen Kommissar der Vereinten Nationen für Flüchtlinge über die Vergabe von Mitteln an Nationalgeschädigte zur Abgeltung von Härten in Einzelfällen, 28. 11. 1981’, in BGBl. 1981 II, pp. 80 ff. The decades-long disputes around compensation for those persecuted by the Nazis from Poland and the other occupied countries of Eastern Europe who had emigrated to the West is worthy of a specific study; on this, see the key documents in BArch B 136/3314. ‘Richtlinien der Bundesregierung für die Vergabe von Beihilfen an jüdische Verfolgte zur Abgeltung von Härten in Einzelfällen im Rahmen der Wiedergutmachung (Hardship Fund), 3. 10. 1980’, in Bundesanzeiger 192 (1980); for the prehistory of this, see Goschler, ‘Die Bundesrepublik’, 105 ff. Rumpf, Der Fall Wollheim gegen die I.G. Farbenindustrie AG in Liquidation. Ibid., 517 ff.; Ferencz, Lohn des Grauens, 68 ff., 76 ff.; Kuczynski, Brosamen vom Herrentisch, 16 ff. Ferencz, Lohn des Grauens, 99 ff., 139 ff., 165 ff., 213 ff., 264 f. Only industrial enterprises with strong export interests in the transatlantic region were willing to enter into negotiations with the Claims Conference. Other large companies, such as those in the construction industry that at the time had more of a domestic orientation, declined. ‘Erlass des Bundesministeriums der Finanzen über die Gewährung einer Einmalleistung von 5000 DM an Zwangssterilisierte, 3. 12. 1980’. BMF Erlass VI A 4 – VV.5050 B – 89/80. On the ‘aid’ for the other ‘forgotten victims’, see the ‘Bericht der Bundesregierung über Wiedergutmachung und Entschädigung für nationalsozialistisches Unrecht sowie über die Lage der Sinti, Roma und verwandter Gruppen, 31. 10. 1986’. Deutscher Bundestag, 10. Wahlperiode, Drucksache 10/6287, pp. 34 ff., 37 ff., 42 ff. See Winstel, ‘Die Bundesregierung’; Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 233–47. Moisel, ‘Pragmatischer Formelkompromiss’; Meyer, ‘Das deutsch-französische Wiedergutmachungsabkommen’. Extensively documented in BArch B 126/9145 (1); B 136/2293, 3306; PA AA, B 130/5543 A; PA AA, B 86/515, 913: in addition, see Helmberger, ‘Ausgleichsverhandlungen’, 217 ff. See, for instance, the manner in which compensation payments were distributed in France, Norway and Italy: Moisel, ‘Pragmatischer Formelkompromiss’, 242–84; Frøland, ‘Eine gewaltige, nicht beglichene Schuld’; Focardi and Klinkhammer, ‘Wiedergutmachung für Partisanen?’ ‘Bericht der Bundesregierung über Wiedergutmachung und Entschädigung für nationalsozialistisches Unrecht, Bundestagsdrucksache 10/6287 vom 31. 10. 1986’, p. 50. The Claims Conference constantly won new ‘hardship regulations’ in its favour, which eventually culminated in 1980 in the so-called Goldmann Fund. See Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 323 ff. At the same time, the Claims Conference provided members of

The Reparations Policy of the West German Power Elite   •  223

84. 85. 86. 87. c. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

94. 95. 96. 97.

98. 99.

the East European Jewish communities with care packages and small cash payments as part of a ‘relief-in-transit’ programme to help to prepare them for emigration. See Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World, 132 ff. The work of the Inter-Ministerial ‘Eastern Europe Compensation’ Working Group is comprehensively documented in: PA AA, B 130, No. 8308 A; for more on this, see Goschler, ‘Die Bundesrepublik’; Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 309 ff. . ‘Devisen statt Entschädigung’. Janjetovic, PA AA, B 86/5543. Féaux de la Croix had also included the compensation payments made to the West European countries between 1959 and 1964 into his calculations, so that – according to the minutes – this resulted in a total sum of 3.2 to 3.4 billion DM. See the Minutes of the Departmental Meeting at the Foreign Office, 20. 8. 1970 (Document 104). Report of the Inter-Ministerial Working Group for the Examination of Compensation in Relation to the East European States of 24 November 1970, PA AA, B 130, No. 8308 A. Excerpts of this are printed in this volume as Document 2. The minutes of this meeting have not yet been located. However, the results can be reconstructed from the correspondence and notes of the ministerial director Féaux de la Croix, who had attended the meeting: BArch B 126/109455. . ‘Devisen statt Entschädigung’, 633–66. See Janjetovic, Conversation between Chancellor Brandt and President Tito on the Brijuni islands, 18. 4. 1973, printed as Document 110 in: AAPD 1973, Volume 1, pp. 539–53, quote p. 553. Conversation between Chancellor Brandt and the general secretary of the KPČ, Husák, in Prague, 12. 12. 1973, reprinted as Document 415 in: AAPD 1973, 2nd vol., pp. 2027–34, here 2032. This did not prevent Germany from claiming co-responsibility for the allocation of the project’s funds in order to serve the investment interests of the West German companies. This led to a fierce reaction from the Yugoslav side, who repeatedly emphasised that these payments actually fell under reparations policy. Cf. Botschafter Jaenicke, Belgrad, an das Auswärtige Amt, Betr. Langfristige Zusammenarbeit mit Jugoslawien, hier: Projektbindung von Kapitalhilfe, reproduced as Document 27 in AAPD 1974, Vol. 1, pp. 108 ff. Ungváry, ‘Ungarn und die deutsche Wiedergutmachung’, 740–75; Jelínek and Kučera, ‘Ohnmächtige Zaungäste’. See PAAA, B 86, No. 1341, 1355, 1370, 1489, 1792, 1807, 1808, 1809; B 130, No. 5760 A, 9725 A; ZA 133.362. In addition, see Żerko, ‘Reparationen und Entschädigungen’, 20 ff., 25 ff.; Geyr, Auf dem Wege, 667–739. ‘Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Brandt mit dem Ersten Sekretär des ZK der PVAP, Gomułka, in Warschau, 7. 12. 1970’, Warsaw, 7. 12. 1970: AAPD 1970, Document 589, pp. 201–20, here 210 ff., 219 ff. They published the documents of the occupation crimes in a series of large original editions, thus providing important impulses for comparative occupation research to this day. See, above all, the series Documenta Occupationis edited by the Instytut Zachodni (13 volumes). ‘Referat 514 des Auswärtigen Amts, Betr. Polnische Wiedergutmachungsforderung – Sachstand, Ablehnungsgründe der Bundesregierung, 25. 5. 1973’. PA AA, B 86, Nr. 1355. And they did so until the end of the 1980s. See, for example, the Foreign Office’s reparations files relating to Poland from the mid-1980s in PA AA, B 86, No. 2039 and 2040.

224  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

100. ‘Fernschreiben des Botschafters Ruete, Warschau, an das Auswärtige Amt, über ein Gespräch mit Außenminister Olszowski, 24. 1. 1973’, reproduced as Document 22 in: AAPD 1973, Vol. 1, pp. 116–22; ‘Bericht des Staatssekretärs Gehlhoff über ein Informationsgespräch mit dem Ersten Sekretär des ZK der Polnischen Vereinigten Arbeiterpartei, Gierek, über die schwebenden Finanzkredit-, Entschädigungs- und Sozialversicherungsverhandlungen’, 20. 11. 1974, reproduced as Document 335 in: AAPD 1974, Vol. 2, pp. 476–81. 101. Documented in: PA AA, B 86, Nr. 1355. 102. Cf. additionally PA AA, B 86, no. 1808; AAPD, 1975, Document no. 61, pp. 302 f.; no. 148, pp. 685-689; no. 189, pp. 877-882; no. 225, pp. 1049-1052; no. 241, pp. 11341148; no. 368, pp. 1737-1741; PA AA, B 86, no. 1807, 1808, 1909; B 130, no. 9725 A. 103. ‘Abkommen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Volksrepublik Polen über Renten- und Unfallversicherung vom 9. Oktober 1975’, in BGBl. 1976 II, Nr. 15, pp. 396 ff. 104. ‘Botschafter Ruete, Warschau, an das Auswärtige Amt. Betr. Polnisches Gesetz vom 23. 10. 1975 über die weitere Erhöhung der Leistungen für Kombattanten und KZ-Häftlinge, 1. 12. 1975’. PA AA, B 86, Nr. 1809. 105. Goschler and Ruchniewicz, ‘Abrechnungen’; for more on the context, see Ruchniewicz, Polskie zabiegi, 253–63. 106. See AAPD, 1975, Document No. 148, note 6, p. 586. 107. ‘Referat 214, Vortragender Legationsrat I. Klasse Derix und Vortragender Legationsrat Weiss: Vorlage für Bundesminister Genscher, Betr. Polnische Wiedergutmachungsforderungen, Stellungnahme und Verbalnote zur Note des polnischen Gesandten vom 11. 12. 1986, 23. 6. 1987’. PA AA, B 86, Nr. 2040. 108. ‘Bundeskanzler Kohl an Außenminister Genscher, Betr. Gründung einer KZ-Gedenkstätte der BRD in Auschwitz, 25. 7. 1986’. AAPD 1986, Doc. 217, pp. 1154–56. 109. Kuczynski, Brosamen vom Herrentisch, 44 ff.; Goschler, ‘Zwei Wege der Wiedergutmachung?’, 115–37. 110. Later on, however, two groups were formed – resistance fighters, on the one hand, and victims of the NS regime on the other. From then on, the pensions received by those who were once active resistance fighters were somewhat more generous.

Chapter 8

Greece on the Sidelines Once Again

Asymmetrical Relations – on the Reparations Question Too Even a cursory glance at the hurdles erected by West German reparations policy makes it clear how difficult it was for the Greek governments and associations of those persecuted by the Nazis to assert and enforce their compensation claims in Bonn between the 1950s and the 1980s.1 Greece was at a disadvantage in many other respects too. Its neglect during the Allied reparations phase from 1946 to 1951 had not escaped the West German ministerial bureaucracy that was in the process of formation, and it saw no reason to alter this state of affairs in the next round of reparations that was now due. This basic attitude was reinforced by several factors relating to how relations between the two countries were structured.2 Like West Germany, Greece had been a ‘frontline state’ in the confrontation between East and West ever since the civil war. Domestically, the royalist-conservative power elite there also pursued a determined policy of repression against the inferior forces of the left, although its civil-war justice and ‘administrative banishments’ went far beyond the West German practices of marginalising the Communist and pacifist opposition. This common domestic political positioning was reinforced by the geostrategic location of the two countries. At the beginning of the 1950s, the political class in Athens, observing the rise of the Federal Republic in economic

226  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

and foreign policy, came to the conclusion that the FRG was destined to be the leading nation in the process of European integration, and expected that state to provide extensive material support for the reconstruction of Greece. Its West German allies, by contrast, regarded Hellas as a cornerstone on whose consolidation the stability of the entire Mediterranean region depended: this was considered essential for the restoration of their supremacy in foreign trade in South Eastern Europe.3 This formed the conditions for the reconstruction of an asymmetric relationship in which there could be little room for any Greek demands for reparations. The Western Allies warmly welcomed the rapprochement between these former adversaries under the umbrella of the ‘free West’ and the new US hegemon. But the pace of this reconciliation also generated mistrust, especially among the British. This assessment not only reflected the shift in the balance of power within the Western hemisphere, but also alluded to an unspoken continuity: the changed strategic framework favoured the former collaborators’ rapprochement with the exponents of the occupying power. This development was primarily covered up by the propagandistic instrumentalisation of the consequences of the civil war.4 By means of its claim, flying in the face of all the facts, that the three-year-long ‘gang war’ had caused far greater human and material damage in Greece than the German occupation, the dominant royalist-conservative camp in Athens was able to accelerate the rehabilitation of the country’s erstwhile collaborators. Conversely, the West German diplomats who returned to Athens at the end of 1950 repeatedly expressed their hope that the consequences of the civil war would soon eclipse the ubiquitous memory of the German policies of looting and extermination. Under the secretive direction of Prime Minister Alexandros Papagos, the royal family and West German diplomats, this calculation proved largely successful. The ‘disposal’ of the war crimes issue, which began with the resumption of diplomatic relations and was mutually orchestrated from that point, was streets ahead of the tendencies towards rehabilitation in the other countries of former Nazi-occupied Europe,5 and Greece was also way ahead of the other ‘small allies’ when it came to reconnecting with the ‘cross-holding’ that was forced into existence in 1941. Long before the intergovernmental agreements on the release of the blocked capital assets came into force, West German company managers and Greek asset managers arranged the repurchase of the sequestered Osram branch by the Osram Group, the Lokris nickel ore mine by Krupp and the bauxite deposits by Vereinigte Aluminiumwerke AG – all at scrap prices.6 What was particularly bitter was that, in doing so, the Greek stooges and former economic collaborators not only circumvented Allied regulations but also abused sovereign Allied functions.7 In this way, a corrupt grey area, funded

Greece on the Sidelines Once Again  •  227

by large German companies, was created at the beginning of the 1950s in order to safeguard their economic interests. It has lasted through the decades until today. All these were the worst conceivable conditions for a consistent and unyielding Greek position on the reparations issue. They have shaped the German–Greek debate on this problem to this day. As a result, it became clear that only the left in opposition could take an uncompromising stand. Thus, the ups and downs of the Greek–German compensation disputes were – and still are – always an indicator of the strengths and weaknesses of the left. Nevertheless, even in the ‘dark’ 1950s, the Greek government did not completely neglect the reparations issue. In fact, they even paid it considerable attention from time to time.8 The material damage and humanitarian catastrophe caused by the German occupation were simply too great for this question to be ignored, and the compensation payments made by this point had been too low. Moreover, tangible property interests had to be protected too. As early as 1952, the Greek embassy enquired about the West German guidelines on compensation for those persecuted by the Nazis in order to sound out the possibility of including Greek victims of the Nazis in the compensation. The information provided was disenchanting.9 In the same year – a few days after the Transitional Treaty had been initialled – Greece officially ended its state of war with Germany. At the same time, the legislature explicitly stated that it reserved for itself the final settlement of the consequences of the war – and thus the fundamental settlement of the reparations question – for the coming peace treaty (Docs. 61, 62). The Athenian Foreign Ministry represented Greek reparations interests at the London debt negotiations most incisively.10 Even though the Greek delegation merely consisted of the first secretary of the London Embassy, Aristide Pilavachi, he was well oriented and he safeguarded Greek interests. In an aide-memoire written at the end of May 1952, he informed the general secretariat of the Debt Conference that, contrary to the German delegation’s view, Greece’s reparation demands from the two world wars were ‘in no way prejudiced’ by the London negotiations, but merely ‘postponed to a later date’ (Document 64). Irrespective of other claims, the Greek delegation simultaneously repeated three further demands:11 first, it reclaimed compensation payments totalling 120 million Reichsmarks. These originated from the First World War and had been awarded to Greece by an arbitration tribunal decision in the interwar period; second, it demanded the repayment of the compulsory credit from the Greek central bank from the Second World War to finance the German occupation costs to the tune of 135 million dollars (price levels from 1938); and third, it demanded 153 million dollars in compensation for the sinking

228  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

of merchant ships before the Greek entry into the war on 6 April 1941. In the opinion of the German delegation, all three claims were merely ‘memorandum items’ that had nothing to do with the Debt Conference itself, meaning that a statement was unnecessary (Document 65). Nevertheless, this was a clever move: Pilavachi reaffirmed, on the one hand, the statement by the Greek negotiating delegation, which had linked its protest against the discriminatory quotas to the removal of the Greek compulsory credit from the general reparations pool towards the end of the Paris Reparations Conference; on the other hand, he had now, six years later, extended this procedure with two further ‘noted items’. This made it clear that although the Greek government had placed itself under the care of the rising European hegemonic power, it had not completely ‘forgotten’ what the Germans had done to their country a decade earlier. When it came to the reparations issue, it not only preserved its long-term options, but also committed itself to demanding precisely specified compensation claims through bilateral negotiations, even before a peace treaty was signed for all of Germany. Since then, all Greek governments have followed this line. Under pressure from the left in opposition, they have repeatedly renewed their universal reparation claims tied to the peace treaty – for example, when they signed the Global Compensation Agreement of March 1960 (see Document 86); and at the same time, they repeatedly attempted to update and negotiate their ‘memorandum item’. Nevertheless, it was unmistakable that until the end of the 1950s Greek reparation demands remained a mere ‘hope’. However, the impoverished survivors of the German policy of terror and annihilation could not sustain themselves on hope alone. The decision makers of the Bonn and Athens ministerial bureaucracies were quite indifferent to this suffering. From the perspective of the Greek local authorities, however, the situation was quite different. They seized every opportunity to push ahead with the reconstruction of the destroyed villages, and to get community life going again. And they hoped that those who had been ennobled as partners of the ‘free West’ would contribute to this. Numerous entries of this kind can be found in Federal Foreign Office files from the beginning of the 1950s. At first the mayors piped up, but they were all rebuffed. In 1953, the Foreign Office rejected German participation in the reconstruction of Kalavryta on the grounds that this would set a dangerous precedent. This apodictic refusal caused a sensation. When Chancellor Adenauer travelled to Athens on a state visit a year later, he sought to pour oil on troubled waters: he presented the Greek queen with a cheque for 50,000 DM from his special fund, which was intended for the establishment of a textile factory in Kalavryta – a depressing job-creation measure for the widows of the murdered.12 But this was an exception. In the absence

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of public awareness, there was no such charity. This was the experience of the community leader of the small town of Klissura in the Macedonian province of Kastoria, which had been destroyed by an SS unit in March 1944. In a touching letter to Adenauer of 20 November 1954, he praised the chancellor’s services for the resurgence of Germany and the unification of Europe, and requested that, in the interest of German–Greek rapprochement, he ask the Federal Republic of Germany or a major West German city to sponsor the reconstruction of Klissura.13 Barely four months later, the German Foreign Office ordered the Athens embassy to cancel the request, saying that – as in the case of Kalavryta – no precedent should be set. The author of this order was the well-known Nazi desk clerk and expert on Eastern Europe, Otto Bräutigam (Document 72). Bräutigam recommended that the addressee be made aware of the equally severe wartime destruction in Germany and, moreover, that the enormous financial sacrifices made by the FRG to ‘strengthen the free Western world’ precluded raising funds for the reconstruction of Klissura. Things were not as straightforward for the West German Philhellenes, because during their trips to Greece in the early 1950s they were completely unexpectedly confronted with the ruins and the survivors of the martyr villages, who were starving in their emergency shelters. The first West German who came to Kalavryta in 1952 during a visit to the nearby monasteries was Ehrengard Schramm-von Thadden, the wife of the Göttingenbased historian Percy E. Schramm.14 She was shaken by her encounter with the widows and orphans. She decided on a concrete relief action: the adolescents from the village, just over thirty in total, were to be sent to Germany for a three-year vocational training course. To this end, she called in the ‘Deutscher Frauenring’ (German women’s ring) and won the support of West German business circles, which commissioned one of their education funds – the Carl Duisberg Society – to carry out the project. The Kalavryta apprentices arrived in Germany in 1955, and even serenaded Chancellor Adenauer. Ehrengard Schramm-von Thadden advanced in the following years to become an informal advisor to the Foreign Office, and arranged further relief actions in favour of other martyr villages – including Chronia on Crete. The funds that the Foreign Office contributed to this from a special fund were, however, extremely modest. At the beginning of 1960, the ‘Aktion Sühnezeichen’ (Reconciliation action) also included the Greek martyr villages in its care measures. With their members – mostly young Germans – giving a helping hand in the reconstruction of the destroyed villages, a sign was to be set for the vicarious assumption of guilt.15 One of their activists was Freya von Moltke, who was living in West Berlin at the time. She was responsible for the reconstruction of the town of Servia in southern Macedonia, and coordinated the

230  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

planning work required. In April 1960 she turned to the Federal Foreign Office with a request for support, which she deliberately kept general.16 There, the speakers responsible for this matter noted with concern that the planned expenditure would go beyond the very tight budget that had been set. They then consulted Ehrengard Schramm, who also advised against it. After the parties involved finally discovered that Freya von Moltke had not addressed the cost issue at all in her letter, she was fobbed off with a general letter of confirmation.17 The Schramm–Moltke case made the dilemma of all non-governmental relief and expiation initiatives clear at an early stage: they were always in danger of serving as a buffer and being instrumentalised for the purpose of minimising costs as soon as they became official initiatives. However, when individuals turned directly to policy makers to urge them to take action, they were often openly put in their place. This was the case, for example, with Volker Moeller, a resident of West Berlin, who in mid-September 1980 approached German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and called for public funds to be made available for the reconstruction of the Agios Dionysios Monastery on the slopes of Mount Olympus, which had been destroyed by the Germans (Document 110). In a response of almost unparalleled brusqueness, Moeller’s proposal was rejected because the settlement of all reparations payments resulting from the Second World War had been ‘postponed’ until a final settlement of the reparations issue in an all-German peace treaty.

Civil Law Compensation instead of Criminal Prosecution: The Refused Package Deal, the Max Merten Case and the Compensation Agreement of March 1960 In the second half of the 1950s, a new movement entered Greek politics. The royalist-conservative government camp had failed in its attempt to set in motion the reconstruction of the largely destroyed infrastructure and to overcome the war-induced relapse of the country’s economy into the status of a developing country. The side effects of this structural crisis – persistent mass unemployment, poverty-induced migration and unresolved problems in fiscal policy – gave fresh impetus to the marginalised forces of the left spectrum. The view that the civil war was a ‘gang war’ began to fade, and the demoralisation caused by the strategic mistakes of ‘Free Greece’ in the years 1944–46 gradually diminished.18 A new Greek United Democratic Left (EDA) was established and eventually won a quarter of the popular vote. It gained self-confidence and began to question the basis of the alliance between the power elites of Greece and West Germany.

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The West German diplomats were argus-eyed when it came to these developments, as they feared increasing Soviet and East German influence on Greece as a result. They were soon so alarmed that they presented for discussion in Bonn a comprehensive ‘general plan’ to reaffirm West German supremacy.19 They had good reason to do so, because the government of Konstantinos Karamanlis, which was installed after the death of the field marshal and Prime Minister Papago, was unstable, and reacted to the new challenges with increasing uncertainty. Since the growing opposition was also gradually encroaching on the weak points of the subaltern position of Athens in the German–Greek alliance, Karamanlis found himself in a difficult situation. In particular, the indulgence on the issue of war crimes, the Mafia-like arrangements for the release of strategically important German assets, and the passive wait-and-see attitude in reparations policy fell into the twilight. Just how unsettled Karamanlis’s cabinet was became very apparent in February 1957 during a parliamentary debate on the reparations problem, in which the representatives of the Ministry of Finance contradicted themselves considerably (Document 74). In fact, the Greek establishment did not cut a good figure on this sensitive terrain of its foreign policy.20 In the spring of 1956, a delegation led by the head of the Greek War Crimes Office, Attorney General Andreas Tousis, travelled to Bonn and handed over to the Federal Ministry of Justice the files of proceedings against more than five hundred war criminals for further processing. By refraining from further prosecution, the delegation hoped that the German government would, in return, be generous to Greece by providing compensation for the Greek victims of Nazi persecution. At the same time, the initiators of the West European compensation initiative turned to the Greek government and invited it to participate. Karamanlis initially adopted a wait-and-see attitude. Pressure from the victims’ associations and the opposition was needed before Athens agreed to co-sign the verbal note from the eight governments. As the political pressure continued to increase, the Greek cabinet finally decided to bundle all outstanding war debts into a single package and to offer its allies in Bonn an ‘overall solution’. If it were possible to negotiate a generous bilateral agreement to compensate the Greek victims of Nazi persecution in exchange for the preliminary work conducted on the war crimes issue, they believed that this would not only take the wind out of the Greek opposition’s sails, but also pave the way for a comprehensive normalisation of German–Greek relations. At the end of November 1956, the Greek government presented its proposal in an aide-memoire. But the Germans wanted nothing to do with an ‘overall solution’ of this kind. They took it for granted that the Greeks would finally stop prosecuting war criminals, as they had demanded from

232  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

them for years, and also made it clear to Tousis, who had travelled to Bonn as emissary of the Greek government, that they had no intention whatsoever of continuing the proceedings that had been handed over to them. They saw no reason for any kind of consideration for the victims of these war crimes. They also categorically rejected bilateral negotiations. When Tousis travelled to Bonn, not even the Foreign Office had been able to bring itself to mitigate its abrupt rejection of the eight West European governments’ démarche by proposing an aid fund. Tousis was thus met with an outright rejection, and before returning to Athens he could only warn that the Greek authorities would resume their search for German war criminals from the end of March 1957. Despite this setback, the Greek leadership stuck to this concept. In April 1957, in order to give it force, Tousis had Max Merten – the former head of the Thessaloniki-Aegean military administration, who had travelled to Athens – arrested, and then prepared a war crimes trial against him.21 This action caused a considerable stir. It relieved the burden of the duped Greek government on the domestic front, whereas Bonn used all available levers to release Merten.22 However, their negative attitude towards compensation did not change at all, even though the Athens embassy gradually changed course and repeatedly proposed giving in. The ministerial bureaucracy in Bonn remained unperturbed, however, and was only too happy to be confirmed in this view by ‘pro-German’ Greek exponents who – like the former head of the ‘national’ resistance wing Napoleon Zervas, for instance – rushed to Bonn especially to apologise for Merten’s arrest and to invoke once again the common ‘front state’ constellation.23 By contrast, when Tousis once again proposed a bilateral compensation agreement and, in return for this, promised a final general amnesty for all German war criminals, he was turned away.24 However, his interlocutors still did not want to have anything to do with such a package deal. At that time, nobody in Bonn was thinking of separate negotiations with the eleven European governments. An aid fund for the ‘charitable’ handling of all ‘hardship cases’ in the Western hemisphere was viewed as completely sufficient. It was not until November/December 1958, when the Federal Cabinet responded to the Foreign Office’s urges to bring the increasing distortions with the former ‘small allies’ and current European allies under control by means of bilateral compensation negotiations, that a new movement emerged in the dispute with the Greek government. It was now asked – as were the other demarchic governments – to specify its claims and to submit documents on those persecuted by the Nazis.25 In the period 4–6 May 1959, the first round of negotiations began in Bonn.26 It began with the usual skirmishes between the two heads of delegation, Karl Born and Georgios Papadakis, about the exclusion criteria

Greece on the Sidelines Once Again  •  233

and the solidity of the number of victims. Papadakis named 190,800 eligible persons: 60,000 murdered Jews, 21,500 executed in violation of international law, 1,800 non-Jewish concentration camp victims, 95,000 survivors from Greek concentration camps and prisons, and 12,500 who had returned from concentration camps outside of Greece.27 These figures were questioned by the German delegation, as were the estimated periods of detention for each group. There was a great deal of mutual mistrust, and the fact that Georg Blessin, the representative of the Federal Ministry of Finance, doubted the existence of ‘real’ concentration camps on Greek soil, did not exactly ease the tension. Finally, the negotiations were broken off and adjourned indefinitely. The German delegation had the impression that its Greek negotiating partners had presented a maximum programme in order to secure a favourable starting position for further negotiations. The interruption of the negotiations triggered storms of protest among the Greek victims’ associations.28 In the months that followed, they sent numerous letters of complaint and petitions to Bonn, which differed drastically from the requests for aid from the early 1950s in both diction and sharpness. They almost always missed their mark. One exception was the already mentioned Franz Böhm, who was a member of the Bundestag’s Committee for Reparations (Document 82). He considered it at least understandable that the Greek Nazi victims were unable to distinguish between Nazi ‘persecution injustice’ and ‘occupation injustice’. It was therefore necessary, he said, to convey to them that the FRG was bound by the reparations protection clause of the London Debt Agreement. This was by no means a matter of ‘wanting to cover up everything’ that had ‘happened on the part of our Wehrmacht’. In this troubled situation, the Greek royal house and the government decided to make another spectacular advance: in October 1959 they passed a law on a general amnesty for all German war criminals – partially bypassing parliament in order to do so – and shortly afterwards they also deported Max Merten back to Germany, who in the meantime had been sentenced to twenty-five years in prison by an Athens military tribunal. In doing so, they not only snubbed the victims’ associations and the oppositional left, but also had completely illusory hopes that the West German ministerial bureaucracy would give in. There were other reasons (Document 65) why the Germans finally moved closer to the Greek minimum demands: they wanted to strengthen the Karamanlis regime in order to prevent Greece from withdrawing from the Western alliance system, and to curb the growing influence of the GDR, which itself had promised compensation payments in the event of its diplomatic recognition.29 But there were also tangible foreign economic interests at stake, namely the resolution of the outstanding questions of the restitution of property and the enforcement

234  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

of the right of West German companies to set up shop in Greece. The Greeks were by no means comfortable with this economic policy package deal. But here the Germans had an effective means of exerting pressure: their influence on Greek efforts to reach an association agreement with the European Economic Community (EEC). In February 1960, negotiations on the compensation agreement resumed. The heads of delegation this time were Ministerial Director Friedrich Janz of the Federal Foreign Office and Ambassador Konstantinos Tranos.30 Haggling over the number of victims and the extent of the suffering to be compensated – periods of imprisonment and the degree of disability – soon assumed grotesque proportions, as the Germans tried to modify all of these to their willingness to pay, which they had fixed in advance (Document 84). According to the Federal Ministry of Finance, 60 million DM and, shortly thereafter, 65 million DM would be offered, whereas Tranos first demanded 200 million DM and then went down to between 130 and 150 million DM. Negotiations again threatened to fail due to the intransigent attitude of the Federal Ministry of Finance, whose team of experts was this time ostentatiously supported by State Secretary Karl M. Hettlage,31 the former head of the Ministry of Armaments and War Production’s Finance Department. Only a face-to-face discussion between Ambassador Prince Thomas Ypsilanti and Chancellor Adenauer brought the breakthrough. On 2 March 1960, a cabinet meeting decided to grant the Greek delegation an amount of up to 110 million DM and to set 115 million DM as the upper limit. On this maximum basis, which came close to the Greek minimum demand, the compromise solution – 115 million DM – was agreed after an embarrassing final exchange of blows on 9 March. The members of the delegation from the Federal Ministry of Finance were absent, as they did not want to support this outcome. When the Foreign Office became active again a day later and, under the impression of the massive war damage in Greece, brought up the issue of a modest aid fund for the municipal reconstruction of the martyred villages (Document 85), this failed because of the Federal Ministry of Finance’s obstructive attitude. The Compensation Agreement was signed on 18 March 1960 (Document 86). It adhered to the normative guidelines of the donors, and concerned voluntary benefits for those that had faced racial, religious and ideological persecution in Greece. Claims for damages under private law were not affected. In an accompanying exchange of correspondence, however, the Germans expressed their expectation that the contract would settle future claims arising from the war and the related persecution. The Greek delegation, on the other hand, again emphasised the continued existence of the ‘statutory claims of Greek citizens’ (namely restitution claims) and explicitly reserved the right to approach the Federal Republic of Germany with

Greece on the Sidelines Once Again  •  235

further claims in the event of a final settlement of the consequences of the war in accordance with Article 5.2 of the London Debt Agreement. The mutual ratification procedures were completed before the two parliaments broke for summer recess. The Greek ratification law was particularly significant in this regard, as it arranged for the payments to be transferred to those persecuted by the Nazis in four instalments (Document 87).32 All those persecuted by the Nazis who had lived in Greece during the German occupation were entitled to apply for a one-off payment.33 The close family members of the murdered and all those who had become disabled as a result of imprisonment or torture, insofar as they had been persecuted on ‘racial’, religious or ideological grounds, or had become victims of the German massacres or hostage taking, were eligible for compensation. In contrast to France, Italy, Belgium and Norway, the politically active former resistance fighters were excluded, many of whom had been additionally criminalised by their participation in the civil war or had emigrated to the people’s democracies. The compensation payments exclusively consisted of one-off payments.34 They were graduated in such a way that the close relatives of those murdered received the maximum amounts, while payments to invalids, graduated according to severity, were significantly lower. Particularly noteworthy were the provisions on the decision-making bodies. While the government had initially planned to set up government commissions, the victims’ associations and the left-wing opposition groups pushed through linking the application and decision procedures to the respective regional district courts. This ensured a fair and transparent distribution of the meagre funds. Just a few months after the ratification law came into force, it became clear that far more applications were being received than had been expected (Document 92).35 The Compensation Authority, located at the Greek Court of Audit, therefore initially decided to pay only 55 per cent of the compensation sum to the applicants who had received a positive decision, followed later by a meagre 4 per cent. This turned the already small one-off payments into alms for the vast majority of recipients. Only about one-tenth of the recipients, namely the relatives of the murdered Sephardic Jews and the massacred victims in the martyr villages, received the maximum amounts – in the case of two murdered close relatives (parents, siblings or children) this was the equivalent of about 5,500 DM. The broad mass of invalids, on the other hand, had to be satisfied with much lower amounts that did not even come close to the arithmetical average of the entire action. According to the registry books received from the Compensation Office, 96,880 Greek victims of Nazi persecution were compensated; the average per capita amount was thus only 1,187 DM.

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Failed Attempts at ‘Indirect’ Reparations for the Reconstruction of Greece In the face of this shameful record, it was clear how badly the Greek compensation claims had been dealt with a decade and a half after the end of the Second World War. In fact, nothing at all had happened with the ‘memorandum items’ that had been removed from the general reparation claims, because there had been no opportunity to include them in the bilateral dialogue. This changed at the beginning of 1957, when it became apparent that the FRG had granted Yugoslavia a long-term and practically interest-free loan of 300 million DM, which was rightly regarded as a hidden reparation payment.36 The Greek media discussed this event extensively, and in February 1957, during the parliamentary debate on the reparations issue, the oppositional left repeatedly referred the government to the successful Yugoslavian model (Document 74). As a result, the Karamanlis government decided to emulate it. Its chances did not seem entirely hopeless, since even the former Reich plenipotentiary Altenburg had meanwhile recognised that the Greek demands for compensation for the cost of the German occupation were to some extent justified.37 First, the government made a point of approaching the German vice-chancellor and minister of development, Franz Blücher, when he stopped over in Athens in April 1957. But Blücher did not want to hear about reparations, and warned against linking this delicate issue to the question of possible economic aid (Document 75). The Greek government then turned directly to Bonn.38 In a memorandum, it referred to the FRG’s moral responsibility for the ruinous consequences of the occupation and proposed negotiations over a generous government loan to rebuild infrastructure. The negotiations lasted several months. Referring to the Yugoslavian precedent, the Greek delegation called for a loan of 400 million DM with a term of 50 years and an interest rate of 2 percent. Their German counterparts rejected this and eventually conceded half of this amount over a 20-year term period and an interest rate of 6 percent. This had nothing to do with ‘indirect’ reparations; it was a perfectly normal bond. Nonetheless, the Federal Cabinet interpreted the deal as a moral gesture to settle Greece’s war-related claims. Later, the impression was even created that the Greek negotiating partners had seen it the same way. The Greek side repeatedly and vehemently denied this allegation, and Helmut Rumpf, who had been a reparations expert in the Foreign Office since the 1960s, later recommended that this accusation be removed from the list of arguments against the Greek demands.39 In the autumn of 1961, the Centre Union assumed the reins of power. The Papandreou dynasty40 thought the time had come to use the tailwind

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provided by the conclusion of the EEC association agreement to push ahead decisively with the reconstruction of Greece. The fundamental orientation towards the West remained unchanged, and as in the Karamanlis era, the FRG was considered the dominant European power, which now had to be won over to support the acceleration of Greece’s overall economic development. And like their predecessors, the leading centre-right politicians were convinced that the outstanding debts from the Second World War should be eliminated by tacitly including reparations claims in the negotiations over economic aid, because they were an unnecessary burden on mutual relations. The only difference with the previous approach was that there was now no talk of general reparation claims: the main issue was compensation for the occupation loan that the Germans and Italians had imposed on the Bank of Greece from 1942 onwards. In doing so, the Papandreou government could fall back on the reservations of the Greek negotiating delegations in December 1945 and May 1952 respectively. At the beginning of September 1964, Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou sent the journalist Mathiopoulos to Bonn to explore this question – initially on an unofficial basis. Mathiopoulos met with Dr Reinhardt, who was a ministerial director in the Federal Ministry of Economics (Document 93). Referring to Altenburg’s confirmatory statement, he raised the issue of ‘settling the occupation costs’. The Papandreou government, he said, wanted to ‘settle them in the most inconspicuous and elegant manner possible’, and at the same time to ‘clean up’ all ‘matters left over from the war and occupation’. This would be best achieved, he said, by granting a new loan, the conclusion of which would then see ‘a line drawn under all the irritating questions from the past’ in a confidential protocol. However, Reinhardt was uninformed about the facts regarding the compulsory credit. He merely referred to the fact that the size of the compulsory credit mentioned by Mathiopoulos – 250 million Reichsmarks – would be considerably reduced if the fictitious exchange rate of the drachma and the Reichsmark and the German currency conversion of 1948 were taken into account. Otherwise, he agreed to contact the Federal Ministry of Finance for information on the status and assessment of the matter. Two weeks later, another of Papandreou’s emissaries made an appearance in Bonn: the Athens professor of economics Angelos Angelopoulos.41 Angelopoulos was a proven expert on the subject, and in his talks with Féaux de la Croix on 15 September and with Reinhardt one day later, he emphasised the special debt character of the compulsory credit, the validity of which the former occupying experts had not only formally recognised, but had also serviced normally through partial repayments via special accounts. However, the two ministerial directors were not impressed by these arguments. Féaux de la Croix decided ‘to give a difficult

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answer’. Referring to the reparations protection clause of the London Debt Agreement, he stressed that, even taking into account Greece’s precarious situation, the question of a long-term loan ‘must be decided according to purely economic criteria’.42 Reinhardt, too, had in the meantime adopted the reparations experts’ usual patterns of argument. In addition, he claimed that the government bond agreed in 1958 had only come about because at the time the Greek government had claimed that it had settled all wartime claims. Referring to the completely normal character of this bond, Angelopoulos vehemently denied this.43 This marked the failure of the exploratory talks. Féaux de la Croix informed Reinhardt of the historical details of the Greek compulsory credit, and reiterated his view that these were in any case covered by the London Reparations Protection Clause, thus rendering any special Greek claims invalid (Document 94). Referring to the visit by the journalist Mathiopoulos, Reinhardt then informed Papandreou at the end of September that there was no basis for the negotiations he had initiated, because the reparations provisions of the London Debt Agreement ruled out such negotiations. Moreover, on the occasion of the 1958 Bond Agreement, it had been agreed to draw a line under all financial issues arising from the occupation.44 Angelopoulos saw things somewhat differently. He told the Greek government that his interlocutors had acknowledged that recovering the compulsory credit was justified. In their opinion, however, their repayment would fall under the reparations provisions of the London Debt Agreement. The Greek government would have to adapt to this line of argument in the future: it must always come back to its claims for reparations and, in particular, raise the open question of the compulsory credit at every opportunity.45 But Papandreou did not want to resign himself to the Germans’ intransigent attitude. In January 1965, he thus went a step further and sent his son Andreas G. Papandreou to Bonn for unofficial negotiations. The line of march remained unchanged: Papandreou junior combined various infrastructure projects and a renegotiation of the 1958 government bond with a request for a long-term aid loan for Greece’s development, which would include compensation for the forced loans. This time, the West German ministerial bureaucracy did not show as much disdain towards the proposal. Federal Chancellor Ludwig Erhard personally received the member of parliament and former coordination minister; and Günter Keiser, a confidant of Erhard’s from the last years of the war and ministerial director in the Federal Ministry of Economics, looked after the guest. Andreas Papandreou repeated the suggestions of the former emissaries. He added, however, that a discreet settlement of the occupation bond was very much in German interests too, as this would rule out similar demands from other states.46

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The opportunities now seemed to be more favourable than in previous years. That is why Papandreou postponed a government memorandum one month after his return. The memorandum47 said that the time had finally come to ‘forget the traces of the unfortunate events of the past’, and the bonds issued by the Bank of Greece to the German occupying authorities played a prominent role in this. The Greek government had a legal claim to these bonds being reimbursed, it said, but in the interest of good relations between the two sides, it did not wish to pursue ‘any legal claims’. Rather, the inclusion of the bonds within extensive German aid measures to expand Greek infrastructure in the form of issuing a generous bond and of extensive cooperation between Greek and German business was the best solution. Such an arrangement, the memorandum continued, would be recognised by the Greek people as a ‘gesture of help’ and a ‘sign of justice’. The Bonn reparations experts reacted with irritation. They resented the Greek government for their reprimanding talk of ‘justice’ in the context of the compulsory credit and the fact that they even alluded to a legal claim. Keiser sent Papandreou junior his refusal at the end of March 1965 (Document 95). He referred to the negative decisions of the previous year, and stressed once again that when the 1958 loan agreement was concluded, both parties had considered the question of possible financial claims from the occupation to have been settled. Nevertheless, the Greek government still did not admit defeat. It put the issue back on the agenda when federal foreign minister Gerhard Schröder visited Athens in October 1966.48 Its tone now became harsher, with the outstanding compulsory credit once again making headlines in the daily press in Greece.49 In this situation, Schröder’s repeated reference to the reparations protection clause of the London Debt Agreement did not help. His Greek counterpart Toumbas was no longer impressed by this. He even went a step further and called for the establishment of a bilateral commission to deal with all the outstanding compensation claims. In view of this hardened attitude, the German reparations experts had to rethink their counter-arguments (Document 98). They realised that their Greek counterparts had never abandoned their reparations claims, and that their demands for the occupation credit to be treated separately were well founded. Other governments, such as Norway, also insisted on such repayment. In addition, there had been partial repayments during the occupation, underlining that this was a normal credit. But the reparation character of the loan given to Yugoslavia was also clear. There was therefore nothing left to do but to reject the demand, which the Greeks had in the meantime raised once again in a verbal note, for the formation of a mixed commission to settle the Greek claims. The note also included a laconic reference to the reparations protection provision of the London Debt Agreement.

240  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

In April 1967, the Greek colonels’ coup d’état marked a turning point in the conflicts that had been going on for almost four years. The majority of the key players in Athens were forced to emigrate or into illegality. Others, however, came to terms with the situation and continued with the reparations debates in a way that did not interfere with the now openly practised rehabilitation of the former collaborators: namely, by taking up the ‘memorandum items’ from the First World War. Before Greek entry into the war in 1917, German submarines had sunk numerous Greek merchant ships.50 For this violation of neutrality, a German–Greek arbitration court established under the Treaty of Versailles in the mid-1920s had set a compensation sum of 120 million Reichsmarks, but this had never been paid. Since then, Greek diplomats repeatedly laid claim to this ‘memorandum item’, which had been minuted on the sidelines of the London Debt Agreement, and in 1966 included it in the list of claims they wanted to present to the bilateral commission – which was then rejected by the Germans. After lengthy excuses from the Germans and absurd attempts to make counter-claims, the Greek government finally lost its patience and filed a complaint with the Court of Arbitration of the London Debt Agreement of 1968. Four years later, the court recognised the Greek claim, as there were prominent precedents that precluded its rejection.51 After a further two years, a settlement was finally reached: the Greek government was awarded a sum of 47 million DM by an agreement signed on 13 June 1974.52 In contrast, the Greek experts failed with their third ‘memorandum of understanding’: compensation for the merchant ships sunk before Greek entry into the war on 6 April 1941 was denied. After the end of the military dictatorship in 1974, the priorities of Greek domestic and foreign policy shifted. In the foreground was the rise of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) to become the leading political force, and Greece’s full membership of the European Community in 1981, which expanded the conditions for overcoming its domestic structural deficits through foreign capital assistance. Accordingly, the unresolved reparations issue receded into the background. However, it remained subliminally present. Thus, when German president Richard von Weizsäcker made an official state visit to Athens in June 1987, he, like the other leading German politicians before him, was provided with arguments to ward off possible compensation claims (Document 112). This time, however, he went a step further and visited the Kaissarianí Memorial for the Victims of the Greek Resistance, to set an official sign of reconciliation. The reaction was positive, but the associations of the persecuted in Greece once again made it clear that they expected more than symbolic gestures from the Germans.

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The Struggle for the Restitution of Stolen Property One of the most controversial conflict areas in the reparations issue was also the restitution of stolen property in Greece.53 The regulations developed for this purpose were difficult for even the experts to grasp, and favoured the West German compensation bureaucracy’s tendency to handle proceedings as restrictively as possible and to hold things up whenever they could. In principle, the Greek claimants had three ways of asserting their claims. First, they could sue before the civil chambers of the West German courts (the Bonn Regional Court was responsible), but most of them could not afford to do this. Second, they could turn to their embassy, which then presented their claims to the Federal Office for Foreign Restitution – an authority subordinate to the Federal Ministry of Finance. And third, since the adoption of the Federal Restitution Act, they were able to submit their claims individually to the responsible regional tax directorates or the West Berlin Restitution Court, insofar as they could prove that the assets stolen from them had been transported to Germany. Consequently, the first point of contact was the Federal Office for Foreign Restitution, which was founded in 1955 in compliance with the Fifth Section of the Transitional Treaty and located in Bad Homburg (see Document 63). There, however, the Greek diplomats representing the applicants had the shock of their lives. Their applications for restitution were almost always rejected, regardless of whether they concerned restitution or compensation for the theft of silk cocoons, rosin, railway material, extraction machines, hotel inventory, clothing stocks, securities or chrome ores.54 To justify these almost blanket rejections, the decision makers used the following arguments: first, the Federal Office was only responsible for the restitution of art treasures, high-value jewellery and cultural assets; only if other looted property had been used up or destroyed (‘thwarted restitution’) was it the right place for corresponding negotiations over compensation negotiations; and second, the authority interpreted the provisions of the Transitional Treaty to mean that applications could only be processed if they had been submitted before the Act entered into force. Only when the applicants had overcome these formal hurdles did the actual disputes begin. The burden of proof lay exclusively with those who had been robbed (proof of looting or forced surrender, mandatory identification of property in the FRG etc.). The applicants and the diplomats representing them were hopelessly overburdened by this. It was impossible for the applicants to provide complete documentation, and so applications were almost invariably rejected – even in those cases in which the Federal Office had recognised that it was liable. Two years after the establishment of the Federal Office, the practice of harassment was so obvious, as illustrated by the seventy-eight Greek

242  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

applications initially submitted, that even foreign minister Evangelos Averoff, who was classified as ‘German-friendly’, lost his composure and complained vehemently.55 However, his protests did not have the slightest effect, as shown by the resumed claims for compensation for the theft of almost 14.8 tonnes of silk cocoons, which were not decided until the mid1960s.56 At that point, just one single case had been documented in the files in which the Federal Office and the restitution expert of the Federal Ministry of Finance, senior government councillor Fricke, who ran this body, were prepared to give in. In 1959, the Greek embassy demanded the return of the head of an antique statue of a woman that a Wehrmacht staff member had ‘purchased’ from an Athenian art dealer.57 In the course of the investigations, it turned out that it stood safely on the mantelpiece of the former field marshal general and commander-in-chief of the 12th Army, Wilhelm List. His general staff had given him the head as a birthday present. Since objects of art acquired under normal conditions also had to be reimbursed in principle, the Germans offered the Greek negotiators a settlement payment, so that List could continue to enjoy this memento from better times in his retirement home in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. However, the Greek embassy representatives then waived this offer and withdrew their claim. It thus became clear that the Federal Office for Foreign Restitution was an efficient public institution for the protection of looted property and its new owners and beneficiaries. The front of rejection only began to crumble after the adoption of the Federal Restitution Act because, in contrast to the practice of the Federal Office for Foreign Restitutions, it also only allowed these restitution claims to be processed if it could be proven that the stolen property had been transported to Germany. As a result, from the end of the 1950s, more and more Greek looting victims – to the extent that they were aware of this bottleneck in the processing of claims and could afford the considerable costs involved – addressed their applications to the Regional Financial Directorate responsible for these cases, and to the Reparation Chamber of the Regional Court of West Berlin. But here, too, there were substantial hurdles to overcome, as we will soon see. In the case of Greece, the restitution problem was accentuated by an outstanding event, which resulted from the largest looting and pillaging operation in the history of the occupation. As described earlier, the Germans, under the direction of the Reemtsma managers, had confiscated the entire Greek tobacco harvest between 1939 and 1941, forced them to buy far below the normal price level and, from the total of 85,000 tonnes, removed about 57,000 tonnes of high-quality oriental tobacco. As a result of this procedure, several thousand tobacco farmers were impoverished and hundreds of tobacco export trading companies became destitute. It is

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therefore not surprising that, from 1946, the Greek military mission, in parallel with its dismantling activities, made a special effort to locate the stolen tobacco stocks and to collect appropriate compensation for them. In doing so, however, they met with little approval from the Allied Control Council or, later, from the British military government. The hoped-for compensation failed to materialise. At the beginning of the 1950s, the tobacco trading companies joined forces and filed compensation claims in the Greek courts, and increasingly in the Bonn Regional Court too.58 They also tried to win the Greek government over to their cause. However, the government hesitated at first because it feared negative repercussions for its foreign trade relations with the FRG. It was no coincidence that in 1951–52 it was the first to remove the Reemtsma managers, who had back then been exposed in Greece, from the list of war economy criminals. In addition, the legal situation was not clear: who had actually stolen the tobacco – had the Reemtsma managers done so on behalf of the authorities of the Reich Ministry of Economics, or was it their own initiative? The first variant was an intergovernmental reparations matter; otherwise, however, the Reemtsma group was liable to pay restitution because it had violated the ‘good morals’ of the ‘honourable merchant’ – even in a most restrictive interpretation of that morality. In 1957, the Greek government finally gave in to pressure from the aggrieved parties, and instructed its embassy to initiate formal restitution proceedings at the Federal Office for Foreign Restitution. From that point, the fight for the restitution of Greek raw tobacco – ‘thwarted’ by its mass consumption during the last years of the war – occupied three institutions at the same time: the Greek judiciary, the Regional Court in Bonn and the Federal Office in Bad Homburg. The case was so weighty that the proven principles of the FRG’s refusal to pay compensation failed. In July 1957, the lawyer Stelios Karakantas approached Chancellor Adenauer on behalf of the aggrieved Greek tobacco exporters and offered the compromise solution of a settlement in order to avoid setbacks in tobacco exports; but nobody wanted to offend Reemtsma either. The initiative was then forwarded to the restitution department of the Federal Ministry of Finance and dealt with there.59 Due to the restitution provisions of the Transitional Agreement, however, settlement negotiations were only possible at an intergovernmental level. After the Greek government had declared its willingness to participate, the negotiations began. These led to the conclusion of a settlement agreement in December 1961, in which the Federal Republic agreed to pay compensation of 4.8 million DM for the ‘withdrawal’ of 5,000 tons of raw tobacco that had been confirmed up to that point (Document 90). In return, the Greek government undertook to work towards the termination of the ongoing legal proceedings, and to

244  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

cease supporting any further compensation claims in the tobacco sector that were not covered by the provisions of the Federal Restitution Act. The Greek government was responsible for distributing the compensation. The tobacco compromise had an after-effect on both sides. The managers of the Reemtsma group subsequently tried, in vain, to increase the compensation amount from their own funds if they succeeded in closing the door that had been left open in the agreement for further individual compensation proceedings.60 In Greece, on the other hand, the ratification procedure was delayed because the left-wing opposition – rightly – criticised the exclusion of the tobacco farmers who had equally suffered; however, the amount was so small – despite the large number of damaged trading companies and the extent of their occupation-related losses – that serious disputes arose over how the compensation was to be distributed. As a result, the ratification law was not adopted until 1967, and the agreement only entered into force after a six-year delay.61 In the end, the Settlement Agreement did not even cover a tenth of the total value of the tobacco stolen.

The Snubbing of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki To conclude this case study, we will turn to a group that has been specifically confronted with the pitfalls of West German restitution practice since the late 1950s – the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki. Even after the one-off payments from the German–Greek compensation agreement had been made, the majority of its approximately thirteen hundred surviving members were still in a precarious situation.62 In Greece, the return of the real estate and industrial property stolen from their families had largely failed to materialise, and the funds made available by the international Jewish aid organisations were not sufficient to rebuild community life.63 In this situation, the Union of Jewish Deportees and community representatives once again turned their attention to the West German authorities as the legal successors of the occupation regime and its perpetrators. While the negotiations on the German–Greek compensation agreement were still underway in 1959–60, they collected applications for the restitution of property that had been stolen from them and transported to Germany in several phases. Their mediator was the Hamburg-based lawyer and legal advisor of the Greek Consulate General, G.S. Constant. He was an expert on compensation of Greek origin (Konstantopoulos) and a member of the Central Council of Jewish Communities in Greece. From the early 1960s, Constant represented the municipal compensation claims of the Jewish community and its individual members. His addressees were the authorities subordinate to the Federal Ministry of Finance, as they were

Greece on the Sidelines Once Again  •  245

responsible for the restitution of such assets for which only general proof of their transfer to the territory of the later FRG could be provided. The first negotiations with the head of the Berlin reparations office, Dr Mertens, were positive.64 Constant provided him with extensive documentary evidence: documents from the Greek state railway on the removal of cult objects from the synagogues, as well as the inventory of the libraries, the hospitals, practice facilities and warehouses. In addition, Constant received a detailed report from the surviving community representatives on the looting and destruction, and on the robbery of gold and precious metals carried out in several stages;65 a memorandum from the Shoah survivor and historian Joseph Nehama from 1946 on the amount of looted gold;66 reports from the gendarmerie and the resistance movement from the time of the occupation; orders from the military administration and the SD Thessaloniki branch office; and testimonies from the Athens war crimes trial against Max Merten, as well as other documents. The amount of material was impressive, and perfectly adequate for a global compensation procedure. It soon also became available at the Federal Ministry of Finance,67 and there too the experts had to acknowledge that there was no doubt that at least large amounts of the looted material would have been shipped to Germany.68 Government Director Koppe could only point out that the obligation to restitution was limited to precious metals and jewels, household effects, libraries and art objects. Because of the importance of the matter, the Federal Ministry of Finance took the initiative, and Koppe got down to work. This was the beginning of the delaying tactics and the search for weaknesses that had become typical for the Federal Ministry of Finance. The Federal Office for Foreign Restitution considered the material to be incomplete, and expressed reservations about global compensation.69 Koppe discovered that the largest item of compensation, the looted gold, had not been transported to Germany: according to the unanimous statements of some of those involved in the crime, it had rather been delivered to a ‘collection point’ at the Reich’s plenipotentiary in Athens.70 When questioned, the former officials Altenburg and von Graevenitz rejected this,71 and Koppe was careful not to pursue this thread further. However, since he was apparently certain that the core of the restitution proceedings did not comply with the legal provisions – namely, the removal of the looted property to the territory of the later FRG or West Berlin – he proceeded to thwart the entire procedure. After five years of waiting, Constant and the applicants he represented lost patience. They intervened at all levels, appealing to the FRG embassy in Athens, the Federal Ministry of Finance72 and the authorities in Berlin. Although the diplomats of the Athens embassy feared in the meantime

246  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

that Germany’s reputation would be seriously damaged in the event of a further delay, nothing happened. The tide only turned when the Greek Foreign Ministry and the West German Claims Conference director, Ernst Katzenstein, backed the initiative of the Thessaloniki Jewish Community, which had by then been supported by the Central Council of Jewish Communities in Greece (Document 97). Their demands were raised in the context of Foreign Minister Schröder’s visit to Athens in October 1966, and gained considerable weight through their inclusion in the Greek– German reparations dispute, which was reaching a climax at that time.73 It was now agreed to set up a bilateral working group to examine the claims at the historical site of the event itself. In June 1967, the German delegates arrived in Thessaloniki. There they could only confirm the validity of the evidence, including that contained in the Nehama report of 1946. A joint vote was taken by the working group: in view of the tragic fate of the Jewish community, a further examination of all the assets that had actually been transferred to Germany should be dispensed with and a settlement reached. The Jewish community was to receive 5 million DM as compensation for the cultural assets and property stolen from them, and a global sum of 13 million DM was to be made available to settle the approximately thirteen hundred individual applications for compensation for the theft of gold and jewellery.74 This tied the hands of the officials in the Federal Ministry of Finance. But they only partially conceded, and continued their stalling tactics. It was not until two years later that Constant succeeded in reaching a settlement with the Berlin Regional Court, which awarded the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki and a Tel Aviv-based organisation of Greek-Jewish emigrants a compensation sum of 5 million DM, plus 350,000 DM in interest, as recommended by the commission.75 However, the inventory of the Jewish hospital, which had been looted and destroyed during the occupation, was not included in this amount: Constant was only able to enforce compensation of 1.12 million DM for this after another fifteen years of legal action.76 On the other hand, the compensation for the two main items – the ransoms extorted from the members of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki in the autumn of 1942 for the release of their forced labourers, and the precious metals and jewels stolen in February–March 1943 – remained open. In 1968–69 there were several meetings on the question of the gold looted from the deported Jews, during which Koppe refrained from pointing out the whereabouts of the gold from Greece, which he had ascertained, as in doing so he would have exposed the occupation administration as a beneficiary. Instead, in collaboration with his superior Féaux de la Croix, he demoralised his Jewish opponents: on the one hand, he snubbed them by breaking down the 13 million DM global amount under

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discussion into several lump sums, with staggered deductions (Document 99); on the other, he undermined the agreed-upon global payment by instructing the Berlin Regional Tax Office to conclude individual settlement agreements (Document 101). The Central Council of the Jewish Communities of Greece had no objections to this course of action. Joseph Lovinger, the president of the Central Council, protested vehemently and demanded a renegotiation on a fair basis: in vain. In December 1971, he finally wrote to Chancellor Brandt and asked for a meeting.77 Karl-Otto Pöhl, who worked in the Chancellor’s office as head of the Department for Economic, Financial and Social Policy, then asked the experts of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Finance about the state of affairs, and their view of things. He accepted their position without reservation, and informed Lovinger that the time for a global settlement of individual restitution claims had expired.78 In this way, the actors of the social-liberal coalition also continued the practices of the previous German administrations. For the just under 6.6 tons of gold looted from the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, the Regional Financial Directorate reimbursed an amount of significantly less than 10 million DM in roughly one thousand individual settlement proceedings; the equivalent value of the looted gold in 2014 amounted to around 211 million euros.

Notes   1. Cf. Radiopoulos, Η διεκδίκηση των γερμανικών οφειλών προς την Ελλάδα από τον Α΄ και τον Παγκόσμιο Β΄ Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο μέσα οφειλές έγγραφα έγγραφα του Αρχείου του Υπουργείου Εξωτερικών [Die Forderungen Griechenlands auf Erstattung der deutschen Schulden aus dem Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg anhand von Dokumenten des Archivs des Griechischen Außenministeriums], Athens 2019; Déspoina-Georgía Konstantinakou, προς έγγραφα και και οφειλές στην Ελλάδα. μετά την μετά και Αθήνα Ψάχνοντας τον δικαίωση› τον Πόλεμο, Αθήνα 2015 [Kriegsschulden und Kriegsverbrecher in Griechenland. Suche nach moralischer Rechtfertigung nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg], Athens 2015.   2. See Nessou, Griechenland 1941–1944, pp. 478 ff.; Apostolopoulos, Die griechisch-deutsche Nachkriegsbeziehungen, 25 ff.; Fleischer and Konstantinakou, ‘Ad calendas graecas?’, 382 ff.; Fleischer, ‘Vom Kalten Krieg zur “Neuen Ordnung”’.   3. Parallel to this, the FRG traditionally maintained good relations with Turkey. As a result, it was able to derive considerable benefit from the rivalry between Greece and Turkey, which culminated in the Cyprus conflict.   4. Fleischer, ‘Der Neubeginn’.   5. See Rondholz, ‘Rechtsfindung oder Täterschutz?’; Fleischer, ‘“Endlösung” der Kriegsverbrecherfrage’.   6. Extensively documented in: PA AA, B 86/700.

248  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

  7. One of the key players, the board member of Osram’s Greek branch, Karteroulis, was a sequestrator of foreign assets in the Greek Ministry of Finance and the Greek representative of the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency (IARA) in Brussels. He enabled the Osram Group to buy back shares on extremely favourable terms and was involved in other transactions of this kind. Germans repurchasing German foreign securities was explicitly prohibited by the provisions of the IARA. See PA AA, B 86/700.   8. See Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, 107 ff., 148 ff., 172 ff.   9. Verbal note from the Greek Embassy in Bonn to the Federal Foreign Office, 6 March 1952; Verbal note from the Federal Foreign Office to the Greek Embassy in Bonn, 20 March 1952, PA AA B 81/48. 10. Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, 107 ff.; Documentation, 406 ff. 11. Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, Document 33, p. 504. 12. The cheque was handed over to Queen Friederike, who came from German high nobility, by Adenauer’s daughter. See Fleischer and Konstantinakou, ‘Ad calendas graecas?’, 389. 13. ‘The head of the municipality of Klissura to Prime Minister [sic] Adenauer, 20. 11. 1954’, PA AA, B 11/1223. 14. Cf. the pieces of correspondence and records in: PA AA, B 26/20; B 130/3287 A. 15. On the theological self-understanding and the activities of the ‘Aktion Sühnezeichen’, see Staffa, ‘Die “Aktion Sühnezeichen”’. 16. See PA AA, B 86/3287 A. 17. ‘Staatssekretär von Scherpenberg, Auswärtiges Amt, an Freya von Moltke, 23. 8. 1960’, PA AA, B 130/3287 A. 18. In February 1945, on the occasion of the Varkiza Agreement to end the ‘second round’ of the civil war, the National Liberation Front of Greece had agreed to disarm unilaterally. Subsequently, it isolated all resistance groups that refused to do so, and gave their details to the associations of the counter-revolution. In March 1946, however, under the dominant influence of the Communist Party (KKE), it went to the other extreme and boycotted the parliamentary elections – despite the fact that its victory was virtually assured and the excessive use of force by its paramilitary opponents could have been stopped. This would have probably averted the particularly bloody ‘third round’ of the civil war (1946–49). 19. Ambassador [Gebhard] Seelos, ‘Generalplan zur Abwehr sowjetischer und DDREinflussnahme auf Griechenland, 12. 11. 1959’, PA AA, B 26/130. 20. See Fleischer and Konstantinakou, ‘Ad calendas graecas?’, 398 ff. 21. Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, Document 59, pp. 616–18; Konstantinakou, Kriegsschulden und Kriegsverbrecher, 406 ff. 22. PA AA, B 26/84. The entire political leadership of the FRG was involved in these efforts. The Federal Intelligence Service also became active. It compiled a list of the children of high-ranking Greek politicians studying in the FRG, who were then visited to ensure their fathers’ commitment to releasing Max Merten. 23. Junge, Federal Foreign Office, Record of a Conversation with Napoleon Zervas, 18. 7. 1957, PA AA, B 26/16. 24. Fleischer and Konstantinakou, Ad calendas graecas?, p. 401. 25. Extensively documented in: PA AA, B 81/203. 26. See PA AA, B 26/133; B 81/203, 204; Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, 178 ff.; Kostantinakou, Kriegsschulden und Kriegsverbrecher, 80 ff. 27. Minutes of the German–Greek Negotiations on the Question of Reparations from 4 to 6 May 1959, 29 May 1959, June 1959, pp. 5 f., PA AA, B 81/203. 28. Numerous examples in: PA AA, B 81/204.

Greece on the Sidelines Once Again  •  249

29. The compensation disputes with the GDR temporarily played an important role in Greek foreign policy, but we cannot go into this matter within this overview. For more detail, see Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, 213 ff. 30. See the protocols and records on this in: PA AA, B 81/204; B 130/2156 A. 31. On Hettlage’s life, see Schrafsteter, ‘Verfolgung und Wiedergutmachung’. 32. See the reports of the Athens embassy on the Distribution Law in: PA AA, B 81/352. 33. Originally, it was additionally required that the applicants were Greek citizens and were also living in Greece at the time of the adoption of the law. This would have excluded the surviving Jews who emigrated after 1945, the Jewish Community of Rhodes and some smaller groups of national minorities. These provisions were dropped following massive protests by Greek Jewish emigrant associations and Jewish aid organisations, and after a West German démarche. See PA AA, B 81/205; B 26/160. 34. Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, 198 ff.; Konstantinakou, Kriegsschulden und Kriegsverbrecher, 141 ff. 35. For more on this, see the ongoing reports of the Athens embassy in: PA AA, B 26/160; Fleischer and Konstantinakou, ‘Ad calendas graecas?’, 441 ff. 36. The loan had a term of 99 years, and the interest rate was just 1 per cent. It had been awarded for political reasons. Its reparation character was clear and was never disputed by the ministerial bureaucracy. 37. Günther Altenburg, Deutscher Industrie- und Handelstag, to Dieter von Mirbach, Federal Foreign Office, 27 February 1957, PA AA, B 26/20. 38. Cf. the reconstruction of the negotiations in two later documents from the Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology: Rumpf, Foreign Office, to the Federal Ministers of Finance, Justice and Economics, Re: Greek Demands from World War II, 25. 12. 1966, BArch B 102/13578, fol. 265-271; Ruhe, Note re: Greek Demands from World War I and World War II, 25 January 1967, ibid. 39. Rumpf, Federal Foreign Office to the federal ministries of Finance, Justice and Economic Affairs, 23. 12. 1966, BArch B 102/13578, fol. 267 f. 40. Georgios Papandreou became prime minister and his son Andreas G. Papandreou temporarily became coordination minister. Andreas then served as a member of parliament, and as his father’s special representative for questions of economic development. 41. See the records and notes in: BArch B 102/13578, fol. 119 ff., 128 ff. 42. Head of Department VI, Féaux de la Croix, Note of 18 September 1964, BArch B 102/13.578, fol. 128 f. 43. Dr Gerbaulet, Note on the Meeting of the Greek Prof. Angelopoulos with Ministerial Director Dr Reinhardt on 16. 9. 1964, ibid., fol. 119–21. 44. Ministerial Director Reinhardt, Federal Ministry of Economics, to Prime Minister Papandreou, 30. 9. 1964, ibid., fol. 130 f. 45. Report of Professor Angelos T Angelopoulos to Foreign Minister Stavros Kostópoulos on his discussions with E. Féaux de la Croix and G. Keiser on compulsory credit to Germany, 26.9.1964. Reprinted as Document 86 in: Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, 691–701. 46. ‘Ambassador Schlitter, Concerning Professor Andreas Papandreou’s Visit to Germany, 12 February 1965’, BArch B 102/13578, fol. 149 f. In fact, in the 1950s, the Norwegian government also claimed repayment of a compulsory credit raised by the Norwegian Central Bank. See the unsigned and undated list of ‘Claims against the FRG raised by foreign states and not yet settled’, PA AA, B 130/5543 A. 47. Memorandum, Appendix to the letter from Andreas Papandreou to Ministerial Director Keiser dated 24 February 1965, BArch B 102/13578, fol. 137 f.

250  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

48. Extensively documented in: BArch B 102/13578, fol. 203 ff.; extracts of the Greek Foreign Ministry’s report on the meeting can be found in Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, Document 92, pp. 721–23. 49. The campaign was also reported in the West German daily press. See the newspaper clippings in: BArch B 102/13578, fol. 197 ff. 50. See the documents in the file in this and the following sections: BArch B 126/60560, 85771; BArch B 102/13578, fol. 289 ff.; PA AA, B 86/700. 51. Previously, the United States had enforced compensation payments for acts of sabotage in which the then German military attaché in Washington, Franz von Papen, had been involved in 1915/16. 52. See the settlement agreement in: BArch B 126/85771. 53. Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, 148 ff. 54. See the documentation of the individual cases mentioned here in: BArch B 126/19141; PA AA, B 86/911; Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, Document 52, pp. 589 ff.; Document 53, pp. 593 ff.; Document 54, pp. 596–603. 55. Embassy of Athens to the Federal Foreign Office, regarding statements by Foreign Minister Averoff on the unfavourable treatment of Greek restitution claims in the Federal Republic, 22 June 1957, PA AA, B 86/911. 56. Ambassade Royale de Grèce, Counsellor N. Katapodis, to the Federal Office for External Restitutions, regarding the claim for restitution or compensation for the thwarted restitution of silk cocoons, 29 December 1965, BArch B 126/19141. 57. Extensively documented in: BArch B 126/19141. 58. Cf. PA AA, B 62/175; B 86/572, 911. 59. Fricke, Federal Ministry of Finance, to the Federal Foreign Office, 23. 8. 1957, PA AA, B 86/911. 60. In doing so, he allowed his dialogue partners from the ministerial bureaucracy a comprehensively documented insight into the extent of the tobacco theft, so as to convince them of the necessity of putting an end to further legal proceedings. Cf. BArch B 102/13578, fol. 83 ff.; PA AA, B 26/160. 61. A German translation of Law No. 56 of 19 June 1967 can be found in PA AA, B 86/911. 62. Molho, Der Holocaust der griechischen Juden, 75 ff.; Benveniste, Die Überlebenden, 182 ff., 309 ff. 63. See Mazower, Salonica – City of Ghosts, 412 ff.; Králova, ‘In the Shadow of the Nazi Past’; Varon-Vassard, ‘Der Genozid an den griechischen Juden’. 64. Raschke, note for Dr Mertens on the discussion with Dr Constant of 20 October 1960, 21 October 1960, Landesarchiv Berlin (LAB), B Rep. 039-01/347. 65. Israelitiki Kinotis Thessalonikis [Jewish Community of Thessaloniki], Detailed list of the damage inflicted by the Germans on the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki during the occupation years (in connection with the Declaration of 30 December 1958), 6 sheets, LAB, B Rep. 039-01/347. 66. Jos[eph] Nehama, Salonika, Memorandum for the Jewish Community of Salonika concerning the gold confiscated from the Greek Israelites by the German occupying power, 2 April 1946, 3 sheets (translated from the French), ibid. 67. Extensively documented in: BArch B 126/117164. 68. M[ertens], note on Greece’s claims for restitution – discussion on 10 March 1961 in Bonn, Berlin 14 March 1961, 3 sheets, ibid. 69. Dr Andrae, Federal Office for External Restitutions, to the Federal Ministry of Finance, regarding the implementation of the Federal Restitution Act, here: Greek expropriations, 15 May 1961, BArch B 126/117164, fol. 133–38.

Greece on the Sidelines Once Again  •  251

70. Koppe, Federal Ministry of Finance, to the Federal Foreign Office, concerning the implementation of the Restitution Act, here: Seizures in Greece, 26 July 1962, PA AA, B 81/352. 71. Dr Köstenbach, Federal Foreign Office, to the Federal Ministry of Finance, concerning the implementation of the Restitution Act, here: Expropriations in Greece, 27 September 1962, ibid. In the letter, Köstenbach quoted in detail from the statements made by Altenburg and von Graevenitz, who in the meantime had become ambassador to Mexico. 72. Constant to Koppe, Federal Ministry of Finance, concerning the implementation of the Federal Refund Act, here: Claims of the Jewish Community in Thessaloniki, 3 January 1966, PA AA, B 86/1222. 73. Extensively documented in: PA AA, B 86/1222. 74. The Federal Ministry of Finance, the Foreign Office and the Regional Finance Directorate in Berlin had formed a working group for the negotiations. This group stayed in Thessaloniki from 11 to 17 June 1967. Cf. the reports and minutes of the results in: PA AA, B 86/1222. 75. See ibid.; Fleischer and Konstantinakou, ‘Ad calendas graecas?’, 437. 76. Ibid., 438. 77. Josef Lovinger, Conseil Central des Communautés Juives de Grèce, to Federal Chancellor Brandt, 27. 12. 1971, BArch B 136/7307. 78. Ministerial Director Karl-Otto Pöhl to Lovinger, 19. 7. 1972 and 21. 11. 1972, ibid.

Chapter 9

Interim Conclusions

After almost four decades of intensive negotiations and decision-making processes, the German ministerial bureaucracy was able to draw up a remarkable interim balance sheet on the reparations issue. With American support, it had succeeded in undermining Allied reparations policy and postponing the final settlement of the issue until a peace treaty for the whole of Germany. From its perspective, this was tantamount to postponing it until Never-Never Day. At the same time, the Bonn bureaucracy had developed specific procedures to place such high hurdles and selection techniques for claims for those aspects of reparations that had been removed from the overall settlement and transferred to it for further processing – namely, the compensation of Nazi victims and the restitution of looted property – that the vast majority of those persecuted by the Nazis outside of Germany were denied the legal right to compensation. Those who did manage to get a response from the German authorities were fobbed off by ‘voluntary’ transfers of purchasing power, which often amounted to a mere fraction of their legitimate claims. To this end, the decision makers in the reparations bureaucracy developed specific tactics, and increasingly refined them over the decades. In retrospect, these can be summarised into a few rules of thumb, the basic lines of which are well documented in source materials from the ministries and authorities involved. First, they consisted of the axiom that under no circumstances should further compensation or restitution payments be granted that were endowed with a legal entitlement. Everything that

Interim Conclusions • 253

nevertheless had to be conceded should be ‘granted’ in sole decisionmaking competence as ‘voluntary’, ‘humanitarian’ or ‘charitable’ aid and emergency measures. Second, this ability to rule unilaterally on the applications was linked to the maxim of keeping the circle of recipients of compensation as small as possible, with the general exclusion criteria of the Hallstein Doctrine, the limitation of the offenses to be compensated to ‘typical National Socialist injustice’, and the postponement of compensation for war crimes and occupation terror to Never-Never Day used as justifications. Third, new procedures were constantly being developed to minimise costs: filibustering tactics, shortened application deadlines, overly detailed documentation requirements, and Byzantine legal argumentation patterns such as the use of the principles of bankruptcy law in restitution procedures. Fourth, this basic pattern of unilaterally ruling on the applications made it possible to prevent the emergence of a ‘front of reparation creditors’: in the first place by playing off the respective groups of creditors against each other, and by sorting the individual applicants into hierarchically staggered classes of damage and treatment. These four rules of thumb were flexibly adapted to the respective claimants, and integrated into the foreign policy and foreign trade interests of the FRG, as required. All in all, the West German reparations bureaucracy displayed a remarkable efficiency, elasticity, determination and malice. Nevertheless, this was no smooth success story. After the marginalisation of the outsiders, a self-confident consensus community of former Nazi desk officers, national conservatives and – from the early 1970s – social engineers was formed. But it did not always succeed in meeting the demands of its bourgeois clientele, to whom the – however limited – reparations and restitution proceedings had in some cases caused considerable losses of property. The question of involving taxpayers to indemnify the ‘reparation and restitution victims’ was therefore the subject of fierce debate from the late 1950s.1 Powerful lobby groups came to the fore here, causing considerable trouble for the Federal Ministry of Finance, which was in charge of this issue.2 In order to save costs, the ministerial bureaucracy wanted to change the compensation payments promised by the Transitional Treaty to the regulations agreed within the framework of the equalisation of burden in favour of the displaced and those affected by the air war, and to compensate natural persons. After the presentation of a corresponding draft law in 1961, the lobbying associations of the ‘Aryanisers’ and large corporations became active in order to bring about priority compensation that went beyond the equalisation of burden and the inclusion of legal entities – the corporations. On the basis of an alternative bill, they brought part of the governing coalition (CDU and FDP) on their side. Since the SPD opposition initially rejected

254  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

both draft variants, the procedure was blocked for years.3 Only after the formation of the Grand Coalition in 1965 did the Social Democrats relent and support the concept put forward by the Federal Ministry of Finance, which reckoned with some 47,000 applicants (43,000 individuals and 4,000 private companies) and estimated the volume of expenditure to be just under 2 billion DM. The Reparations Damages Act was passed by the Bundestag in January 1969.4 The Federal Ministry of Finance’s ‘moderate’ version also had a fatal symbolic effect. While the large corporations had not succeeded in persuading the small taxpayers to compensate for their liquidated foreign assets and the consequences of dismantling,5 a considerable proportion of the ‘Aryanisers’ were paid out of tax revenues because the concept of ‘immoral’ acquisition, based on the German Civil Code, was interpreted in an extremely narrow fashion. In addition, the Reparations Damages Act implicitly classified the entire reparations and restitution policy of the Allies as ‘injustice’. This was a serious milestone, especially since, following the inclusion of the social-democratic camp, it came across as a consensus of society as a whole. However, the prominent and, at the same time, contradictory result of previous reparations practice was the development of real expenditure on compensation and restitution. It blatantly contradicted the intentions of the reparations bureaucracy: the officials of the Federal Ministry of Finance were obviously unable to reconcile their calculations and forecasts with the parameters of budgetary and macroeconomic development. In the mid1950s, they had thought that they would be able to cover the obligations assumed under the Transitional Treaty with an amount of just under 6 billion DM. By the end of August 1960, expenditure on all legally fixed and ‘voluntary’ compensation and reparation payments had risen to 12.6 billion DM, with payments made in the context of the Federal Compensation Act to settle 1.4 million individual claims taking up 8.53 billion DM of that total amount.6 For the next few years, costs were expected to rise to a total of 25 billion DM.7 In fact, however, by January 1969 the compensation and restitution payments actually rose to 34.9 billion DM; payments made under the Federal Compensation Act, amounting to 24.5 billion DM, were again the largest item, while a further increase in expenditure of 11.09 billion DM to a new total of 46 billion DM was forecast by 1975 (Document 100). But even these figures and projections soon became outdated. At the beginning of 1986, the total of compensation and restitution payments made by that point came to 77.055 billion DM. Of this, 59.878 billion DM was accounted for by obligations arising from the Federal Compensation Act; at that time, 13,774 survivors’ pensions and 139,150 pensions for those injured as a result of Nazi persecution were

Interim Conclusions • 255

registered in the two most important benefit groups.8 In addition, a further increase in total benefits was estimated at 25.587 billion DM for the period up to the end of the twentieth century. The projection for 1955 (just under 6 billion DM) had thus multiplied by a ‘correction factor’ of 17 billion to 102.653 billion DM within a period of forty-five years.9 How can this contradictory development be explained? The answer is simple: the majority of compensation payments were linked to the fourclass pension payments of civil servants, and thus followed the expansion of social incomes in the FRG, which was accompanied by enormous economic growth. There was nothing at all objectionable about this, apart from the socially unjust division of those persecuted by the Nazis into four artificial income classes. However, the boomerang effect of the cost increases proved to be problematic because it widened the gap between those who had received compensation and those persecuted under the Nazis who at that point had come away empty-handed. The majority of those persecuted by the Nazis did not live in the Federal Republic of Germany or the emigration countries of Israel and the United States, but in former Nazi-dominated Europe, which – apart from the Benelux countries, Scandinavia and, to a certain extent, France – was decoupled from the dynamics of transatlantic social incomes. If one disregards the payments made to the victims of Nazi persecution in the eleven West European countries, the vast majority of the victims of the Nazis in Europe remained cut off from the benefits paid by the West German compensation authorities. The relative improvement in the compensation payments – which, nonetheless, were still limited to the legally documented claims – thus came at their expense, and the extent of their discrimination increased from year to year. But that seemed only right to the German reparations bureaucracy, because now it could further tighten its selection strategy by citing the ‘scarcely no longer calculable’ cost increases. As the bureaucracy had been protected with such arguments by an all-party coalition since the incorporation of the SPD, it saw no reason to think about a possible standardisation or a simultaneous European expansion of its payments. Instead, in the 1980s, it began to make a big deal of the rising overall figures, and thus sold its reparations policy as a success story.10

Notes   1. Extensively documented in: BArch B 126/38158, 38196, 60653; B 136/7471, 7472, 7477: more information in Lillteicher, ‘Die Rückerstattung in Westdeutschland’, 69 ff.

256  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

  2. These were primarily the Bremen-based Studiengesellschaft für privatrechtes Auslandsinteressen, the Bundesverband der reparationgeschädigten Industrie in CastropRauxel, and the Bundesverband der Rückerstattungsgeschädigten. Strangely enough, Erich Kaufmann, the nestor of the reparations policy provisions of the Transitional Treaty, also took the side of the lobbying associations, causing considerable difficulties for the federal government. For background information, see PA AA, B 86/813.   3. This was mainly thanks to Martin Hirsch, an SPD member of the Bundestag who headed the Bundestag Committee for Reparation Issues until he left the Bundestag in 1965 and, together with a number of committed colleagues, had prevented the SPD from buckling under the pressure of the reparations bureaucracy until then.   4. Gesetz zur Abgeltung von Reparations-, Restitutions-, Destruction- und Rückerstattungsschäden (Reparations Damage Act) of 12 February 1969, in: Federal Law Gazette 1969 I, p. 105 et seq.   5. As late as 1969, I.G. Farbenindustrie AG in Liquidation filed a constitutional complaint against the Reparations Damage Act with the Federal Constitutional Court, but it was dismissed in 1974. See BArch B 136/4440.   6. Of this amount, 6 billion DM went to the German victims of Nazi persecution who had emigrated.   7. Stolzhäuser, Department 3 of the Federal Chancellery, material for the speech of the Federal Chancellor at the 6th FILDER Congress in Bonn on 29 October 1960, here: Redemption, 26 October 1960, BArch B 136/3306.   8. Report of the Federal Government on reparation and compensation for National Socialist injustice, Bundestagsdrucksache 10/6287, p. 31, et seq.   9. Ibid., 30; supplemented by Heßdörfer, ‘Die finanzielle Dimension’. 10. This was primarily the result of a series of publications launched by the Federal Ministry of Finance in 1981, in which the main players in the reparations bureaucracy gave themselves a pat on the back. As a review of the relevant historical research literature shows, it largely succeeded in winning over published opinion – including in academia. Only after the turn of the millennium did other voices have their say. Cf. Federal Minister of Finance in cooperation with Walter Schwarz, ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrecht’ (for further details, see the bibliography).

Chapter 10

The Two-plus-Four Treaty and the Exclusion of the Reparations Question

On 9 November 1989, the SED leadership opened the GDR’s western border, which had been closed since 1961, with no preconditions. This ‘fall of the Berlin Wall’ made the movements to flee the GDR that had been going on for months uncontrollable, and came to symbolise the collapse of the Warsaw Pact system. It triggered a dynamic that within a few months ended the Cold War in favour of the West. The West German ruling classes immediately recognised their opportunity and seized it.1 At the end of November 1989, Chancellor Helmut Kohl proclaimed a 10-point programme in which he proposed a process for the political confederation of the two German states, at the end of which ‘reunification’ would be achieved. After the GDR transitional government had agreed to this model, the West German actors tightened their grip and, at the beginning of February 1990, committed themselves to the concept of the unilateral annexation of the GDR into the territory of the FRG, as provided for in Article 23 of the FRG’s constitution. The GDR leadership saw through this change of course: in the words of an information circular from the GDR Foreign Ministry: ‘The FRG government’s intention is to press ahead with the unification process quickly in order to create a fait accompli for Europe’.2 But it was just as powerless against this as it was against the numerous ‘Round Tables’, which hoped to combine the internal democratisation of the GDR with an ‘equal separation’. The elections to the Volkskammer parliament of 18 March 1990 gave the asymmetrical

258  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

relations between the two German states a broad parliamentary majority. After a few months, monetary and economic union was achieved, and at the beginning of October the Federal Republic of Germany was expanded to include the ‘new East German states [Länder]’. Had it been solely up to the Bonn actors, this process would have taken place without any outside interference. For them, it was simply a matter of using the strategic window that had suddenly opened in order to push through ‘German unity’ as quickly as possible. Then their European neighbours, large and small, would have to ratify the facts that had been created and think about adapting the process of European integration to the changed balance of power. This perspective caused enormous irritation in the capitals of Eastern and Western Europe.3 Warsaw again felt that Poland’s western border was in danger. London predicted a one-sided shift in the European balance of power towards Berlin. French President François Mitterrand’s advisers believed that the Bonn–Paris axis had come to an end, and drew up plans to enclose the German colossus by introducing a European single currency and establishing a European Central Bank. There was growing concern in Moscow that the breach in the dam in East Germany might lead to NATO’s advance to the western border of the USSR. These particular fears, which were based on their own interests, were accompanied by the impression, shared by all, of a risky game of power poker that had to be avoided. For this reason, simulation games to frame and decelerate the dynamics of German unification soon flourished. In Paris and London, the four victorious Allied powers considered convening a conference to define the framework of a German-German confederation process that suited their respective interests. By contrast, the smaller players involved in Western integration and those in the crumbling Warsaw Pact system favoured intensifying the process initiated by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) begun in 1973: all thirty-five member states of the CSCE would meet to moderate the German unification process and integrate it into a framework of pan-European security. The options available to the Soviets were initially unclear. The Soviet leadership apparently considered both options to be a viable way to avoid catastrophic escalation and to be able to withdraw from their East German glacis without losing face unduly. In January 1990, the US hegemon interfered in the European turmoil.4 The White House sympathised with the West German government’s action because it chimed with its own strategic options – namely, to include the whole of Germany within NATO and the European Community, and to drive the Soviet Union back out of Eastern Central Europe. But Washington also calculated the high risks involved and the destabilising consequences of

The Two-plus-Four Treaty   •  259

excessively marginalising the other European regional powers. It was from this perspective that experts from the State Department analysed plans for the containment of the German unification process coming from Europe. They rejected the CSCE model because it was opposed to their own power interests with its potential to neutralise Germany and loosen European ties with the West. It thus voted in favour of combining the Four-Power Conference with the negotiating duo involved in the unification process (the Two-plus-Four procedure). This concept was still hotly disputed in Washington when US Secretary of State James Baker introduced it to his West German counterparts in early February 1990. Hans-Dietrich Genscher was deeply impressed. However, he immediately followed suit and called for a reversal of the order: the negotiations had to be led by the Germans. They never wanted to be sidelined again – as they had been at Versailles and then at the Geneva Four-Power Talks – and the conference should not assume the character of formal peace negotiations. Baker and his advisors recognised this, and with it the ‘Two-plus-Four’ formula was born. After it had gained the approval of US president George H.W. Bush, it became binding for the US administration. From that point, Baker repeatedly made it clear to his Soviet negotiating partners that a formal peace treaty so long after the end of the war would ‘damage German self-confidence’ and also ‘give rise to claims for reparations from a number of countries’. For the Americans, then, the peace treaty had to be replaced by a ‘legal solution’.5 The solution found in favour of West German interests was adopted in the second week of February 1990 at the Ottawa Conference of NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries. Initially, this was merely a decision on the procedural approach, which once again marginalised the former ‘small allies’ – occasionally in the face of vehement protest. The question of whether the outcome would be a formal peace treaty was left to the coming negotiations. In the following weeks, the negotiating powers’ controversial starting points became evident. The Soviet Union now committed itself to a peace treaty and was supported by the GDR in this endeavour until Hans Modrow’s transitional government was voted out on 18 March. The Soviet Union was opposed by the Bonn–Washington axis forged by Genscher and Baker’s advisors. France and Great Britain, by contrast, placed themselves between these two positions. On certain issues, in particular when it came to guaranteeing the Oder–Neisse border, they too tended towards a formal peace treaty; in general, however, they had no choice but to subordinate themselves to the overpowering American–West German negotiating bloc. Since, moreover, the continuing economic destabilisation of the Soviet Union and the political upheaval in the GDR played into the hands of the

260  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

American–West German negotiating bloc, this bloc was able to establish itself as the dominant force in shaping the process already in the first round of negotiations, which took place on 14 March 1990 in Bonn.6 However, it took until June for the Soviet Union to abandon its demand for a formal peace treaty – and the humanitarian compensation payments implicitly linked to it – and to finally accept the inclusion of the GDR in NATO and within the European Community’s sphere of power. Nevertheless, it was by no means the case that everything went according to plan. Even forty-five years after the end of the war, what the Germans had done in Nazi-dominated Europe during the Second World War had not been forgotten. All these memories were re-awoken by the negotiations on a final peace treaty, which had now finally become a prospect, especially since the Germans had always played for time and had postponed the payment of their debts in all relevant international treaties until the conclusion of a final peace treaty. It was therefore inevitable that even those who welcomed the imminent demise of the GDR and the dissolution of the Soviet sphere of influence would draw a connection between the final negotiations that were envisaged and the reparations question. Their political representatives spoke out even more vehemently than the diplomats from non-aligned Yugoslavia, who tried in vain to establish an alliance of reparation creditors with some other ‘small allies’,7 whereas the Soviets merely hinted from time to time that the question of humanitarian compensation might also be raised again.8 Such half-heartedness was foreign to the Polish politicians. Although they did not take part in the Two-plus-Four negotiations, they were always active behind the scenes as the ‘seventh’ negotiating partner because of their exposure to the border issue (the Oder–Neisse line). Their unrelenting insistence on the reparations issue was thus particularly significant. And this was one of the reasons why Kohl, with American support, kept the Polish government at a distance and blocked its attempts to conclude a bilateral border treaty with the Federal Republic, even before the conclusion of the German–Allied negotiations.9 As a result, West German diplomats viewed the Polish advances with the greatest suspicion. They resented the fact that Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, had described the waiver of reparations in August 1953 as one of the greatest mistakes that the fallen Communist regime had made, while at the same time emphasising how the demands now pending for adequate compensation for Polish concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers fortunately had nothing to do with the reparations issue and would have to be negotiated separately.10 This argumentation has dominated numerous debates in the Polish parliament (Sejm) ever since. When Kohl was in Warsaw immediately

The Two-plus-Four Treaty   •  261

before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he had to deal with it in his top-level discussions.11 His counter-arguments, above all his reference to the renunciation of reparations in 1953 and the alleged ‘indirect’ reparations of 1975, did not seem convincing. Moreover, his statement that it was not possible to compensate ‘800,000 people’, but that one would have to make ‘considerations in the area of hardship’ did not – at best – seem particularly sensitive in view of the historical abyss that stood behind this figure.12 The Polish negotiating partners saw no reason to give in to such helpless excuses during the following months either. As early as December 1989, during a visit to Bonn, the president of the Polish parliament, Mikołaj Kozakiewicz, confronted the German public with demands for the Polish victims of the Nazis to the tune of billions of euros.13 These and other Polish demands on the reparations issue finally led Kohl’s advisors to draw a connection between such demands and the guarantee of Poland’s western border, which was to be enshrined in the Two-plus-Four Treaty: ‘the definitive recognition of Poland’s western border; Poland’s definitive renunciation of reparations’.14 In fact, the Germans introduced this calculation into the negotiations on the border issue, which were taking place alongside the main negotiations. In doing so, they rekindled a deep-seated mistrust among the Polish leadership.15 This suspicion was quite justified. In early March 1990, Kohl frankly stated that he was using the question of Poland’s western border as a bargaining chip to force Poland to waive its reparations claims for good, and to make generous concessions to the German minority living in Poland. In doing so, he disavowed his previous arguments against immediately recognising the Oder Line as Poland’s western border, because this decision would have to be left to the coming all-German government. Now that his previous argument had been revealed as a pretext, it almost provoked a cabinet crisis with his free-democratic coalition partner.16 The Two-plus-Four delegations of the Allied powers were also alarmed. It took an intervention by US Secretary of State Baker to calm the situation and to correct the Germans.17 Kohl later explained that he had never intended to draw such a connection.18 Nevertheless, even after the scandal had been settled, there was no bilateral compensation agreement for the Polish victims of Nazi persecution,19 and the question of non-contractual compensation for Polish concentration camp prisoners and forced labourers also remained in limbo.20 In the end, the advances made by Polish government representatives on the margins of the Two-plus-Four Conference led nowhere. The bilateral agreement on the recognition of the Oder–Neisse line came about only after the Two-plus-Four Treaty, and the question of reparations was ignored. Nevertheless, the moves by the Polish government had far-reaching

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consequences. They made it clear to the Federal Government from the outset that the reparations issue was the decisive weakness of the Two-plus-Four negotiations. The FRG government thus considered it necessary to produce arguments to underpin its strategic decisions, agreed with Washington, to circumvent a peace treaty and the associated debts of the Second World War, and to swear in all decision makers and officials of the Bonn political establishment to these arguments. The Federal Foreign Office distinguished itself in coordinating this. On 14 February 1990, a working group on foreign and security policy was set up under the leadership of Foreign Minister Genscher and placed under the responsibility of the Cabinet Committee on German Unity, which had begun its work a week earlier. At the founding meeting, the foreign minister set out the course of action:21 the ‘Four Powers’ would need to provide ‘cover’ for the envisaged annexation of the GDR. At the same time, the Allies would have to ‘declare their rights obsolete’ in such a way that would avoid ‘a solution that was similar to a peace treaty’. This called for a squaring of the circle, which could only be achieved by means of rabulistics, tricks in international law and semantic twists. Three special staffs of the Federal Foreign Office were assigned this task: a special task force on ‘German policy issues’, a project group on ‘German Unity’ and a working group on monetary and economic policy issues.22 To date, the first working paper to substantiate the strategic guidelines of Baker and Genscher in an argumentative manner that we know of was presented by the project group ‘German Unity’ on 23 February under the programmatic title: ‘No need for a peace treaty’.23 In its introduction, the paper stated that in the previous decades the German government had always referred to a peace treaty with the four Allied powers in its efforts to keep the ‘German question’ open, but that it had always treated this peace treaty merely as a ‘means to an end’. This end had now been achieved, the paper claimed, and therefore there was no longer any interest in a peace treaty. The ‘now outstanding issues’ had to be resolved in other ways to prevent the reparations problem from being put ‘back on the international agenda’. However, since two of the four Allied partners in the agreed Twoplus-Four process – the Soviet Union and, more recently, the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher – favoured a peace treaty, and since Poland was also now demanding a bilaterally agreed peace treaty, a convincing counter-argument had to be found. The paper sought to point out that the FRG, despite its reservations about a peace treaty that had been repeatedly formulated in the past, had never committed itself to such a course of action. Moreover, it further claimed, there was no longer any need for a peace treaty. First, the state of war had long since ended as a result of numerous legal acts during the post-war period (the treaties in the East and West, the CSCE process, etc.). Second, the reparations question had

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also been resolved as a result of the considerable German compensation payments and a number of declarations waiving reparations claims. And third, a stable European security order had been created through the CSCE process. As a result, the outstanding issues – the renunciation of the rights of the four Allied powers, the border issues, and Germany’s security policy position – could be settled ‘in the form of coordinated declarations’. On the very same day, Genscher received this memorandum from the head of his planning team Klaus Citron.24 Although it created the prerequisites for a further differentiation of the lines of argumentation, its proposal for tactical action – dissolving the future treaty into several declarations – hardly seemed feasible. As a result, more working papers were produced in the following days, but these were not entirely convincing either. When the Foreign Office presented a first interim report of the Working Group on Foreign and Security Policy to the Cabinet Committee on German Unity on 5 March (Document 113),25 it was again stated that: ‘We want to avoid a peace treaty because it could trigger a chain reaction in the field of reparations’. But the question of ‘how’ to do so remained in limbo, and the ‘reparations question’ was therefore classified as ‘legally and politically difficult’. Nevertheless, there was an enormous need for action at the beginning of the first round of the Two-plus-Four process. On 8 March, the reparations experts from the German Foreign Office and the Federal Chancellery therefore adopted a joint short report,26 the guiding principles of which were presented to Chancellor Kohl a week later by his closest adviser Horst Teltschik (Document 114). After an introductory reference to the context of the reparations issue under international law, Teltschik referred to the previous postponement of the reparations problem by the Transitional Treaty and the London Debt Agreement. Although no contractual reparations claims had arisen in the process, in the event of the conclusion of a formal peace treaty, however, ‘it was inevitable … that the reparations issue would come onto the table in its entirety and in the form of concrete claims’. It was thus of prime interest to ‘oppose any demand for the conclusion of a peace treaty’ and to reaffirm that the reparations issue did not need to be revisited; but such an approach had never been contractually agreed upon. Moreover, the entire complex had been ‘de facto settled, forty-five years after the war’ by the payments already made and by ‘our former war opponents waiving reparations’. It thus comes as no surprise that Dieter Kastrup, the West German head of the Two-plus-Four process delegation, uncompromisingly rejected the inclusion of the item ‘peace negotiations’ in the catalogue of topics.27 There is no doubt that the specifications outlined here made a major contribution to the fact that, after a tug of war lasting several months, the strategic plans of the Bonn–Washington axis to secure the incorporation of

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the GDR finally prevailed. But the Germans were by no means sure of their success, and they were also able to see that the ‘small’ CSCE partner states in Western, Southern and Eastern Central Europe, which had been kept out of the Two-plus-Four negotiations, would never resign themselves to having their reparations demands thwarted. For this reason, the members of the special staffs continued to work intensively on their blueprints for arguments in defence of their approach. Representative of these efforts is a working paper of 15 May 1990,28 which was sent to the missions abroad in an expanded version by the Foreign Office fourteen days later (Document 116). In contrast to previous memoranda, it was systematically well thought out, and presented detailed information to substantiate the arguments that the German diplomats put forward when confronting the foreign experts. The catalogue opened with an overview of those states that had formally renounced their claims for reparations since the end of the Second World War. This was followed by the well-known reference to the alleged lack of a legal basis. The third focal point was the time lag, described as unprecedented, between the end of the war and the presentation of claims for reparations. And fourth, it noted that Germany had fulfilled its compensation obligations by paying a total of around 200 billion DM, which was twice as much as the reparations agreed at the Yalta Conference – not even taking into account the territorial losses and other components of a possible offsetting calculation. The orientation paper ended with the warning that, despite these detailed justifications, if Germany agreed to conclude a formal peace treaty, then it could not evade a demand for reparations negotiations on the basis of the provisions of the Transitional Treaty. The rejection of reparations thus ultimately remained linked to rejecting a peace treaty, and for this reason the German delegation tried until the end to downplay the treaty character of the Two-plus-Four Agreement. In the final stage of negotiations, it tried to reformulate the ‘Treaty on the Final Settlement with regard to Germany’ as an ‘agreement’.29 Nevertheless, the Two-plus-Four Treaty – concluded on 12 September 1990 and supplemented two months later (on 14 November) by the German–Polish Border Treaty – was a classic peace treaty, even if it lacked one essential component, namely a settlement of the reparations issue.30 First, the treaty on the final settlement with regard to Germany definitively established the German borders, with explicit emphasis on the Oder–Neisse line as the border with Poland. Second, it obliged Germany to renounce weapons of mass destruction permanently and to limit its conventional military potential, and it prohibited Germany from waging wars of aggression. Third, it regulated the withdrawal of Soviet troops; and finally, it left Germany free to decide for itself on its affiliation to international alliances.

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The nature of the peace treaty was so clear and comprehensive that one can assume that the three Western parties to the treaty tacitly or secretly agreed to exclude the reparations question. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was on the sidelines, and was obviously resigned to ‘indirect’ reparations, which were made available to it shortly before the conclusion of the treaty as interest-free loans totalling 15 billion DM. These loans were to finance the further stationing and subsequent withdrawal of Soviet troops, which was limited until 1994.31 For the other signatory states of the CSCE Act, however, the implicit renunciation of reparations by the United States, Great Britain and France was not binding.32 Their governments were not informed of the conclusion of the treaty until 1 October, and even the ‘benevolent’ acknowledgement of the treaty on the occasion of the adoption of the CSCE Charter ‘for a New Europe’ in Paris on 21 November 1990 had no connection whatsoever with the reparations question. On the contrary: since treaties that are binding in international law must never be concluded at the expense of uninvolved third parties, the exclusion of the reparations issue was a tacit concession to all CSCE states kept out of the Two-plus-Four process to continue to assert their claims for compensation. The German reparations experts’ arguments were not sound either. Since these arguments are still heard today, let us discuss each one briefly. (1) The claim that Germany never entered into contractual reparations obligations is contradicted by the historical facts. In the Transitional Agreement and the London Debt Agreement, these obligations had merely been postponed until the conclusion of a final (peace treaty) settlement. At the same time, however, since 1952 the FRG had concluded – in accordance with Section Six of the Transitional Agreement – numerous bilateral treaties that constituted classical reparations agreements (the Israel Treaty, the Compensation Treaty with the Netherlands, and so on). (2) Even the argument that the sheer amount of time that had passed since the Second World War had now ‘settled’ the reparation claims – be that forty-five or seventy years later – can easily be refuted. From the perspective of international law, there is no statute of limitations for compensation claims for war crimes or crimes against humanity in civil law either. Moreover, the FRG has on several occasions made compensation payments which fall within the time period under discussion here. In 1974, for example, it fulfilled its reparations obligations for the sinking of Greek merchant ships in the early phase of the First World War. Even the last interest arrears on the government bonds taken out in 1924 and 1930 to settle the reparations debt created by the Treaty of Versailles were only finally settled in 2010. There are numerous other examples, such as

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Namibia’s current reparations demands for the massacres that German colonial troops committed against the Herero and Nama between 1904 and 1907. (3) But what about the formal declarations that waived reparations after the end of the Second World War? This argument is also incorrect. When the former allies of the Berlin–Rome fascist axis concluded peace treaties with the Allies in 1946–47, Italy and Hungary, which were also occupied by the Germans towards the end of the war, waived compensation claims from the funds of the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency, but by no means did they renounce their claims against the two German states that later became sovereign.   The waiving of reparations by the Soviet Union and Poland in August 1953 also only applied specifically to the GDR, which up to that point had made substantial reparations payments, and only became effective in the GDR. In addition, there was talk of renouncing claims against ‘Germany as a whole’. But this was merely a declaration of intent that was not binding under international law, and was, moreover, tied to the fulfilment of clear conditions – namely, the conclusion of the peace treaty sought by the Soviet Union in 1953–54, alongside the subsequent unification of the two German states. This initiative was, however, brusquely rejected by the Western powers and the German government, thereby invalidating the waiver of further reparations claims vis-à-vis a united Germany. (4) In defending reparation claims, the reference to the German-German compensation payments already made in 1989–90 became increasingly significant. Chancellor Kohl and other leading West German politicians initially confronted their interlocutors with a total volume of 100 billion DM. The orienting directive of the Foreign Office of 29 May 1990 then spoke of 200 billion DM, which, taking into account extensive offsetting calculations – the territorial losses, the consequences of expulsion and other damage to civilians as a result of the war – would be considerably higher. These arguments were by no means conjured up out of thin air. They were, however, one-sided: the significance of these figures, which at first glance appear impressive, only becomes apparent when they are compared with the extent of the damage caused by the Nazi occupation of Europe. Only when we compare the actual German-German reparations payments with the extent of the value of the damage caused by the German policy of robbery and extermination, quantified in economic terms, can we judge the extent to which German politicians, for all their avoidance strategies, were completely unable to evade the ‘cunning of history’, as well as to assess whether even a total sum of 200 billion DM could ultimately cover even a fraction of the reparations debt from the Second World War. We will deal with this question in more detail later.

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Notes  1. See Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit; Möller et al., Die Einheit; in addition, see the digitally copied documents in the publishing project ‘Die Einheit’ in the Archive Database of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte; Teltschik, 329 Tage.  2. ‘On the Unification Process’, in Information. Edited by the GDR Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Nr. 7, 23. 2. 1990 (digitally reproduced for the database of the publishing project ‘Die Einheit’).  3. See Attali, Verbatim, Vol. 3; Falin, Politische Erinnerungen, 466, 486 ff.; Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, 768 ff., 789 ff.; Borodziej, Polska wobec zjednoczenia Niemiec; Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, 278 ff.  4. See Baker, Drei Jahre, 171 ff., 187 ff., 198 ff.; Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed, 102 ff., 149 ff., 198 ff.; Genscher, Erinnerungen, 623 ff., 709 ff.; Genscher, Meine Sicht der Dinge, 149 ff.  5. Conversation between König, the GDR ambassador in Moscow, with the head of department in the Soviet Foreign Ministry, Bondarenko, in Moscow, 10 April 1990, reprinted as Document 82 in: Möller et al., Die Einheit, 416–21; the quote is from p. 418.  6. ‘Ministerial Director Hartmann’s Submission to Chancellor Kohl, First Round of the Two-plus-Four Talks at the level of the Civil Service, Bonn, 14 March 1990’, reproduced as Document 220 in: Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 950–52; Report of the GDR delegation on the first meeting of the ‘Two plus Four’ on 14 March in Bonn, 8 sheets with appendixes, PA AA, Bestand MfAA, ZR 3991/95 (digital copy of the publication project ‘Die Einheit’ on the database of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte).  7. See Möller et al., Die Einheit, fn 14 to Document 66, p. 333.  8. ‘Position of the Soviet Leadership on the Unification of the Two German States’, in: Information Nr. 131/II, 22. 2. 1990, Bl. 1-3, with a partial translation of an interview with Shevardnadze in the Appendix, PA AA, Bestand MfAA, MF 031641 (digital copy of the publication project ‘Die Einheit’ on the database of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte); ‘Submission by Ministerial Director Teltschik to Chancellor Kohl, Regarding Recent Soviet Statements on the German Question, 22. 2. 1990’, reprinted as Document 191 in: Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 857–59.  9. ‘Conversation between Chancellor Kohl and US President Bush in Camp David, 24. 2. 1990’, reprinted as Document 192 in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 860–73, here 863 f., 867. 10. See Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, Problem reparacji, odszkodowań i świadczeń w stosunkach polsko-niemieckich 1944–2004, tom II: Dokumenty [The Problem of Reparations and Compensation in German–Polish Relations 1944–2004, Vol. 2: Documents] Document 121 ff., 518 ff.; Żerko, ‘Reparationen und Entschädigungen’, 31 ff. 11. He interrupted his state visit when news of the fall of the Berlin Wall broke, and resumed it afterwards. 12. ‘Conversation between Chancellor Kohl and Prime Minister Mazowiecki in Warsaw, 14 November 1989’, reproduced as Document 92 in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 532–37, here 534 f. 13. See ibid., footnote 8 to Document 214 (Kohl’s conversation with British foreign secretary Douglas Hurd), 934. 14. ‘Presentation by Government Director Mertes and Legation Councillor Franz to Chancellor Kohl on the Connection between the Recognition of Poland’s Western

268  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

Border and Poland’s Definitive Renunciation of Reparations, 27. 2. 1990’, reproduced as Document 195 in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 676 f. See ‘Ministerial Director Teltschik’s Conversation with Ambassador Karski and Deputy Head of Department Sulek, Bonn, 19 March 1990’, reproduced as Document 223 in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 956–60, here 958. Weidenfeld, Außenpolitik für die deutsche Einheit, 487 ff. Baker, Drei Jahre, 189 f. He did so for the first time in a telephone conversation with US president George H.W. Bush on 15 March 1990, in which he additionally stressed that a resumption of the reparations debate would place him in a ‘catastrophic domestic political situation’. See the transcript of the telephone conversation between Chancellor Kohl and President Bush, 15 March 1990, reproduced as Document 221 in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 952–55, here 954. See ‘Presentation by Legation Councilor Ueberschär to Ministerial Director Teltschik Concerning Polish Compensation Claims, 6. 3. 1990’, reproduced as Document 206 in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 915 f. See ‘Ministerial Director Teltschik’s Conversation with Ambassador Karski and Deputy Head of Department Sulek, Bonn, 19 March 1990’, reproduced as Document 223 in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 956–60, here 958. ‘Founding Meeting of the Foreign and Economic Policy Working Group of the Cabinet Committee on German Unity, Bonn, 14 February 1990’, reprinted as Document 182 in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 830 f. See Möller et al., Die Einheit, footnote 28 to Document 56, p. 291. Planning staff/project group: German Unity, VLR Erath concerning Policy towards Germany, here: ‘No Need for a Peace Treaty, Bonn, 23. 2. 1990’, PA AA, B 9/178530 (digital facsimile of the project ‘Die Einheit’ available on the the database of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte). ‘Presentation by the Head of the Planning Staff, Citron, for Federal Minister Genscher, Concerning Policy towards Germany’, here: ‘No need for a peace treaty’, short version, reproduced as Document 58 in Möller et al., Die Einheit, Document 59, pp. 301–3. Reproduced in its entirety as Document 66 in Möller et al., Die Einheit, 329–39. ‘Note by the Legation Councilor Ueberschär, concerning the possible assertion of claims for reparations against a united Germany, 8. 3. 1990’. Although we had located this document in a file within the inventory BArch B 136, we were denied access to it by the Federal Chancellery. ‘Ministerial Director Hartmann’s Submission to Chancellor Kohl, First Round of the Two-plus-Four Talks at the Level of the Civil Service, Bonn, 14 March 1990’, reproduced as Document 220 in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 950–52; Report of the GDR Delegation on the First Two-plus-Four Meeting on 14 March 1990 in Bonn, 8 sheets with annexes, PA AA, Bestand MfAA, ZR 3991/95 (digital facsimile of the project ‘Die Einheit’ on the database of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte). ‘Note by the Head of Unit 012 of the Federal Foreign Office, Bettzuege, on German Unity. Point I. German Unity and Reparations, 15. 5. 1990’, printed in: Möller et al., Die Einheit, Document 99, pp. 469–85. See the German delegation’s final draft contracts – including their handwritten contracts – in: BArch B 136/34465. Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, in: BGBl. 1990 II, pp. 1318 ff. See documents 415, 417, 418, 418 A, 419 B and 422 in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 1526 ff., 1541; on the background, see Zelikow and Rice, Sternstunde der Diplomatie. Die deutsche Einheit und die Spaltung Europas, 355 ff., 444 ff. These

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generous financial transfers were primarily intended to prevent the Soviet Union from becoming insolvent before the ratification of the Two-plus-Four Treaty. We have located the files that could provide information on the extent to which the interest-free loans were considered as indirect reparation payments in the BArch B 136 portfolio. However, the Federal Chancellery refused to allow us to inspect them. 32. See Nessou, Griechenland 1941–1944, 489 ff.; Kancellari Sejmu, Biuro Analiz Sejmowich [Chancellery of the Sejm, Office for Sejm Analysis], ‘Legal Report on the Possibilities of Asserting Poland’s Claims against Germany for the Damage Caused by the Second World War against the Backdrop of International Treaties, 6. 9. 2017’, pp. 38 f.

Chapter 11

Developments since the 1990s

The ‘Voluntary Assistance Fund’ to Ward off Compensation Claims from Poland and Eastern Europe After the conclusion of the Two-plus-Four process, the German reparations bureaucracy returned to its daily routine. Its basic approach did not change, but the justifications it provided did. While it had previously rejected universal compensation claims on the grounds that it was too early to do so, it now declared that it was too late. In this way, the reparations problem was transformed into an unresolved void that opened the door to minimal solutions for the ‘humanitarian’ alleviation of ‘hardship cases’. As in the past, decision-making authority lay with the reparations debtors. It was left up to them to adjust the amounts they paid in their ex gratia transfers of purchasing power to the political prestige of the applicants, and to Germany’s foreign policy interests. The ‘reconciliation initiatives’ initially focused on the East European states, which until 1989 had almost entirely been excluded from German compensation payments.1 At first, the most important addressee of these initiatives was Poland, because defusing the bilateral tensions with the Polish government that arose during the Two-plus-Four negotiations was a priority for the German government, especially since it had repeatedly combined its rigorous rejection of reparations negotiations with promises of voluntary and extrajudicial ‘emergency aid’ to alleviate ‘humanitarian hardship’.2 The border treaty concluded in November 1990 was followed

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on 17 June 1991 by a treaty on ‘good neighbourship and friendly cooperation’, which was intended to facilitate the Polish government’s path to the ‘social market economy’ and towards the European Community, as well as to step up mutual relations.3 On that basis, several German– Polish funds were established that integrated the repeatedly promised ‘humanitarian’ compensation for the lack of reparations. These included an intergovernmental agreement, also concluded on 17 June 1991, regarding the establishment of a ‘German–Polish Youth Office’,4 a ‘Foundation for Polish–German Cooperation’,5 and finally a ‘Foundation for Polish– German Reconciliation’, which was agreed in October 1991 and began its work in January 1992.6 With these three funds, as well as half a dozen other bilateral governmental commissions, Germany asserted its dominant influence on Poland’s further development – including how its culture of remembrance would develop in the future. The services Germany rendered in return were extremely meagre. First, they consisted of a partial cancellation of the loan debts that had accumulated since the 1980s, whereas the Polish government contributed, in local currency, what was left to be repaid to the ‘Foundation for German–Polish Cooperation’. The ‘Youth Office’, on the other hand, was endowed bilaterally, and the German government contributed 500 million DM to the ‘Foundation for Polish– German Reconciliation’, which in the following years was distributed to just over one million eligible victims of Nazi occupation crimes. This was the equivalent of around 405 DM per person.7 During a period of growing mass impoverishment, destroyed claims to state social benefits and rampant hyperinflation in Eastern Europe, this charity offering for the redemption of Poland’s compensation claims, documented in international law, became a model for dealing with reparations claims in the region as a whole. During the negotiations with the Soviets, which began in February 1991, the German government representatives also sought to keep the pending ‘voluntary humanitarian aid’ to a minimum. The negotiating delegation from Moscow initially counted on further indirect reparations on a considerable scale in order to avert the threat of national bankruptcy. The Germans, backed by the Americans, rigorously rejected this. It was not until December 1992, during a visit to Moscow, that Kohl agreed on a ‘Joint Declaration’ with President Boris Yeltsin, which announced a fund initiative for the surviving Russian victims of Nazi persecution.8 In this declaration, the extra-legal and ‘voluntary’ character of the initiative, which was to be endowed with 1 billion DM, was emphasised once again. The disintegration of the Soviet Union delayed the implementation of the project. Finally, the total sum was divided between Russia and Ukraine (400 million DM each) and Belarus (200 million DM); the few hundred surviving victims of Nazi persecution in the Baltic States, which had already

272  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

become independent in 1991, were to be looked after by Belarus and the Russian Federation. The Ukrainian National ‘Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation’ Foundation was established in mid-March 1993, and adopted its award criteria at the end of June 1994. It was followed by the Minsk Foundation in mid-June 1993, which became active in April 1994. By contrast, the Russian ‘Understanding and Reconciliation’ was not established until early November 1993 and only began its work in August 1994. In the second half of the 1990s, the foundation agreements were extended to the other East and South East European states – Albania, the Baltic Republics, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and finally the successor states of Yugoslavia. The Germans made a total of 220 million DM available, of which 140 million DM alone was paid into a ‘German–Czech Fund for the Future’, co-financed by the Czech Republic. Some of the agreements had been preceded by years of conflict – for example, with the Czech Republic, in which the Germans unsuccessfully demanded that the country distance itself from the expulsion decrees issued in 1946; and with Latvia, whose government correctly assessed the mentality of the German reparations bureaucracy and negotiated, in parallel with compensation for the few hundred surviving Jews, much more favourable pension payments for the former Latvian SS volunteers from the funds of the Federal Pensions Act.9 The award criteria of the various foundations were quite different. In Poland, the 1,060,689 eligible persons – former prisoners, forced labourers (who had been exploited for more than six months) and children who had suffered under Nazi persecution – received one-off grants amounting to 731.84 million złoty; this was just under 690 złoty per person, which following the currency changeover of 1995 was the equivalent of about 405 DM. After huge pressure from the Germans, the Russian foundation excluded the Soviet prisoners of war and made the meagre one-off payments, mainly to former concentration camp prisoners and forced labourers who had been minors at the time of their persecution; adult concentration camp prisoners followed as the second category, interned forced labourers as the third, and finally non-incarcerated forced labourers. In the Ukraine, the award criteria were more differentiated: (1) disabled people, victims of medical experiments, and under-age concentration camp prisoners; (2) concentration camp and ghetto prisoners; (3) abducted children; (4) disabled forced labourers; (5) forced labourers imprisoned for more than five months; and (6) non-imprisoned forced labourers. With the exception of the former prisoners of war, whom the Germans had excluded in order to prevent further-reaching reparations claims, all groups of victims were represented. It became evident just how young the majority of those entitled to reparations had been at the time of persecution – a remarkable

Developments since the 1990s  •  273

indication of the disastrous demographic and social consequences of the German occupation of Eastern Europe. By 1997, a total of around 1.4 million beneficiaries had received donations from the various foundations. A superficial glance at the relationship between the beneficiaries and the total amount of money available for the foundation shows that these were all very small sums: a total of 1.72 billion DM was distributed among the 1.4 million beneficiaries who had been informed of the existence of the funds. After deducting a 10 per cent share for administrative costs, this amounted to an average payment of 1,105 DM per person. As a result, the foundation’s board of directors felt compelled from the outset to reduce payments because of the incalculable number of applications. In Poland, transfers of purchasing power averaged just under 1,000 DM. For the Ukraine, an average payment of 615 DM per recipient was documented. The Russian foundation worked with a basic amount of 100 DM for the fourth category, which increased by 100 DM per category and by smaller additional amounts to compensate for the periods of imprisonment suffered, resulting in an average payment of 600 DM. In all cases, these charity offerings were not even sufficient to improve the health care of the beneficiaries, who were predominantly chronically ill and over seventy. The payments were thus not seen by those persecuted by the Nazis as a ‘humanitarian gesture’, but rather as an imposition. Their bitterness grew when they learned from the victims’ associations that the companies that had profited from their forced labour had been asked for contributions to boost the funds when the foundations were set up, but that the companies concerned had consistently refused to do so. Only a handful of heirs to assets started their own compensation initiatives outside of the bilateral foundation structures. The German reparations bureaucracy could not deal with the world’s Jewish aid organisations in such an autocratic manner.10 In August 1990, the Claims Conference in Bonn called for top-level negotiations on the extension of restitution proceedings throughout Germany, and compensation for all survivors of the Shoah who previously had either hardly been considered or not been considered at all. This request was initially met with firm rejection. Only after massive interventions by the US State Department did the Federal Government declare its willingness to include in the German-German agreement on the interpretation and implementation of the Unification Treaty promises to extend the restitution proceedings to the ‘new states [Länder]’ and to negotiate a ‘fund solution’ with the Claims Conference. This solution would provide ‘hardship payments’ for those persecuted Jews who had hitherto not been covered by German compensation practice. Nevertheless, negotiations on this were only to be conducted at the executive level in order to prevent expectations from becoming too great. Because of the higher level of compensation payments

274  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

that were nonetheless expected, discretion needed be maintained when dealing with the East European victims of Nazi persecution. The first round of negotiations began in July 1991 and ended in vain because the representatives of the Federal Ministry of Finance rejected the pension solution demanded by the Claims Conference and did not want to go beyond a fund solution with a limited financial pledge. Following further interventions from Washington, they finally agreed to a pension solution after all. However, they now tried to limit the number of eligible Shoah survivors to seven thousand with a total compensation of 320 million DM, whereas the Claims Conference was demanding a fund endowed with 3.6 billion DM for about fifty thousand Jewish survivors. After further extensive interventions from the United States, which was eventually joined by the Bundestag Subcommittee on Reparations, the two parties finally moved towards each other. On 28 October 1992, the so-called Article 2 Agreement was concluded.11 The Claims Conference was granted 200 million DM to continue the Hardship Fund established in 1980, and in addition it was allowed to pay monthly allowances of 500 DM (later DM 556) for another 38,100 persecuted Jews living in the West – particularly in Israel and the United States. The benefits were initially set to expire at the end of 1999, and had reached a total of 975 million DM by then. Since then, they have been extended on several occasions. In exchange for this success, which was achieved after tough negotiations, the Claims Conference first had to make a far-reaching concession: as in the Cold War era, the Jewish victims of National Socialism living in Eastern Europe were excluded and had to accept the minimum amounts provided by the bilateral foundations in the East, because the Federal Government wanted to prevent the pension model from being transferred to the broad mass of East European victims of Nazi persecution. However, the Claims Conference and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which was particularly committed to this issue, only took this into consideration for a short time. Secret negotiations at the highest diplomatic level took place between 1994 and 1996, and in March 1997 a further round of negotiations began, in which the Claims Conference called for an extension of the Article 2 Agreement to the Jewish world in East Central and Eastern Europe, and for a related extension of compensation payments to former ghetto inmates. These regulations would have required an additional 700 to 800 million DM. Serious disputes broke out again. In July, the representatives of the Federal Ministry of Finance declared that the negotiations had failed because they feared that the pension claims would be extended to non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution in Eastern Europe. Once again, US diplomacy intervened, with Stuart Eizenstat, the secretary of state for trade policy at the US State Department, coming

Developments since the 1990s  •  275

to prominence for the first time. At the same time, the American Jewish Committee ran an advertising campaign in which it highlighted the old-age pensions received by veterans of the Latvian Waffen-SS. It pointed out that the former ghetto inmates had come away empty-handed.12 This campaign scared the German government. It gave in to the pressure, and agreed to the establishment of a mixed commission of experts, which met from October 1997 onwards. In January 1998, a compromise solution was reached that enabled the German government to continue its restrictive practices in Eastern Europe, while at the same time taking steps towards helping the Jewish survivors there. It was agreed to set up a further fund endowed with 200 million DM, from which distressed Shoah survivors from East Central and Eastern Europe would receive a maximum monthly allowance of 250 DM – half of what the Jewish survivors in the Western hemisphere had received since 1992. Some eighteen thousand people were entitled to these benefits. As a result of further negotiations, which abolished minor provisions and included open ghettos within the compensation procedures, this number increased until 2012. In 2007, for example, former ghetto residents who had not been forced to perform forced labour were also compensated for the loss of their entitlement to a pension.13 Our view of the German compensation practice’s hierarchisation of the European victims of Nazi persecution would be incomplete if we were to overlook the small group of survivors – or their parents – who already held a US passport at the time of their persecution by the Nazis.14 After the FRG’s integration of the GDR, they too filed their claims for compensation, having previously often spent years unsuccessfully asserting their claims for compensation in US courts. One of their exponents was the US citizen Hugo Princz, the son of a naturalised US American from Slovakia. The Nazis had murdered his family members and he was the only one who had survived the concentration camp. The State Department and leading US politicians had been lobbying for him since 1990, but it was only when the US Congress set about improving the possibility for survivors of the Shoah to sue German companies that the German government showed itself willing to give in. In 1995, it concluded a global compensation agreement with the US government, the amount of which – 3 million DM – was made available to Princz and ten other victims; in addition, unknown amounts were paid by some German companies. Three years later, as part of a second German–American global agreement worth 24 million US dollars, a further 240 US citizens who had been detained in concentration camps were compensated with an average of 100,000 US dollars. This meant that the compensation payments for those persecuted by the Nazis had developed even further. If we disregard those who still had not received any compensation at all – such as the two million Soviet prisoners

276  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

of war who were forced into forced labour, and the six hundred thousand Italian military internees – the Russian concentration camp survivors, who received just under 1,000 DM, were up against the Shoah survivors who had been issued with a US passport at the time of their concentration camp internment – a ratio of about 1:160. This represents the extreme variance in German compensation practice since the unification process and the conclusion of the Two-plus-Four Treaty. It further deepened the gap between East and West in reparations policy due to the one-sided outcome of the Cold War.

The Compensation for Forced Labourers and the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ Towards the end of the last century, an unexpected opportunity arose to correct the restrictive and exclusionary compensation practices of the past. This time, the hopes of critical observers and non-governmental organisations were directed towards the United States. These hopes were triggered by two German–American global agreements and the agreement just concluded with the major Swiss banks to settle the heirless accounts of the Shoah victims. For more than two centuries, US citizens have enjoyed the right to sue in their own courts against violations of international law committed abroad, and they have been able to join together in class actions. Given that, since the 1970s, the legal protection enjoyed by companies against individual claims for damages has weakened, it was obvious to demand appropriate compensation from those German companies that had exploited slave and forced labour during the Second World War. Since the end of the war, thousands of surviving concentration camp prisoners and forced labourers have emigrated to the United States. So much for the US side of this strategic window – the domain of the plaintiffs acting collectively and with their law firms. For the corporations of the German export industry, they represented a real danger, especially since – as events against the backdrop of the recent negotiations with the Claims Conference had shown – they could at any time be used in effective media campaigns. But there was also a German component: the critics of compensation practices up until that point, and the numerous grassroots initiatives hoping to use their influence by forming an alliance with those involved in the class action suits in order to achieve a socially just compensation solution for all former slave and forced labourers in Nazi-dominated Europe. From 1998, they went about this task with vigour and updated the state of research on the structure and extent of slave and forced labour within the Reich and in Nazi-dominated Europe.15 Older studies on the

Developments since the 1990s  •  277

previous exclusion of forced labourers from German compensation practices were taken up and extended.16 The economic historian Thomas Kuczynski published a groundbreaking expert report in which he calculated the total wages withheld from concentration camp prisoners, prisoners of war and civilian forced labourers. He reconstructed the considerable contribution they made to the expansion and modernisation of Germany’s capital stock, and proposed for discussion a lump sum of 15,000 DM compensation for each person affected – the survivors, as well as the heirs of those killed and those who died after liberation.17 But things turned out quite differently. In the FRG, a foundation initiative was set up, alongside the Federal Government, by the export companies involved in the legal action. Shortly thereafter, negotiations with the US government on the possibilities of quashing the pending class action lawsuits began, and the US chief negotiator Eizenstat, with his ‘10 billion formula’, advanced to become the broker of the compromise that was eventually reached.18 The phases of negotiations involved in this have since been sufficiently critically examined,19 so we can limit ourselves to the essential results of the negotiations. Following the intergovernmental legal protection of German industry from further compensation claims in 2001, a Federal ‘Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ began its work as a public law institution on the basis of a voluntary agreement outside any legal claim. It was endowed with 10 billion DM. Half of this was raised by industry – some 6,500 companies – and half came from the Federal Government.20 Its task was to pass on the bulk of this amount – minus the administrative costs and some reserve funds to establish a so-called Future Fund – to a group of European and international partner organisations, which then distributed the funds to the former concentration camp prisoners (up to 15,000 DM each) and the surviving forced labourers (a maximum of 5,000 DM) in two instalments. At the time that the Federal Foundation was established, about 2.7 million of the approximately 13.5 million former concentration camp prisoners, prisoners of war and civilian forced labourers were still alive. Of these, all former prisoners of war who had conducted forced labour were excluded from compensation in principle, as were those who had not been deported to the Reich for forced labour. Furthermore, all workers previously employed in agriculture, the municipal sector and private households were excluded, but this regulation was subsequently corrected by some partner organisations, albeit limited to much lower amounts. By the end of the campaign, some 1.6 million beneficiaries had been paid the staggered lump sums. Most of them lived in Eastern Europe. Whereas previously they had received the first crumbs from the bilateral ‘reconciliation’ foundations, they were now – eight to ten years later – compensated by a small one-off

278  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

payment. In Poland, for example, 484,000 former forced labourers received 975.5 million euros (3.5 billion złoty) in several tranches until 2006 under the auspices of the ‘Polish–German Reconciliation Foundation’, with an average of around 2,016 euros per person.21 This outcome was not what the critical actors and non-governmental organisations had envisaged. But, for all their illusions, the result reflected the fact that, at the turn of the new century, the power relations involved in reparations policy remained unchanged. The strategic window of opportunity quickly closed again, and the opportunity – perhaps the last one – for a consciously non-hierarchical, socially just compensation solution that would overcome the differences between the nation states had passed. It was not until 2015 that the Bundestag’s Budget Committee decided to award each of the two thousand still-living former Soviet prisoners of war with a lump-sum compensation payment of 5,000 euros.22 Both the material and social components of the reparations issue thus remained on the agenda. Particularly in the countries of Eastern Central Europe, rumours continued to circulate – sometimes quite loudly, but sometimes also diplomatically and discreetly – behind the scenes. Poland was responsible for the escalating public disputes. The then mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczyński, got the ball rolling in 2004 when he tasked a historical commission to chronicle the public property destroyed during the German occupation, and to estimate its current value. In doing so, the mayor was reacting to an intervention by Preußische Treuhand GmbH & Co KGaA [Prussian Claims Society], which was founded in 2000 and had claimed compensation from Poland. The commission reconstructed the various stages of the process of destruction, which began with the air raids at the beginning of the German invasion of Poland, and which, after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, led to the destruction of the remains of the residential quarters located west of the Vistula and the historic city centre. If they had not already fled, the population were deported, with almost a million people losing their belongings. The commission estimated the losses of public property alone at the equivalent of at least 31.5 billion US dollars; it later increased this sum to 45 billion and finally 54.6 billion dollars (based on values in 2004).23 In September 2004, the Sejm, the Polish parliament, followed suit and formally called on the government to continue treating the reparations issue as a significant problem area for German–Polish relations. However, things did not stop at political appeals. In the same year, the Institute for International Affairs in Poland published all the important Polish documents on the reparations issue since 1944 as part of a research project, and thus placed the historical-political debate on a new footing.24 Three years later, the ‘Foundation for Polish–German Reconciliation’ published a trilingual reprint of the investigation report, in

Developments since the 1990s  •  279

which the Office for War Compensation at the Presidium of the Council of Ministers had, at the beginning of 1947, drawn up a balance sheet of the destruction and humanitarian damage caused by the German occupiers in Poland.25 In the introduction, the chairman of the foundation, Mariusz Muszyński, wrote that until 2006 the foundation had primarily dealt with the distribution of aid money to the surviving victims. This task was now finished, he stated, but the time of the ‘community of interest’ had now passed.26 It was not a matter of opening up old wounds, he said. But the extent to which the Polish catastrophe had been excluded from West European historical discourse and distorted by revisionist tendencies was unacceptable. It is in this spirit that the new edition of the report, which is largely unknown abroad, should be understood, he claimed. That was a clear signal that also indicated that the foundation had freed itself from its previous German tutelage. The German media, however, hushed up the report, and historical research did not take note of it either, although it was becoming increasingly aware of the shortcomings of its previous publications on ‘reparations’. The Czech Republic, on the other hand, took a rather quiet but possibly much more effective line. When the US State Department began to get involved in the question of compensation for forced laborers at the turn of the millennium, the Prague government obtained a legally binding guarantee from Washington that the Czech Republic’s claims for reparations on the FRG would not be affected in any way by the forthcoming agreement.27 The Federal Government only later learned of this agreement that had been made behind its back. This triggered considerable turbulence behind the scenes.28

Notes  1. See Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 429 ff.; in addition – despite his tendency to support the general conditions – see Küpper, ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrecht in den Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion’, 639–56; Küpper, ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrecht in den Staaten Osteuropas’, 758–68.  2. Cf. Żerko, ‘Reparationen und Entschädigungen’, 31 ff.  3. ‘Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Poland on Good Neighbourship and Friendly Cooperation’, in Bulletin des Presse- und Informationsamtes der Bundesregierung, Nr. 68, 18. 6. 1991.  4. ‘Agreement between the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Government of the Republic of Poland concerning the German–Polish Youth Office’, signed on 17 June 1991, printed in German in Ludwig, Polen und die deutsche Frage, 300–7.

280  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

  5 https://sdpz.org/; Tomala, ‘Später Segen: Die Gelder der “Stiftung für deutsch-polnische Zusammenarbeit” dienen wichtigen und nützlichen Zwecken’, Die Zeit, 21. 5. 1993.  6. ‘Exchange of Notes between the Foreign Office State Secretary Kastrup and the Head of the Office of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Poland Krysztof Zabinski on the “Foundation for Polish–German Reconciliation”, Bonn/Warsaw 16. 10. 1991’: Blumenwitz, Das Offenhalten der Vermögensfrage, 125–27; the Polish version is available in Problem reparacji, Volume II, Documents, No. 127, pp. 537 f.  7. Detailed information on the groups of victims and figures can be found in Żerko, ‘Reparationen und Entschädigungen’, 38 f.; Office for Sejm Analysis, ‘Legal Report on the Possibilities of Asserting Poland’s Claims against Germany for the Damage Caused by the Second World War against the Backdrop of International Treaties’, 39 f.  8. The ‘Humanitarian Settlement’ section of the ‘Joint Declaration’ is contained in: ‘Bulletin des Presse- und Informationsamts der Bundesregierung’, Nr. 139, 22. 12. 1992, p. 1265.  9. The veterans of the Latvian Waffen-SS – around three hundred – received monthly pension payments of 200–300 DM under the Federal Pensions Act. See Küpper, ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrecht in den Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion’, 654 f.; Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 434 f. 10. See Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 438 ff. 11. See the ‘Agreement of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany in Accordance with Article 2 of the Agreement on the Implementation and Interpretation of the Unification Treaty (Article 2 Agreement), 28 October 1992’, as well as the new version of 15 November 2012, SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72, printed matter, collection of laws and treaties. 12. For the context and the details, see Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 499, 447 f. 13. ‘Federal Government Guidelines on the Recognition of Benefits for Persecuted Persons for Work in a Ghetto that was not Forced Labour, and which has not been Taken into Account under Social Security Law, 1. 10. 2007 – New Version of 20. 12. 2001’, in Bundesanzeiger No. 186, 5. 10. 2007, p. 7693; No. 195, 28. 12. 2011, p. 4608 f. 14. See Hennies, Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit’, 66 f.; Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 436 f. 15. For an exemplary study of this, see Spoerer and Fleischhacker, ‘Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany’. 16. On the refusal to pay compensation up until that point, see Herbert, ‘Nicht entschädigungsfähig?’. 17. Kuczynski, ‘Entschädigungsansprüche’, 15–62. Four years later, a revised and expanded version of this appeared in book form, in which Kuczynski recalculated the total amount to be compensated (now 228 billion DM): Kuczynski, Brosamen vom Herrentisch. 18. Eizenstat, Unvollkommene Gerechtigkeit, 308 ff. 19. See Hense, Verhinderte Entschädigung; Kuczynski, Brosamen vom Herrentisch, 139 ff.; Hartz, ‘Ökonomie und Entschädigung nationalsozialistischer Zwangsarbeit’. 20. ‘Law on the Establishment of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, 2. 8. 2000, in: BGBl. 2000 I, pp. 1263 ff. 21. Żerko, ‘Reparationen und Entschädigungen’, 39. 22. See the supplementary documents (motions, expert opinions, minutes of the proceedings) in the Bundestag printed matter 18/3316 of 25 November 2014 and 18/5680 of 29 July 2015; German Bundestag, Budget Committee, Protocol No. 18/47, SfS Archive, inventory III.72, printed matter. 23. Warszawa szacuje straty wojenne, http://www.um.warszawa.pl/aktualnosci/warszawaszacuje-straty-wojenne (last accessed 16 March 2007); Website of the Warsaw City Administration (as of 13 August 2009).

Developments since the 1990s  •  281

24. Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, Problem reparacji. 25. Foundation for Polish–German Reconciliation, Bericht über Polens Verluste (available in the Polish original and in German translation). 26. Ibid., 125 ff. 27. Verbal note from the Czech Republic to the State Department, 12. 7. 2000, and an undated, unsigned reply note from the State Department to the Embassy of the Czech Republic, BArch B 136, (reproductions of the Federal Chancellery on the basis of the Freedom of Information Act in: SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72). 28. Cf. the email and telex correspondence of the FRG embassy in Prague with the Federal Foreign Office’s Situation Centre, July/August 2000.

Chapter 12

Greece Comes Away Empty-Handed

Political Skirmishes Following the Two-plus-Four Treaty There was another ‘small’ CSCE partner with whom the outstanding reparations were intensively discussed – Greece. From the spring of 1990, the Greek press’s coverage of the German unification process and the Two-plus-Four negotiations highlighted the debts resulting from the German occupation. The unfinished business of the past decades – especially the unpunished massacres in the martyred villages and the catastrophic consequences of financial plundering – made the headlines once more. This placed the conservative government of Konstantinos Mitsotakis, elected in 1990, under increasing pressure. In October 1990, the head of government still stated that he did not consider demands for reparations from ‘reunified Germany to be in keeping with the times’.1 But just a few weeks later, German diplomats had considerable difficulty in keeping this issue off the agenda of a German– Greek economic meeting scheduled for early November (Document 117). In December, under considerable pressure from the opposition, Mitsotakis eventually modified his position. Now he told parliament that, while the Two-plus-Four Treaty and the CSCE Act had made a multilateral solution to the reparations issue impossible, the matter had not yet been resolved and would therefore have to be pursued bilaterally.2 This marked a return to the approach of all previous governments, to which official politics in Greece has remained faithful to this day.

Greece Comes Away Empty-Handed  •  283

These prospects were hardly reassuring for the Germans, because it was clear that their Greek partners would not yield on the compensation issue in the future either, but would bring up their outstanding claims at every available opportunity. The German diplomats would thus have to be on their guard at all times, especially on this issue, and stay up to date with it. The working paper ‘German Unity and the Reparations Issue’ (Document 115), announced to the Athens embassy by wire decree on 4 May, became a decisive basis for discussion,3 and in the following years, the volumes of files in the relevant embassies in Athens and Bonn filled up. The associated departments in Berlin and Bonn were overwhelmed with monthly reports on the ‘state of affairs’ (see Docs. 115, 121). These contained advice on ‘how to conduct discussions’ and various ‘argumentation aids’ to support the diplomats on the ground and to help them assert themselves against the legal actions that were being prepared with ever greater expertise.4 However, the success was modest. The Consulate General of Thessaloniki in particular signalled again and again that it could do little with these broad brushstroke justifications – already known to us from the general context – and demanded more concrete instructions from Germany. The reparations experts at the Federal Foreign Office became increasingly overburdened by this task. No amount of sophisticated discussion tactics could ultimately prevent the emergence, at the end of the disputes, of a refusal attitude that did not go beyond limited statements such as: ‘the reparations issue is settled, there is nothing to negotiate’. In the end, the Greeks were always snubbed. Since, as a result, nothing ultimately moved on the political-diplomatic stage, we can be quite brief in our analysis of the extensively documented German–Greek reparations dispute during the past twenty-five years. In the early 1990s, the Greek government first tested the reparations issue at the highest political level. During Genscher’s visits to Athens (April 1991) and Kohl’s visit to Crete a month later, however, this was met with a flat rejection and the argumentation patterns with which we have already become familiar.5 After that, the Greek government limited itself to renewing its unresolved demands at every available opportunity. These demands included fulfilling the largely unfinished reparations deliveries from the Inter-Allied Reparations Agreement of 1946 (7.18 billion US dollars), compensation for the merchant ships sunk before the war began (153 million US dollars), reimbursement of the compulsory credit paid during the occupation (135.8 million US dollars) and residual compensation from the First World War amounting to 263 million US dollars.6 After the conservatives were voted out of office, the PASOK government under Andreas Papandreou, which had once again taken the political reins,

284  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

stepped up the pace. Now, experts who had already been involved in the 1960s – such as the economist Angelos Angelopoulos – had their say, but there were also some new impulses, to which the historian Hagen Fleischer, who taught at the University of Athens, contributed in particular. German diplomats observed these developments with growing concern,7 and they reported that the main focus should be to reject any willingness to enter into negotiations over compulsory credit. In addition, a new campaign for individual compensation for the survivors of Nazi terror on a judicial basis was launched in the summer of 1995, which put the Greek government under considerable pressure – as we will see in more detail below. As a result, for the first time the Greek government abandoned its waitand-see attitude and submitted a verbal note to the Federal Foreign Office on 14 November 1995, which called for the commencement of bilateral negotiations on the repayment of the compulsory credit.8 Their request was brusquely rejected, with the Foreign Office using a formal error – the contents of the note had been leaked to the press shortly before – to make a fool of the Greek government in public.9 This once again made the balance of power plain. Nevertheless, the Germans gradually became uncomfortable with the stubbornness of Athens. Their attempts to neutralise Greece’s demands for compensation by means of evermore sophisticated legal arguments had failed. Worried, they had to ask themselves what would happen if the Greeks turned the tables and adopted the same defensive measures as the Germans. The Germans liked to argue that all Greek demands fell under the universal reparations complex, claiming that the reparations issue had been resolved by the fact that it was not dealt with in the Two-plusFour Treaty. Moreover, the London Debt Agreement could not be invoked because there too the reparations issue was not linked to a peace treaty, but merely postponed to a ‘final settlement’. Why should the Greek counterparts not conclude from this that the time was now ripe for such a final settlement, and call upon all signatory states of the London Debt Agreement to hold a final reparations conference? In fact, the Bonn experts feared that the Greeks would take such a step, and therefore considered it urgently necessary to reverse the previous line of argument. A Foreign Office status report on 1 December 1995 stated: ‘However, we want to let the legal argumentation take a back seat … In so doing, we are merely provoking the demand that a conference on the final settlement of the reparations issue now be held with all signatories of the LDA [London Debt Agreement]. Our main concern must be to prevent an alliance being formed against us at the instigation of Greece, which would press for the convening of such a reparations conference’.10

Greece Comes Away Empty-Handed  •  285

However, Greek politics did not seek to close ranks with the other CSCE partners that had outstanding accounts to settle with Germany, but continued to go its own way. In addition, it trusted the advice of its authoritative experts, who regarded a continuation of the general reparations discourse as hopeless. Greek politics pushed the general reparations issue increasingly into the background and concentrated instead on the problem of the occupation loan. Such an approach seemed particularly promising for various reasons. The interest-free compulsory credit imposed on the Greek central bank was officially recognised by the Germans as ‘Reich debt’ and was serviced by partial repayments, as with a normal loan. Moreover, the amount to be repaid was limited, and was considered a one-off event that had only occurred in this form during the occupation of Greece, so that it would not have any prejudicial effects on the other formerly occupied countries. What is more, since the end of the war, the Greek delegations had repeatedly removed the compulsory credit from the general reparations package and had treated them as a loan to be repaid separately. Ultimately, the intention behind all these considerations was to build a bridge to the German reparations bureaucracy, to reach a compromise and to defuse the conflict that was again escalating over the compensation issue. But these hopes were built on sand. The Germans rejected the offer. As before, they claimed that the compulsory credit was part of the reparations problem that they had declared to be ‘settled’ and they remained on their confrontational course, as was evinced by Kohl’s statements at a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg at the end of September 1998.11 But there was no breakthrough on the international stage either. When, shortly afterwards, the Greek government, together with the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, presented a memorandum on the unresolved agenda items of compensation policy at a conference on ‘Holocaust Era Assets’ that had been organised by the US State Department and the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hagen Fleischer’s presentation on the results of his compulsory credit research were passed over in silence.12 In 2001, the Greek prime minister Kostas Simitis finally convened a commission of experts to settle the reparations issue for good. The commission once again voted to put the general reparations problem on hold, to concentrate on the repayment of the compulsory credit – misinterpreted as forced loans – and to establish a compensation and culture fund from the 5 billion euros that was expected to be paid, which would benefit the martyred villages in particular.13 Simitis followed the proposals of his advisors and presented the concept to the German leaders. However, he met with sharp rejection from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Foreign Minister Joseph Fischer. Germany’s fundamental rejectionism did not change even in the ‘red–green’ era.

286  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

A New Compensation Campaign After the associations of the survivors of Nazi terror had tried, in vain, to influence the stagnating diplomatic-political conflicts with appeals and petitions for years, in July 1995 they took matters into their own hands. They used the newly founded municipal associations (nomarchies) as a platform, and Jannis Stamoulis, the prefect of Boeotia, became their most prominent spokesman. The former socialist MEP and lawyer took advantage of the class-action lawsuit – something that at that time had also been discovered by former concentration camp slave workers living in the United States. This was a matter of urgency, because civil law claims in Greece expire five years after the law governing them comes into force: the deadline for asserting claims under the Two-plus-Four Treaty was 12 September 1995. Numerous martyred villages, including Distomo, are located in the prefecture of Boeotia. This is where the campaign began,14 and soon the first class-action lawsuit against the Federal Republic of Germany was filed with the Regional Court of Livadia.15 The campaign gained enormous momentum. Other prefectures and municipal initiatives joined in, including the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki. To expedite proceedings, some prefectures distributed pre-printed application forms. By the end of August 1995, forty thousand participants were expected, and by the end of the application deadline this number had risen to over sixty thousand. The response both in the media and in politics was enormous. The dispute over individual compensation for German war crimes had become a mass phenomenon. As a result, the Athenian political class came under considerable pressure. On the one hand, it had to take into account the fact that it was dealing with an increasingly prominent regional ‘parallel diplomacy’; on the other hand, after the German reparations bureaucracy had got over the shock effect of the campaign (Docs. 95, 96 and 97), it decisively turned against it. It informed the Greek government that, in its view, the actions brought against the FRG before the Greek courts were contrary to international law, violated state immunity, and in the event that the Greek government should support the campaign politically, raised the prospect of considerable negative consequences.16 In return, the Greek government repeatedly emphasised its neutrality in this matter, but also pointed out that its hands were tied in relation to the judiciary and the regional self-governing bodies that had just become operational. Moreover, from its perspective, the assertion of individual claims for damages was covered by the international provisions on reparations.17 The Greek government thus sat on the fence. Understandably, the leaders of the campaigns did not hesitate to criticise the government, but they

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overlooked the fact that Athens was indeed ‘neutral’ and did not give in to the pressure from Germany. As a result, a direct confrontation between the initiative and its German addressees became inevitable. When the group of plaintiffs from Boeotia wanted to submit their class-action lawsuits to the German embassy in Athens, they were dismissed with the argument that such a sovereign act violated the embassy’s immunity status.18 The Greek initiatives then turned to their own embassy, which in September and October 1995 handed over dozens of packages of class actions to the Foreign Office in Athens. In this case, too, the Germans reacted immediately by post: the parcels were returned unopened, and in the accompanying verbal notes the Foreign Office emphasised its legal position that the class actions brought against the FRG by the Greek victims of Nazi persecution disregarded the principle of state immunity, and were therefore contrary to international law.19 This was a harsh approach, but the documents that have since become available show that the German reparation experts were coming under increasing pressure. The provisions of international reparations law explicitly stipulate that individuals who have been harmed by acts of war contrary to international law may also assert their claims for damages against the former enemy states, but the necessary procedures for this must be regulated within the framework of intergovernmental agreements. In addition, the aggrieved parties were at any time free to assert their claims for damages personally before the courts of the former enemy state. Thus, if the Greek government had formally supported the campaign of legal action and, with reference to the completely inadequate payments resulting from the Global Agreement of March 1960, had demanded a further round of intergovernmental negotiations, the legally justified defence of its German counterparts would have collapsed. This was all the more so because, almost at the same time, such a global agreement was negotiated with the United States to settle the extremely high claims for damages from concentration camp survivors in that country. The German experts thus had to prepare themselves for the worst – and they decided once again to take the bull by the horns. They intensified the threat to the Greek government in order to persuade it to stick to its approach of passively waiting. But they also took precautions in case their opponents were to become aware of the provisions of the Princz Agreement: should this happen, then they would claim that the ‘Princz case’ merely provided the occasion for the conclusion of a longoverdue global compensation agreement with the United States.20 As a result of this offensive approach to neutralise the Greek government, the medium-term prospects of success for the initiators and sponsors of the class actions deteriorated considerably. The short-term success they achieved in the legal arena could not hide this fact. As this ‘public’ aspect

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of the events has already been reconstructed in detail by other authors,21 here we can restrict ourselves to the basic facts. Several, but not all, first instance courts granted the plaintiffs’ request for damages from the Federal Republic of Germany. These proceedings ultimately ended up before the Supreme Court of Greece (Areopagus) in Athens, which at the beginning of May 2000 confirmed the first-instance rulings – with explicit reference to analogous US case law, among other things – by a large majority. This cleared the way for enforcement of the compensation sum, which was set at the equivalent of 60 million DM. However, this enforcement was double-edged. The plaintiffs had limited themselves to compensation for the acts of violence inflicted on them and their relatives by German Wehrmacht units and paramilitaries, and had ignored other aspects – such as the famine triggered by the financial and economic plundering, the forced recruitment conducted by the Todt Organisation, and the deportation of thousands of concentration camp inmates and hostages to Germany for slave labour.22 As a result, the now pending seizure actions could not be carried out against the successor bodies of the occupying power located in Greece, but only against some FRG properties in Greece in general, which were not protected diplomatically. The attention of those involved was thus drawn – albeit only after a controversial decision-making process – towards the Goethe-Institutes, the German Archaeological Institute and the German schools in Athens and Thessaloniki. The confiscation of these German cultural-political institutions immediately after the liberation of Greece would have been essential, especially because of the fatal role they played during the years of occupation. But in 2001, the foreclosures had the effect of being hostile to culture, which could no longer be offset by the claim to compensation for the barbaric occupation crimes. As a result, the mood shifted away from the compensation initiatives. The Greek minister of justice suspended the enforcement, and in September 2002 the Supreme Court of Greece, which was called upon in a similar procedure, implicitly reversed the Areopagus ruling. Now the principle of state immunity from individual compensation claims came into force once again in Greece, and the German reparations experts were to be proved right when they predicted, in a brief statement written back in 1996, that the Greek class actions would also be rejected by the European Community Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights.23 But several years passed until this happened, and the initiative so successfully launched by the Boeotian prefect Stamoulis and the Distomo Victims Association was eventually only rejected in February 2012, when the International Court of Justice in The Hague also declared the class actions null and void by citing the reference to the principle of state immunity.24

Greece Comes Away Empty-Handed  •  289

But the Federal German judiciary, which was quite competent in matters of international law, also stonewalled.25 In June 1997, the Regional Court in Bonn rejected the claims of some Distomo survivors on the grounds that the massacre of June 1944 had been an act of war that could only be compensated by reparations law; the court further claimed that ever since the Two-plus-Four Treaty, which was also binding on the nonsignatory states, the reparations issue had been settled. This verdict was upheld by all authorities and was finally explicitly confirmed by the Federal Constitutional Court too. Nevertheless, the Greek compensation initiatives did not give up. They now sought judicial support in neighbouring Italy, where the judiciary has for some years now accepted the claims of former military internees and ruled that the German Federal Government, as the successor to the Nazi dictatorship, should pay compensation. This step was only logical in so far as the Italian constitution – as in the United States – also allows foreigners to sue for compensation for human rights violations committed against them. This was a nuisance for the Italian government. It thus supported Germany’s dual tactic and decided to stave off legally binding claims and instead to play the ‘culture of remembrance’ card, decorated with ‘voluntary humanitarian’ gestures. With this in mind, the foreign ministers of Italy and Germany appointed a bilateral commission of historians in 2009 to document the crimes committed against military internees, and combine them with symbolic practices of ‘reconciliation’ in order to ‘promote, in a European spirit, the rapprochement of the remembrance cultures in both countries’.26 While the historians were working on their contribution to the study of legitimacy,27 the Foreign Office had made representations to the International Court of Justice in the Hague, and in February 2012 received confirmation once again that individuals were not entitled to take civil action against foreign states (state immunity); the Italian government, for its part, had immediately put this decision into law to prevent further lawsuits by former military internees.28 In October 2014, however, the Italian Constitutional Court ruled against this interaction between the two governments. It repealed the law that implemented the Hague’s ruling, and decided that state immunity would not apply to war crimes or other serious human rights violations. The frozen proceedings of former military internees were reactivated, and the lawsuits of survivors and descendants of Greek massacre victims were also permitted. In August 2016, the Higher Regional Court of Florence imposed the first enforcement order against German public property in Italy. The German government no longer intervened.29 It relied on the Italian government to take countermeasures as quietly as possible. The victim groups, however, gained new hope and continued with their campaign.

290  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

Parallel to the class-action lawsuits launched in the mid-1990s by the survivors and descendants of the martyred villages, the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki spoke out once again too. They returned to a restitution claim that they had put on hold during their previous disputes with the German authorities. This concerned the return of the ransom money that the German military administration had extorted from the Council of the Jewish Community in the autumn of 1942 as a prerequisite for the release of the Jewish forced labourers before they were deported, together with their fellow Jewish citizens, to the concentration and extermination camp in Auschwitz a few months later.30 Fifty-five years later, the lawyer Telis Nahmias turned to the Supreme Civil Court of Thessaloniki on behalf of the Jewish Community, and sued the Federal Republic for repayment.31 The court dismissed the claim in 1999 on the grounds that it was not competent to deal with civil law claims of Greek citizens against foreign countries. Two years later, however, the Court of Appeal confirmed its jurisdiction in international disputes. However, it now dismissed the claim on the grounds that information on the number of forced labourers, their hours of work and the wages withheld from them was missing. Nahmias could not accept this ruling: after all, the ransom of the Jewish forced labourers had amounted to naked extortion, and the demand for restitution exclusively pertained to the ransom paid in the process. He therefore appealed to the Supreme Court in Athens. The Areopagus then referred the case back to the Court of Appeal in Thessaloniki, and in 2013 it finally declared itself to be not competent as the court of last instance, because international treaties protected Germany from civil law claims made by foreign private individuals. This exhausted the legal options in Greece, and the Jewish Community commissioned a lawyer based in Israel to bring an action against Germany and Greece before the European Court of Human Rights, since both countries had blocked the legal remedies for civil law compensation claims. However, the Strasbourg-based court also declared that it had no jurisdiction on the grounds that the admissibility criteria of the European Convention on Human Rights had not been met. This also blocked the path taken by the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki towards a legal dispute conducted behind closed doors. The decision of the European Court of Human Rights, made on 17 April 2014, caused an international sensation. But in Greece, too, sensitivity for the concerns of the Jewish community grew, the fate of which had previously been ignored in recent history because of the active participation of Greek collaborators in the plundering. In November 2014, a monument commemorating the Shoah was unveiled on the site of the former Jewish cemetery, which now houses the Aristotle University. Thessaloniki’s mayor, Jannis Boutaris, delivered the commemorative speech, recalling the shameful role played by the city administration in the destruction of the Jewish cemetery in 1943.

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But the political authorities of the FRG still wanted nothing to do with all of that. When Federal President Joachim Gauck visited Greece in the spring of 2014, he avoided Thessaloniki to dodge the questions that were expected from the Jewish community. The Federal Government, on the other hand, could rely on German jurisdiction and the legal authorities of the European Union. By keeping the Greek government at arm’s length at the same time, its success was never in question – even in the critical year 2000, when the large majority of the Areopagus plenum approved the legal case of the Nazi victims in Boeotia. The Greek government and public opinion did not need to be taken into account, because it considered the peripheral European metropolis of Athens to be a political entity whose power was of no significance compared to Washington.

The Greek Debt Crisis and the Reactivation of Reparations Demands The reparations problem was still on everyone’s lips when, towards the end of the 2000s, it was exaggerated by another event: the Greek debt crisis.32 Greece was hit by the great recession of 2008–9 at a delicate stage of development. After joining the euro zone in 2001, the country had gone through a boom, the downside of which – high deficit investments in infrastructure and huge military spending – had now been relentlessly exposed. The country’s national debt spiralled out of control, and the collapse of the banking sector could no longer be stopped by that sector alone. In May 2010, the era of the ‘Troika programmes’ began: in order to seal the leak and prevent the imminent collapse of the entire European banking system, the European Central Bank, the EU Commission and the International Monetary Fund made a huge volume of loans available to Athens, which were to be refinanced by means of rigorous savings, restructuring and privatisation programmes. Berlin was easily identified as the driving force behind these ‘memoranda’. The German government used its role as the main creditor to set an example in Greece and to eliminate all alternative models for overcoming the European crisis that were at odds with its general line. This strategic turning point in German–Greek relations inevitably came up against the unresolved conflict that had emerged in the dispute over German debt from the Second World War. The collision was huge: on the one hand, German politics rejected indefinitely the debts to be repaid as a result of the excesses of violence and destruction between 1941 and 1944; on the other hand, it fought back as the driving force behind the group of creditors, and left no doubt that it wanted the loans granted under the

292  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

‘Memoranda’ to be repaid down to the last cent, without regard for the consequences that this would entail for the Greek population. In this acute situation, the unresolved reparations issue once again became a focus of public debate. Exaggerations and broad brushstroke simplifications could not be avoided. In some cases, estimates were presented that had little to do with the historical facts, and were based on the desire to be able to solve the current debt crisis by offsetting the compulsory occupation credit alone. However, these were rather the exception. In 2011, a cross-party parliamentary committee was set up to clarify the reparations claims, and this resulted in a stronger focus on the historical facts. When the new forces of the oppositional left, united in the coalition of the radical left (Syriza), took up the reparations problem, the debate became more objective. In December 2012, a special issue of Syriza’s weekly newspaper Afgi was devoted to the historical, economic and legal aspects of the compulsory credit.33 In addition, domestic and foreign historians were given access to the Greek mass media. Hagen Fleischer once again voted for a compromise solution in calling for the restitution of the occupation credit.34 In this context, Albrecht Ritschl, who teaches economic history in London, proposed a new calculation method and called on the decision makers in Germany to pass on the generous debt relief granted to it at the time in the London Debt Agreement to the Greek economy, which was now under pressure.35 A speech by the Athenian finance economist and former finance minister Nicos Christodoulakis was also remarkable. He not only revived discourse on reparations by proposing another calculation method, but also recommended a consensual offsetting of the occupation credit, which had been brought up to the current price level, by writing off the German share in the first loan package put forward by the ‘Troika’.36 What all these and other attempts at mediation37 had in common was that they established an explicit link between Germany’s position as a debtor and a creditor. They were desperate attempts to put a stop to German hubris and to prevent mutual stereotypes from building up that would poison German–Greek relations in the long term. But they were all disregarded. While in Greece – despite some sorties from those on the extremist right – the dispute became more objective, in Germany, after an initial period of wavering when it came to assessing the reparations problem, a view of it emerged in the German media that backed the German government in its dual role as debtor and creditor. After the new coalition government, led by conservative prime minister Antonis Samarás, came to office in Athens in June 2012, it had to implement another, much tougher, ‘Troika’ austerity package. The social consequences – wage and pension cuts, further tax increases – made the search for alternative

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solutions even more urgent. The newly formed left-wing opposition became a beacon of hope. It declared the fulfilment of Germany’s reparations obligations to be an essential item on the agenda: the Germans, it argued, must finally recognise that they are debtors, like the Greeks, and be prepared to find a compensatory solution.38 This demand was accompanied by growing criticism of the Samarás cabinet’s passivity. Finally, in April 2014, Syriza chairman Alexis Tsipras declared that the coalition of the radical left would place the fulfilment of Greece’s reparations demands on the agenda after its election victory.39

The Greek Court of Audit’s View of the Reparations In September 2012, Samarás gave in to public pressure and set up a commission of inquiry to clarify the question of reparations – the third such inquiry in Greek post-war history. It was subordinated to the Greek Court of Audit, which in turn was subordinate to the Ministry of Finance, and was headed by Panajotis Karakousis.40 Its remit was broad. It would reconstruct the Greek reparation claims from both world wars on the basis of all available written records of the central authorities and the Central Bank, compare them with the previous German compensation payments and present an overall account adjusted to current price levels. In addition, there would be a specific focus on dealing with the problem of the occupation loan. Around fifty experts participated in the constituent meeting of the Special Commission – mainly senior officials and academics, with experts qualified in finance and economics predominant in both groups. Several working groups were then formed. In March 2013, the General State Audit Office issued a first interim report of some eighty pages. Shortly afterwards, this was followed by a working group report by the State Legal Council. The interim report of the Court of Auditors was classified as ‘top secret’ and at first was only sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister Samarás. In April 2013, however, the first details became public.41 No figures were provided, but the experts had obviously come to the conclusion that the Germans had largely evaded their obligations. The source base was considered to be excellent. In addition to the materials drawn from several archives, new documents had been found in the cellars of several public buildings, and indexed. For the Greek government, these initial results were extremely unpleasant. The media, above all the daily newspaper To Vima, which had long been committed to this issue, demanded that the report be immediately published in order to relieve Greece of the massive pressure it was coming

294  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

under from its creditors. Deputy Finance Minister Christos Staikouras, on the other hand, once again emphasised the wait-and-see official position: the issue was open and a ‘satisfactory solution’ would be sought at a favourable opportunity. Another high-ranking government representative also made it clear that this was ‘not the right time to start a dispute with Berlin’.42 Nevertheless, the working groups were able to continue their activities unhindered and to forward their findings to a six-member expert group of the Court of Auditors for final editing. Finally, in December 2014, its coordinator Panajotis Karakousis presented a 150-page final report in which the commission disclosed in detail its calculation methods and the results of its investigation (Document 123).43 This report, drawn up seventy years after the end of the Second World War, is a significant event. Its main statements are based on the results of various commissions of inquiry in Athens from 1945 to 1946, with which research until that point was only partially familiar. What is more, the report evaluated the extensive documents of other top authorities, especially the Bank of Greece. Through their synopsis, important open questions of historical-economic research could be clarified, such as the falsifications in the German–Greek clearing balance,44 the extent of the destruction of the Greek merchant fleet during the period of neutrality and the war years,45 and the extent of the material destruction of economic resources and infrastructure.46 In addition, insights could be gained into hitherto completely unknown German looting operations, and important information about the early phase of inter-Allied reparations policy (1945–46), which had been characterised by extreme discrimination towards the ‘small allies’ – and thus towards Greece’s own claims.47 Unfortunately, the experts did not consult the German counterparts. Therefore, they were only partially successful in clarifying the cycle of exploitation involved in the Germans stealing gold in Greece and in subsequently deploying this gold in the country again.48 The evaluators also broke new ground in methodological terms.49 Until that point, there had only been a few reliable methods that allowed for the original scope (the baseline values) of the reparations claims to be calculated at their current price levels or time values. These included, above all, the combination of several price indices or the one-to-one conversion of the costs resulting from the war and the crimes conducted under the war economy from the national product of the person liable for reparations, both at the time and today. The Special Commission’s experts rejected these two methods, and followed a proposal made by Nicos Christodoulakis, an economist teaching at the University of Athens:50 the experts quantified the current value of the compulsory credit by converting it into US dollars and correlating it with the interest rates obtained on ten-year US government

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bonds since 1945. Once this method had proved its worth – the correlation between the underlying asset (213.3 million US dollars) and the current value (10.345 billion euros as of December 2014) was within the range of alternative calculation methods – the appraisers decided to calculate all other items in the catalogue of reparations using this method too. From an econometric perspective, this method for the ‘financialisation’ of reparations claims is beyond dispute, and it will therefore still cause considerable headaches for the experts in the Federal Ministry of Finance. This notwithstanding, a historical-critical perspective speaks against such a general approach. It seems plausible when calculating the compulsory credit because, even though it was not classified as such within the context of reparations policy, it was a typical compulsory credit. However, it does not seem right to commercialise the consequences of the excessive violence and destruction by estimating them from their baseline values and then treating them as a quasi-bond. By contrast, the experts used this procedure to develop two alternative syntheses: the first was based on the provisions of the Inter-Allied Reparations Agreement of 1946 (a total of 332.842 billion euros), which they supplemented with a few additional calculations. The second was based on the archival research carried out independently of this (a total of 269.547 billion euros). In our own final attempts to calculate the sum, we will take a critical look at the large discrepancy between these two figures. Including some components of the general costs of war in the catalogue of reparations also seems problematic to us.51 Furthermore, we should question why the Greek experts did not include the humanitarian consequences of the German occupation policy in their reparations balance sheet. Although they also discussed the damage to life, health and personal property caused by the occupation, they only calculated it as a lump sum, and listed it separately.52 This resulted in a distortion of the overall estimate. We will also go into this aspect in more detail in our final considerations. Despite these weaknesses, the report of the Greek Special Commission is an important contribution to the historical and economic research on reparations and to the final political debate on the debts resulting from the German occupation. In Germany it was hushed up. It is likely that translations of the report have long been circulating in the relevant German offices and expert committees. The fact that to this day no one has publicly grappled with the Special Commission’s report only underlines its importance. In our opinion, even a declaredly deconstructive debate on the content of the report would get the ball rolling again and lead to the realisation that the unresolved reparations claims – in Greece, as well as in Europe as a whole – continue to be justified historically, economically and legally.

296  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

Notes   1. Telex from the Athens Embassy to the Federal Foreign Office, Department 503, Concerning Reparations Issues – Including Compensation in Relation to Greece, 8. 10. 1990, PA AA, B 86/2022 (ZA).   2. War reparations as of February 1992, point 1: Statement by the Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis in the Greek Parliament on 14 December 1990 in Response to a Question by the Communist Party, PA AA, B 86/2022 (ZA).   3. Wire Decree of the Federal Foreign Office to the Embassy in Athens Regarding Compensation for the Consequences of the War, here: Greece, 4 May 1990, ibid.   4. Extensively documented in: PA AA, B 80/1591 (ZA); B 86/2022 (ZA), 2169 (ZA), 2225 (ZA), 2226 (ZA), 2227 (ZA), 2312 (ZA).   5. See Unit 503-533.32 GRI, on reparations issues in relation to Greece, as of 1. 10. 1992, PA AA, B 86/2022 (ZA); Division 503-533.32 GRI, The State of Affairs Regarding Reparations Issues in Relation to Greece, 4. 9. 1995, PA AA, B 80/1591 (ZA); Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, 282 ff.   6. For example, Deputy Foreign Minister Pangalos in the Greek Parliament on 12 November 1993 in response to a question from a Communist MP. State of play, p. 3, Bonn, 27 November 1995, PA AA, B 80/1591 (ZA).   7. In July 1995, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Athens sent Fleischer’s and Angelopoulos’s publications to the responsible department 503 of the Federal Foreign Office. Cf. Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, Referent Horney, to the Federal Foreign Office Concerning Compensation for the Consequences of War in Greece, 13. 7. 1995 (with appendixes), PA AA, B 86/2225 (ZA).   8. Radiopoulos, Die Forderungen Griechenlands, 286 ff.   9. When Greek Ambassador Bourloyannis handed over the verbal note, Foreign Secretary Peter Hartmann not only immediately rejected his request for negotiations, but at the same time published a press release in which he announced the reasons for the rejection. Previously, the Germans had even considered refusing to accept the verbal note at all. However, this idea was dropped at the last minute because of the possible diplomatic consequences of such an ‘unfriendly act’. See the events in: PA AA, B 86/2226 (ZA). 10. Federal Foreign Office, Department 503, State of Affairs Concerning: 1. Actions for Reparations by Greek Citizens 2. Greece’s Reparations Claims against the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn, 1. 12. 1995, p. 4, PA AA, B 86/2227 (ZA). 11. Kohl had stated that Germany had ‘paid over 100 billion in reparations by the end of 1994. Of this amount, GRI [Greece] received 115 million DM under the 1960 reparations agreement. We are not prepared to reopen this issue fifty years after the end of the war’. Department 223/503 of the Federal Foreign Office, General Council in Luxembourg on 1.10.2005. Bilateral Issues, Bonn, 2.10.1995, PA AA, B 862226 (ZA). 12. Fleischer, ‘Das griechische Memorandum’. 13. Fleischer and Konstantinakou, ‘Ad calendas graecas?’, 455. 14. See the speeches, notes and documents of their probably most famous survivor and activist: Argyris Sfountouris, Trauer um Deutschland. 15. A German translation of the lawsuit can be found in: PA AA, B 86/2225 (ZA). 16. The German demarches are extensively documented in: PA AA, B 86/2225 (ZA), 2226 (ZA). 17. For instance, the Greek government spokesman Venizelos at a press conference on 22. 8. 1995. Excerpt from the translation into German in: PA AA, B 86/2225 (ZA); Note by Legation Secretary Schlaudraff, Department 223-533.20 GRI, on a

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18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

Conversation with StV [sic] Nourney on 28 August 1995, ibid.; Note by Legation Secretary Lorenz, Department 503-533-32 GRI, on a Conversation between the Director of Department 5 and the Greek Secretary of State Sotiropoulos, 7 September 1995, PA AA, B 80/1591 (ZA). Unit 503-533.32 GRI, State of Affairs in Relation to Greece, here: Actions of Individual Claimants, 4. 9. 1995, PA AA, B 86/2225 (ZA). See the documentation in: PA AA, B 86/2226 (ZA): Reporting on these events in the Status Notes of Department 503 of the Federal Foreign Office, 19 October 1995. Submission of Department 512 for State Secretary Hartmann regarding Claims for Reparations by Greek nationals against the Federal Republic of Germany, 12 October 1995 (with a verbal note from the Greek Embassy and a Draft of the German Reply Note in the Appendix); Note from Department 5 for State Secretary Hartmann Concerning Private Greek claims for Reparations, 27. 10. 1995; further notes on the State of Affairs from Department 503 for November/December 1995 in: PA AA, B 86/2227 (ZA) and B80/1591 (ZA). Unit 223/503, General Council in Luxembourg on 2 October 1995; Bilateral issues, Bonn, 2 October 1995, p. 2 (Princz case), PA AA, B 86/2226 (ZA); Unit 503, Catalogue of Arguments, Point 6, Bonn, 12 October 1995. A more detailed discussion can be found in Nessou, Griechenland 1941–1944, pp. 496 ff.; in addition, see the ongoing reporting and commentary in the German-language Athener Zeitung, 1997 ff. Back then, there were also compensation claims by Greek victims of Nazi persecution against German companies, thus opening up the possibility of a close alliance with the international compensation initiative. However, they were not integrated into the class actions of the prefectures. Cf. the case of Konstantinos Dossis, who was abducted from captivity to perform forced labour at Siemens-Schuckert in Vienna and filed a lawsuit against the Republic of Austria, the Federal Republic of Germany and Siemens AG at the Athens Regional Court in April 1996. There is a German translation of the statement of claim in: PA AA B 86/2312 (ZA). Unit 500-533.43 GRI, Legation Council I Terstegen, Concerning Greek Reparations Claims, here: The Possibility of Referral to International Jurisdiction, Bonn, 14 December 1995, PA AA, B 80/1591 (ZA). Goschler, ‘Distomo and the Glocalization of Compensation. From Greek Massacre Site to European Place of Remembrance’, 162. For a detailed discussion of this, see Nessou, Griechenland 1941–1944, pp. 514 ff. Report of the German–Italian Commission of Historians appointed by the Foreign Ministers of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Italian Republic on 28 March 2009, July 2012, German version, p. 171. SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72. The commission was composed of five historians from each country. The members of the German group were Gabriele Hammermann, Lutz Klinkhammer, Wolfgang Schieder, Thomas Schlemmer and Hans Woller. Ibid., Foreword, p. 3. See the short question by Ulla Jelpke and others: Compensation for Nazi victims in Italy, 25 November 2014, German Bundestag, 18th parliamentary term, printed matter 18/3333; Reply of the Federal Government, 9 December 2014, printed matter 18/3492, SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72. ‘NS-Entschädigung: Neue Niederlage Deutschlands vor italienischem Gericht’, Der Tagesspiegel (Berlin), 31. 10. 2016. The total amount involved was 3.5 billion drachmas. The Jewish Community had raised 2 billion of this in cash, while the remaining 1.5 billion was credited for the forced

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transfer of the Jewish Central Cemetery. For the background to this, see the final section of Chapter 7. 31. See Schulz and Mena Urbitsch, Spiel auf Zeit, 240–55 (a biographical sketch of Telis Nahmias); Eberhard Rondholz, ‘Alles vergessen, alles erledigt? Die Shoa in Thessaloniki, und wie Griechen und Deutsche damit umgehen’, Exantas (Berlin), Vol. 23, December 2015, pp. 30–35. 32. See Roth, Griechenland: Was tun? (Greek edition: I Elláda ke i krísi: Ti égine ke ti borí na jíni. Metaphrasi Dimútris Lámbos); Roth, Griechenland am Abgrund. 33. ‘Katochikó dáneio: to apaphágrapto dikéoma tis diekdíkisis tou. Istorikés, Nomikés ke Ikonomikés diastasis [The occupation loan: The undeniable right to this claim. Historical, legal and economic aspects]’, Afgi, Special Edition, December 2012. 34. Fleischer, ‘To anagnorisméno katochikó dáneio [The recognized occupation loan]’, Kathimerini, Athens, 14. 10. 2012, p. 15. 35. Ritschl, ‘Antí ja polemikés apozimósis’; Ritschl, ‘Germany’s Unpaid Debt to Greece’. 36. Christodoulakis, Germany’s War Debt to Greece. 37. For example Roth, Greichenland am Abgrund, 37 ff. 38. ‘Griechenlands Linke verlangt Rückzahlung deutscher Schulden [Greece’s left demands repayment of German debts]’, Zeit Online, 14. 9. 2013, http://www.zeit.de/politik/ ausland/2013-09/tsipras-reparationen-griechenland (last accessed 4 January 2016). 39. Interview with Alexis Tsipras, Afgi, 25 April 2014. 40. Ellinikí Dimokratía, Ipourgio Ikonomikón, Geniko Lotisirio tou Kratous: ‘Prosdiorismoós axioseon apo tis jermanikés epanorthosis kai to katochikó dáneio. Aporiti ekthesi idikis voitropis’ [Republic of Greece, Ministry of Finance, General State Audit Office: ‘Determination of the Claims to German reparations and from the occupation credit. Secret Report of the Special Commission’], Athens, 30 December 2014 (hereafter: Report of the Special Commission), Chapter 1. 41. Christides, ‘Ergebnis des Athener Geheimberichts: Deutschland schuldet Griechenland Reparationen’, http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/bericht-deutschland-schuldetgriechenland-reparationen-a-892962.html (last accessed 30 December 2016). 42. Ibid. (also for the quote that follows). 43. A facsimile of the original and several other partial translations can be found in: SfSArchiv, Bestand III.72, printed matter. 44. Report of the Special Commission, Chapter 10.10: Losses from Commercial Transactions under bilateral Trade Agreements (Clearing). 45. Ibid., Chapter 10.13: Merchant Ships and Inland Waterway Vessels. 46. Ibid., Chapter 10.1: Material Damage and Damage to Infrastructure. 47. Ibid., Chapter 9: Calculating Entitlements on the Basis of the Paris Conference. 48. Cf. ibid., Section 10.4: The Removal of Monetary Gold from the Greek Central Bank; Section 10.5: The Looting of Monetary Gold from Greeks and Greek Jews, who were mainly resident in Thessaloniki, by the Occupying Power. 49. See ibid., Chapter 4 (Sections 4.1 to 4.7): Methodology for Determining the Time Value of Greek Claims against Germany. 50. See Christodoulakis, Germany’s War Debt to Greece, 41 ff. 51. See the Report of the Special Commission, Chapter 10.2: Consequential Damages and Collapses in the Value Chain; Chapter 10.9: Inflationary Losses Suffered by Investors, Bondholders and Holders of Insurance Policies. 52. Ibid., Chapter 11 (Sections 11.1 to 11.5): Claims Not Included in the Final Total.

Chapter 13

New Conflicts The Controversy Surrounding German Reparations Debts since 2015, and the Problem of ‘Remembrance Culture’

The Greek Court of Audit’s reparations report ushered in a new stage in the dispute over German reparations debt. It made it clear to the German power elite that they had still not won their decades-long battle against the enforcement of their debts from the Second World War. It was no coincidence that they had to admit this fact at a time when they had forced the peripheral countries of the European Union to bear the brunt of the consequences of the euro crisis. The austerity policy imposed on Greece had assumed the character of an exemplary disciplinary action, and now a highly undesirable reminder of Germany’s own huge, unsettled debts on a gigantic scale came – of all places – from Greece. This signal was noted across Europe. While the other formerly occupied EU member states and aspirant member states in Southern and South Eastern Europe kept a low profile, the situation was quite different in Eastern Central Europe, especially in Poland. Poland’s socio-economic development was, however, in no way comparable to that of Greece. Poland had only become an EU member in 2004, following a terrible transformation crisis prolonged by a course of harsh austerity. It subsequently became the East European model pupil of EU integration, but the broad mass of the Polish population had to pay a high price for the ‘economic miracle’ of catch-up development. Even after the beginning of the new millennium,

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its incomes and standards of living amounted to a mere third of the West European average. While, as a result, they were forced to migrate to the West on a massive scale, large West European corporations in particular secured key positions in the economy and in the financial sector. This asymmetry was overlaid by a policy of the ‘European Community of Interests’, which instrumentalised the post-socialist groupings that joined together in the ‘Alliance of the Democratic Left’ (SLD) and, when it came to the politics of memory, was also intended to hand over the Polish population to the cultural dominance of Western Europe – and Germany in particular. Following the political turning point of Polish politics in 2015, however, this policy finally came to an end. After a national-conservative counter-movement, which emerged from ‘Solidarność’, had won an absolute majority in the parliamentary elections, it forced a change in political strategy by taking up the ‘social question’ and combining it with critical positions on the EU. In autumn 2015, it won an overwhelming majority in the parliamentary elections, helping the Law and Justice Party (PIS) to become the sole governmental force and allowing it to begin the work of restructuring the Third Polish Republic in an authoritarian fashion. The year 2015 thus became a political watershed in the two countries on the European periphery that for decades had been particularly affected by the reparations issue. However, this happened under contrasting political auspices. In January 2015, a ‘coalition of the radical left’ (Syriza) was elected in Greece, whereas in Poland the national-conservative PIS was elected in October 2015. The parties represented completely opposed political attitudes. Nevertheless, both were united in their criticism of the harshness of European hegemonic power, which dictated a rigorous austerity course at the expense, and to the detriment, of the vast majority of the population in their countries. And neither government failed to notice that Germany’s unpaid reparations debt was closely tied to the ‘social question’, because the lower classes had been the main victims of Germany’s wartime policy of robbery and extermination. However, the new political elites in Athens and Warsaw had limited room for manoeuvre. This is another reason to look at recent developments in this particularly explosive area of relations between Germany and Europe.

Developments in Greece In Athens, the first few months of 2015 were dominated by compensation claims. In his government declaration, the new head of government Alexis Tsipras reaffirmed his pledge that getting Germany to pay its reparations debt was an integral part of the issues that his government would

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seek to solve. On 10 March, the Hellenic parliament held a special session and unanimously adopted a resolution linking the ‘recovery of Germany’s occupation debts’ with the ‘repayment of the ransom money’ that ‘the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki had to pay to the occupying forces’.1 The non-partisan parliamentary ‘Committee for the Assertion of Claims from German Liabilities’ was also revived, chaired by the president of the Hellenic parliament, Zoe Konstantopoulou. Justifiably, it was now expected that the new government would publish the Greek Court of Audit’s reparations report, which its predecessor had classified as ‘secret’. But nothing of the sort happened. Initially, even the parliamentary committee did not receive a copy of the report. Nonetheless, at the beginning of April, Alternate Minister of Revenue Dimitris Mardas informed its members of the report’s most important findings.2 He said that the report summarised all of the destruction, confiscations and compensation claims that had arisen from the occupation period on the basis of completely accessible sources. This amounted to 278.7 billion euros for the period of the Second World War, with the compulsory credit accounting for 10.3 billion euros of the total amount. A short time later, the daily newspaper To Vima published the report in a small special edition that was sold out within a few days. This move made it accessible to the expert public. However, in contrast to its original stated intentions, the new government continued to keep a low profile. Apparently, Janis Varoufakis, the new finance minister and superior of the Court of Audit, had vetoed the report because he considered it unwise to combine the reparations demands with the negotiations now underway concerning the partial cancellation of Greece’s national debt. In fact, the German leaders threatened reprisals if the new government dared to link the pending negotiations on a modification of the troika programme to the reparations question. Since Tsipras and Varoufakis knew only too well that the German power elite dominated the negotiating objectives of the group of creditors from the European Central Bank, the EU Commission and the International Monetary Fund, they caved in to the pressure in order to avoid falling into a hopeless situation from the outset. In July 2015, the Greek government eventually failed in its attempts to ease the debt regime; on the contrary, it had to submit to an even tougher austerity package and, in return for additional financial aid, had to introduce further cuts in the budget for social expenditure and accelerate the privatisation of public infrastructure. As a result, the Syriza-led governing coalition was in a position of even greater dependency than its conservative predecessors had been. In this situation, it considered it impossible to stick to the active course on reparations that it had originally intended. However, this by no means amounted to a final renunciation of

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the issue. The claims for compensation would merely be put on hold and pursued further in the medium term. This option was supported by a broad majority. A small group of dissidents, including the president of the parliament, did not wish to support capitulating to the dictates of the Troika: they voted against it, and removed themselves from political responsibility for the decision. As a result, the cross-party Parliamentary Compensation Committee was reconstituted in November 2015 and began its third attempt. It dealt intensively with the view expressed by the Court of Auditors. One year later, it adopted a report on its findings and submitted it to parliament for discussion and adoption.3 After studying numerous documents and hearing from a number of experts, the committee largely agreed with the calculations made by the Court of Auditors, and raised a claim for reparations against Germany. Proceeding from the estimates made by the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency, this amounted to 332.84 billion euros and, on the basis of evaluations of the archives, to a total of 269.5 billion euros. The commission stated that waiving these claims, which had resulted from the massive destruction of the occupation period, was out of the question in principle. The committee proposed various ways of enforcing these claims and proposed that legal proceedings also be considered. In midAugust 2016, Prime Minister Tsipras backed the committee’s proposal and declared that his government would continue the fight for the settlement of Germany’s reparations debt.4 However, nothing of the sort happened – at least initially. The special session of parliament scheduled for September to discuss and adopt the Commission’s report did not take place until April 2019. The reasons for this delay are unknown, but we can assume that the German government once again threatened Greece with economic and political reprisals. Instead, at the beginning of December 2016, the foreign ministers of Germany and Greece signed a joint declaration that called for a further deepening of their cooperation, and reaffirmed their mutual desire to ‘work towards a common culture of remembrance through concrete gestures and signs of reconciliation’ in order to ‘raise public awareness of the occupation crimes committed by the Wehrmacht in Greece’.5 The question of reparations – now more open than ever – was left unmentioned, and as a result of the asymmetrical power relations the Greek side had no other choice but to accept its material claims, guaranteed by international law, being concealed by ‘remembrance politics’, while at the same time keeping the back door open. This is how the statement by the Greek president, Prokopis Pavlopulos, an expert in international law and until that point a staunch advocate of reparations demands, should be understood. At a ceremony in honour of German president Frank-Walter Steinmeiner at the end of April 2017, Pavlopulos declared that Greece does not represent

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its reparation demands unilaterally, but ‘within the framework of international law and European legal culture’.6 A few weeks earlier, Prime Minister Tsipras had highlighted with even more clarity that the blockade on the compensation issue was a result of the extreme weakness of the Greek side. In a television interview, he stated that Greece must first of all ‘be able to stand on its own two feet again in order to make demands’.7 As a result, no talks on this issue were held at all at German–Greek government or departmental level in 2017, as the then secretary of state for finance, Jens Spahn, informed the German Bundestag when responding to a parliamentary question on this issue.8 In fact, another year was to pass before the moratorium on reparations, indirectly enforced by the Troika dictates, came to an end. When Claudia Roth, vice-president of the Bundestag, met Nikos Voutsis, president of the Athens parliament, during a trip to the Greek memorials at the beginning of February 2018, the latter explained to her that the moratorium was coming to an end: ‘Before the end of this year, we will take all possible action to talk about the reparations demands at both a parliamentary and governmental level’.9 On 17 April 2019, the Greek parliament adopted the committee’s report by a large majority, and instructed the government to take the necessary diplomatic and legal steps to enforce the reparation claims.10 At the beginning of June, Ambassador Theodoros Daskarolis presented a verbal note to that effect to the Federal Foreign Office.11 In it, the Greek Foreign Ministry called for the opening of political negotiations on the central problem areas of German reparations debt to Greece from both the world wars – namely material destruction, the consequences of German war crimes for the civilian population, the unpaid compulsory credit and the theft of cultural assets. Concrete figures were not provided. On 27 June, diplomat Aris Radiopoulos also published an edition of key documents from the Greek Foreign Ministry on the history of Greek reparations demands, with a detailed introduction and commentary.12 This event underlined the seriousness of the Greek demarche. * Fortunately, the initiatives by individuals and citizens involved in the fight for compensation were not subject to such restraints. While the institutional representations were at a standstill until the spring of 2019, from 2015 the grassroots movements had been developing a wide range of activities, some of which have attracted considerable attention. Three particularly striking series of events will be described here as representative of the others. In April 2015, the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki and the German citizens’ ‘Train of Remembrance’ initiative sent an open letter to the board of directors of the Deutsche Bahn AG, demanding that the board and its

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owner, the German government, reimburse the travel costs that its legal predecessor (Deutsche Reichsbahn) had extorted from the Jewish deportation victims from Thessaloniki and the rest of Greece. Before they were crammed into the cattle cars deported to the Auschwitz and Treblinka extermination camps from March 1943 onwards, the Reichsbahn had taken 39 Reichsmarks per person – two Reichspfennigs for every kilometre transported – from their confiscated property. The total sum at that time amounted to about 2.3 million Reichsmarks, corresponding to a current value of 15.1 million euros. Taking into account an interest rate of 2.5 per cent per annum, this would amount to almost 89.5 million euros.13 In making these estimates, the ‘Train of Remembrance’ initiative was able to draw on an expert report prepared in 2009. This report took into account the insights of related Holocaust research to calculate the income that the Reichsbahn had made from aiding and abetting the mass murder of European Jews and other victims of the Nazi regime, which began in 1938. Taking interest rates into account, the report set this at 44.1 million Reichsmarks or 444.8 million euros at current values.14 Based on the results of this investigation, the citizens’ initiative began to take action across Europe, and contributed significantly to the fact that some persecuted groups were able to enforce their claims for compensation from the Deutsche Bahn AG (Poland in 2010) and the French state railway SNCF (2014) – in some cases successfully. But now the two signatories of the Open Letter15 got nowhere, and a signature campaign launched subsequently was also unsuccessful. The board of the Deutsche Bahn AG stonewalled. When the German government was asked a question on the matter in parliament, it feigned ignorance and declared that it did not intend to investigate the revenues made by the Deutsche Reichsbahn during the deportations either.16 Once again, the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki was rebuffed, and even the ‘Train of Remembrance’ was not able to continue the partial success it had achieved. Nevertheless, its alliance with the victims’ associations was considered dangerous. We will soon see below the approach chosen by the FRG diplomacy in order to divide the coalition forged between Gerd-Rüdiger Minow, spokesman of the ‘Train of Remembrance’, and David Saltiel, president of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki. However, there were also individuals who became active in the reparations issue on their own initiative and responsibility. One of them was Zoe Konstantopoulou, the former president of the Hellenic parliament and head of the cross-party committee to clarify Greece’s compensation claims against Germany. On 10 June 2017, she attended an annual service in Distomo in memory of the victims of the SS massacre. The German ambassador to Greece, Peter Schoof, was also present at this ceremony. Schoof suddenly stepped forward and tried to lay a wreath at the memorial without

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consulting the organisers beforehand. Konstantopoulou found this unbearable. She stepped in front of the ambassador and exclaimed: ‘You have no right to do this. You must pay reparations to the victims’.17 The scandal suddenly rendered visible the ever-widening gap between the official gestures of Germany’s culture of remembrance and the rigorous refusal to pay compensation. Immediately afterwards, however, something else happened: the resistance hero Manolis Glezos, who was also present, took the ambassador by the hand and led him to the memorial so that he could lay his wreath there. He justified this move with the remark that children should not be held responsible for the crimes of their parents. Perhaps he had misunderstood the meaning of the ambassador’s violation of the rules. More likely, however, is that the Germans’ instrumentalisation of the culture of remembrance for the purposes of avoiding compensation had in the meantime also begun to paralyse the camp of their erstwhile opponents. * While Zoe Konstantopoulou was committing her anti-symbolic violation of the rules, the 14th international art exhibition ‘documenta’ opened in June 2017 in Kassel. A pre-exhibition had already begun two months earlier in Athens, because the ‘documenta’ had the motto ‘Learning from Athens’, with which the organizers wanted to remind the public of the social consequences of the policy of austerity in Europe through a ‘minimal gesture of solidarity’. This politicisation was controversial, and led to considerable internal conflicts. In particular, the German Foreign Office, which was one of the sponsors, did not agree with it at all. In addition, some groups from the German–Greek solidarity movements – the main initiator was the Hamburg-based ‘AK Distomo’ – tried to use this political opening to draw the attention of the widest possible international public to the unpaid German reparations debt. During Federal President Steinmeier’s opening address on 10 June, they held a rally at the nearby Opernplatz, where Distomo survivor Argyris Sfountouris reminded the public of the massacres committed under German occupation and the still unresolved compensation claims.18 He then opened, as part of the official accompanying programme, a ‘Parliament of Bodies’, which addressed the senselessness and inhumanity of the use of military force.19 In doing so, he highlighted something that he believed represented an important political-economic justification for the consistent implementation of international humanitarian law: ultimately, wars are always fought for profit. He argued that those who want to prevent them must ensure that they become unprofitable by subsequently providing compensation for all the material destruction and the violations of human rights committed in the process. This was the only concession the organisers granted to the Greek–German

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compensation initiatives. Further attempts to integrate the dimensions of Germany’s reparations debt into the framework programme were blocked in advance. ‘Documenta 14’ closed its doors again on 17 September 2017. The dispute with and between the organisers over the politicisation – and the decommercialisation – of contemporary art escalated further and made headlines. As a result, the alternative symbolic acts organised by the German–Greek compensation initiatives in parallel to the main event were hardly noticed. They adopted a ‘Kassel Manifesto’ in which they reiterated their demand for compensation for the martyr villages in Greece and across Europe.20 In addition, they took up a proposal that had been made during the opening event of the ‘Parliament of Bodies’: they symbolically occupied an exposed exhibition building (the Fridericianum) and handed it over to the survivors and descendants of the Distomo massacre. * The actions of the non-institutional compensation initiatives made it clear to the German political class that their previous measures to ward off Greece’s reparations demands were insufficient. Although it had succeeded in neutralising its institutional opponent, the latter had not given in to pressure from ‘the streets’, which was still clearly manifesting itself, but had merely retreated into a wait-and-see position. As a result, the two informally complementary actors had to be separated even more than before, and the Greek victims’ associations and the German extra-parliamentary grassroots initiatives had to be cut off from each other. The only way to do this was to use the most cost-effective procedure possible – the broad institutionalisation of the German–Greek culture of remembrance in line with the pattern that had become established in the early 1990s in the countries of Eastern Europe. However, some structural modifications had to be made in the process, because since 2006 the Foundation for ‘Polish–German Reconciliation’, which consists of equal numbers of representatives from both sides, had avoided German paternalism. In their approach, the German diplomats were able to draw on initial initiatives that were launched in the spring of 2014 following a visit to Greece that March by the German president, Joachim Gauck. He had visited several memorials and martyr villages, where he had expressed his ‘deep shock and double shame’ and asked the families of the survivors ‘in the name of Germany … for forgiveness’.21 Like all his predecessors, he had avoided any formulation that could lead to a legal claim for compensation (asking for ‘forgiveness’ instead of issuing an ‘apology’). He also clearly distanced himself from all reparations claims during conversations with his Greek counterpart Karolos Papoulias. At the same time, however, in

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consultation with the Federal Government, he stressed that, in view of the drastic fall in German popularity figures, a new reconciliation initiative had to be launched, namely the establishment of a ‘German–Greek Youth Office’ and a ‘German–Greek Future Fund’, which, with an endowment of 1 million euros per year across four years, was to coordinate the historical reappraisal of the German occupation, and thus send a strong ‘signal of being with and for each other’.22 Gauck also immediately suggested a number of particularly suitable mediators, and mentioned above all the German–Greek historian Hagen Fleischer, who had long called for Greece to waive its reparations claims officially, but at the same time suggested that the compulsory credit – which he incorrectly considered to be a single forced loan – should be reimbursed, with this amount being used to endow a ‘German–Greek Future Fund’. The funds were to be used primarily to conduct interviews with a hundred contemporary witnesses. In the process, not only the survivors ‘from the massacre villages, but also Greeks who had rebuilt German–Greek relations after the war’ would have their say.23 Gauck expressly endorsed these proposals, not least because Fleischer, as the highly respected founder of serious historical research on the occupation, had an integrity that lent itself to neutralising Greek compensation claims when it came to the politics of memory. Based on these guidelines, Michael Roth, who was appointed minister of state for Europe at the Federal Foreign Office, set about his work. In the following months he travelled to Greece on several occasions and held a series of preparatory expert talks. The German–Greek Future Fund was launched in September 2014 on the occasion of the Greek president’s return visit.24 It was a unilateral German institution under the exclusive decision-making authority of the Federal Foreign Office and – as proposed by Gauck – was endowed with a budget for an initial period of four years.25 The Germans had thus learnt lessons from their experience with the Foundation for Polish–German Reconciliation, and considered it safer to prescribe to the Greek partners the kind of culture of remembrance they alone wanted – namely the one that excludes Greek public and private claims for compensation on principle, ‘since, from the German perspective, this issue is legally and politically settled’.26 As a result, the Future Fund initially went down the path of classical cultural imperialism. It allocated funds to the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the German Archaeological Institute in Athens, and the Centre for Modern Greece at the Freie Universität Berlin. Afterwards, however, minister of state for Europe Roth and the experts working with him recalled what their actual functions were and, from the summer of 2015, organised several workshops to which young people from the martyr villages specifically were invited in order to remove them from the influence

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of the victims’ associations there. Particularly striking in this context were two ‘STEP-IN seminars’ organised jointly with the ‘Filoxenia’ association, which were attended by ‘youth group leaders’ from the Greek martyr communities of Kalawryta, Kommeno, Lingiades, Distomo, Lechovo, Klissura and Messovouno.27 ‘Further training measures’ followed in order to intensify the ‘transfer of know-how’ and ‘to enable the communities to help themselves’ – primarily in the fight against the stubbornness of the victims’ associations. Optimal socio-economic conditions prevailed for all these and numerous other interventions in favour of the interests of the European pioneer of remembrance culture. Since the world economic crisis of 2008–9, there has been massive youth unemployment in Greece, and many have often lost perspective. The positions for academic knowledge workers also shrank and, with their salaries cut in half, they barely had enough to survive. Under these circumstances, the offers made by the Future Fund seemed promising, and the administrative office set up at the Federal Foreign Office was inundated with project applications. Who can blame the leading historians in this field for adapting their precarious post-docs to the positions offered by Berlin? This benevolence was probably also why Hagen Fleischer took part in the project; but even his minimum demand – that a bilateral agreement on the German compulsory credit be repaid, at least in part – was sidelined. In addition, his lifelong dream came true. In the course of 2016, work began to construct the video archive to document the biographies of the survivors from the massacre villages and other constellations of German occupation terror. It was developed as a cooperative project between the Centre for Digital Systems at the Freie Universität Berlin (with Nicolas Apostolopoulos as project leader) and a working group of the National and Kapodistrias University of Athens, coordinated by Hagen Fleischer as the scientific director.28 By the spring of 2018, ninety life stories had been recorded, including the memories of those victims and resistance fighters who had previously been staunch advocates of Greek reparations demands, such as Manolis Glezos and Argyris Sfountouris. At a ceremony on 23 April, the online archive of contemporary witnesses located at the Berlin Center for Digital Systems was handed over to the public.29 The two project leaders, Apostolopoulos and Fleischer, and the Greek ambassador in Berlin, Theodoros Daskarolis, spoke there, as did two survivors from the villages, Argyris Sfountouris and Estathios Chaitidis, who had survived a massacre perpetrated by the Germans and their collaborators in April 1944 in Kozani (Northern Greece). And, of course, Minister of State for Europe Roth was also involved; but when Martin Klingner, the spokesman for AK Distomo, highlighted Germany’s unpaid reparations debt in a short contribution to the discussion, Roth left the room.

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The success of the Future Fund was so overwhelming that the ‘German– Greek Youth Office’, also proposed by Gauck, was initially unable to go beyond declarations of intent. The reason for this is obvious: the task of isolating the victims’ associations from the young people growing up in the martyred villages had virtually been ‘achieved’ by the Future Fund by summer 2015. Earlier, in March 2013, the Association of German–Greek Societies (VDGG) had called for the establishment of such a project in order to make a statement against the Greek youth’s lack of prospects and the rampant precarity they faced.30 Afterwards, the VDGG chairman and SPD politician Sigrid Skarpelis-Sperk succeeded in including the project in the coalition agreement for the 18th German government, which was concluded between the CDU and SPD at the end of November 2013. A corresponding German–Greek agreement was signed in September 2014:31 in contrast to the Future Fund, this project, like the German–Polish Youth Office, was to be financed equally, with parity on the committees. Afterwards, the project was left to gather dust, because the Greeks were unable to counter-finance it due to the debt crisis; in addition, the new Greek government probably had considerable reservations. The German side, however, could only be happy with this moratorium: it had no interest in implementing the VDGG’s broader intentions and, what is more, the tasks favoured by the VDGG had long since been carried out by the Future Fund. For this reason, the project, which was budgeted for by the Federal Ministry for Youth and Family Affairs, continued to bob along. In 2016, the Bundestag finally approved some special funds, but it was not until 26 July 2017 that another German–Greek agreement was reached, which again postponed the start of the project until 2019.32 After the establishment of the central steering instrument for the development of the German–Greek culture of remembrance, minister of state for Europe Roth turned to the task of removing the basis for the alliance of convenience concluded in April 2015 between the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki and the ‘Train of Remembrance’ citizens’ initiative. In September 2016, he travelled to Greece again and held talks behind closed doors with the president of the Jewish community, David Saltiel. Nothing was revealed about concrete offers or the consideration demanded in return; the Jewish community only announced in mid-September that Roth had offered 10 million euros from the Federal Foreign Office for the construction of a Holocaust museum in Thessaloniki.33 The negotiations were concluded by the end of November, and on 1 December the community’s administration informed its members that Frank-Walter Steinmeier, at that time still the German foreign minister, would be made an honorary citizen of the Jewish community. In response to horrified enquiries about the reasons behind this step, which was felt to be contrary to the statutes, it was said

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that they were unknown to the municipal administration, and this led to the fear that this gesture was intended to ‘cement’ the Germans’ 10 million euro grant for the establishment of the museum.34 In the days that followed, there was an outburst of furious protest, and most members stayed away from the ceremony scheduled for 4 December in the Central Synagogue. In his ‘words of thanks’, Steinmeier celebrated this ‘miracle of reconciliation’ and declared that ‘we’ – he and the Germans he represented – would never let go of these ‘outstretched hands’.35 He naturally left the modalities of the agreement previously negotiated with Saltiel unmentioned. Nor did he mention the agreed co-financing of the Holocaust Museum. He merely referred to the involvement of ‘German hands’ in the restoration of the synagogue and other projects, such as a Jewish education centre. The deal negotiated between Michael Roth and David Saltiel was a severe blow to all those who had been involved in seeking the proper enforcement of the Jewish community’s compensation claims in the past few years. In a bitter statement, the ‘Train of Remembrance’ calculated the cost savings that this 10 million euro debt relief made for the German treasury. The majority of the Jewish community felt excluded and cheated of the legacy of their family members who had been murdered in the Shoah. But the historians among them, who had been researching the destruction of the Jewish community by the German occupiers and their Greek collaborators for years, were also disavowed. Saltiel commissioned his nephew to set up the memorial museum, ensuring that the German-financed policy of clientelism took precedence over the historical expertise of Germany’s critics within the community. From 2015–16, then, it was clear that the Foreign Office-led initiatives to neutralise Greece’s compensation claims had initially been successful. The Greek government found itself in a situation of ‘starvation and obedience’, which condemned it to passivity until the end of the troika controls. In addition, the initiatives succeeded in driving a wedge between the victims’ associations and the martyr communities, splitting the coalition of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki from the ‘Train of Remembrance’ initiative and even drawing several proponents of the ‘National Council for the Demand for Reparations’ into the German–Greek Future Fund’s oral history projects. For the Germans involved, however, the question arose of whether these successes could be extended to achieve lasting and sustainable control over Greek remembrance culture. To date, none of Germany’s opponents have drawn the consequences of their setbacks by throwing in the towel and renouncing in a legally binding form the demands that, since the reparations report, had been verified by historical research. In April 2019, these claims were finally endorsed by a decision of the Greek parliament and placed on

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the political and legal agenda. The presentation of the verbal note by the Greek Foreign Ministry then finally made it clear that the time of substitute solutions to reparations in the realm of ‘cultural memory’ was over. * In the event of a further escalation of the compensation claims, the German experts had sought preventive support from historians who reject Greece’s reparations claims. In doing so, they found what they were looking for among the national-conservative spectrum of German historical scholarship. For years, the Greek historian Heinz A. Richter has been trying to rehabilitate German war criminals,36 to foster understanding for the massacres conducted by the German paratroopers in Crete,37 and to revive the alliance between the German occupiers and the Greek collaborators.38 Now he has become active in the reparations issue too. In November 2015, he was invited by the Federal Ministry of Finance to give a lecture to an internal group of experts.39 There he advanced to the claim – based on the apologetics of a former collaborator – that it was not the Germans who owed reparations to Greece, but rather the Greeks who had to pay the Germans back several thousand gold pounds.40 The ministry officials were pleased to hear this message, and placed Richter’s draft ready in their desk drawers so that they could make use of it if Greek claims for compensation were to surface again. However, the employees of the then finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble did not want to commit themselves publicly to this outrageous position. After a parliamentary question concerning this meeting, they carefully distanced themselves from Richter.41 It was left to Germany’s leading media to spread Richter’s view and thus prepare the journalistic defence against a new Greek initiative.42 Moreover, this flank protection was by no means aimed at a political outsider. As a historian, Richter is rejected by the experts. But he is a prominent exponent of German–Greek cooperation in the rightwing conservative camp, where descendants or supporters of the former occupiers and collaborators shake hands. It is no coincidence that Richter was the recipient of a high distinction from the Greek president, or that until recently he held an honorary doctorate from the University of Crete. It was only in March 2018 that the university’s Senate unanimously revoked his doctorate.43 In doing so, Richter’s role as the legitimiser of German counter-claims had come to an end.

The New Reparations Debate in Poland During the summer of 2017, the reparations debate in Poland unexpectedly emerged out of hibernation among a few expert circles in which it

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had found itself for over a decade. The initiative came from the leadership of the Third Polish Republic. On 1 July, Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the ‘Law and Justice’ party, declared at its programme congress that Poland had never claimed the ‘huge damages’ suffered during the Second World War, but fortunately it had ‘never renounced such compensation’.44 He therefore now saw a need for action. In several interviews given during the weeks that followed, he announced a ‘historical counteroffensive’: they were dealing with ‘huge amounts of money’ and the fact that ‘Germany has long refused to take responsibility for the Second World War’.45 The government’s leading representatives seconded their party leader, and the media close to the national-conservative power bloc began to take up the issue. The journalists speculated with compensation claims ranging from 1 to 6 trillion US dollars. As a result of this concerted political campaign, the first week of August was dominated by the reparations question. This time was not chosen at random. During this week, commemorative events were being held across Poland to mark the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, which had begun on 1 August 1944. Both abroad and among the Polish opposition within the country, there was a growing impression that this was a temporary propaganda manoeuvre by the national-conservative government camp to stir up resentment against its overpowering Western neighbour, which had presumed to use EU sanctions to counter the authoritarian restructuring of Poland’s judiciary and media landscape. However, this assessment was obviously not far-reaching enough. The fact that more than mere day-to-day political calculations were at play was already evident in the first days of August. A government spokesman called on the Federal Government to fulfil its obligation to pay compensation. In addition, Arkadiusz Mularczyk, an experienced constitutional lawyer, commissioned an expert opinion from the Analysis Office of the Sejm, which was tasked with clarifying Poland’s compensation claims under international law. The German media reacted with uncertainty – quite in contrast to their coverage of Greece’s reparation claims – and even the international press became aware of the newly emerging Polish–German controversy.46 On 6 September 2017, the Analysis Office of the Sejm presented its eagerly awaited report.47 The author of the 43-page draft was Robert Jestrzębski, a legislative lawyer. He presented a legal-historical compendium, in which he proceeded on the basis of the Polish doctrine of international law. This distinguishes between reparations for material destruction and individual compensation for human rights violations, both of which are, however, to be settled at an intergovernmental level. After a look at the Polish reparations disputes during the aftermath of the First World War, he presented the basic data compiled by the Polish Bureau of War Damages in their report of 1947, and then reconstructed the history of

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the Polish reparations disputes in the context of the Potsdam Conference and the subsequent Soviet–Polish agreements that had placed Poland at an extreme disadvantage. He then discussed the renunciation of reparations announced by the Council of Ministers of the People’s Republic of Poland on 23 August 1953. In a further section, he took stock of the FRG’s compensation payments in the 1970s, and finally dealt with the Two-plus-Four Treaty and the associated German–Polish follow-up agreements. Overall, he came to a clear conclusion. In his opinion, Poland had been extremely disadvantaged in all stages of its post-war history, although it had suffered most from the German occupation relative to the size of its population and its economic capacity. In his opinion, Germany had not paid back even 1 per cent in compensation for the material destruction and humanitarian damage caused. However, he said, Poland had repeatedly made its demands for such compensation, and this could be proven for all stages from the Potsdam Conference to the present day. Even the renunciation of reparations in August 1953 had not become effective under international law, he added, because it was unconstitutional, had only been addressed to the GDR and had come about under Soviet coercion. What is more, the claims for compensation had neither lapsed nor expired. The Two-plus-Four Treaty had not changed this state of affairs either, for Poland had not been a party to the treaty, and negative effects on third states had been prohibited under international law since the adoption of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties in May 1969.48 The expert report published by the Analysis Office of the Warsaw parliament was backed by legal history and, as a result of its orientation towards the Polish School of International Law, was watertight legally. It proved once again how intensively the Polish intelligentsia had dealt with the unresolved reparations issue – despite the political ruptures of 1980–81 and 1989–93. This critical potential stands above changes in Poland’s political cycles, and represents a factor with a lasting effect that can also be expected to have a lasting impact in the future. Compared with this, the shortcomings of the expert report are not serious because they concern only secondary aspects that can easily be corrected. These include, above all, the unverified adoption of the basic data from the 1947 war damages report, the gross underestimation that German compensation payments to date amount to ‘less than 1 per cent’, and the – only partially correct – justification it provides for the Polish waiver of reparations in 1953 being void (even though this reasoning is absolutely applicable to the case at hand).49 In contrast to Greece, the reparations report of the Analysis Office in Poland was immediately published and discussed in the Sejm. Shortly thereafter, parliament convened a fifteen-member ‘Parliamentary Working Group to Estimate German Reparations to Poland for Damage Caused

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during the Second World War’, which was chaired by Mularczyk. The committee immediately got down to work, with the 1947 war damages report and the legal opinion of the Sejm’s Analysis Office providing excellent starting points. The committee organised a working conference on 26 October in the prime minister’s Chancellery, which was attended by representatives of the ministries involved, as well as by experts from the Main Statistical Office, the Archives Administration, the Institute of National Remembrance and the State Insurance Institute.50 Thus the historical knowledge acquired over the past decades was combined with new findings, and the source materials in the War Compensation Office and the Restitution Office kept in the Warsaw ‘Archive of New Records’ were once again combed through.51 It remains to be seen whether further key documents will surface that can really expand the state of research already achieved in the 2004 edition of the sources; since then, it has been claimed that several papers have been newly discovered of particular significance, but in fact they have been known to the experts for some time.52 Nevertheless, it is to be noted that the working group agreed on a systematic approach and did not allow itself to be put under pressure. Mularczyk also made contact with the expert committees in the other countries that had been dealing with the reparations issue for decades, including Greece. This led him to the conclusion that official and legally binding compensation claims against Germany only have a chance of succeeding if they do justice to the complexity of the issues down to the very last detail, and are methodologically and thoroughly thought out. The decisive question for the ultimate success of the project was also embedded within this context – namely, how the reparations claims should be enforced. Here Mularczyk voted for a multilevel approach: all conceivable possibilities would be tested. From Italy, for example, he took the suggestion to negate the German reparations bureaucracy’s insistence on ‘state immunity’ through a decision of the national constitutional court: at the end of October 2017, one hundred members of the Sejm applied to the Polish constitutional court to validate the compensation claims of legal or natural victims of Nazi occupation policy against the Federal Republic of Germany.53 By April 2018, the main focal points of the report had been defined by the committee. Subsequently, the working group began to examine the individual items into which the total claim would be broken down.54 The first focal point was to compile a list of compensation claims for the looted and destroyed cultural property. At the same time, numerous special investigations were launched that could have an impact far beyond the report. These included, above all, the contract awarded to the experts of the State Insurance Institute to calculate the economic value of the lives lost during the terror of the Nazi occupation.

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* At the turn of 2018, the German power elite became aware that a development was on the horizon in Poland that could not be thwarted by using the defensive reflexes of the past. The counter-arguments used so far – the Polish waiver of reparations of August 1953, allegedly confirmed by several subsequent governments; the settlement of all compensation issues through the Two-plus-Four Treaty; and the voluntary payments made so far to compensate for Nazi injustice – failed to have the desired effect. As late as the beginning of September 2017, a spokesman for the German government had rejected the demands of Polish prime minister Beata Szydło using this reasoning – but only with the result that the Polish foreign minister paused for breath, brought a compensation sum of 840 billion euros into play and even declared an amount of 1 trillion euros to be ‘conceivable’.55 This was a provocation that no longer had anything to do with diplomatic practices. German–Polish relations deteriorated visibly. The fact that Mularczyk, citing the results of the parliamentary working group’s investigations to date, shortly afterwards agreed to a much smaller sum – 690 billion euros – did nothing to change this.56 The German government was increasingly at a loss. It lacked new and reasonably plausible counter-arguments. At the end of August 2017, the Scientific Service of the Bundestag published an expert report on the international legal basis and limits of ‘war-related reparations with special consideration of the German–Polish situation’.57 But it was of little help to the politicians in Berlin, who had come under pressure to act, because it only reproduced the defensive arguments that had been known for decades – the Polish waiver of reparations, the settlement of all reparations issues by the Two-plus-Four Treaty, forfeiture due to the omission of legal acts, time-related limitation periods, and so on.58 What is more, the authors had not waited for the legal opinion of the Analysis Office of the Sejm, which had been announced at the beginning of August, in order to be able to take targeted countermeasures. Therefore, in mid-January 2018, the acting foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, had no choice but to entrust his Polish counterpart Jacek Czaputovicz, who had made representations to him on the reparations issue, with the establishment of a German–Polish commission of experts. Gabriel thought that if experts dealt with this question then the current situation of the two countries mutually ignoring each other could perhaps be overcome.59 However, this idea – described by Gabriel as a ‘consideration’ – is yet to be put into practice. Rather, not a single word was devoted to the Polish–German reparations controversy within the new coalition agreement concluded on 7 February 2018 between the SPD and CDU coalition partners of the new government. Instead, the agreement emphasised that the German–Polish friendship,

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which is based on ‘reconciliation between Germans and Poles’ and ‘joint responsibility for Europe’, must be further consolidated by strengthening the ‘German–Polish Youth Office’, the German Poland Institute and the youth clubs in Kreisau and Auschwitz.60 No further reference was made to the ‘Foundation for Polish–German Reconciliation’, which had slipped out of German control. * With a certain delay, representatives of the academic world and historical scholarship finally took a stand. The Copernicus Group, a German–Polish association of experts, was deeply worried because it feared that the reactivation of the reparations issue could cause ‘lasting damage’ to German– Polish relations.61 Mularczyk refused to accept such warnings. Instead, he complained about the massive counter-propaganda being conducted by the German-controlled Polish media, and stressed that many Polish academics were keeping a low profile on the question of reparations because they did not want to endanger their multilayered integration into the German academic sphere. For then it would be difficult for them ‘to continue to receive German funding, scholarships, well-endowed prizes and awards, invitations to research stays and lectures and presentations in Germany’.62 By contrast, historians argued in a more differentiated manner. However, to date, only a few have spoken out and taken a stand, and some have even made rash and poorly documented judgments. Typical of the latter category was a statement published by Constantin Goschler (University of Bochum) and Krzystof Ruchniewicz (director of the Willy Brandt Centre for German and European Studies at the University of Wrocław), in the digital edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in mid-March 2018.63 In their introductory article, they criticised the political instrumentalisation of the reparations issue and the all-too-careless handling of historical facts by leading Polish politicians. They attempted to prove this using the example of a statement by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who had claimed that the Polish victims of the Nazi occupation had not even received 1 per cent of the compensation paid to victims in other Western countries and Israel. He concluded from this that there was particular discrimination against Poland. To prove the contrary, Goschler and Ruchniewicz presented a detailed list of the compensation payments that had been made to Polish survivors since the 1960s, which, according to them, amounted to a current value of 2.6 billion euros. But this estimate was actually still too low.64 The authors, however, failed to correlate the calculated amount with the number of Polish victims of the occupation and then to compare the average sum calculated with the average compensation payment received by those persecuted by the Nazis in the Western hemisphere to date. Then they would have had to

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admit, nolens volens, that the Polish prime minister’s statement was by no means incorrect.65 Instead, Goschler and Ruchniewicz contented themselves with the vague remark that the individual compensation payments made to Polish citizens were undoubtedly too low. In addition, the stringency of their statement was impaired by the incorrect assertion that the Polish claims for reparations had been settled since the waiver of August 1953, and that several subsequent governments had confirmed this state of affairs – but this was only a half truth. Even those Polish governments that considered the hope of material reparations to be illusory had at the same time always upheld their demand for adequate compensation for the prisoners of concentration camps, the resistance fighters and all the other victims of the German occupation terror. When compared with this statement, the historical analysis of the Polish–German reparations problem, which Stanisław Żerko presented at around the same time, was cut from a different cloth.66 He also criticised the current political-media spectacle before reconstructing the main constellations in which the Polish reparations disputes had taken place since the end of the Second World War. The discriminatory practices of the USSR in the first phase of reparations were discussed, as were the stalling tactics of West Germany’s decision makers in the subsequent stages, whose achievements he nevertheless correctly discussed, thereby implicitly correcting the misjudgements of the Sejm office. Despite their exclusion of the German territorial cessions from the reparations budget, studies of this kind are most likely to contribute to opening up a new dialogue and bring the reparations issue to a conclusion.

Open Perspectives As of autumn 2020, the prospects of the reparations issue are more uncertain than ever. In Greece, the government continued to wait until parliament finally gave it a mandate to assert the reparations claims in April 2019. In light of their recent setbacks, the German–Greek grassroots initiatives have given up or have become divided. In the end, the situation in Poland was no different. Although the parliamentary working group made remarkable progress, the government did not go beyond declarations of intent, and it refrained from taking official action. Not even the bilateral commission of experts mooted in January 2018 was set up, let alone a multilateral intervention coordinated with Greece and the other governments involved. Only after the Greek parliamentary decision did the Polish reparations commissioner Mularczyk announce that he too would now submit the committee’s report to the Sejm for discussion and adoption: the

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report, he claimed, has now been submitted and was set to be published in 2019. However, as of September 2020, this has not happened. The decision of the Greek parliament, he added, showed ‘that the internationalisation of the issue of war reparations from Germany is realistic’.67 A few days earlier, he had reaffirmed that the Polish waiver of August 1953 had been issued under Soviet pressure, was unconstitutional and had only referred to compensation claims against the GDR. He further claimed that a credible German–Polish reconciliation would only be possible if the German government were to approach Poland on the reparations issue.68 On 5 June 2019, one day after the submission of the Greek verbal note, the German government had its deputy spokesperson reject the Greek demands. He repeated, mantra-like, that Germany considered the reparations issue to be ‘legally and politically settled’.69 On 18 October, a verbal note from the Foreign Office formally rejected the proposal: the reparations issue was ‘settled’ and the Federal Government ‘therefore does not intend to enter into negotiations on this issue’.70 But these snubs were no longer convincing. In the German media, both radio and print, previously marginalised critical voices could now be heard. International law expert Andreas Fischer-Lescano considered the Greek demands to be completely justified.71 The renowned spokesmen of the opinion makers in the media did not want to go as far as he – and some other interview partners – did. Instead, they took a defensive stand: while the Greek and Polish demands for reparations were obviously ‘morally’ justified, the enforcement of these claims could have serious implications. The political scientist Herfried Münkler declared that the Greek and Polish reparation demands were ‘likely to undermine and call into question the European peace. No matter how morally legitimate they may be, politically they are a product of the nationalism that is once again making itself felt in Europe’.72 Sven Felix Kellerhoff, the chief historian of the daily Die Welt, went a step further and wrote, with reference to the consequences of the Versailles reparations provisions, that this time around there would probably not be a second war of revision. ‘But the euro and the European Union will certainly break up’ if the two countries take their demands seriously; moreover, this would ‘breed outright resentment, and there would probably be a tremendous rise in nationalism as a result’.73 The German power elite had already made such threatening gestures in the context of the two-plus-four process, but they had always been mere hints. However, since the collapse of their refusal to comply with the basis of international law was now becoming apparent, their media-political and intellectual masterminds now signalled a marked shift in priorities. We will soon know whether the actors in Berlin’s political decision-making centres will follow this change of course towards issuing open threats.

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Parallel to these anticipations of the change in the argumentative scene, the dismantling of a refusal to pay reparations that was based on international law began within the political centre of power. On 14 June 2019, the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag completed a status report commissioned by the parliamentary group of ‘Die Linke’ on the Greek and Polish reparation demands against Germany.74 This report did not intend to reassess the problem area, but rather endeavoured to clarify earlier government statements on it from the perspective of international law. Nevertheless, the results amounted to a far-reaching partial revision. The experts corrected their previous statement that reparation claims fell under the statute of limitations in principle. Rather, they said, it first had to be clarified whether this was in fact the case; and, if at all, then the conditions and deadlines for this had to be established.75 The second focus of the report was the question of whether Greece had explicitly or tacitly waived its reparation claims.76 Here the experts ruled that Greece would never have waived its claims, not even in the context of the Two-plus-Four Agreement: in addition, the possible special status of the compulsory credit in civil law would have to be clarified. In the case of Poland, however, the experts upheld their previous view, and repeated that the Polish claims were settled as a result of the proportionate Soviet reparations deliveries and the waiver of reparations declared in 1953. In conclusion, the experts recommended that the German government agree to clarify the legitimacy of the Greek reparations claims through proceedings at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.77 These considerations on the partial revision of the previous official government position caused a storm in German media and politics.78 Although the experts concluded that the government’s position was ‘justifiable under international law, but by no means absolutely’,79 they had clearly moved away from the previous position of unqualified rejection. At the same time, however, they were committed to damage limitation by continuing to give Poland the cold shoulder, despite all the well-founded counter-arguments with which they had been presented. In so doing, they were acting in line with a trend that increasingly amounted to presenting Greece as a special case and removing it from the previous line of refusal. The reasons for the emerging rejection of the equally justified – but much higher – Polish demands for compensation are manifold. One essential motive is clear, however: even in circles that have to be open to the Polish cause, the prevailing view is that Warsaw’s compensation demands are an integral part of the currently dominant national-conservative view of history, which stylises Poland as a sorely afflicted victim that resisted the German occupation as a faultless hero nation. In this context, even in historically critical magazines, Polish claims for compensation are classified as a ‘smear

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campaign’ that is ‘primarily directed at its own citizens’.80 In the face of such massive verdicts, it seems urgently necessary to point out the special dimensions of Germany’s occupation terror in Poland and the rootedness of the reparations claim, which is a valid one irrespective of the existing political situation. Only if Poland, and with it the other formerly occupied countries of Eastern and South Eastern Europe, remain involved in the now emerging ‘last round’ of reparations disputes, will there be a chance for a final settlement of the unpaid German debts from the Second World War.

The Ethical Dimension of the Compensation Issue The reparations problem also has an ethical dimension that is closely tied to the material compensation claims. It relates directly to the social groups involved, namely the victims of Nazi terror and their descendants, on the one hand, and the children and grandchildren of the generation of perpetrators on the other. Those who claim compensation alongside the victims and their descendants attempt to place these people on an equal footing with the perpetrators and their heirs. The right to compensation for war crimes and human rights violations is guaranteed under international law. Whoever is committed to this constitutes himself as an equal legal subject. By enforcing this legal claim, he overcomes the helot status into which the Nazi regime plunged him or his ancestors. The implementation of this egalitarian legal act includes ensuring that the resulting compensation payments deprive the obliged debtors of revenues that can then be redistributed in favour of the aggrieved parties, and enable them to earn a secure livelihood. Only in this way is it possible to realise a compensation that can (but does not have to) lead to a removal of guilt or even to a reconciliation. It is precisely this process that is at stake: the recognition of an equal relationship that presupposes an appropriate transfer of value to compensate for the material destruction and humanitarian damage. This is why the political representatives of the German generation of perpetrators and their heirs have shirked their responsibilities to this day. However, since flat-out rejection would have isolated them internationally, over the past decades they have developed a habitus that is bipolar in structure. The continued refusal to pay compensation was linked to a symbolic recognition of the suffering that had been inflicted on the victims of occupation terror. The victims are now honoured in the media and at memorials, and, after decades of exclusion, the few survivors still alive have received voluntary ‘humanitarian aid’ from ‘hardship funds’. These one-off payments, however, do not establish any legal entitlement whatsoever, and have fixed the status of the recipients as subaltern petitioners.

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As a result of this bipolar process, a commemorative industry known as the ‘European culture of remembrance’ eventually emerged, which is fed and controlled by the political leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany. At the core of its symbolic practices are the victims of the occupation terror, who are increasingly being detached from the historical context of German occupation. The invisible opposite pole, however, is the overpowering taboo of the ban on reparations and compensation. Under no circumstances should the icons of suffering rise above their victim status and confront the perpetrators and their descendants as equals. We ourselves have been trying for decades to build a self-determined culture of remembrance. Our goal was, and remains, to preserve and pass on the collective memory of those who suffered under the German occupation and resisted it. We were always aware that their rehabilitation also has a material dimension. Only if the collective memory of the victims of Nazi terror remains linked to their claims for compensation will these victims overcome their helot status and confront the perpetrators and their executors on an equal footing. By contrast, the ‘European culture of remembrance’ developed by the Berlin central offices leaves the asymmetry between victims and perpetrators, which was caused by the extreme violence of the occupation, ultimately untouched. This kind of ‘reconciliation’ is patronising and disingenuous. It seeks to deprive all those in Europe, as well as in Germany, of the basis on which they have tried for decades to enforce the legitimate claims for the victim groups to be compensated.

Notes  1. Cf. Rondholz, Alles vergessen, alles erledigt?, 32.  2. ‘Zweiter Weltkrieg: Athen beziffert deutsche Schuld auf 278 Milliarden Euro’, Spiegel Online, 7 April 2015, http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/griechenland-beziffertdeutsche-schuld-aus-weltkrieg-auf-290-milliarden-a-1027235.html (last accessed 30 December 2016).  3. ‘Diakommatikí kinovoulevtikí epitropí ja ti diekdíkisi ton germanikón ofilón: Éktesi tis diakommatikís kinevoulevtikís epitropís ja ti diekdíkisi ton germanikon ofilón’ [Cross-Party Parliamentary Committee to Demand German Liabilities: Presentation of the Intergroup Parliamentary Committee on the Recovery of German Liabilities], 56th parliamentary term, 1st session, Athens 2016. A German summary has also since become available, however it is not entirely accurate (for example, ‘cross-party’ has been translated as ‘inter-party’). I would like to thank Mr Antonios Beys-Kammarokos for pointing this out.

322  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

 4. ‘PM Tsipras: We will continue our struggle for German reparations’, Athens News Agency, 16 August 2016.  5. Auswärtiges Amt, Pressemitteilung: Gemeinsame Erklärung der Außenminister Deutschlands und Griechenlands, 14. 12. 2016, p. 4.  6. ‘Schulterschluss unter der Akropolis’, FAZ, 2. 5. 2017, http://www.faz.net/-gpc-8wpgw (last accessed 2 August 2021).  7. Our thanks to Triantafillia Thiesing-Kostopoulou for pointing this out and for translating the most important passage of the interview.  8. Federal Ministry of Finance, Parliamentary State Secretary Jens Spahn, email to Andrej Hunko, 1. 8. 2017. SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72.  9. ‘Athen will mit Berlin über Weltkriegs-Reparationen reden’, Welt online, 8 February 2018. 10. ‘Athen erhebt erneut Reparationsforderungen an Deutschland’, Die Welt, 19 April 2019. 11. ‘Athen fordert Berlin zu Verhandlungen über Reparationen auf ’, Die Welt, 4 June 2019. 12. Radiopoulos, Η διεκδίκηση των γερμανικών οφειλών προς την Ελλάδα από τον Α΄ και τον Β΄ Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο μέσα από έγγραφα του Αρχείου του Υπουργείου Εξωτερικών [Greek claims for the reimbursement of German debts from the world wars based on documents from the archives of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs], Athens 2019. 13. Zug der Erinnerung e.V.& Die Jüdische Gemeinde von Thessaloniki an den Vorstand der Deutsche Bahn AG, Betr.: Die Verantwortung der Deutschen Bahn, den jüdischen Opfern von Thessaloniki 89 Millionen Euro zurückzuerstatten [Letter from the Train of Remembreance Association and the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki to the Board of the Deutsche Bahn Concerning The Deutsche Bahn’s Responsibility to Reimburse the Jewish Victims of Thessaloniki with 89 Million Euros], Berlin/Thessaloniki/Rom, April 2015. SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72. 14. ‘Zug der Erinnerung e.V., Gutachten über die unter der NS-Diktatur erzielten Einnahmen der “Deutschen Reichsbahn” aus Transportleistungen zur Verbringung von Personen aus dem Deutschen Reich und dem okkupierten Europa in Konzentrationslager und ähnliche Einrichtungen sowie zwischen diesen Einrichtungen einschließlich ihrer Nebenstellen. Ohne Berücksichtigung der von der “Deutschen Reichsbahn” durchgeführten Transporte von Zwangsarbeitern’ [Expert report on the income made by the Deutsche Bahn from the transfer of persons from the German Reich and occupied Europe to concentration camps and similar institutions, as well as between these institutions, including their substations. Without consideration of the transport of forced labourers carried out by the Deutsche Bahn]. O.O., November 2009. SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72. 15. Namely, Gerd-Rüdiger Minow as spokesman of the ‘Train of Remembrance’ and David Saltiel, the president of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki. 16. Rondholz, Alles vergessen, alles erledigt?, 30. 17. ‘Eklat bei Gedenkveranstaltung für griechische NS-Opfer’, Zeit Online, 11 June 2017. 18. Ak Distomo, Bericht von der Documenta Eröffnung in Kassel [Report from the ‘Documenta’ opening in Kassel], Hamburg, 13 June 2017. SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72. 19. Ibid., 3. 20. Argyris Sfountouris, AK Distomo and others, ‘Kasseler Manifest’ [The Kassel Manifesto], September 2017, SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72. 21. Office of the Federal President, Speech by Federal President Joachim Gauck on 7 March 2014 in Lyngiades. Printed as facsimile in German in Sfountouris, Trauer um Deutschland, 149–51. 22. ‘Ist die deutsche Schuld beglichen?’, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, 4 February 2015.

New Conflicts • 323

23. ‘Wo die Nazis besonders wüteten, soll Geld in die Infrastruktur fließen’, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, 4 February 2015. 24. Federal Foreign Office, press release: ‘German–Greek Future Fund begins its work’, 12 September 2014. 25. The Federal Government’s reply to the short question from Members of Parliament Ulla Jelpke and Jan van Aken, among others, and the parliamentary group DIE LINKE, 6. 5. 2015. German Bundestag, 18th term, printed matter 18/4863. 26. Ibid., reply to point 13 of the short question, p. 5. 27. Website of Deutsche Vertretungen in Griechenland, Projekte: Deutsch-Griechischer Zukunftsfonds: https://griechenland.diplo.de/gr-de (last accessed 2 August 2021). 28. Bericht Freie Universität Berlin, Presse und Kommunikation: Neues Online-Archiv mit Erinnerungen von Zeitzeugen an die Okkupation in Griechenland von 1941– 1944 (9 May 2018). 29. Freie Universität Berlin, Center für Digitale Systeme: Memories of the Occupation in Greece (MOG), ‘Erinnerungen an die Okkupation in Griechenland’. Präsentation des neuen Online-Zeitzeugenarchivs (23 April 2018). 30. Antrag des Vorstandes zur VDGG-Jahresversammlung am 10. 3. 2013: Initiative für ein Deutsch-Griechisches Jugendwerk. SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72. [Motion of the Board of Directors to the VDGG Annual Meeting on 10. 3. 2013: Initiative for a German–Greek Youth Office]. SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72. 31. ‘Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, Aktuelle Meldung: Deutsch-Griechisches Jugendwerk geplant’ [Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, Current News: German–Greek Youth Office Planned], 12. 9. 2014. SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72. 32. Website of the German Representations in Greece, ‘Jugendwerk: Ein unschätzbar wichtiger Beitrag für die deutsch-griechische Freundschaft. Vereinbarung zur Gründung des Deutsch-Griechischen Jugendwerks unterzeichnet’ [Youth Office: An invaluable contribution to German–Greek friendship. Agreement on the foundation of the German–Greek Youth Office], signed 7 August 2017. 33. Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, Press Release: Visit of the Minister of State of the Federal Republic of Germany, Mr Michael Roth, 15 September 2016. 34. Paul Isaac Hagouel, Offener Brief [Open Letter], 2. 12. 2016. SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72. Our thanks to Eberhard Rondholz for forwarding this to us. 35. ‘Dankesworte von Außenminister Steinmeier anlässlich der Annahme der Ehrenmitgliedschaft der Jüdischen Gemeinde von Thessaloniki’ [Words of thanks from Foreign Minister Steinmeier on the occasion of his acceptance of honorary membership of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki], 4 December 2016. SfS-Archiv, Bestand Reparationen. 36. Richter, ‘Sühnung von Kriegsverbrechen, Reparationsforderungen und der Fall Merten’, Thetis. Mannheimer Beiträge zur Klassischen Archäologie und Geschichte Griechenlands und Zyperns, Vol. 20 (2013), 440–64. For a critical assessment of his overall work, see Roth, ‘Wohin der Zeitgeist weht. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Griechenlandhistoriker Heinz A. Richte, Teil I’, Sozial.Geschichte Online, Vol. 21 (2017), 173–209; Part II, Sozial.Geschichte Online, Vol. 22 (2018), 123–74. 37. Richter, Operation Merkur. Die Eroberung der Insel Kreta im Mai 1941, 254 ff. 38. So it was that in 2015 Richter published a German translation of the apologetic autobiography of the former prime minister of the second collaborative government Konstantinos Logothetopoulos, together with notes by his wife Elisabeth Logothetopoulos: Richter, Griechenland 1942–43. Erinnerungen von Elisabeth und Konstantinos Logothetopoulos.

324  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

39. ‘Offene Rechnung’, Der Spiegel, No. 7/2016, pp. 41 f. 40. See his speech, which was expanded into an article: Richter, ‘Die Besatzungsanleihe – To Katochiko Daneio’, Thetis. Mannheimer Beiträge zur Klassischen Archäologie und Geschichte Griechenlands und Zyperns, Vol. 22 (2015) [recte: 2016], 233–40. Against this, see the critical statement by Fleischer, Roth and Schminck-Gustavus, ‘Die Opfer’. 41. Letter from the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance Jens Spahn to the President of the German Bundestag, Subject: ‘Position of the Federal Government on the bilateral debts of Germany and Greece from the time of the German occupation (1941 to 1944)’, Bundestag printed matter 18/7711 of 23 February 2016, SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72. 42. Kellerhoff, ‘Hat Griechenland noch Schulden bei Deutschland?’, Die Welt, 15 February 2016; ‘Forscher hat genau nachgerechnet. NS-Reichsbank-Akte zeigt: Eigentlich schuldet Griechenland Deutschland noch Geld’, Focus Online, 16 February 2016, http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/staatsverschuldung/fundamental-falscheforderungen-reichsbank-akte-zeigt-eigentlich-schuldet-griechenland-deutschlandnoch-geld_id_5287427.html (last accessed 2 August 2021). 43. https://www.neakriti.gr/article/kriti/1504355/ektos-panepistimiou-kritis-kai-episimao-rihter/ (last accessed 2 August 2021). 44. Żerko, ‘Reparationen und Entschädigungen’, 7. 45. Mijnssen, ‘Warschau will Reparationen aus Berlin’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 9 August 2017, p. 5. 46. ‘Reparations for Poland: Upping the Ante’, The Economist, 19 August 2017, p. 18. 47. Büro für Sejm-Analysen, ‘Ein Rechtsgutachten zu den Möglichkeiten einer Geltendmachung von Entschädigungsansprüchen Polens gegenüber Deutschland für die durch den Zweiten Weltkrieg verursachten Schäden vor dem Hintergrund völkerrechtlicher Verträge’ [Analysis Office of the Sejm, ‘A legal report on the possibilities of enforcing Poland’s claims for compensation against Germany for the damage caused by the Second World War against the background of the treaties in international law’], BAS-WAP-1455/17, Warsaw, 6. 9. 2017. 48. See Wiener Übereinkommen über das Recht der Verträge vom 23. Mai 1969, in: BGBl. 1985 II, pp. 927 ff. 49. See the last section of Chapter 6. The argument that Poland made this declaration under Soviet pressure is not particularly valid either, because then the compensation agreements concluded before 1955 by the – at that point only partially sovereign – FRG and GDR would have been void. For instance, without massive pressure from the Western Allies, the FRG would never have accepted the compensation provisions of the Transitional Treaty of 1952–54. 50. Deutsche Reparationen – Polnische Positionen, Teil I: Interview mit Arkadiusz Mularczyk. Radiodienst Polen, 27 November 2017. 51. Deutsche Reparationen – Polnische Positionen, Teil II: Interview mit dem stellvertretenden Direktor des Warschauer Archivs der Neuen Akten, Mariusz Olczak, 27 November 2017. 52. Such as, for example, the minutes of the Presidium Council of Ministers of 19 August 1953, which preceded the waiver published on 23 August 1953 and were seen as a historical sensation. The minutes are reproduced as Document 60 in Problem reparacji, tom II: Dokumenty, pp. 263–65. 53. Deutsche Reparationen – Polnische Positionen, Teil I. pp. 3 f. 54. Polen präzisiert Reparationsforderungen an Deutschland. Meldung des Mitteldeutschen Rundfunks (MDR.aktuell) vom 4. 5. 2018 [15. 6. 2018].

New Conflicts • 325

55. Ausschuss in Polen prüft Höhe der Reparationsforderungen an Deutschland. AFPJournal, Meldung vom 29. 9. 2017 [15. 6. 2018]. 56. ‘Polnischer Politiker verlangt 690 Milliarden von Deutschland’, Die Welt, 5. 3. 2018. 57. Deutscher Bundestag, Wissenschaftliche Dienste: Völkerrechtliche Grundlagen und Grenzen kriegsbedingter Reparationen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der deutsche-polnischen Situation. WD 2-3000-071/17, 28. 8. 2017. 58. See the critical statement on this from the Polish side: Bainczyk, ‘Kommentar zum Sachstandsbericht vom 28. August 2017 von den Wissenschaftlichen Diensten des Deutschen Bundestages’ [Commentary on the Progress Report of 28 August 2017 by the Scientific Services of the German Bundestag], IZ Policy Papers, Nr. 26 (1), Poznań: Instytut Zachodni 2018, pp. 57. 59. Deutschland und Polen erwägen Expertenkommission in Reparationsfrage. ReutersMeldung vom 18. 1. 2018. SfS-Archiv. Bestand III.72. 60. Koalitionsvertrags der 19. Legislaturperiode des Deutschen Bundestags vom 7. 2. 2018, Abschnitt Deutsch-Polnische Partnerschaft [Government agreement for the 19th legislative period of the German Bundestag, 7 February 2018, Section on German– Polish partnership]. 61. See Mijnssen, ‘Warschau will Reparationen von Berlin’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 9 August 2017. 62. Deutsche Reparationen – Polnische Positionen, Teil I (Interview with Arkadiusz Mularczyk), 7. 63. Goschler and Ruchniewicz, ‘Abrechnungen’. 64. In fact, if the compensation for forced labourers agreed upon in 2001–2 is included, the current value of the amount paid is 3.135 billion euros. See Chapter 14, Table 14.11 in this volume. 65. See my own calculation in Chapter 15, Table 14. 66. Żerko, ‘Reparationen und Entschädigungen’. 67. ‘Entschädigungsforderungen auch aus Polen’, ZEIT Online, 18. 4. 2019. 68. ‘Polen fordert immer noch Geld. Politiker: Deutschland sollte Reparationen als Chance sehen’, dpa-Mitteilung vom 11. 4. 2019. 69. ‘Bundesregierung geht nicht auf Reparationsforderungen ein’. dpa-Meldung vom 5. 6. 2019. 70. Mitteilung des Auswärtigen Amts gemäß Informationsfreiheitsgesetz. Berlin, 30. 10. 2019. SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72. 71. Fischer-Lescano, ‘Deutschlands Verhalten ist beschämend’, Neues Deutschland, 7. 6. 2019. 72. Münkler, ‘Was moralisch legitim ist, muss politisch nicht klug sein’, Deutschlandfunk Kultur – Politisches Feuilleton, 20. 6. 2019, 7:20 Uhr. An excerpt can be found in: SfSArchiv, Bestand III.72, Broschüren und Druckschriften. 73. Kellerhoff, ‘Fluch der Reparationen’, Die Welt, 21. 5. 2019, p. 2. The article was accompanied by a nationalist caricature from 1919, which was intended to symbolise the victorious powers’ greedy grip on Germany that was made possible by the Treaty of Versailles. 74. Wissenschaftliche Dienste des Deutschen Bundestags, ‘Griechische und polnische Reparationsforderungen gegen Deutschland. Sachstand’ [Scientific Services of the German Bundestag. ‘Greek and Polish reparation claims against Germany. State of affairs’], WD 2-3000-066/19, 14. 6. 2019. 75. Ibid., 9 f. 76. Ibid., 10 f.

326  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

77. In addition, it was recommended that the Court of Arbitration of the London Debt Agreement of 1953 be asked to assess the passage contained in § 5.2 of the agreement as to how the phrase ‘until a final settlement’ should be understood when it came to postponing the settlement of reparation claims from the Second World War. 78. Typical examples: ‘Gutachten sieht Chancen für griechische Reparationsforderungen’, Spiegel online, 10. 7. 2019; ‘Bundestag-Gutachten stellt deutsches Nein zu griechischen Reparationsforderungen infrage’, Handelsblatt, 10. 7. 2019; ‘Bundestags-Gutachten zweifelt deutsche Ablehnung von Reparationsforderungen an’, Die Welt, 10. 7. 2019; ‘Neue Sicht auf Kriegsschulden’, Frankfurter Rundschau, Nr. 158, 11. 7. 2019; Eisenring, ‘Vorbehalte in der Reparationsfrage. Deutsches Gutachten sät Zweifel an der Haltung der Regierung gegenüber Griechenland’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 13. 7. 2019, p. 5. 79. Wissenschaftliche Dienste des Deutschen Bundestags, ‘Griechische und polnische Reparationsforderungen gegen Deutschland’, 13. 80. Wóycicka, ‘“Politik der Ewigkeit” auf Polnisch. Zu der aktuellen politischen Geschichtspolitik’, in Studienkreis deutscher Widerstand (ed.), Informationen, 3–7, here 4.

Chapter 14

Guilt and Debt The Extent of Germany’s Reparations Debts and What Has Been Paid So Far

Research Problems and Methodological Issues In the historical literature and official reports, there are various lists of the reparations that Germany has paid to date. By contrast, studies dealing with the full extent of the material and humanitarian damage caused by the Germans to the civilian population are largely lacking;1 there are, however, some studies on the financial and commercial plundering of the occupied territories2 and the exploitation of the forced labourers deported to the Reich.3 This shortcoming should be addressed, because we can only understand the problem if we correlate the facts triggering the reparations claims to the compensation payments made as a result. This seems all the more urgent because since the beginning of the 1990s it has become common practice among German government officials to raise in public – and all the more so within the arcane sphere of diplomacy4 – the compensation payments that they have already made. However, many obstacles stand in the way of such an undertaking, with the result that most authors give up right at the outset and content themselves with the hypothesis that the economic consequences of Germany’s policy of robbery and extermination can no longer be reconstructed today, more than seventy-five years after the end of the Second World War. From

328  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

an archival perspective, however, this assumption is untenable. Shortly before and immediately after liberation, the provisional governments of all the occupied countries returning from exile established commissions to survey the material damage caused by the war, the destruction of economic capacity and the loss of human life – even in Greece, which was severely affected by the ensuing civil war. In all the cases that came to our attention beyond Greece and Poland, extensive investigations were carried out and the findings were presented in numerous commission reports. In addition to the Greek war damages report and the reports compiled by the InterAllied Reparations Agency, we have based the overall estimate presented below on the reports of the Soviet and Polish expert commissions from July 1944 and January 1947 respectively.5 The amounts of damages calculated in these reports were enormous and certainly sometimes exaggerated, because all the governments involved wanted to secure the most favourable conditions possible for the upcoming international negotiations on the sums that would be distributed as reparations. Yugoslavia and the Netherlands, for example, registered amounts of 45 billion US dollars and 25 billion guilders respectively for the Paris Reparations Conference,6 whereas the follow-up costs of the German occupation for the first four years of the war, estimated at 60 billion (pre-war) złoty in the second reparations report by the Polish government in exile of February 1944, were comparatively low.7 These reports were, of course, critically evaluated at international conferences, with the ‘small allies’ having to accept cuts that in some cases went too far in the opposite direction. From the perspective of historical scholarship, it is possible to arrive at an almost exact overall analysis by comparing the source records of the countries affected by the Nazi occupation with the documents from the international conferences in Paris in 1945–46 (the reparations conference and the peace treaty conference with the former coalition partners of the Nazi dictatorship), as well as with the papers from the Soviet–Polish reparations negotiations. However, this would be a challenging research task for a larger team, who would need to be well versed in the ‘small’ European languages too. During the research for our project, we had to limit ourselves to random samples in order to gain at least some indications that could help us to provide an initial overview. In addition to this, there are methodological problems. Here, too, we have had to limit ourselves to an initial hypothetical overview, and hope that later research teams will be able to benefit from our first approximations. With this in mind, we have first decided to use the US dollar from 1938 as our benchmark currency. In the period under discussion here, the US dollar was the most stable world currency, and trustworthy continuous indices can be determined from the purchasing power of that currency in

Guilt and Debt  •  329

the final year before the outbreak of the Second World War in order to determine the current values. Second, when deflating prices from the time, we have refrained from combining various indicators (an index of wholesale prices, a wage index, an index for the cost of living, a GDP index and so on) and from forming the most adequate average value depending on the reparations to be calculated. Instead, we have based all price calculations on the cost of living index (the CPI deflator) in order to reflect the standard of living at the time, rather than today’s, in our calculation of the reparation goods. We are aware that this will sometimes lead to considerable distortions, for example in the calculation of the wages withheld from the forced labourers. For this reason, we have, third, used a control procedure for our calculations dating back to 1990 that bypasses all price indices and transfers the amount of damages and reparations to today’s German gross domestic product by a ratio of 1:1. We were, of course, not able to carry out these three basic assumptions completely, and had to resort to the exchange rates (between the US dollar and the Reichsmark, the Deutschmark and the euro, as well as the rouble and the złoty) on several occasions.8 Here too, we always adhered to the official data, just as we always given preference to publicly accountable statistics over private estimates. Proceeding from these premises, below we present a brief summary of our quantifying studies of the reparations question. In a first step, we examine the extent of the compensation claims for damages against Germany, based on international civil law, by the civilian populations of former Nazidominated Europe; in so doing, we distinguish between material damage, damage to life and health, and the wage income withheld through forced labour. We break these figures down into a total amount, and into partial amounts specific to Greece and Poland. In the next focus area, we then add up the reparation payments made by Germany so far. Here, too, we are guided by the provisions of international law, and explicitly take into account such items as the economic consequences of the loss of territory and of administrative expulsions. Our balance sheet concludes with an overview of the relationship between the extent of the destruction and the compensation paid to date, based on current values determined by using the cost of living index and a comparison of GDP from 1944 and 1990.

Material Damage As mentioned in the introduction above, there are three major categories of damage that arise from violations of international humanitarian law and that can be quantified: first, material damage caused by robbery and looting, financial exploitation and the destruction measures unrelated to the

330  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

acts of war (‘scorched earth’); second, excessive violence against the civilian population and prisoners of war that results in either death, traumatisation or permanent damage to health; and third, the withholding of wages through the use of forced labour. When calculating the material damage, we can in part rely on verified data. In some cases, we make corrections to official figures, and in some we supplement the verified partial data with estimates. In addition, we will establish territorial subgroups within our overall estimate that resulted from the division of reparations zones agreed at the Potsdam Conference: we will list the Soviet Union and Poland and the Western reparations sphere separately. The first amount, related to the USSR, is verified, because all Soviet representatives always separated the material damage from the much higher general costs of war, and most recently put it at 128 billion US dollars.9 The damage to Poland caused by the war can also be determined on the basis of the commission’s report of January 1947. Since this report was based on the guidelines of the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency, it combined compensation claims guaranteed under international law with the general consequences of the war. We therefore do not use the total amount mentioned there – 258.4 billion pre-war złoty – but instead set a total of 125.34 billion, which corresponds to 23.6 billion US dollars (based on its purchasing power in 1938).10 This was 18.4 per cent of the material war damage suffered by the USSR. In this respect, the 15 per cent share of Soviet reparations withdrawals awarded to Poland in the Polish–Soviet reparations agreement of August 1945 seems quite appropriate, especially since the Soviet Union also ceded all German assets located on Polish soil, including the newly acquired areas east of the Oder and the Lusatian Neisse.11 It is, by contrast, tricky to obtain a reasonably reliable estimate for the Western hemisphere. Although the Paris Reparations Conference (November–December 1945) did not adopt an absolute amount, the allocation of quotas for categories A (foreign assets) and B (dismantling and merchant ships) was of course based on the – previously evaluated – damage reports conducted by each nation, and added together.12 This amounted to 389.492 billion US dollars (according to its purchasing power in 1938). Within this sum, which is very high in comparison with the Soviet and Polish figures, the Anglo-Americans dominating the conference had included the general and personnel war costs of 247.9 and 70.322 billion US dollars respectively. This was to the detriment of the severely damaged ‘small’ European allies. In accordance with international reparations law, then, we again have to deduct 318.222 billion USD from the total amount. So it is that we end up with a specific subtotal of 71.27 billion USD as reparations. According to the available sources, this sum is split into material damage amounting to 53.664 billion USD and

Guilt and Debt  •  331

financial exploitation (occupation costs, clearing debts, etc.) amounting to 27.606 billion USD. The calculation of this amount was clearly too low. The Anglo-Americans, however, pushed it through against the fierce protests of the conference participants from Continental Europe. At least when it comes to the post of financial exploitation, we can prove that this sum was too low, for once we remove the costs the Germans extracted from the occupied territories of the Soviet Union and the Polish General Government, we find that the occupation costs extracted by the Germans amount to 90 billion RM. On top of this, the Germans either robbed or ‘Aryanised’ 17.5 billion RM of goods, and had trade debts to the tune of 30 million RM forcibly credited to them.13 This amount, equivalent to 44 billion US dollars (137.5 billion RM to an exchange rate of USD 2.5 plus the deflator for 1944/1938), is therefore included in the calculation as an alternative amount. We then arrive at a claim for economic reparations in the Western hemisphere of 97.664 billion US dollars. We proceed accordingly when calculating an estimate of the damage to Greece. We adopt the sum of 2.545 billion US dollars that was granted to the Greek delegation in Paris for material damage and destruction, and, in line with the above procedure, raise the estimate for the general consequences of the occupation (robbery,14 the occupation costs and the clearing debts) from 2.781 billion USD to 4.43 billion USD. This amount is possibly slightly too large, but it compensates for what we see as an obvious underestimation of the economic losses and the destruction of the infrastructure. Instead of the Greek claims amounting to 7.181 billion USD, as agreed by the Paris Conference, we thus put them at 8.83 billion.15 In calculating the basic sum for the Greek occupation loan, however, we follow our own recalculation (720 million RM out of a total occupation cost of 1.2 billion RM).16 This corresponded to around 280 million US dollars, according to its purchasing power in 1938. Table 14.1 The material war damage (financial exploitation, robbery and looting, destruction measures – amounts in billions) Territory

US dollars (1938)

US dollars (1944)

GDP of the German Reich 1944 (RM)

GDP of the German Reich 1944 (USD)

USSR

128.00

157.70

125.361

50.144

Poland

23.60

29.07

125.361

50.144

Western Hemisphere

97.66

120.18

125.361

50.144

Total

249.26

306.95

125.361

50.144

Of which occurred in Greece

8.83

10.88

125.361

50.144

332  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

The Consequences of Excessive Violence Let us now turn to the problems of assessing the consequences of the excessive violence that the Germans inflicted on the people of Europe and the prisoners of war. This is where things become particularly difficult. First, it seems to us inappropriate and unworthy of those persecuted by the Nazis if they are differentiated, and treated as separate social, ethnic, political or religious groups. Their suffering and traumatisation should be compensated for by a standard approach that applies to all equally. Second, we consider it inappropriate to think only of the survivors and to forget those who have been killed. Their families and communities must be involved in the assertion of a universal humanitarian compensation claim. Third, the compensation payments to be demanded on this basis must enable the survivors of Nazi persecution and the relatives of the murdered to be given a new start straight away; the payments should be made over a limited period of time to thus put them in a position to overcome the consequences of their catastrophes and to start a new life. At the beginning of the negotiations in The Hague, the Israeli delegation demanded 3,000 USD for each Shoah survivor who emigrated to Palestine and later to Israel in order to assist them with this move; since the second half of the 1950s, this payment was accompanied by the benefits resulting from the Federal Compensation Act and the Federal Restitution Act. We want to transfer this principle – integration assistance and individual compensation – to all survivors of German terror and extermination policy ex post. In so doing, we wish to reverse the hierarchisation of the victim groups that has been in place for decades. In our opinion, it would have been appropriate to set a lump sum of 3,000 US dollars for the social reintegration of all survivors, and to provide at least another 2,000 USD per person for payments over a limited transition period.17 At today’s price levels (2018), this would have amounted to 88,500 US dollars, or just under 76,000 euros per person or surviving family – roughly the average amount that the German group of Nazi victims has received to date, insofar as they had a legal entitlement to compensation.18 Based on the available war damage reports and the current state of research, it can be assumed that at least 26.4 million civilians fell victim to the Nazi policy of annihilation in the occupied territories and in Germany itself.19 The hardest hit were the citizens of the Soviet Union: 13.2 million civilians were murdered (4.2 million of these were civilian victims of the hunger genocide, and 2.1 million were Jewish) and 2.8 million prisoners of war were taken by the end of the war. However, in relative terms, it was Poland that suffered the highest population losses: almost 5.1 million civilians (including about 3 million Jews) fell victim to the Nazi terror, and these mainly came from the

Guilt and Debt  •  333

active social groups between 18 and 45 years of age. The other countries of Nazi-dominated Europe and the warring states lost 3.8 million civilians, and here the South East European states of Yugoslavia (1.36 million) and Greece (328,000) dominated the casualty figures. The fourth group of civilian victims were the ‘occupied Allies’ Italy (with 65,300 dead) and Hungary (with 600,000 victims, of whom 550,000 were Jewish), as well as those from neutral countries and North Africa who had fallen under German rule; according to current estimates, there were 715,300 such victims in total. Insofar as this has not yet happened, or only to a limited extent, 5,000 US dollars in start-up aid must therefore be made available to each of the descendants, families or communities of these 26.4 million Nazi victims. What is more, we can see from the demographic statistics of the Inter-Allied Reparations Conference and other international bodies that the mental or physical health of at least another 21.1 million people was seriously affected. In our opinion, they too must be provided (and should have been provided) with the same initial aid to create the material conditions for the long-term rehabilitation of their mental and physical health. These considerations give rise to the estimate set out in Table 14.3. While the overall figures are reasonably certain, we would like to comment briefly on our assumptions regarding the case studies of Greece and Poland. We have not used the figures for Greece officially registered at the Inter-Allied Reparations Conference (558,000 violent deaths and 880,000 invalids) because in the light of recent research they seem too high. However, since reliable figures are still lacking today, we have used several estimates published in the post-war period20 to calculate an average value (328,000 killed and 517,000 invalids), because the figures discussed in the context of the German–Greek global negotiations in 1959–60 were themselves far too low.21 In contrast, when breaking down the total losses (6.028 million people), the Polish Office for War Compensation’s report correctly distinguishes between the victims of direct acts of war and those of the occupation terror under international law. Nevertheless, we cannot uncritically accept this figure because it includes those people who died violently during the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland between September 1939 and June 1941.22 These events have now been extensively researched, but there is no reliable data on the number of victims.23 However, we must assume that there were around 300,000 victims of the Soviet occupation, meaning that the total number of people killed in Poland by the Germans should be reduced to around 5.7 million, of whom 5.1 million were civilians. In contrast, the number of seriously injured is made up of several groups. Taking into account those who were injured during the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland (an estimated 200,000 people), there were 4.87 million injured people in total.

26.40

21.10

47.50

5.10

4.87

9.97

0.328

0.517

0.845

Killed

Injured

Total killed or injured

Polish who were killed

Polish who were injured

Total victims in Poland

Greeks who were killed

Greeks who were injured

Total victims in Greece

Number of fatalities or harmed (in millions)

5,000

5,000

5,000

5,000

5,000

5,000

5,000

5,000

5,000

Total compensation received by individuals and families (in US dollars, 1938)

4.225

2.585

1.64

49.85

24.35

025.50

237.50

105.50

132.00

Total amount spent (in billions of US dollars, 1938)

5.22

3.17

2.05

61.08

29.84

031.25

292.60

129.98

162.62

Total amount spent (in billions of US dollars, 1944)

125.361

125.361

125.361

125.351

125.361

125.361

125.361

125.361

125.361

GDP of the German Reich in 1944 (in billions of RMs)

Table 14.2 List of compensation for those persecuted by the Nazis, and for the families of those killed

50.144

50.144

50.144

50.144

50.144

50.144

50.144

50.144

50.144

GDP of the German Reich in 1944 (in billions of US dollars)

334  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

Guilt and Debt  •  335

Forced Labour Now we turn to the third group that must not be overlooked when arriving at an overall balance sheet of the reparations claims for violations of international humanitarian law: the forced labourers. In their case, as opposed to that of other dependent employees, it is a matter of establishing the wage incomes of which they had been deprived. Towards the end of the 1990s, the economic historian Thomas Kuczynski undertook this difficult task: he determined the amount of work conducted by the forced labourers (concentration camp prisoners, the prisoners of war, and the civilian forced labourers) who had been deported to the Reich, enumerated the wages paid for this work, compared them with the average wages that were normally paid, and calculated the wage income that had been withheld from them.24 In Table 14.3, we enter the total amount he thus arrived at for the 13.5 million forced labourers exploited within the territory of the Reich, which amounts to 20.5 billion RM.25 On top of this, the Germans themselves forcibly exploited – directly or indirectly – more than 24 million people in the occupied territories. The exact number exploited in this way is unclear, and opinions differ widely, even when it comes to how their work differed from other employment relationships classified as ‘normal’. This research deficit must also be overcome in view of the relatively solid sources and the now well-developed studies on working and social conditions in the German-occupied territories that are now available.26 Perhaps the estimates we presented in 2011 following a regional field study were not yet differentiated enough when we assumed that there were thirty-six million unfree workers within the German occupation archipelago.27 Their working conditions could only partly be defined as typical forced labour, with the key criteria being forced entry into work, camp accommodation and reduced or completely cancelled wage payments. In addition, collaborating local companies were often involved as formal employers. A further problem arises from the considerable wage differential that existed – mainly due to inflation – between the Reich and the occupied territories. These considerations ensure that it is not easy to apply the statistical data compiled by Kuczynski to the wage shares withheld from the forced labourers in the occupied territories. Unfortunately, supplementary quantifying studies in this field that could fill this particularly regrettable gap in comparative research on the occupation by means of a few representative samples were not possible within the scope of our study. As a result, we have had to limit ourselves to some roughly estimated data that we have obtained from a synopsis of the research literature. First, we have proceeded from the hypothesis that at least as many people were exploited as typical forced labourers in the occupied territories as in the Reich; and second, we have halved the

336  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

Table 14.3 The exploitation of forced labourers in the Reich and in the occupied territories (estimates of the withheld wage payments – amounts in billions, unless stated otherwise) Territory

Number of forced labourers

Withheld wages (RM in 1944)

Withheld wages Withheld wages (US dollars in (US dollars in 1938) 1944)

The Reich

13.5 million

20.5

6.56

8.2

The occupied territories

13.5 million

10.25

3.28

4.1

Total

27.0 million

30.75

9.84

12.3

‘Reich Deployment’* of Poles

2.46 million

3.73

1.49

1.84

In Poland**

2.46 million

1.86

0.74

0.92

Total for Poland

4.92 million

‘Reich deployment’ of 15,000 Greeks

5.59

2.23

2.76

0.02

0.006

0.007

In Greece

150,000

0.112

0.035

0.044

Total for Greece

165,000

0.132

0.041

0.051

Notes: * Including other occupied territories outside of Poland ** Including the annexed western voivodships (the ‘annexed Eastern territories’)

wage shares withheld from them in order to take into account the marked wage differential between the Reich and the occupied territories, as well as the interposition of collaborating foreign companies that were integrated into the ‘Greater European Economic Area’ as sub-companies of the Todt Organisation – either as holding companies or through long-term supply contracts. In our case study of Greece, on the other hand, we are guided by the figures provided in the research literature that are still reliable today – 15,000 forced labourers deported to the Reich and at least 150,000 forced labourers exploited in the country itself.28 On the basis of these preliminary considerations, we have drawn up the following table:

The Baseline and Current Values of Reparations Claims after the Second World War Having worked out these estimates for the three main groups, the following table provides an overview of the extent of compensation claims under international humanitarian law:

US dollar (1938)

249.26

237.5

9.84

496.6

75.68

13.189

Type of damage

Material damage

Humanitarian damage

Forced Labour

Total amount

Of which affected Poland

Of which affected Greece

16.24

92.73

611.85

12.3

292.6

306.95

US dollar (1944)

125.361

125.361

125.361

125.361

125.361

125.361

GDP German Reich (1944, in RMs)

50.144

50.144

50.144

50.144

50.144

50.144

GDP German Reich (1944, in US dollars)

32.4

184.9

1,220.1

24.5

583.5

612.4

% share of reparations debt in German GDP (1944; index number of 100)

547.328

547.328

547.328

547.328

547.328

547.328

German GDP 1990 (US dollars)

Table 14.4 Baseline values for the reparations claims on Germany from the Second World War (monetary amounts in billions)

Guilt and Debt  •  337

338  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

This brings us to quantifying the current values of the reparation claims against Germany. As outlined in the introduction, we will apply two alternative methods. In a first step, we will examine the reparations debt Germany would have had to face if it had agreed to settle the reparations issue for good within the framework of the Two-plus-Four negotiations. To this end, we will first extrapolate our interim result to price levels in 1990 using the CPI Inflation Calculator developed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States Department of Labor.29 Second, using the figures for Germany’s gross domestic product, as revised by Albrecht Ritschl and Mark Spoerer,30 we will transfer them to 1990 using a ratio of 1:1. In addition, we will use the CPI calculator to determine the current level of reparations debt in preparation for the next steps in our calculations. The results of this first overview show that, depending on how they are calculated, the current values of the reparation claims can differ markedly. In the first variant, we have only taken into account changes in the cost of living since the last pre-war year, as fixed by the most stable world currency. This leads to a one-sided extrapolation of the living conditions from that time to the present, and appears particularly unfair for some components – such as the calculation of withheld wages for forced labour.31 In contrast, the second 1:1 transfer of reparation claims from Germany’s gross domestic product of the time to today’s value, as proposed by Albrecht Ritschl when calculating the Greek forced credit, not only takes into account the progressive increase in the cost of living, but also includes German economic growth since then. This approach therefore seems most appropriate, since the plundering of the occupied territories, together with the extensive mobilisation of underpaid and unpaid forced labour, provided an indispensable foundation for the rapid expansion and modernisation of Germany’s capital stock during the war years – and thus a decisive Table 14.5 The extent of the reparations claims against Germany from the Second World War in 1990 and 2018 (monetary amounts in billions) Territories

Amount in US dollars (1938)

Amount in US dollars (1990)

Share of GDP 1:1 (1990)*

Amount in US dollars (2018)

Amount in euros (31 Dec 2018)

All the Allies

496.6

4,519

6,677.9

8,790

7,647.3

Poland

75.68

678.99

826.1

1,154.6

1,004.5

Greece

13.189

120.02

176.7

233.4

203.1

Note: * Calculation steps: (1) divide the total reparations in US dollars (price levels from 1944) by the German Reich’s GDP in US dollars (1944); (2) convert the result to Germany’s GDP in 1990 by a ratio of 1:1 (also in US dollars).

Guilt and Debt  •  339

prerequisite for the export-oriented economic upswing after the war.32 Continuing to apply this approach beyond the ‘unification year’ of 1990 would further widen the difference between the two sets of figures and lead to an enormous increase in the outstanding reparations claims. However, since it is already clear from the trillions that have been calculated how, in both cases, a complete settlement of the reparations debt must be disregarded,33 we will continue the final calculation solely on the basis of the CPI calculator. When considering the reparations payments that the Germans have made since the end of the Second World War, we are able to draw on numerous public compilations and private estimates. The following have turned out to be of particular significance for our purposes: Gustav W. Harmssen’s studies of the heyday of reparations practice’34 the Federal Ministry of Finance’s current statistics on the reparations payments made as part of the ‘reparations’ complex;35 Rainer Karl’s study of the reparations payments made by the Soviet Occupation Zone/the GDR;36 the publications by Christoph Buchheim and Jörg Fisch on the international aspects of reparations practice;37 as well as the synopsis, prepared by a group of ministerial officials, of the compensation payments alongside the other expenditures made to liquidate the consequences of the war.38 Both the views and statistical methodology of these authors and institutions are very different, and cannot be reduced to a common denominator. However, their integrative view of the problem area as a whole has enabled us to form manageable subsections and to summarise these in a tabular overview. When presenting the results – obtained with the help of extensive supplementary documentation – we will only comment on those phenomena whose evaluation is controversial for methodological or historical-political reasons. For statistical documentation, we will normally only give the currency amount from which we obtained the original underlying asset (RM, DM or euro) and convert it to our central reference value (the US dollar at price levels in 1938) and to the current euro exchange rate. The first problem area is outlined by the question of which publiclaw transfer payments made since the end of the war are to be regarded as reparations. Since we advocate a universal approach oriented towards international humanitarian law, we have chosen a correspondingly broad spectrum, which assumes that a fair reparations bill also includes those acts of compensation that are concealed or treated as ‘fringe benefits’. In addition, at this point we would like to point out once again that in this area it is not the laws of the victors that prevail, but the violations of international humanitarian law committed by all warring parties – and thus also by the victors – that must be taken into account.

340  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

Since our listing follows the chronological sequence of the payment of damages, we find in the first group above all those reparations transfers for which evidence has been established since the aftermath of the Potsdam Conference,39 but which often remain unconsidered for a wide variety of reasons: the economic value of the territorial cessions to Poland and the Soviet Union; the compensation and reintegration benefits paid to the Germans forcibly expelled from these territories; the systematic confiscation of technical know-how (patents, construction drawings, prototype installations) by special units of the Allied troops; the occupation costs skimmed off by the victorious Allied powers in the two reparations zones; and the work performed by German prisoners of war. For all these basic achievements of German–German reparations policy we have compiled – as in the following groups – data and figures that are in the middle range of estimates and are well documented.40 In individual cases – for example, when offsetting the compensation payments made to displaced persons and civilian victims of aerial warfare within the framework of the equalisation of burden procedure – more precise differentiations would have been necessary; however, the special studies required for this would have gone beyond the scope of our investigation. Since the benefits for the equalisation of burden and the integration of forced resettled persons also took into account specific groups of Nazi perpetrators, and in part also benefited small savers and social pensioners who had been disadvantaged by the currency reform of 1948, we reduced these by one-fifth.41 In the calculations for the second group, we additionally had to take into account that the dollar equivalents listed by the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency in its final reports for the transfer of German foreign assets, dismantled factories and merchant ships to its clients were clearly underestimated. Contrary to the official exchange rate (1 US dollar = 2.50 RM), it used an exchange rate of 1:4, in addition to further impairments. We therefore doubled the official amount (520.377 million US dollars).42 In calculating the looted gold reimbursed by the Trilateral Gold Commission to the plundered European central banks, we calculated a sum of 35 USD per fine ounce.43 The second group is followed by an estimate of the reparation payments taken from the Soviet Occupation Zone/the GDR. Using Fisch’s figures, we have extrapolated the data established by Karlsch to the end of the 1950s. In addition, we have estimated the restitutive and humanitarian compensation payments – not taken into account by either of the authors – at the equivalent of 9.6 billion marks, with the estimate of the honorary pensions paid to those persecuted by the Nazi regime and resistance fighters since 1965 constituting the largest cost item. Considerable problems are

Guilt and Debt  •  341

posed by the conversion of the total amount in Reichsmark/the Mark of the GDR into US dollars (price levels in 1938) because the exchange rates – both official and real – changed on several occasions. We have thus refrained from converting the individual items, but have formed an overall estimate (14 billion US dollars) from the total sum (52 billion RM/Mark). When compiling the data for estimating the West German reparation payments (in the Western zones and later West Germany), the initial situation was somewhat more favourable. Essential components of the first years of reparations have already been included in the first main group (basic benefits on the basis of the Potsdam resolutions) because solid allGerman figures are available for this – especially for the confiscation of know-how and for the occupation costs. As a result, we were in a better position to distinguish the remaining unregistered ‘savage’ compensation payments – financial operations, dismantling and the deliveries from current production not on the official reparation lists – from one another. On top of this, there were the compensation payments for those persecuted by the Nazis. We have broken down the latest statistical overview from the Federal Ministry of Finance, which shows that a total of 76.659 billion euros had been paid by the end of 2018,44 into eight subgroups. The results of this general overview are remarkable in many respects. First of all, the total sum is impressive: since 1945, a total of 66.27 billion US dollars (1938) or 1,028.2 billion euros (2018) has been paid in reparations. The overwhelming majority of these transfers of capital and purchasing power consisted of the basic services from Group I (44.25 billion US dollars or 690.72 billion euros). These were followed by the reparations payments made by the Soviet occupation zone/the GDR (14 billion US dollars or 211.9 billion euros) and the Western zones (2.59 billion US dollars or 39.2 billion euros), with the FRG subsequently only making compensation payments to Nazi victims in Germany and abroad, amounting to 86.34 billion euros. So much for our view of the reparations that Germany has made to date. They were substantial and exceeded the predictions of the reparations bureaucracy at the beginning of the 1990s by about five times (the highest estimate known to us to date was 200 billion DM).45 However, this total can only be conclusively evaluated by comparing it with the total amount of the compensation claims against Germany in international law. Before we do this, however, we would like to turn to our case studies and list the compensation payments that Germany has made to Greece and Poland since the end of the Second World War. At first glance, we can see that these payments are astonishingly small. Let us first summarise the transfers of value and purchasing power to Greece:

342  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

Table 14.6 German reparations payments since the end of the Second World War (monetary amounts in billions) Reparation group

US dollars (1938)

RM/M / Mark / DMs

Euros (2018)

German GDP in euros (2018)

690.72

3,344.37

21.48

3,344.37

211.9

3,344.37

Group I: Basic payments Cessions of territory*

12.68

Occupation costs (East and West Germany) until 1955/1958

10.55

Resettlements/civilian damage from the air war

14.22

Confiscation of technical knowhow

5.00

Work conducted by prisoners of war

1.80

4.5

Subtotal I

44.25

4.5

Group II: IARA payments Category A and B

1.04

Looted gold

0.38

Subtotal II

1.42

Group III: Soviet Occupied Zone/ the GDR War booty actions/occupation currency

7.75

Disassemblies

6.1

Ongoing production

11.48

Soviet Stock Companies deliveries (including ancillary deliveries)

4.5

Wismut AG/Uranium deliveries

10.9

Repurchases of the SAG

1.75

Compensation Act for those persecuted by the Nazis

9.6

Subtotal III

14.0

52.08

0.35

1.5

Group IV: Additional withdrawals from the Western zones The Allied military mark, manipulation of exchange rates, undervalued exports, etc.

Guilt and Debt  •  343

Unregistered dismantling and deliveries from current production

0.818

Subtotal IV

1.168

Group V: Business compensation for concentration camp slave labour** Subtotal V

3.5 17.71

3,344.37

0.032

3,344.37

0.065

0.002

0.065

Group VI: Compensation for those persecuted by the Nazis at home and abroad (1)  Luxembourg Agreement (Reparations agreement between Israel and the FRG)

7.87

(2)  The Federal Compensation Act

48.312

(3)  Reimbursement

2.023

(4)  The Compensation Pensions Act

0.813

(5)  European global agreements

2.508

(6)  Compensation Act for those persecuted by the Nazis

2.746

(7)  Other payments***

6.642

(8)  Payments provided by countries outside the FCA

1.994

(9)  Hardness arrangements, hardship and relief funds

8.319

(10) Foundation Remembrance Responsibility and Future

5.112

Subtotal VI

05.431

86.339

3,344.37

Total amount

66.271

1,028.181

3,344.37

Notes: * Areas ceded to Poland beyond the Oder–Neisse border = 9.5 billion US dollars (1938); the northern part of East Prussia ceded to the Soviet Union = 3.18 billion US dollars (1918). ** We did not include this group in Group VI because the initiative for the compensation of the concentration camp slave labourers came from an international association (the Claims Conference) and the funds it obtained were distributed equally without reference to the applicants’ nationality. *** Public service, The Fund for the Victims of Human Experiments, Article VI of the Final Act of the Federal Compensation Law, etc.

344  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

The transfer payments that Poland has received from Germany (that is to say, from the Soviet Occupation Zone/the GDR, the FRG and the post-1990 united German Federal Republic) through to the present day are also adequately documented. Taking a closer look at these payments opens up interesting possibilities for a comparison of two of the countries that were particularly hard hit by Nazi occupation policy. Table 14.7 German reparations and compensation payments to Greece so far in comparison with Greece’s reparations claims (monetary amounts in millions) Compensation group

US dollars (1938)

DM

US dollars Euros (2018) (2018)

IARA Deliveries

26.996

477.83

400.64

Reimbursement of the looted gold

0.056

0.99

0.85

The Global Compensation Agreement of 1960

115.0

247.22

The restitution of tobacco

4.8

10.32

Restitutions to the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki

6.112

4.81

Individual reimbursement

10.0

12.86

Compensation for forced labour

1.754

39.116

31.06

Total amount

26.56 703.26

Table 14.8 Germany’s reparations and compensation payments to Poland to date (monetary amounts in billions) Reparation group

US dollars (1938)

Marks/ Deutschmarks

US dollars (2018)

Euros (2018)*

180.54

154.397

Group I: Reparations Cession of territory

9.5

Poland’s share of the USSR reparations**

0.7

Subtotal I

10.2

Group II: Humanitarian compensation Victims of medical experiments (I: 1960/61)

0.04

0.0914

Victims of medical experiments (II: 1972)

0.1

0.153

Hidden compensation (1975)

0.6

0.757

Foundation for Polish–German Reconciliation

0.5

0.440

Guilt and Debt  •  345

Relief Fund for Jewish Poles (1980)

0.5

0.462

Compensation for forced labourers (Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future)

1.232

Subtotal II

0.204

1.74

3.593

3.135

Total amount

10.404

1.74

184.133

157.532

Notes: * Calculated taking into account the cumulative increase in the cost of living (the DM until 2000, the Euro from 2001) ** One-third of the contractually agreed share of 15 per cent of Soviet reparations withdrawals

Table 14.9 Germany’s reparations debt, what has been repaid to date, and its share of German GDP in 2018 (monetary amounts in billions of euros) Total debt (31.5.2018)

German GDP 2018

Total debt in % of GDP 2018

Repayment by 2018

Repayment as % of GDP 2018

Remaining debt in 2018

Remaining debt in %

3,344.37

228.7

998.21

29.8

6,649.1

86.9

3,344.37

6.1

0.703

0.02

202,39

99.6

3,344.37

30.0

157.52

4.7

846,98

84.3

All Allies 7,647.3 Greece 203.1 Poland 1,004.5

Germany’s Current Reparations Debt Now we can finally turn our attention to comparing Germany’s reparations debt from the Second World War and the compensation payments that the country has made so far. Only when we correlate these two figures can we estimate how large the remaining debt is today. As before, we will first present a general overview and then compile the relevant data from our case study of Greece and Poland. The results of our study speak for themselves. Of the total reparations debt of around 7.6 trillion euros, only 998 billion euros has been repaid to date, so about seven-eighths (87 per cent) is still outstanding. It is true that the Germans have made considerable contributions over the past seventy years: they account for almost three-and-a-half times the amount proposed by the Soviets at Yalta in February 1945 (namely the equivalent of 354.0 billion US dollars, or 302.7 billion euros, at today’s value). But they are

346  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

insufficient when compared with the severe destruction wrought during the Second World War. This balance is even more problematic when we look at the country we have chosen as a case study for the disadvantaged ‘small’ continental European allies – Greece. This country has been left virtually emptyhanded during the distribution of reparations, and not even half a per cent of its reparations bill (some 203 billion euros) has been paid. As with the total bill, this amount exclusively entails the inflation-adjusted current value of the original reparations debt, because – unlike the Greek Special Commission – we do not consider it appropriate to commodify the reparations debt and treat it like a normal government bond. Poland, on the other hand, occupies a special position. In terms of its population and the extent of its economic capacity, this country suffered most under the Nazi occupation. As a result, it is also entitled to just under a seventh of Germany’s reparations and compensation payments. To date, Poland has only been given about one-seventh of this amount, meaning that it finds itself within the overall average when it comes to the outstanding compensation claims. It is also well ahead of the successor states of the Soviet Union. Poland’s position contradicts the latest estimates by Polish experts and politicians, who assume that German compensation payments will not exceed 1 or 2 per cent.46 However, this in no way calls into question the legitimacy of Polish demands for an appropriate final settlement. That said, Poland’s distance to the other ‘small allies’ in Eastern and South Eastern Europe is as clear as the fact that Poland, with the transfer of resources that have benefited it, is also well ahead of the Soviet Union – or, rather, its successor states. The USSR would have been entitled to about half of all German reparations and compensation payments. Yet only around 7.6 per cent of the compensation payments to which it was entitled were transferred, despite the at times intensive withdrawals from the Soviet Union and DDR, and the cession of North East Prussia.

The Unequal Handling of Individual Compensation Claims At the end of this statistical approach to German reparations debt, I will deal with an aspect that is particularly controversial in public debate and historical research: how did the German reparations bureaucracy deal with claims for damages from the victims of Nazi terror? From our analysis of the ‘compensation’ practices, we already know that the decision makers rejected the claimants on account of the claimants’ outlook, and minimised costs rigorously. This basic attitude resulted in a tendency towards preselection,

Guilt and Debt  •  347

namely of respectable Nazi victims and those of negligible importance, but who were also subjected to expert scrutiny. First, a distinction was made between German and non-German applicants: only those who had lived in the Western zones or the FRG at a certain point in time and/or were victims of Nazi persecution within the Reich borders of 31 December 1937 were entitled to ‘compensation’. These applicants were then classified into four reference classes – based on German civil service law – and, after an individual assessment procedure that often lasted for years, were granted one-off transfers of purchasing power for their loss of income and assets, as well as pension benefits for periods of imprisonment and damage to health. However, this only applied to those domestic German victims who had been persecuted by the Nazis on racial, religious or ideological grounds, or because of their political convictions. All war-related victim groups were excluded from this legal claim, with the exception of the ‘displaced persons’ who had become stateless.47 Victims of war crimes and former forced labourers shared the fate of those ‘forgotten victims’ whose persecution was classified as ‘not typically National Socialist’: the Roma and Sinti (until 1963), the Communists, those who had been forcibly sterilised, the ‘antisocial elements’, the homosexuals and even the descendants of the psychiatric and disabled victims of the Nazis. Only when grassroots initiatives or influential lobby groups took up their cause were they granted ex gratia ‘voluntary’ emergency benefits, which usually only amounted to meagre one-off payments. As a result, only a fraction of the approximately 2.1 million German victims of Nazi persecution – the ones the reparations bureaucracy thought could not be circumvented – received compensation in accordance with the law, but did so in multilayered and non-transparent hierarchical gradations. To date, there are no statistics on the social, occupational or national composition of the applicants. As a result, making quantifying statements will encounter considerable hurdles, because only approximate conclusions can be drawn from the – partially accessible – data on the number of applications and the destinations of the transfers. Thus we know, for instance, that for the core area of West German ‘compensation’, the benefits from the Federal Compensation Act, which has been amended several times, and the Federal Restitution Act, almost 4.84 million applications had been submitted by the end of the statistical surveys on 1 October 1987, resulting in about 2 million grants. However, since these were usually multiple applications submitted by the same person, it is not possible to map the number of applications onto the number of applicants directly. We can assume, however, that from the core area of German compensation practice, which only covers those who emigrated and those domestic German victims of

348  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

Table 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 Beneficiaries

Number of Amount (in beneficiaries billions of (millions) euros, at end of 2018)*

Recipient groups from Germany

2.1**

Federal Compensation Act

48.312

Restitution Act

2.023

Compensation Pensions Act

0.813

NS Persecution Compensation

2.746

Treaty of Israel

7.87

Other services***

4.642

Services provided by countries outside the FCA

1.994

Hardness regulations****

4.319

Subtotal I

2.1

Non-German recipient groups

45.4

72.719

Global contracts in Western Europe

2.508

Compensation for forced labourers (Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’)

5.112

Assistance funds and hardship schemes

4.0

Other services

Amount per capita

Percentage (of the recipient group and the total amount)

34.628

4.4 / 84.2

300

95.6 / 15.8

2.0

Subtotal II

45.4

13.62

Total amount

47.5

86.399

100 / 100

Notes: * Predominantly a 1:1 conversion (DM:Euro) according to the specifications of the Federal Ministry of Finance. In some cases (the Israel Agreement and the European Global Compensation Agreement), the current value was recalculated. ** 1.4 million NS victims with a legal claim; 0.7 million NS victims as recipients of oneoff ‘emergency aid’. *** About 2 billion euros of the total amount of ‘other benefits’ are estimated to have gone to non-German recipients (those who suffered under the Nazi human experiments, etc.). **** An estimated 4 billion euros went to non-German recipients.

Guilt and Debt  •  349

Nazi persecution who were legally entitled, some 1.4 million people have been granted lump-sum settlements and pensions. Of these payments, 85 per cent went to the Western countries and Israel, because the main group of recipients with legal entitlement – Jewish and non-Jewish emigrants as well as relatives and descendants of the victims of the Shoah and Nazi terror – had predominantly emigrated to these countries. Proceeding from this basic data on the compensation practices of the FRG, which focus on the German victims of National Socialism, we can then go a step further and ask what the situation looked like when it came to the compensation payments – granted in principle only extra-legally and ‘ex gratia’ – made to the non-German victims of National Socialism in the territories annexed and occupied by Germany. The results of this tabular overview are explosive. Before discussing them, we must – as explained in the introduction to this chapter – point out that they are merely initial approximations. Two of the ten items are based on estimated values, because the Federal Ministry of Finance mixed up payments to German and non-German recipients, and the archival documents that could clarify exactly the relation between the two are not yet available. In addition, we have only partially determined the current values for this table and, in the majority of cases, adopted the Federal Ministry of Finance’s non-transparent calculation method. It is often not possible to extrapolate appropriately the transfers of purchasing power that have often been made over the course of seven decades to today’s standard of living. However, this does not detract from the informative value, because this is the case for both comparison groups in an almost identical manner. As a result, the proportions would not change significantly even after such a calculation. Despite these reservations, we can conclude that the comparatively small group of recipients originating from Germany (clearly below 5 per cent) received slightly more than four-fifths of all compensation payments (whereby here, too, Nazi victims with legal entitlement were once again treated extremely preferentially). The group of non-German claimants, which is nineteen times larger, was so disadvantaged by receiving just under one-fifth of the payments that we must speak of systematic discrimination both in the planning and the implementation of the compensation practices. Let us now try to penetrate a little further into the jungle of German compensation practices by comparing the benefits that those persecuted by the Nazis from Germany, Greece and Poland have received to date. In doing so, we summarise the current values obtained in the previous tables.

350  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

Table 14.11 A comparison of the compensation payments made to the victims of Nazi persecution from Germany, Greece and Poland (Nazi victims without taking into consideration the forced labourers) Origin of the recipients

Number (millions)

Total amount (2018 values in billions of euros)

Per capita share of the current value (euro)

Per capita ratio Greece / Poland to Germany 2018 (%)

Germany*

2,100

72,719

34,628

(100)

Greece

0.845

0.252

290.2

0.84

Poland

9,970

1.903

190.9

0.55

Notes: * German emigrants and nationals in accordance with the territorial and cut-off date provisions of the Federal Compensation Acts. This group also includes: (a) Forcibly resettled Germans and refugees from the Soviet Occupation Zone/the GDR who had been persecuted by the Nazis (b) East European Jews (in particular from Poland and the USSR) who had emigrated to the transatlantic region or to Palestine/Israel, provided they could prove that they belonged to the ‘German language and culture area’ (c) East European citizens of German nationality (‘ethnic Germans’, ‘late resettlers’, etc.) who emigrated to the Western zones/the FRG after 1945, and had been persecuted by the Nazis (d) foreigners who became stateless as a result of the Second World War (especially Poles) who had lived as ‘displaced persons’ in the Western zones/the FRG. However, their payments were considerably lower than the benefits issued to the other groups of recipients.

This result speaks for itself, and requires no further discussion. The average individual compensation payments received by the Greek and Polish victims of National Socialism were only 0.84 and 0.55 per cent respectively of the amount received by the German victims. The statements made in this regard by Greek and Polish experts and politicians, who have repeatedly pointed out that the Germans have only paid 1 per cent of the total reparations sum, are thus fully justified. However, it must be borne in mind that this comparison relates exclusively to what the German side calls ‘reparations’ for the Nazi victims. They therefore do not take into account material reparation payments, which in the case of Poland are quite significant. Such a separation not only contradicts our universal approach, but also ignores a piece of historical reality, because after all, several hundred thousand surviving Polish Nazi victims were settled in the former German territories east of the Oder–Neisse line, and received assets there on preferential terms.48 Such a ‘social’ bridge to material reparations, however, only existed in Poland, not in Greece. But that is not all. As we already know, the authorities dealing with compensation issues were at the same time, as a result of the Allied denazification

Guilt and Debt  •  351

Table 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 (monetary amounts in billions) Groups of recipients

DM

Euros

Federal Social Assistance Law [Bundesversorgungsgesetz]; (Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS, etc.)

415.5

212.44

Social assistance for the discharged NS functionaries in line with Article 131 of the Constitution

177.5

90.75

Compensation for prisoners of war

2.8

1.43

Prisoner Assistance Act

2.7

1.38

Total amount

598.5

306.01

Compensation for victims of Nazi persecution (total amount in 2000)

102.7

52.51

Percentage of compensation going to victims (compared to perpetrators)

17.2

Source: Compiled according to Brodesser et al., Wiedergutmachung und Kriegsliquidation, 250, in combination with the author’s own calculations of the compensation payments for those persecuted by the Nazis.

policy, responsible for compensating the individual losses suffered by the Nazi dictatorship’s elite functionaries and weapons carriers (the Wehrmacht, the Waffen-SS and police units) during the war. This dual function on the part of the authorities makes a comparison of the support received by these groups of perpetrators and their families with the compensation received by the victims of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany and abroad necessary. Our final table provides information on this. This table includes all those who had made themselves available to the Nazi dictatorship as political-bureaucratic functionaries, had organised its expansionist policies and had translated the dictatorship’s goals into (para-)military violence against the resistance and the civilian populations of the occupied territories; among them were the non-German members of the Waffen-SS too. There were about 5 to 6 million such people, and their families, compared with the 47.5 million who had been persecuted by the Nazis. The results documented here display a drastic asymmetry in the favour of the perpetrators: their cohort of about 6 million people had received benefits to the tune of 306 billion euros by 2000, whereas the 47.5 million Nazi victims had to be content with 52.5 billion euros, or 17.2 per cent of the amount received by the generation of perpetrators. This is impressive statistical evidence of the fact that, in post-Nazi Germany, there was no room for the surviving victims

352  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

of Nazi persecution or their descendants. Due to the additional discrimination against all non-German victims of Nazi persecution, this asymmetry has extended to the entirety of those European nations once occupied by the Nazis, and has been reinforced once again.

Notes   1. Important approaches in this direction can be found in Klemann and Kudtyashov, Occupied Economies; additionally, there is Scherner and White, Paying for Hitler’s War; Buchheim and Boldorf, Europäische Volkswirtschaften.   2. Lanter, Die Finanzierung des Krieges, 108 ff.; Boelcke, Die Kosten von Hitlers Krieg, 108 ff.; Buchheim, ‘Die besetzten Länder’; Scherner, ‘Der deutsche Importboom’; Kilian, Krieg auf Kosten anderer.   3. Kuczynski, Brosamen vom Herrentisch; Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz.   4. Cf. Arbeitspapier des Referats 012 des Auswärtigen Amts Betr. Deutsche Einheit und Reparationsfrage [Working Paper by Department 012 of the Federal Foreign Office concerning German unity and the reparations question]. Reproduced as Doc. 93 in Roth and Rübner, Reparationsschuld, 508 ff. (here 513–16).   5. Grundzüge des Reparationsprogramms der UdSSR. Abdruck der Zusammenfassung und des Begleitschreibens Majskijs an Molotov vom 28.7.1944 [Basic features of the USSR’s reparations programme. Reprint of Maiski’s summary and his accompanying letter to Molotov, 28 July 1944]. Available as Doc. 114 in Laufer and Kynin, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage 1941–1948, Vol. 1, pp. 425 ff.; Büro für Kriegsentschädigung, Bericht über Polens Verluste. . Devisen statt Entschädigung, pp. 634 f.; on the original Dutch reparations   6. Janjetovic, claims, see PA AA, B 86/913.   7. Ruchniewicz, ‘Deutschland und das Problem der Nachkriegsentschädigungen’, 670 f.   8. In such exceptional cases, we used the following official exchange rates: 1 US dollar (1938) = 2.50 RM = 5.30 roubles = 5.31 złoty.   9. Both Soviet politicians and experts alike clearly distinguished this amount from the general costs of war, which were estimated at 357 billion US dollars (according to price levels in 1938). All of the information was taken from the final report compiled by a state commission of inquiry that was established to determine the damage caused by the war. See Molotow, Fragen der Außenpolitik, 394 ff.; Wosnessenski, Die Kriegsschäden, 133 ff. In the first reparations report of July 1944, by contrast, a total loss of 130–150 billion US dollars had been expected by the end of the war. 10. Büro für Kriegsentschädigungen, Bericht über Polens Verluste und Kriegesschäden in den Jahren 1939–1945, Table 7. As in the calculation of Greek and Soviet material war damage, this only covered direct damage, indirect losses and the capitalised costs for the pensions of the disabled, widows and orphans. 11. On the details, see Ruchniewicz, ‘Deutschland und das Problem der Nachkriegsentschädigungen’, 676 ff. When it came to the assets and capital investments east of the Oder–Neisse line, the Soviets only fulfilled their contractual obligations to Poland to a very limited extent. The largest industrial property, I.G. Farben’s Auschwitz plant, for example, was divided into two reparations facilities: the plant complex for the synthesis of petrol was dismantled and rebuilt in the Ural region; only the Buna plant

Guilt and Debt  •  353

12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

remained at the site. The Buna plant was the largest Polish chemical combine for the production of plastics. It is still in operation today. The following calculations are based on the figures outlined in Chapter 9.1 of the report by the Special Commission of the Greek Court (special edition of the daily newspaper To Vima, p. 79). These figures are consistent with the report compiled by the deputy head of the US delegation, D. Maynard Phelps, published in 1982. However, in his statements he calculated the costs of occupation alongside the general costs of the war, thereby covering up his delegation’s cardinal error: Phelps, ‘German Reparation and Restitution’, 10. These figures are roughly in line with Kilian’s calculations, who put the financial and commercial exploitation of all occupied territories (the occupation costs, the clearing debts and Reich’s treasury credit notes) at 131.1 billion RM – still 30 per cent of Germany’s total war costs. These final results are somewhat higher than the estimates made by Lanter, Boelcke and Buchheim, but without significantly changing the state of research that has been carried out for decades. See Kilian, Krieg auf Kosten anderer, 383 ff; Scherner comes to a somewhat lower German clearing debt of 29 billion RM as a result of re-estimating the German balance of trade; see Scherner, ‘Der deutsche Importboom’ (as in Note 2). Including a value calculation for the looted gold and the gold of the Jewish victims. In the case of Greece, we have retained the reparations item entitled ‘war expenses’, because for the most part this spending was on war victims. This consists of an original total amount of 1.55 billion RM minus the compensation payments made by the Germans (350 million RM). Of this 1.2 billion RM, around 60 per cent (720 million RM) had been raised as forced credit. This is based on the cost of living in 1938. For details, see Table 14.11 below. Büro für Kriegsentschädigungen, Bericht über Polens Verluste, Tables I–VI, pp. 90–95 (with comparative figures for the IARA member countries in Table VI and a correction of the Polish casualty figures further below); Kropačev and Krinko, Poteri naslenja SSSR v 1937–1945 gg.: Masštaby i formy [The USSR’s Population Losses: Extent and Forms]. The overview provided by Pohl, Verfolgung und Massenmord, is incomplete and underestimates the figures on several occasions. Pallis, Greece. Basic Statistics; Memorandum of the Greek Government to the Temporary Sub-Commission on Economic Reconstruction of Devastated Areas (United Nations), Part I, London, 1. 8. 1946; Frumkin, Population Changes, 89–91, 170. The Greek delegation had originally listed 190,800 victims of Nazi persecution. This figure was then reduced to 96,880 as a result of the negotiations, and was used as the basis for the law adopted by the Greek parliament on the distribution of compensation. On this, see Chapter 9. The sweeping inclusion of the Polish and Jewish victims from the territories ceded to the Soviet Union was justified by the fact that ‘these people have the right – or if they were still alive, would have the right – to choose to be resettled in Poland’. Office for War Compensation, Report on Poland’s Losses and War Damage in the Years 1939–45, German version on p. 130. On this, see in particular Materski and Szarota, Polska 1939–1945; additionally, see Hryciuk, ‘Die Illusion der Freiheit’. In doing so, he added the taxes and social security contributions deducted from the wages of the forced labourers (15% of their reduced gross wages) to four-fifths of the withheld wage total. He did not include one-fifth of the wage total in his calculations because it was partly used to pay the forced labourers’ sick pay and, after the war, used for partial

354  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40.

compensation payments. See Kuczynski, ‘Entschädigungsansprüche für Zwangsarbeit im “Dritten Reich” auf der Basis der damals erzielten zusätzlichen Einnahmen und Gewinne’, 1999. Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts, 15 (2000), Vol. 1, pp. 15-63. Kuczynski, Brosamen vom Herrentisch, 119 f. In 1945–46, several investigation commissions conducted surveys on the exploitation of forced labourers. Using this database, it would be easy to obtain a general overview. We therefore find the agnosticism shown by some experts on this issue incomprehensible. See, for example, Pohl and Sebta, ‘Nationalsozialistische Zwangsarbeit außerhalb des Deutschen Reiches und ihre Folgen’, in Pohl and Sebta, Zwangsarbeit in Hitlers Europa, 13 ff. Roth and Abraham, Reemtsma auf der Krim, 451 ff. In calculating the withheld wage shares, we have assumed a total working time of oneand-a-half years on average for both categories, since deportations to the Reich only began in the course of 1943 and since in Greece itself, given the small-scale peasantry’s preponderance in the labour force, periodic corvée work was dominant from the outset of the occupation. The Internet Portal of the CPI Inflation Calculator can be found at: https://www.bls.gov/ data/inflation_calculator.htm (last accessed 10 January 2017). Ritschl and Spoerer, ‘Das Bruttosozialprodukt in Deutschland’. See Kuczynski, Brosamen vom Herrentisch, 131 ff. See Krengel, Anlagevermögen, Produktion und Beschäftigung. This was already clear to the Allied experts when they began to deal with the reparations issue in 1943. See the references in the section of Chapter 4 entitled ‘The Failure of Allied Reparations Policy’. Harmssen, Reparationen – Sozialprodukt – Lebensstandard, 42 ff.; an overview table is on p. 59. Bundesministerium der Finanzen, Referat V B 4, Leistungen der öffentlichen Hand auf dem Gebiet der Wiedergutmachung, Stand: 31. Dezember 2018. SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72, Druckschriften. Karlsch, Allein bezahlt?; Karlsch, ‘Kriegszerstörungen und Reparationslasten’; in addition, see Karlsch and Laufer, Sowjetische Demontagen. Buchheim, Die Wiedereingliederung, 77 ff. (Table on p. 95); Jörg Fisch, Reparationen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, pp. 77 ff. (Table on p. 95); Fisch, Reparationen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, 178 ff. Brodesser et al., Wiedergutmachung und Kriegsliquidation (Timeline 229 ff., List of Payments, 247 ff.). This also applies to such basic services as the confiscation of technical know-how, which was carried out on a large scale, especially by the Western Allies. No decisions were made on this procedure, but the three victorious powers were content to calculate the results of their race in terms of ‘war booty actions’ against each other. For details, see the section of Chapter 5 entitled ‘Allied Reparation Policy’. For one of the largest reparations items – namely, the cession of the areas beyond the Oder–Neisse line to Poland, and the northern part of East Prussia to the USSR – two alternatives had to be weighed up. First, we were able to multiply their share of the GDP of 1938 (11%), as outlined in economic statistics, by a factor of 7 in order to determine their economic substance value (land, real estate, fixed assets, and so on). However, these areas were in part considerably destroyed by the fighting during the last months of the war. In addition, until the conclusion of the Polish–Soviet reparations agreement of August 1945, special Red Army units had dismantled and removed numerous Upper

Guilt and Debt  •  355

41.

42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48.

Silesian industrial plants. Therefore, this amount (23.85 billion US dollars at price levels in 1938) would realistically have to be reduced by about half to a total of 11.9 billion dollars. The second option was to adopt an official Polish–Soviet estimate, which was declared by the chairman of the National Council of the State Belosław Bierut in August 1945. Since we generally prefer official government figures, we used the equivalent value of the territories ceded by Germany (9.5 billion US dollars). Cf. Laufer and Kynin, Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage, Vol. 3, Doc. 40, p. 163. By contrast, we were unable to find any Soviet documents that estimated the economic capacity of North East Prussia (later the Kaliningrad oblast). In this case, we have used the standard calculation method in economics. For example, the benefits for the equalisation of burden also include the amounts received by the former ‘Aryanizers’ under the Reparation Losses Act to compensate for the restitution payments they had made to the former Jewish owners. In addition, compensation for damage resulting from the air war would have to clarify the extent to which these had actually been civilian and not military targets. Compensation was also provided which the Germans had acquired, prior to their forced resettlement from the annexed territories, by appropriating real estate belonging to the population groups expropriated and deported in the process of ‘Germanisation’. We estimate that as a result of such a differentiating study, the sum formed by combining the equalisation of burdens payment with those for the integration of displaced persons would fall by 20–25 per cent. So far, these aspects have not been taken into account in the studies on the equalisation of burden. See, for example, Wiegand, Der Lastenausgleich. Fisch proceeded from a much higher estimate and arrived at a sum of 2.75 billion US dollars (1938), but this seemed excessive. Cf. Fisch, Reparationen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, pp. 203 ff., table on p. 216. On the details, see see Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold, Brussels, Final Report, 13 September, 1998, SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72r. Bundesministerium der Finanzen, Referat V B 4, Leistungen der öffentlichen Hand auf dem Gebiet der Wiedergutmachung, as of: 31 December 2018. SfS-Archiv, Bestand III.72, Druckschriften. This amount increases to 86.339 billion euros in our calculations because a) the Federal Ministry of Finance statistics do not take into account the German group’s 50% share of the ECC Foundation’s capital and b) some easily identifiable current values (from the Israel Treaty and the Western European Global Agreements) were underestimated. Cf. Roth and Rübner, Reparationsschuld, Doc. 93, pp. 508 ff., here pp. 513 f. This low rate mainly stems from the fact that German territorial cessions and Soviet reparations transfers were completely excluded, while important components of the compensation payments made by the FRG since the 1970s were not taken into account. However, cessions of territory are unambiguously part of the basic payments enshrined in international law. In addition, in reducing by two-thirds the reparations share (2.1 billion) to which Poland is contractually entitled, we have taken due account of Polish information on discriminatory Soviet practices. However, they were subject to additional, particularly discriminatory, special regulations, and received a mere fraction of the ‘normal benefits’ provided for by the Federal Compensation Act. The extent of these payments is unknown. In the context of our discussion here, however, they are of no consequence because the values left behind by the Germans in the ceded territories were taken into account when calculating the reparations payments that the Germans had already made (see Table 14.6).

Chapter 15

Arguments in Favour of a Final Reparations Amendment to the Two-plus-Four Treaty

In closing, there is the question of the still outstanding repayment of Germany’s reparations debt. From the outset of our study, it has been clear to us that repaying this debt in full – amounting, as it does, to more than twice Germany’s recorded economic output in 2018 – is hardly conceivable. Substantial debt relief appears to be inevitable, and this shifts the reparations problem onto the terrain of a fundamental political choice. For example, it could be suggested that Germany should once again raise the reparations sum it has already paid – about one-eighth of the total reparations debt – by paying another 951 billion euros on top of the 951 billion already paid. In total, then, this would mean repaying a quarter of its overall debt. The remaining three-quarters could then be waived by Germany’s European creditors and it would then be up to the creditors alone to distribute the funds fairly among themselves. There is no doubt that this amount could be raised within the next fifteen to twenty years without adversely affecting the German economy. It could, for example, be achieved by reintroducing a wealth tax, by raising the top rates of income tax again, by mobilising a large amount of the gold reserves held by the German Bundesbank – which have become unnecessary since the foundation of the European Central Bank – and by other measures, the burden of which would exclusively fall on those who had profited from

Arguments in Favour of a Final Reparations Amendment   •  357

the growth of Germany’s capital stock after the Second World War. This amount would be slightly less than that raised by West Germany in the two decades following the unification process for the economic integration of the ‘new federal states’ in what was East Germany – a challenge sometimes referred to as ‘Aufbau Ost’. We would regard it as an act of retrospective social justice and political fairness if approximately the same amount were to be raised once again in order to settle, once and for all, the issue of compensation for Germany’s neighbours on the European continent that suffered severely under the Nazi occupation. This issue, after all, has been dragged out for more than seven decades. This amount – some 951 billion euros – could be made available within the framework of a final reparations conference to supplement the Twoplus-Four Treaty agreed in 1990, and be distributed over a period of fifteen to twenty years. However, the victorious powers of the Second World War should no longer be in charge of this process. In addition, the Jewish world in the Western hemisphere, as well as the governments of the West European members of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) – Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway – should likewise take a back seat, because they all shared in the prosperity of the post-war decades. The final instalment of Germany’s war reparations should be made available to those societies that up until now have largely come away empty-handed in the reparations process, despite the fact that they suffered particularly badly under the German occupation and today remain cut off from the prosperity of the European centre: to wit, the population of the former ‘small allies’ of East Central and South Eastern Europe,1 and the formerly occupied territories of the former Soviet Union. Are such proposals illusory? If we look back on the German power elite’s approach to the reparations issue so far, then this would seem to be the case. But there certainly are instruments to put the German power elite under pressure, but it needs the former ‘small allies’ to take coordinated action and to be supported by campaigns led by the German counter-public. The former continental European allies of the anti-Hitler coalition could then appeal to the OSCE’s Court of Arbitration. This body is responsible for such disputes, and the German political establishment would hardly be able to evade its arbitration ruling, which would be the first such ruling in its history. At the same time, international political institutions such as the United Nations, the EU Commission and the European Parliament could also become involved in the disputes. Alternatively, legal steps could be considered, such as a joint class action by the reparations creditors before the International Court of Justice, or collective civil actions before those

358  •  Repressed Remitted, Rejected

courts outside of Germany that reject the claim to state immunity when it comes to serious war crimes and human rights violations. Such a final settlement of the consequences of the war, forced within the framework of the OSCE as well as through other interventions, would then create new momentum in Europe. It would lead to a significant renewal of the integration process, and contribute to overcoming the prosperity gap between the core zone and the peripheral countries.

Note   1. This includes Italy and Hungary. These erstwhile allies of the Nazi dictatorship were occupied by the Germans in September 1943 and March 1944 respectively, and were also subjected to a brutal regime of plundering and terror.

Appendix Notes and Documents in the Compilation of Primary Sources

The printed part of this work is limited to the preface, the historical analysis and the scientific apparatus. For reasons of space, the extensive documentation section has not been included within this volume. In order to make the complete version accessible to the reader, the compilation of primary sources can be accessed at: https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800732575.dd. Most of the documents have been left in their original languages (German and English), but each non-English title in the List of Documents section has its English translation below in square brackets. Most of the Greek-, Polish- and Russian-language documents have been reproduced in German translation. The compilation includes the editors’ preliminary notes, a list of the documents, and the documents themselves. This digital part of the work corresponds to the printed edition, in particular through the numerous cross-references and citations to specific documents in the book, in which decisive facts, opinions and decision-making processes appear within a broader framework. In this way, the reader gets a clearer view of the historical context and the political framework conditions. A total of 125 key documents have been reproduced. As a rule, the annotations or comments to them provide additional background information on detailed aspects or on open questions of substance. References to further literature are also provided.

360 • Appendix

List of Documents The following documents are available online at: https://doi.org/ 10.3167/9781800732575.dd. (1) 5 May 1941 Vortragsnotiz des Chefs des Wehrwirtschafts- und Rüstungsamts, Thomas, für Reichsmarschall Göring Betr. Sicherung deutscher Wirtschaftsinteressen in Griechenland [Meeting note by the head of the Defence and Armaments Office, Thomas, for Reichsmarschall Göring concerning securing German economic interests in Greece] (2) 15 May 1941 Bericht des Bergassessors Sohl (Fried. Krupp AG), Essen Sicherung der griechischen Bergbauproduktion für Deutschland [Report of the mining assessor Sohl (Fried. Krupp AG), Essen. Securing Greek mining production for Germany] (3) 30 May 1941 Tätigkeitsbericht der Wirtschaftsabteilung des Bevollmächtigten des Reichs in Griechenland, Athen Sicherstellung der landwirtschaftlichen Erzeugnisse, Tabakernten, Lebensmittel, Kraftstoffe, Bergbauunternehmen und Aluminiumindustrie [Progress report by the economic department of the representative of the Reich in Greece, Athens Securing agricultural products, tobacco crops, food, fuel, mining companies and the aluminium industry] (4) 7 June 1941 / 17 June 1941 Telegramme des Sonderkommandos von Künsberg an das Auswärtige Amt und den Reichsminister Konfiszierung der nationalen griechischen Verteidigungsspende (Gold und Juwelen) in Kandia (Kreta) [Telegrams from von Künsberg to the Foreign Office and the Reich minister Confiscating the National Greek Defence Donation (Gold and Jewels) in Kandia, Crete]

Appendix • 361

(5) 25 June 1941 Schnellbrief des Reichswirtschaftsministeriums, i. A. Dr. Koelfen, an das Auswärtige Amt, z. Hd. Geheimrat Hudeczek. Sicherstellung der griechischen Tabake [Express letter from Dr Koelfen, on behalf of the Reich Ministry for Economic Affairs, to the Foreign Office, for the attention of privy councillor Hudeczek. Securing Greece’s tobacco] (6) 5 August 1941 Der Vorsitzende des Deutschen Regierungsausschusses in Rom, Clodius, an den Vorsitzenden des italienischen Regierungsausschusses, Botschafter Giannini, Rom Deutsch-Italienisches Protokoll und Briefwechsel, 5./6. August 1941 Aufbringung der Besatzungskosten und Finanzierung der Besatzungskosten in griechischer Währung durch die Kollaborationsregierung, Einsetzung von Kommissaren bei der griechischen Zentralbank [The chairman of the German government committee in Rome, Clodius, to the chairman of the Italian government committee, Ambassador Giannini, Rome German–Italian protocol and correspondence, 5–6 August 1941 The collaboration government’s raising and financing the occupation costs in Greek currency, the appointment of commissioners at the Greek Central Bank] (7) 2 October 1941 Aufstellung des Verbindungsoffiziers des Wehrwirtschafts- und Rüstungsamts des OKW beim Armeeoberkommando 12 (IV Wi), Oberst Wendt In der Zeit vom 1. 5. 1941 bis zum 30. 9. 1941 konfiszierte griechische Wirtschaftsgüter [Inventory of the liaison officer of the defence and armaments office of the OKW at the Army High Command 12 (IV Wi), Colonel Wendt Greek assets confiscated between 1 May and 30 September 1941] (8) 16 November 1941 Telegramm des Bevollmächtigten des Reichs in Griechenland, Altenburg, an das Auswärtige Amt Zuspitzung der Hungersnot in Griechenland [Telegram from the Reich plenipotentiary for Greece, Altenburg, to the Foreign Office The escalation of the famine in Greece]

362 • Appendix

(9) 14 March 1942 Vertrauliches Protokoll betreffend die deutsch-italienischen Vereinbarungen über Griechenland Aufspaltung der Besatzungskosten in monatliche Vorschusszahlungen und eine Zwangsanleihe bei der griechischen Zentralbank [Confidential protocol regarding the German–Italian agreements on Greece Splitting the occupation costs into monthly advance payments and a compulsory credit from the Bank of Greece] (10) 26 April 1942 Schreiben des Leiters der Reichskreditkasse Athen an die Hauptverwaltung der Reichskreditkassen Währungslage in Griechenland [Letter from the head of the Reich Credit Treasury in Athens to the Head Office of the Reich Credit Treasury The Currency situation in Greece] (11) 29 September 1942 Aufzeichnung des griechischen Finanzministers Gotzamanis Entwicklung des deutsch-griechischen Clearing-Verkehrs vom 1. 5. 1941 bis 31. 8. 1942 [Chronicle prepared by Greek finance minister Gotzamanis Development of German–Greek clearing between 1 May 1941 and 31 August 1942] (12) 18 – 30 October 1942 - 18. 10. 1942 Der Chef des Stabes beim Befehlshaber Saloniki-Ägäis, Oberst Pramann Abkommen mit der jüdischen Gemeinde von Saloniki [18 October 1942 Colonel Pramann, chief of staff under the commander of Saloniki-Aegean Agreement with the Jewish community of Thessaloniki] - 20. 10. 1942 Kriegsverwaltungsrat Dr. Merten an: (a) Organisation Todt, Saloniki; (b) Verbindungsstab für Landstraßenbau in Saloniki [20 October 1942 Military administration Counsellor Dr Merten to (a) the Todt Organisation; (b) The staff responsible for building highways in Saloniki] - o. D. [Oktober 1942] Aufzeichnung der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde von Saloniki [n.d. (October 1942) Chronicle of the Israelite cultural community of Saloniki]

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- 30. 10. 1942 Mitteilung des Wehrwirtschaftsoffiziers Saloniki an das Wehrwirtschafts- und Rüstungsamt des OKW, Berlin Beschäftigung von Juden im Gebiet von Saloniki [30 October 1942 Communication from the military administration officer Saloniki to the Defence and Armaments Office of the High Command of the Armed Forces, Berlin Forced Labour of Jews in the Saloniki area] (13) 13 November 1942 Telegramm des Bevollmächtigten des Reichs in Griechenland, Altenburg, an das Auswärtige Amt Neuregelung des deutsch-italienischen Warenverkehrs mit Griechenland sowie Funktionen der DEGRIGES [Telegram from the Reich Plenipotentiary for Greece, Altenburg, to the Foreign Office Reorganising German–Italian trade with Greece, and the functions of German–Greek Commodity Equalisation Company] (14) 2 December 1942 Protokoll der Verhandlungsergebnisse zwischen der griechischen Regierung und den Sonderbevollmächtigten der Achsenmächte, Athen Anpassung der Zahlungen zur Aufbringung der Besatzungskosten an die Inflation [Minutes of the outcomes of the negotiations between the Greek government and the special agents of the Axis Powers Adjusting the payments to cover the occupation costs to inflation] (15) 15 March 1943 Generalkonsul Schönberg, Saloniki, an das Auswärtige Amt Beginn der Deportation der Juden aus Saloniki, die Enteignung ihres Vermögens und die Behandlung von Juden nicht griechischer Nationalität [General Counsul Schönberg, Saloniki, to the Foreign Office Beginning of the deportation of Jews from Saloniki, the expropriation of their wealth, and the treatment of non-Greek Jews] (16) 11 May 1943 Note des Volkskommissars für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten V. M. Molotov an die in der UdSSR akkreditierten Botschafter und Gesandten Mitteilung über die von den Deutschen in den besetzten Gebieten der UdSSR begangenen Gräueltaten an der Zivilbevölkerung (Auszug)

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[Note from the people’s commissioner for foreign affairs, V.M. Molotov, to the heads of mission and ambassadors accredited to the USSR Communication regarding the German atrocities against the civil population in the occupied territories of the USSR (excerpt)] (17) 21 July 1943 Mobilmachungsvorbereitungen des Leitenden Pionierführers beim Kommandierenden General und Befehlshaber Südgriechenland für den Wehrwirtschaftsoffizier Athen Erster Räumungs- und Zerstörungsplan für den Fall des Rückzugs der deutschen Truppen aus Griechenland [Mobilisation plans of the leading pioneer of the commanding general and commander of southern Greece for the military economist in Athens First evacuation and destruction plan in the event of German troops withdrawing from Greece] (18) 9 October 1943 Aufzeichnungen von M. Litvinov an V. M. Molotov Die Behandlung Deutschlands und anderer Feindstaaten Europas (Auszug) [Notes by M. Litvinov to V.M. Molotov The treatment of Germany and other enemy states in Europe (excerpt)] (19) n.d. [October 1943] Eugen Varga: Reparationen von Hitler-Deutschland und seinen Komplizen [Eugen Varga: Reparations from Hitler Germany and its accomplices] (20) 15 October 1943 Aus dem Lagebericht des Wirtschaftskommandos Athen Repression von Streiks und Streikversuchen [From the progress report of the economic commando in Athens Repressing strikes and attempts to initiate them] (21) 23 November 1943 Mitteilung des Militärbefehlshabers in Griechenland, General Speidel, an den griechischen Ministerpräsidenten Dr. Rallis Jüdisches Vermögen, mit anliegender Verordnung über die Enteignung geflüchteter Juden

Appendix • 365

[Message from the military commander in Greece, General Speidel, to the Greek prime minister, Dr Rallis Jewish wealth, with an attached decree on the expropriation of Jews who have fled] (22) 3 April 1944 Bericht des Geschäftsträgers des Bevollmächtigten des Reichs in Griechenland, von Graevenitz, an das Auswärtige Amt Sistierung der griechischen, staatenlosen und ausländischen Juden [Report written for the Foreign Office by von Graevenitz, representative of the Reich plenipotentiary for Greece The suspension of Greek, stateless and foreign Jews] (23) n.d. [July 1944] Schlussakte der Geld- und Finanzkonferenz der Vereinten Nationen von Bretton Woods, 1.–22. 7. 1944 (Auszug) VI. Feindliches Vermögen und geraubtes Gut [Final act of the Bretton Woods Conference, 1–22 July 1944 (excerpt) Enemy assets and looted property] (24) 28 July 1944 I. Majskij, Kommission für die Wiedergutmachung von Schäden: Anlage zu einem Schreiben an Molotov Grundzüge des Reparationsprogramms der UdSSR (Auszug) [I. Maiski, Commission for the Compensation of Damages: Appendix to a letter to Molotov Basic features of the USSR’s reparations programme (excerpt)] (25) 10 September 1944 Generalbevollmächtigter für den Metallerzbergbau Südost in Griechenland, Athen: Abschlussbericht über den Metallerzbergbau Griechenland [The general commissioner for Mining Southeast in Greece, Athens: Final report on mining in Greece] (26) n.d. [November 1944] Forschungsstelle für Wehrwirtschaft: Die finanziellen Leistungen der besetzten Gebiete bis Ende März 1944 (Auszug) 9. Griechenland [Research Centre for Defence: The financial contribution of the occupied territories until the end of March 1944 (excerpt) 9. Greece]

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(27) 13 November 1944 A. Gromyko, Washington, an V.M. Molotov Bericht über eine Besprechung mit Morgenthau über die Behandlung Deutschlands nach der Kapitulation [A. Gromyko, Washington, to V.M. Moltov Report of a discussion with Morgenthau about the treatment of Germany following its capitulation] (28) 15 December 1944 I. Majskij, Kommission für die Wiedergutmachung von Schäden, Bericht Nr. 3: Wie hoch sollen die Reparationsforderungen der UdSSR sein? (Auszug) [I. Maiski, Commission for the Compensation of Damages, Report No. 3: How large should the USSR’s reparations demands be? (Excerpt)] (29) n.d. [end of January 1945] Aufzeichnung I. Majskijs für V. M. Molotov zur Vorbereitung der Konferenz von Jalta, mit Begleitschreiben an Molotov Reparationsformel für Deutschland [I. Maiski’s notes for V.M. Molotov in preparation for the Yalta Conference, alongside an accompanying letter to Molotov The reparations formula for Germany] (30) 13 February 1945 Verlautbarung über die Konferenz von Jalta, 3.–11. 2. 1945 3. Reparationsleistungen Deutschlands; 5. Restitutionen und Reparationen [Statement on the Yalta Conference, 3–11 February 1945 3. Germany’s reparations payments; 5. Restitutions and reparations] (31) 2 April 1945 Reichsbankdirektor Hahn: Die griechische Währung und währungspolitische Maßnahmen während der Besatzungszeit 1941–1944 (Auszug) Reichskreditkassenscheine; Finanzierung der Besatzungskosten in Landeswährung; Anlage 5: Abschließende Übersicht über den Einsatz von Reichsgold in Griechenland [Hahn, director of the Reichsbank: Greek currency and the monetary measures taken during the occupation, 1941–1944 (excerpt) Reich’s credit treasury notes; financing of the occupation costs in domestic currency; Appendix 5: Concluding overview of the use of Reich gold in Greece]

Appendix • 367

(32) 2 April 1945 Oberregierungsrat Dr. S. Nestler: Das Finanzwesen einschließlich der Besatzungskosten in Griechenland während der deutschen Besatzungszeit 1941–1944 (Auszug) Die Festsetzung von Abschlagszahlungen und das Anlastungsverfahren; Griechische Abschlagszahlungen und deutsche Anlastungen; Reichsverschuldung gegenüber Griechenland; Beute und Prise; Anlage 19: Stand der deutschen Reichsschuld (Anlastungen aus der Zwangsanleihe) am 21. 10. 1944; Anlage 21: Leistungen der griechischen Regierung nach Abzug der Rückzahlungen des Reichs, Stand: 21. 10. 1944 [Senior Government Councillor Dr S. Nestler: The financial system, including the occupation costs in Greece during the German occupation 1941–1944 (excerpt) Determining the payment instalments and the charging procedure; Greek advance payments and German debits; The Reich’s debts to Greece; Booty and prizes; Appendix 19: The German Reich’s Debts (debits from the compulsory loan) as of 21 October 1944; Appendix 21: The Greek government’s contribution after deducting the Reich’s repayments, as of 21 October 1944] (33) 1 August 1945 Aufzeichnung von I. Majskij für V. M. Molotov Aufteilung der Reparationsleistungen zwischen der UdSSR und Polen [Maiski’s notes for V.M. Molotov Splitting the reparations payments between the USSR and Poland] (34) 2 August 1945 Protokoll der Potsdamer Konferenz II. Die Richtlinien für die Behandlung Deutschlands in der ersten Periode der Kontrolle, Punkt 18; III. Deutschlands Reparationen [Protocol of the Potsdam Conference II. The principles to govern the treatment of Germany in the initial control period, Point 18; III. Reparations from Germany] (35) 5 August 1945 Runderlass von V.M. Molotov an die Botschafter und Gesandten der UdSSR Bericht über die Ergebnisse der Potsdamer Konferenz (Auszug) [V.M. Molotov, Circular to the to the USSR’s heads of mission and ambassadors Report on the results of the Potsdam Conference (excerpt)]

368 • Appendix

(36) 16 August 1945 Abkommen zwischen der Provisorischen Regierung der Nationalen Einheit der Republik Polen mit der Union der Sowjetischen Sozialistischen Republiken über die Entschädigung für den unter der deutschen Besatzung zugefügten Schaden, mit Zusatzprotokollen [Agreement between the Provisional Government of National Unity of the Republic of Poland and the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics regarding compensation for the damage caused by the German occupation, with additional protocols] (37) 28 August 1945 Draft invitation letter from the Allied Commission on Reparations to the conference participants in Paris (38) 1 October 1945 Notes and memorandum by the organising committee on the structure and functioning of the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency (39) 1 October 1945 Zusammenfassung der griechischen Reparationsforderungen Beilage zu einer Verbalnote des griechischen Außenministeriums [Summary of Greece’s reparations demands Supplement to a verbal note by the Greek Foreign Ministry] (40) 13 October 1945 Bericht der Königlich Griechischen Regierung an das Internationale Militärtribunal (Auszug) Teil III: Besetzung [Report of the Royal Greek Government to the International Military Tribunal Section III: Occupation] (41) 18 November 1945 Telegram from Caffrey, American ambassador in France, to the secretary of state The Greek delegation and the issue of strengthening the small Allies’ influence on the Inter-Allied reparations conference (42) 1 December 1945 Office of the British Economic Advisor in Athens: German reparations to Greece, Appendix D to the fortnightly report of the British Mission in Athens (Sir R. Leeper) through to 24 November 1945

Appendix • 369

(43) December 1945 Pariser Reparationskonferenz, 9. 11.–21. 12. 1945 Beschlüsse über Restitutionen [The Paris Conference on Reparations, 9 November – 21 December 1945 Resolutions on restitution] (44) 24 December 1945 Ambassador Caffery, Paris, to the Secretary of State The Greek delegation’s complaints about the low level of reparations (45) n.d. [End 1945] Hellenic Department for Reconstruction: List of total damages suffered by Greece in consequence of the war (46) 14 January 1946 Abkommen über Reparationen von Deutschland, über die Errichtung einer Interalliierten Reparationsagentur und über die Rückgabe von Münzgold, Paris [Agreement on reparations from Germany, on the establishment of an Inter-Allied Reparations Agency and on the restitution of monetary gold, Paris] (47) 28 March 1946 Plan für Reparationen und den Nachkriegsstand der deutschen Wirtschaft, entsprechend den Beschlüssen der Berliner Konferenz Deutsche Abfassung auf Grund der Veröffentlichung der Alliierten Kontrollbehörden [Plan for reparations and for the post-war situation of the German economy, in line with the decisions of the Berlin Conference German version based on the publication of the Allied Control Authorities] (48) 2 May 1946 Telegram from R. Murphy, the US-American advisor for Germany in Berlin, to US foreign minister Marshall Suspending the disassembly in the US Zone due to the failure of a common export–import programme (49) 29 May 1946 A. Skorjukov an den Politischen Berater der Sowjetischen MilitärAdministration, V. S. Semenov

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Vorschläge zur Erklärung Clays bezüglich der Einstellung der Demontagearbeiten in der deutschen Industrie [A. Skorjukov to V.S. Semenov, the political advisor of the Soviet Military Administration Suggestions for Clay’s statement regarding the termination of dismantling work in German industry] (50) n.d. [ca. July 1946] Greek victims during the Second World War: Graphics and graphs compiled by the Greek Ministry for Reconstruction 16. The dismemberment of the country; 53. Villages that were burnt down; 71. The increase in the mortality rate during the occupation (51) January 1947 Office for War Compensation at the Presidium of the Council of Ministers Report on Poland’s losses and the damage caused by the war 1939–1945 (excerpt) (52) 11 March 1947 K.I. Koval: Die deutschen Reparationen Sowjetische Beschlussvorlage für den Rat der Außenminister zum Bericht des Kontrollrats [K.I. Koval: German Reparations Soviet draft resolution for the Council of Foreign Ministers regarding the Control Council’s report] (53) 17 March 1947 Erklärung des sowjetischen Außenministers Molotow auf der Sitzung des alliierten Außenministerrats Deutschland und die Reparationen [Statement by Soviet foreign minister Molotov during the meeting of the Allied Council of Foreign Ministers Germany and the reparations] (54) 16 January 1948 Bericht der Außerordentlichen Staatliche Kommission zur Erfassung der Schäden, die durch die deutschen Besatzer verursacht wurden, an V. M. Molotov Sowjetische Restitutionsansprüche gegenüber Deutschland [Report for V.M. Molotov by the Extraordinary State Commission for ascertaining the damage caused by the German occupiers Soviet reparations claims against Germany]

Appendix • 371

(55) 7 September 1948 Foreign Minister Bevin (Great Britain) to the Secretary of State Critique of the revision of reparations policy; note on the consequences of breaching the Potsdam Agreement (56) 22 November 1949 Niederschrift der Abmachungen zwischen der Alliierten Hohen Kommission und dem Deutschen Bundeskanzler (‘Petersberger Abkommen’) Punkt II: Beitritt zur Internationalen Ruhrbehörde; Punkt VIII: Einschränkung der Demontagen [Transcript of the agreements between the Allied High Commission and the German Chancellor (‘The Petersberg Agreement’) Point II: Entry to the international authority for the Ruhr; Point VIII: Limiting the disassemblies] (57) 15 May 1950 Schreiben des Vorsitzenden des Ministerrats der UdSSR, Stalin, an den Ministerpräsidenten der DDR, Grotewohl Reduzierung der Reparationsverpflichtungen um die Hälfte [Letter from Stalin, the chair of the Council of Ministers in the USSR, to Grotewohl, minister president of the GDR Halving the reparations obligations] (58) 6 March 1951 Bundeskanzler Adenauer an den Geschäftsführenden Vorsitzenden der Alliierten Hohen Kommission, François-Poncet Übernahme der Haftung für die deutschen Vor- und Nachkriegsschulden durch die BRD [The chancellor of the Federal Republic (Adenauer) to the chairman of the Allied High Commission for Germany (François-Poncet) Acceptance of liability for German pre- and post-war debts by the FRG] (59) n.d. [April 1951] Delegation für die Ablösung des Besatzungsstatuts beim Auswärtigen Amt: Entwurf einer Stellungnahme zur Reparationsfrage (39 Punkte-Programm) Reparationen (Kapitel IV – Punkt 8) [Delegation for the replacement of the occupation statute at the Foreign Office: Draft of a statement on the reparations question (39point programme) Reparations (Chapter IV – Point 8)]

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(60) 20 December 1951 Prof. Dr. Kaufmann, Rechtsberater für völkerrechtliche Angelegenheiten beim Bundeskanzleramt, Aufzeichnung der Vorverhandlungen über die Reparationsfrage, 20. Dezember 1951. Anlage: Zweiter deutscher Gegenentwurf vom 19. Dezember 1951 [Prof. Dr Kaufmann, legal advisor for matters of international law at the Federal Chancellory, record of the preliminary negotiations on the reparations question, 20 December 1951. Appendix: The Germans’ second alternative draft of 19 December 1951] (61) 7 February 1952 Begründung zum Gesetz 2023/1952 über Beendigung des Kriegszustandes mit Deutschland, vorgelegt dem griechischen Parlament vom Außenministerium Festschreibung eines Reparationsvorbehalts [Reasoning behind Law 2023/1952 on ending the state of war with Germany, submitted to the Greek Parliament by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Commitment to a caveat regarding reparations] (62) 21 March 1952 Botschafter Grundherr, Athen, an das Auswärtige Amt Betr. Beendigung des Kriegszustands mit Deutschland – Gesetz 2023/1952 v. 10. 3. 1952 [Ambassador Grundherr (Athens) to the Foreign Office Concerning ending the state of war with Germany – Law 2023/1952 of 10 March 1952] (63) 26 May 1952 Vertrag zur Regelung aus Krieg und Besatzung entstandener Fragen (‘Überleitungsvertrag’). Erste Fassung Auszug: 3. Teil: Innere Rückerstattung; 4. Teil: Entschädigung für Opfer der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung; 5. Teil: Äußere Rückerstattung, Art. 1–4; 6. Teil: Reparationen; 7. Teil: Verschleppte Personen und Flüchtlinge; 8. Teil: Ansprüche gegen Deutschland, Anhang [Treaty to settle the issues emerging from the war and occupation (‘Transitional Treaty’). First draft. Excerpts: Section 3: Restitution within Germany; Section 4: Compensation for victims of National Socialist persecution; Section 5: Restitution beyond Germany, articles 1–4; Section 7: Displaced persons and refugees; Section 8: Claims against Germany, Appendix]

Appendix • 373

(64) 27 May 1952 Verbalnote der Griechischen Delegation an den Generalsekretär der Konferenz zur Regelung der deutschen Auslandschulden, Cridland, London Anmeldung von Vorbehaltsforderungen an die BRD für Schäden aus dem Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg [Verbal note from the Greek delegation to Cridland (London), general secretary of the conference to settle Germany’s debts abroad Registering reservation claims on the Federal Republic of Germany for damages from the First World War and Second World War] (65) 30 May 1952 Bericht der deutschen Delegation für Auslandschulden, London, an das Auswärtige Amt Betr. Schuldenkonferenz; Behandlung besonderer Forderungen einzelner Staaten. Auszug: Punkt 4: Reparationsvorbehalte Griechenlands [Report of the German Delegation on External Debts, London, to the Foreign Office Regarding the debt conference; the treatment of specific demands from individual states. Excerpt: Point 4: Caveats regarding Greece’s reparations demands] (66) 8 November 1952 Abs, Deutsche Delegation für Auslandschulden, London, an das Auswärtige Amt Ersuchen um Entscheidung des Bundeskabinetts zur Formulierung des Artikels 5, Absatz 2 zur Ausklammerung der Reparationsfrage [Abs, German Delegation on External Debts, London, to the Foreign Office Request for the Federal Cabinet to make a decision on the formulation of Article 5, Paraph 2 on the exclusion of the reparations question] (67) 13 November 1952 Delegationsmitglied Dr. Vogel, London, an Dr. Röhreke, Bundesministerium für den Marshallplan [Dr Vogel, member of the delegation, London, to Dr Röhreke, Federal Ministry for the Marshall Plan] (68) 27 February 1953 Londoner Abkommen über die deutschen Ausslandsschulden (Auszug) Artikel 5: Nicht unter das Abkommen fallende Forderungen: Anlage VIII: Vereinbarte Auslegung des Artikels 5 Absatz 2 des Abkommens über deutsche Auslandsschulden

374 • Appendix

[London agreement on Germany’s external debts (excerpt) Article 5: Demands that do not fall under the agreement; Appendix VIII: The agreed interpretation of Article 5, Paragraph 2 of the agreement on Germany’s external debts] (69) 19 August 1953 Protokoll der Sitzung des Präsidiums des Ministerrats der Volksrepublik Polen Befreiung der DDR von der Pflicht, Reparationslieferungen auszuführen, sowie Änderungen im polnisch-sowjetischen Abkommen vom 16. 8. 1945 [Minutes of the meeting of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the People’s Republic of Poland Releasing the DDR from its duty to supply reparations, as well as changes to the Polish–Soviet agreement of 16 August 1945] (70) 22 August 1953 Protokoll über den Erlass der deutschen Reparationsleistungen und über andere Maßnahmen zur Erleichterung der finanziellen und wirtschafltichen Verpflichtungen der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik,die mit den Folgen des Krieges verbunden sind [Minutes of the waiving of German reparations payments and other measures to ease the GDR’s financial and economic obligations associated with the consequences of the war] (71) 23 August 1953 Erklärung der Regierung der Volksrepublik Polen über den Verzicht auf Reparationszahlungen Deutschlands [Declaration by the government of the People’s Republic of Poland on the waiving of reparations payments from Germany] (72) 22 March 1955 Entwurf einer Stellungnahme von Dr. Bräutigam, Auswärtiges Amt, für die Botschaft der BRD, Athen [Draft statement by Dr Bräutigam, Foreign Office, for the Embassy of the German Federal Republic in Athens] (73) 21 February 1957 Verbalnote des Auswärtigen Amtes an die belgische, britische, dänische, französische, griechische, luxemburgische, niederländische und norwegische Botschaft Ablehnung der Entschädigungsforderungen – Vorschlag zur Einrichtung eines Hilfsfonds im Umfang von 100 Millionen DM

Appendix • 375

[Verbal note of the Foreign Office to the Belgian, British, Danish, French, Greek, Luxemburgish, Dutch and Norwegian embassies Rejection of the reparations demands – proposal to establish a relief fund of 100 million Deutschmark] (74) 2 March 1957 Botschafter Kordt, Athen, an das Auswärtige Amt Betr. Kammerdebatte über Kriegsentschädigungen; Anlage: Erklärungen des Finanzstaatssekretärs Aliprantis über den im Oktober 1945 errechneten Umfang der Reparationsschuld der ehemaligen Besatzungsmächte [Ambassador Kordt, Athens, to the Foreign Office Concerning the debate in the chamber on war damages; Appendix: Statements by State Secretary of Finance Aliprantis on the extent of the reparations debt of the former occupying powers that had been calculated in October 1945] (75) 30 April 1957 Vizekanzler Blücher an den Bundesminister für Wirtschaft, Erhard Betr. Mein Gespräch mit dem griechischen Handels- und IndustrieMinister in Athen, Herrn Papaligouras Zurückweisung von Reparationsforderungen seitens der griechischen Opposition [Vice Chancellor Blücher to the federal minister of economics, Erhard Concerning my discussion with Mr Papaligouras, the Greek trade and industry minister in Athens Rejecting the reparations demands coming from Greek opposition] (76) 26 September 1957 Aufzeichnung des Auswärtigen Amts über die Auslegung der Reparationsbestimmungen des Überleitungsvertrages und des Londoner Schuldabkommens Grundsätzliche Ablehnung bilateraler Reparationsverhandlungen [Foreign Office notes on the interpretation of reparations provisions in the Transitional Treaty and the London Debt Agreement Rejection in principle of bilateral reparations negotiations] (77) 10 December 1957 Aufzeichnung der Abteilung 5 des Auswärtigen Amts Betr.: Besprechung zwischen dem Bundesminister des Auswärtigen und dem Bundesminister der Finanzen am 6.12.1957 Diskussion über die Interpretation der Reparationsklausel des LSA, die laufenden Ausgleichsverhandlungen und die Demarche der

376 • Appendix

Weststaaten zur Einbeziehung ihrer NS-Opfer in die Regelungen des Bundesentschädigungsgesetzes [Notes of Department 5 of the Foreign Office Concerning the discussion between the federal foreign minister and the federal minister of finance on 6 December 1957 Discussion on the reparations clause of the London Debt Agreement, the ongoing settlement negotiations and the demarche by the Western states on incorporating their victims of National Socialism into the provisions of the Federal Compensation Act] (78) 26 March 1958 Aufzeichnung der Abteilung 5 des Auswärtigen Amts über die Erklärung der Weststaaten zur Entschädigung von NS-Opfern Kritik der Abteilung 3 des Auswärtigen Amts an der Ausgrenzung von Widerstandskämpfern und Zwangsarbeitern [Notes by Division 5 of the Foreign Office on the statement by the Western states on compensation for the victims of the Nazis Critique of Division 3 of the Foreign Office on the exclusion of the resistance fighters and forced labourers] (79) 29 October 1958 Aufzeichnung des Botschafters z.b. Lahr über eine Aussprache zwischen Bundesaußenminister von Brentano und Bundesfinanzminister Etzel über die Entschädigung ausländischer Opfer der NS-Verfolgung [Notes by Special Ambassador Lahr on talks between Federal Foreign Minister von Brentano and Federal Finance Minister Etzel on the compensation of NS victims outside of Germany] (80) 3 November 1958 Vorlage des Unterabteilungsleiters im Bundeskanzleramt, Dr. Kriele, für Bundeskanzler Adenauer Betr. Londoner Schuldabkommen und ausländische Wiedergutmachungsansprüche [Submission by Dr Kriele, head of the subdivision of the Federal Chancellery Concerning the London Debt Agreement and reparations claims from abroad] (81) 8 November 1958 Kabinettsvorlage des Auswärtigen Amts zur Erklärung der Weststaaten zur Entschädigung der durch das Bundesgesetz nicht berücksichtigten ausländischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus

Appendix • 377

[Cabinet submission by the Foreign Office on the statement of the Western states on the compensation of NS victims outside of Germany not considered by the Federal Compensation Act] (82) 26 June 1959 MdB Prof. Dr. Böhm (CDU) an das Auswärtige Amt, zu Hd. Dr. Born Ausgrenzung der unter den Reparationsvorbehalt fallenden Opfergruppen aus den Wiedergutmachungsverhandlungen [Member of the German Parliament Dr Böhm (CDU) for the attention of Dr Born of the Foreign Office Exclusion from the compensation negotiations of those groups of victims who fall under the reparations proviso] (83) n.d. [February 1960] Aufzeichnung des Auswärtigen Amts: Politische Aspekte der Wiedergutmachungsverhandlungen mit Griechenland [Notes by the Foreign Office: Political aspects of the compensations negotiations with Greece] (84) 22 February 1960 Aufzeichnung des VLR im Auswärtigen Amt, Dr. Born (Kurzfassung) Betr. Deutsch-griechische Wiedergutmachungsverhandlungen Übersicht über die Opfergruppen und Argumente für einen zügigen Abschluss des Abkommens [Notes of the deputy head of the Legal Division in the Foreign Office, Dr Born (short version) Concerning compensations negotiations between Germany and Greece Overview of the victim groups, and arguments in favour of a speedy conclusion of the agreement] (85) 10 March 1960 Aufzeichnung einer Abteilungsbesprechung im Auswärtigen Amt Ausgrenzung zerstörter griechischer Ortschaften aus den amtlichen Wiedergutmachungsmaßnahmen aus finanziellen Gründen [Notes from an interdepartment discussion in the Foreign Office Exclusion of destroyed Greek villages from the official compensations measures for financial reasons] (86) 18 March 1960 Vertrag zwischen der BRD und dem Königreich Griechenland über Leistungen zugunsten griechischer Staatsangehöriger, die von nationalsozialistischen Verfolgungsmaßnahmen betroffen worden sind

378 • Appendix

Briefwechsel zwischen dem Auswärtigen Amt und der griechischen Botschaft [Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Kingdom of Greece on payments for Greek citizens who were subject to the persecution measures of the National Socialists Correspondence between the Foreign Office and the Greek Embassy] (87) 24 August 1961 Ratifizierungs- und Verteilungsgesetz zum deutsch-griechischen Wiedergutmachungsabkommen (Auszug) [Ratification and distribution law on the compensations agreement between Germany and Greece (excerpt)] (88) September 1961 Inter-Allied Reparation Agency: A Short History of Reparation from 1946 to 1951 (89) September 1961 Inter-Allied Reparation Agency: Recapitulatory Schedule of the Reparations Distributed by the Inter-Allied Agency (90) 8 December 1961 Deutsch-Griechischer Tabak-Vergleichsvertrag Zahlung von 4,8 Millionen DM Entschädigung für beschlagnahmte und nach Deutschland verbrachte Rohtabake [The tobacco settlement between Germany and Greece Payment of 4.8 million Deutschmark in compensation for the confiscated tobacco that was brought to Germany] (91) 30 January 1963 Bundesamt für gewerbliche Wirtschaft: Stellungnahme zum Schlussbericht der Interallierten Reparationsagentur (IARA) in Brüssel vom 30. September 1961 (Auszug) [Federal Office for Industrial Economics: Statement on the final report by the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency (IARA) in Brussels of 30 September 1961 (excerpt)] (92) 19 July 1963 Botschafter Dr. Melchers, Athen, an das Auswärtige Amt Betr. Wiedergutmachung Bisherige Verteilung der Entschädigungszahlungen, die Zahl der Antragsteller wurde unterschätzt

Appendix • 379

[Ambassador Dr Melchers, Athens, to the Foreign Office Concerning compensation The distribution of the compensation payments to date; the number of applications was underestimated] (93) 1 September 1964 Vermerk des Ministerialdirektors Dr. Reinhardt, Leiter der Abteilung V im Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft Verhandlungsgesuch des griechischen Ministerpräsidenten Georgios Papandreou bezüglich einer Abgeltung der Besatzungskosten aus der Zeit des Zweiten Weltkriegs [Note by the ministerial director Dr Reinhardt, leader of Division 5 in the Federal Ministry of Economics Appeal for negotiations from the Greek minister president Georgios Papandreou concerning the settlement of the occupation costs from the Second World War] (94) 23 September 1964 Schnellbrief des Ministerialdirektors im Bundesministerium der Finanzen, Dr. Féaux de la Croix, an Ministerialdirektor Dr. Reinhardt, Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft Betr. Griechische Ansprüche gegen das Deutsche Reich aus der Zeit des Zweiten Weltkrieges [Express letter by Dr Féaux de la Croix, ministerial director in the Federal Ministry of Finance, to Dr Reinhardt, ministerial director in the Federal Ministry of Economics, concerning Greek claims against the German Reich from the Second World War] (95) 26 March 1965 Ministerialdirektor Dr. Keiser, Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft, an den griechischen Parlamentsabgeordneten A. Papandreou (Ex-Koordinationsminister), Athen Weitere Diskussionen über eine Rückerstattung der Zwangsanleihe seien kontraproduktiv [Ministerial director Dr Keiser, Federal Ministry for Economics, to A. Papandreou, deputy of the Greek parliament and former coordination minister, Athens Further discussions regarding the reimbursement of the forced loan are counterproductive]

380 • Appendix

(96) 10 May 1966 Ministerialdirektor im Bundesministerium der Finanzen, Dr. Féaux de la Croix, an den Chef des Bundeskanzleramts Betr. Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in Ungarn – Ablehnung des Entschädigungsersuchens der Landesorganisation der ungarischen Nazi-Verfolgten [Dr Féaux de la Croix, ministerial director at the Federal Ministry of Finance, to the head of the Federal Chancellery, concerning compensation for those persecuted by the Nazis in Hungary. Rejection of the request for compensation from the national organisation of those persecuted by the Nazis in Hungary] (97) 30 November 1966 Aufzeichnung des Dr. Jestaedt, Botschaft der BRD Athen Betr. Rückerstattungsansprüche der griechischen Juden [Notes by Dr Jestaedt, Embassy of the Federal Republic in Athens Concerning the Greek Jews’ reimbursement claims] (98) 23 December 1966 Schreiben des Referatsleiters V 7 im Auswärtigen Amt, Dr. Rumpf, an die Bundesminister der Finanzen, der Justiz und für Wirtschaft Betr. Griechische Forderungen aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg [Letter from Dr Rumpf, head of Division V 7 in the Foreign Office, to the federal ministers of Finance, Law and Economics Concerning Greek demands from the Second World War] (99) 16 January 1969 Denkschrift der jüdischen Organisationen in Griechenland zu den individuellen Rückerstattungsanträgen für Schmuck- und Edelmetallgegenstände der Israeliten in Griechenland [Memorandum by the Jewish organisations in Greece on individual reimbursement claims for the decorative and precious metal objects of the Israelites in Greece] (100) 27 January 1969 Auswärtiges Amt, Hoffmann, an den Beobachter der Bundesrepublik Deutschland bei den Vereinten Nationen, New York (Auszug) Zusammenfassung über die bislang geleisteten und die voraussichtlich noch zu erbringenden Entschädigungsleistungen [Hoffmann, Foreign Office, to the Federal Republic of Germany’s observer at the United Nations, New York (excerpt)

Appendix • 381

Summary of the compensation payments made so far, and the expected payments that still need to be paid] (101) 3 April 1969 Ministerialdirektor Dr. Féaux de la Croix, Bundesministerium der Finanzen, an das Auswärtige Amt Betr. Durchführung des Rückerstattungsgesetzes, hier: Einzelansprüche in Griechenland lebender Juden wegen Entziehung von Schmuck- und Edelmetallgegenständen [Dr Féaux de la Croix, ministerial director, Federal Ministry of Finance, to the Foreign Office Concerning the implementation of the Reimbursement Act, here: the individual claims of Jews living in Greece due to the seizure of decorative and precious metal objects] (102) 9 April 1969 Bericht der Botschaft Luxemburg an das Auswärtige Amt Betr. Wiederaufleben der Reparationsfrage gemäß Londoner Schuldenabkommen [Report by the German Embassy in Luxembourg to the Foreign Office Concerning the revival of the reparations question in accordance with the London Debt Agreement] (103) 6 May 1969 Dr. Linsser, Auswärtiges Amt, an die Botschaft Luxemburg Londoner Schuldenabkommen und Vertagung der Reparationsfrage [Dr Linsser, Foreign Office, to the German Embassy in Luxembourg The London Debt Agreement and the deferment of the reparations question] (104) 20 August 1970 Protokoll der Ressortbesprechung im Auswärtigen Amt Betr.: a) Wiedergutmachung Jugoslawien; b) Wiedergutmachung Osteuropa im Allgemeinen [Minutes of the department meeting in the Foreign Office Concerning (a) Compensation for Yugoslavia; (b) Compensation for Eastern Europe generally] (105) 28 October 1970 Vermerk des Bundeskanzleramts für Bundeskanzler Brandt Betr. Wiedergutmachung Jugoslawien [Note by the Federal Chancellery to Federal Chancellor Brandt Concerning compensation for Yugoslavia]

382 • Appendix

(106) 24–25 November 1970 Bericht des interministeriellen Arbeitskreises zur Prüfung der Problematik der Wiedergutmachung im Verhältnis zu den osteuropäischen Staaten (Auszug) [Report by the Inter-ministerial Working Group to examine the problem of compensation for the Eastern European states (excerpt)] (107) 4 September 1971 Dr. Vieregge, Bundeskanzleramt: Vorlage für Bundeskanzler Brandt Wiedergutmachung an osteuropäische Staaten – Gespräch mit Herbert Wehner (Auszug) [Dr Vieregge, Federal Chancellery: Submission for Federal Chancellor Brandt Compensation for the East – discussion with Herbert Wehner] (108) 26 March 1975 Vermerk des Bundesministers Genscher Unterredung mit Bundeskanzler Schmidt über die deutsch-polnischen Verhandlungen [Note by Federal Minister Genscher Conversation with Federal Chancellor Schmidt on the negotiations between Germany and Poland] (109) 6 June 1975 Aufzeichnung des Staatssekretärs Gehlhoff Betr. Deutsch-polnische Beziehungen Verbindung der Rentenpauschale mit verdeckten Entschädigungszahlungen (Auszug) [Notes by State Secretary Gehlhoff Concerning German–Polish relations Linking the pension payments to hidden compensation payments (excerpt)] (110) 15 September 1980 / 29 September 1980 Dr. Moeller, Berlin, an Außenminister Genscher Auswärtiges Amt, Dr. von Boehmer, Antwortschreiben Antrag Kostenübernahme für den Wiederaufbau des Klosters Agios Dionysios am Olymp und Ablehnung mit Verweis auf die Reparationsbestimmung des Londoner Schuldenabkommens [Dr Moeller, Berlin, to Foreign Minister Genscher Reply by Dr von Boehmer, Foreign Office

Appendix • 383

Motion to assume the costs for the rebuilding of the Agios Dionysios monastery in Olympus, and rejection of the motion with reference to the London Debt Agreement] (111) 25 June 1987 Drahterlass des Auswärtigen Amts an die Delegation des Bundespräsidenten, Athen Betr. Reparationsforderungen einschließlich Wiedergutmachung im Verhältnis zu Griechenland [Foreign Office wire decree to the federal president’s delegation, Athens Concerning reparations demands, including compensation, in relation to Greece] (112) 27 January 1987 Sachstandsbericht des Auswärtigen Amts, Referat 503 Polnische Reparationsforderungen für Kriegsfolgen einschließlich Wiedergutmachungsforderungen wegen NS-Unrecht für Verfolgte mit Wohnsitz in Polen [Progress report by Department 503 of the Foreign Office Polish reparations demands for the consequences of the war, including compensation demands for injustice caused by the National Socialists to those who live in Poland] (113) 5 March 1990 Vermerk des Referats 210, Auswärtiges Amt (Auszug) Zwischenbericht über Friedensvertrag und Reparationsfrage [Note by Department 210 of the Foreign Office (excerpt) Interim report on the peace treaty and the reparations question] (114) 15 March 1990 Vorlage des Ministerialdirektors Teltschik an Bundeskanzler Kohl Betr. Berechtigung eventueller Reparationsforderungen von Siegern des 2. Weltkriegs gegen ein vereintes Deutschland [Submission by Ministerial Director Teltschik to Federal Chancellor Kohl Concerning the potential entitlement of the victors of the Second World War to reparations from a united Germany] (115) 4 May 1990 Sachstandsbericht der Unterabteilung 503 des Auswärtigen Amts Betr. Reparationsfragen einschließlich Wiedergutmachung im Verhältnis zu Griechenland

384 • Appendix

[Progress report by Subdivision 503 of the Foreign Office Concerning reparations questions, including compensation, in relation to Greece] (116) 29 May 1990 Arbeitspapier des Referats 012 des Auswärtigen Amts Betr. Deutsche Einheit und Reparationsfrage [Working paper by Department 012 of the Foreign Office Concerning German unity and the reparations question] (117) 31 October 1990 Drahterlass des Auswärtigen Amts an die Botschaft Athen Anlass: Deutsch-griechische Wirtschaftsgespräche am 5. November 1990 [Foreign Office wire decree to the German Embassy in Athens Occasion: German–Greek economic discussions on 5 November 1990] (118) 7 September 1995 Vorlage des Referats 503 im Auswärtigen Amt für den Staatssekretär und den Bundesaußenminister Betr. Reparationsfragen im Verhältnis zu Griechenland, hier: Klagen individueller Anspruchssteller [Submission for the state secretary and the foreign minister by Unit 503 of the Foreign Office Concerning reparations questions in relation to Greece. Here: the cases of individual claimants] (119) 12 October 1995 Verbalnote des Auswärtigen Amts an die griechische Botschaft, Bonn Verweigerung der Annahme der Klageschriften von Opfern der deutschen Besatzungsherrschaft [Verbal note by the Foreign Office to the Greek Embassy in Bonn Refusal to accept the applications from the victims of the German occupation] (120) 30 November 1995 Vermerk des Referats 503 des Auswärtigen Amts für das Referat 223 im Hause Betr. Griechische Reparationsforderungen, hier: Versuch der Diskreditierung des deutschen Standpunkts [Note by Department 503 of the Foreign Office for Department 223 Concerning Greek reparations demands, here: The attempt to discredit the German standpoint]

Appendix • 385

(121) 31 January 1996 Sachstandsbericht des Referats 503 des Auswärtigen Amts Betr.: 1. Reparationsklagen griechischer Staatsbürger; 2. Reparationsforderungen Griechenlands gegen die Bundesrepublik Deutschland [Progress report by Unit 503 of the Foreign Office Concerning: 1. The Greek citizens’ reparations lawsuits; 2. Greece’s reparations demands against the Federal Republic of Germany] (122) 1999 Prof. Dr. Kuczynski: Entschädigungsansprüche für Zwangsarbeit im “Dritten Reich” auf der Basis der damals erzielten zusätzlichen Einnahmen und Gewinne Zusammenfassung des Gutachtens über die Wertschöpfung aus der Zwangsarbeit, pp. 3–6 [Prof. Dr Kuczynski: Compensation claims for forced labour in the Third Reich on the basis of the additional income and profits obtained during that period Summary of the expert report on the value created by forced labour, pp. 3–6] (123) 30 December 2014 Republik Griechenland, Allgemeiner Staatlicher Rechnungshof Bestimmung der Ansprüche an deutschen Reparationen und aus dem Besatzungskredit (Auszug) [Republic of Greece, State Court of Auditors Determining the claims for reparations from Germany and from the occupation credit (excerpt)] (124) 6 September 2017 Kanzlei des Sejm, Analyse-Büro, Warschau, an den Abgeordneten Arkadiusz Mularczyk Ein Rechtsgutachten zu den Möglichkeiten einer Geltendmachung von Entschädigungsansprüchen Polens gegenüber Deutschland für die durch den zweiten Weltkrieg verursachten Schäden vor dem Hintergrund völkerrechtlicher Verträge (Auszug) [Sejm Chancellery, Analysis Office, Warsaw, to the parliamentary deputy Arkadiusz Mularczyk A legal report on the possibilities of enforcing Poland’s compensation claims against Germany for the damage caused by the Second World War against the backdrop of the treaties in international law (excerpt)]

386 • Appendix

(125) 31 December 2017 Federal Ministry of Finance, Unit V B 4 Public sector compensation payments (excerpt)

Abbreviations

AAPD

Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Files on the German federal republic’s foreign policy)

Abs.

Absatz (section)

Abt.

Abteilung (department)

ACA

Allied Control Authority

AG

Aktiengesellschaft (Public limited company)

AHC

Allied High Commission

AJC

American Jewish Committee

Anl. / Anlg. Anlage/n (attachment/s) AOK

Army Supreme Command

BArch

Bundesarchiv (German federal archives)

BArch-MA

Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg (German military archives, Freiburg)

Ber./Br.

Bericht (report)

BGBl.

Bundesgesetzblatt (Federal law gazette)

BMF

Bundesminister/Bundesministerium der Finanzen (Federal Minister/Ministry of Finance)

CDU

Christian Democratic Union of Germany

388 • Abbreviations

CSCE

Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe

ČSSR

Československá Socialistická Republika (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic)

DAAD

German Academic Exchange Service

DEGRIGES The German–Greek Commodity Equalisation Company Ltd Dr. Drachma/s EAM

Ethnikó Apelevtherotikó Métopo (Greek National Liberation Front)

ECA

Economic Cooperation Administration

EDA

Eniea Dimokratikí Aristerá (United Democratic Left)

EDC

European Defence Community

EDES

Ethnikos Dimokratikos Ellinikos Syndesmos (National Republican Greek League)

EEC

European Economic Community

ELAS

Ellinikós/Ethnikós Laikós Apelevtherotikós Stratós (Greek People’s Liberation Army)

EP

European Parliament

ERP

European Recovery Programme

FAZ

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

FCA

Federal Compensation Act

FDP

Free Democratic Party [Germany]

FO

Foreign Office

fol.

folio [sheet]

FRUS

Foreign Relations of the United States

geh.

geheim (secret)

GKO

State committee for defence [USSR]

GmbH

Limited company

GRI Greece HaPol

Abt. Handelspolitische Abteilung (Trade policy department)

Hptm.

Hauptmann (Captain)

Abbreviations • 389

HTO

Main Trust Office East

i. A.

im Auftrag (on behalf of )

IARA

Inter-Allied Reparation Agency

ICRC

International Committee of the Red Cross

insbes.

insbesondere (especially)

Kdo

Kommando (command)

KGaA

Kommandit-Gesellschaft auf Aktien (Limited partnership based on shares)

KKE

Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas (Communist Party of Greece)

KZ

Konzentrationslager (Concentration camp)

LAB

Landesarchiv Berlin (Berlin state archive)

LDA

London Debt Agreement

NARA

National Archives and Records Administration [US]

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Nordag

Nordische Aluminium-Aktiengesellschaft (Nordic aluminium corporation)

NS

National Socialism

NSDAP

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party)

NSZ

Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (Polish national armed forces)

OKW

Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Wehrmacht supreme command)

OMGUS

Office of Military Government for Germany, United States

ORR

Oberregierungsrat (Upper government council)

OSS

Office of Strategic Services

PA AA

Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Bonn/Berlin (Political archive of the Foreign Office, Bonn/Berlin)

PASOK

Panellinio Sosialistiko Kinima (Panhellenic Socialist Movement)

PDS

Party of Democratic Socialism [Germany]

390 • Abbreviations

PIS

Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice Party) [Poland]

PKWN

Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego (Polish committee of national liberation)

PVAP

Polnische Vereinigte Arbeiterpartei (United Polish Workers’ Party)

Ref.

Referat (Division)

RGBl.

Reichsgesetzblatt (National law gazette)

RKK

Reich’s credit treasury notes

RM Reichsmark RMSO

Reich Main Security Office

RUK

Staff of the Reich ministry for armaments and war production

SAG

Sowjetische Aktiensgesellschaft (Soviet joint stock company)

SBZ

Sowjetische Besatzungszone (Soviet occupied zone)

SD

Sicherheitsdienst (Security service of the SS)

SfS

Stiftung für Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Foundation for the social history of the twentieth century)

SLD

Soliusz Lewicy Demorat yznej (Alliance of the Democratic Left)

SMAD

Soviet Military Administration

SNCF

Société nationale des chemins de fer français (National society of French railways)

SPD

Social Democratic Party of Germany

SYRIZA

Synaspismós Rizospastikís Aristerás (Coalition of the Radical Left)

TNA

The National Archives [GB]

UK

United Kingdom

UN

United Nations

UNHCR

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

UNRRA

United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration

Abbreviations • 391

UNTS

United Nations Treaty Series

UNWCC

United Nations War Crimes Commission

USD

United States Dollar ($)

USSBS

United States Strategic Bombing Survey

USSR

Union of Socialist Soviet Republics

VAW

Vereinigte Aluminium-Werke AG (United Aluminium Works Ltd)

VDGG

Association of Greek–German Societies

VfZ

Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (Quarterly issues for contemporary history)

vH. / v. Hdt. von Hundert (100%) VLR (I)

Vortragender Legationsrat (I. Klasse) (Deputy head of the legal division in the foreign office)

VS

Verschlusssache (Classified information)

WEU

West[ern] European Union

YDIP

Yperesía Diacheiríseos Israilitikón Perioustón (Management of Israeli wealth)

ZA

Zwischenarchiv (Intermediate archive)

z. b. V.

zur besonderen Verwendung (Special officer)

z. Hd.

zu Händen (for the attention of )

ZK

Zentralkomitee (Central committee)

Sources and Bibliography

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Index

A Abs, Hermann Josef, 187, 191–92, 195, 197, 220n40 Adenauer, Konrad, 173, 184, 188, 190–91, 194, 197, 219n17, 228–29, 234, 243 ‘Aktion Sühnezeichen’ (Reconciliation Action), 229 Albania, 83n2, 91, 166, 175, 179n26, 272 Allied Control Council, 7, 142, 148, 152, 155–56, 168, 170–71, 243 Allied Council of Foreign Ministers, 142 Allied Great Powers, 132, 135, 141, 194 War Conferences, 135–140, 147, 156 Allied High Commission / Commissioners, 173, 184, 186–87, 194–95 Allied occupation of Germany, 137, 141– 44, 148–50, 158–59 Eastern occupation zone (SBZ), 142–44, 148–50, 159, 166, 201, 217, 339–41, 344, 350 (see also Soviet Military Administration (SMAD)) US military governor, 171 Western occupation zones, 142, 166, 194, 202 Allied Reparations Commission (Versailles), 10–11, 13 Allied Reparations Commission (Moscow), 139–40, 152 Allied reparation policy, 7–8, 14–15, 131–44, 171, 173, 252, 294, 354n39 Soviet reparations policy, 7, 142–44 Western reparations policy, 7, 170, 172, 186, 193

Allied reparations zones, 7, 9, 15, 140–41, 148, 330, 340 Eastern reparations zone, 7, 147–63 Western reparations zone, 150, 166–78 Altenburg, Günther, 66, 73, 79, 236–37, 245, 251n71 Aly, Götz, 86nn60–61 American Jewish Committee, 274–75 Angelópoulos, Angelos, 237–38, 284, 296n7 anti-Hitler coalition, 6–7, 14, 166, 177, 357 antisemitism, 86n50, 106, 110 Apostolopoulos, Nicolas, 308 Article 2 Agreement, 274 ‘Aryanisations’, ‘Aryanisers’, 103–4, 124, 185, 192, 204, 217, 253–54, 331, 355n41 Association of German-Greek Societies, 309 Athens, xii, 65–66, 69, 71, 73, 76–80, 83, 84–85n24, 102, 118, 174–75, 177, 226, 228, 231–32, 236–37, 239, 240, 245–46, 283, 284, 287–88, 290–92, 294, 300, 303, 305, 307 embassy of FRG, 229, 245, 283, 287 German Archaeological Institute in, 102, 288, 307 Military Tribunal, 233 political class of, 225, 286, 300 University of, 284, 294, 308 Atlantic Charter, 132 Associations of occupation victims and resistance fighters, 153, 210, 273, 286, 304

418 • Index

in Greece, 225, 231, 233, 235, 240, 306, 308–10 in Poland, 153–55 Auerbach, Philipp, 221n53 Austria, 7, 16n16, 94, 103–4, 297n22 Averoff, Evangelos, 242 B Bad Homburg, 241, 243 Baker, James, 259, 261–62 Baltic Republics, 272 Balkans, 65–66, 72, 80, 90, 113, 115, 123, 210 Bank of German Labour, 45 Bank Polski, 44, 98 Belgium, 9–10, 12–13, 89–90, 99, 120, 133, 166, 172, 207, 209–10, 235, 357 Benelux countries, 95, 104, 124, 255 Belgrade, 73, 91, 115 Bergwerks- und Hüttengesellschaft AG, 35 Berlin, xii, 27, 42–44, 80, 104, 141, 143, 152, 205, 245–47, 251n74, 257–58, 260–61, 266, 283, 291, 294, 308, 315, 318, 321 Freie Universität, 307–8 West, 205, 229–30, 241–42, 245 West, Reparation Court, 205 Bevin, Ernest, 143 Bichelonne, Jean, 111 Bierut, Bolesław, 161, 163n5, 355n40 Blessin, Georg, 233 Blitzkrieg, 22, 23, 50, 65 Blücher, Franz, 236 Bodossaki group, 68–69 Böhm, Franz, 191, 200, 221n53, 233 Boelcke, Willi, 353n13 Boeotia, 286–87 Bonn, 173, 183, 185, 188, 193–94, 199, 201, 204, 206–8, 211, 222n70, 225, 228, 231–33, 236–39, 252, 258–63, 273, 283–84, 289 Regional Court, 241, 243 Born, Karl Heinz, 232 Bourloyannis-Tsangaridis, Ioannis, 296n9 Boutaris, Jannis, 290 Brandt, Willy, 211, 214–15, 247 Bräutigam, Otto, 229 Bretton Woods Conference, 135

Buchheim, Christoph, 339, 353n13 Bulgaria, 16n16, 17n37, 65–67, 71, 77–78, 80, 84, 90–91, 173–74, 177, 272 Bush, George Herbert Walker, 259, 268n18 Byrnes, James Francis, 141 C Caffery, Jefferson, 178n3 ‘charitable’ and ‘voluntary’ assistance, 193, 207–9, 232, 234, 252–54, 270–71, 277, 289, 315, 320, 347 chemical industry, 47–48, 171–72, 184 in occupied Poland, 23, 34–35, 47–48 Christian Democratic Union (CDU), 253, 309, 315 Christodoulakis, Nikos/Nicos, 292, 294 Churchill, Winston, 138–39, 147 Citron, Klaus, 263 Civil war, 1, 4, 111–13 in Greece, 75, 112, 173, 177, 225–26, 230, 235, 248n18, 328 Clay, Lucius Dubignon, 171 Clemenceau, Georges, 10, 13 Cold War, ix, 131, 143, 148, 160, 183, 257, 274, 276 division of Germany, 148, 160, 172 Commerzbank, 45 compensation claims, 6–7, 199–206, 188– 194, 207–10 ethical dimensions, 320–21 Federal Compensation Act (1956), 203–4 Federal Supplementary Act (1953), 201 FRG compensation expenditures, 254–55 GDR’s compensation payments, 217–18 German-Greek Compensation Agreement, 230–235 of concentration camp survivors, 216–17, 233 of displaced persons, 202 of forced labourers, 202–3, 217–18, 276–79 of ‘forgotten victims’, 200–201 of Jewish slave labourers, 206 of Jewish victims, 188–94 of victims of medical experiments, 205–6 of victims of Nazi persecution, 5, 188, 201, 209, 212, 215, 219, 235

Index • 419

of victims of occupation terror unequal handling of claims, 346–52 West German ‘compensation’, 199–206 compensation agreements with Western European States, 207–10 concentration camps, 8, 31, 33, 40–41, 43, 50, 57, 73, 79, 82, 108, 154–55, 198, 206, 216–17, 233, 260–61, 272, 275–77, 286–88, 317, 335, 343 Auschwitz, 30, 41, 57, 60, 78, 79, 206, 290 Majdanek, 30 Płaszów, 30, 40 Stutthof, 30, 41 Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (Claims Conference), 190–93, 201, 203, 206, 222n76, 222n83, 246, 273–74, 276, 343 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), 216, 258–59, 262–65, 282, 285 Charter for a New Europe, 265 Constant[opulos], G. S., 244–46 costs of occupation, 4, 99, 140, 144, 161, 167, 198, 328, 331, 340–42, 353nn12–13 in Greece, 67, 70–73, 82–83, 84n13, 176, 227, 236–37, 331 in Poland, 44–46, 328, 331 Crete, 65–67, 69, 76, 80, 91, 108, 176, 229, 283, 311 University of, 311 Croatia, 91, 93, 111 Curzon Line, 23, 90, 147 Czech Republic, 272, 279 Czechoslovakia, 7, 103–4, 122, 124n2, 148, 166, 170, 215, 221n69 D Daskarolis, Theodoros, 303, 308 Dawes Plan, 11, 14, 194 de Gaulle, Charles, 117 Debevoise, Eli Whitney, 221 Denmark, 166, 207, 210, 357 Deutsche Bank, 45 Deutsche Reichsbahn, 304 displaced persons, 8, 38, 138, 190, 201–2, 340, 347, 350, 355n41

Distomo, 75, 286, 288–89, 304–6, 308 Długoborski, Wacław, 123 Dossis, Konstantinos, 297n22 E East Prussia, 23, 147, 343, 346, 354n40 Eastern Reparations Zone, 9, 141, 147–163 economic exploitation and plunder, 3–4, 24, 94, 96–100, 118–119, 123, 166–67, 177, 188, 209, 282, 288, 327, 329, 331, 335–36, 338, 340, 353n13, 358n of occupied Greece, 65–83, 87n69, 174, 290, 294 of occupied Poland, 21–53, 62n41, 98 Economic Staff East (Wirtschaftsstab Ost), 95 Eizenstat, Stuart Elliot, 274, 277 Energieversorgung Oberschlesien AG, 35 Erhard, Ludwig, 238 Europe, ix, xi, 7–8, 13, 15, 26, 41, 49, 58, 71–72, 82, 90, 94, 98, 105–6, 114, 131–33, 135–38, 161, 172, 183–84, 189, 192, 210, 218, 229, 255, 257–60, 265–66, 276, 285, 295, 299–300, 304–6, 316, 318, 321, 329, 332, 357–58 Continental, xi, 167, 175, 192, 331, 346, 357 Eastern, 13, 22, 26, 54, 56, 94, 96–98, 112, 116, 120, 123, 132, 135, 205, 210–11, 213–14, 222n71, 229, 255, 258, 270–77, 306, 318, 333, 346 Eastern Central, 96, 104, 258, 264, 278, 299, 357 Nazi-occupied, 88, 96, 148, 205, 226 neutral countries, 7, 12, 101, 135, 169 Northern (Scandinavia), 94–96, 99, 103, 107, 109–10, 120, 132 South Eastern, 54, 66, 73, 95–97, 99, 104–5, 109, 111, 119–20, 132, 135, 193, 226, 299, 318, 357 Southern, 299, 346 Western, 94–96, 99, 103–5, 107, 109, 120, 132, 193, 258, 300, 348 European Central Bank, 258, 291, 301, 340, 356 European Community Court of Justice, 288 European Court of Human Rights, 288, 290

420 • Index

European Defense Comunity (EDC), 183, 185 ‘European economic area’, 34 European Economic Community (EEC), 234, 237 European integration, 226, 258 European Parliament, 357 European Union (EU), 291, 299, 318 EU Commission, 291, 301, 357 experts (reparations), xii, 2, 11, 14, 131–33, 135, 152–53, 157, 171, 186, 241, 264, 293–94, 311, 315–17, 354n33 Anglo-American commissions of, 138, 151 British, 134 German, 186, 189, 199–200, 203, 207– 13, 217, 222n70, 234, 238–39, 245, 247, 263, 265, 275, 283–84, 287–88, 294–95, 307, 311, 319 Greek, 173–74, 237, 240, 284–85, 295, 302, 350 Polish, 151, 159, 314, 346, 350 Soviet, 149–50, 352n9 extermination camps, 26, 30, 33, 43, 57, 60, 79, 105, 290, 304 Auschwitz-Birkenau, 30, 82, 290, 304 Bełżec, 30 Chełmno, 30 Majdanek, 30 Sobibór, 30 Treblinka, 30, 82, 304 F Féaux de la Croix, Ernst, 200, 203–4, 210, 212–14, 223n87, 223n89, 237–38, 246 Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), 5, 7, 16n6, 144, 148, 160, 163, 173, 183– 86, 188, 190, 192–94, 196–197, 199– 205, 207, 210–11, 214–17, 219n33, 221n67, 222n70, 226, 229, 233–34, 236–37, 241, 243, 245, 247n2, 248n22, 253, 255, 257–58, 262, 265, 275, 277, 279, 286–88, 291, 296n7, 297n22, 304, 313, 314, 321, 324n49, 341, 343–44, 347–50, 355n46 Bundestag, 201, 207, 233, 254, 256n3, 274, 278, 303, 309, 315, 319

Federal Chancellery, 200, 212, 214, 263, 269n31 Federal Constitutional Court, 256n5, 289 Federal Government, 160, 185–87, 190– 91, 194–95, 197–98, 207, 210, 216, 256n2, 262, 273–74, 277, 279, 289, 291, 307, 312, 318 Federal Ministry of Economics, 200, 237–38, 247 Federal Ministry of Finance, 187, 189, 192, 199–201, 203–5, 208, 212, 233– 34, 237, 241–46, 253–54, 256n10, 274, 295, 311, 339, 341, 348–49 Federal Ministry of Justice, 200, 231 Federal president, 240, 291, 302, 305–6 Foreign Office, 200, 203, 207–8, 211–12, 228–30, 232, 234, 236, 262–64, 266, 283–84, 287, 289, 303, 305, 307–10, 318 Scientific Service of the Bundestag, 315, 319 final reparations conference (proposal), 15, 284, 357 financial exploitation, 98–100, 167, 327, 329, 331, 353n13 of occupied Greece, 67, 82, 87n69, 99, 282, 288 of occupied Poland, 45–47, 49, 52, 98 Fisch, Jörg, 339–40, 355n42 Fischer, Joseph, 285 Fischer-Lescano, Andreas, 318 Fleischer, Hagen, 284–85, 292, 296n7, 307–8 ‘folkdom policy’, 53, 56, 58, 92, 200 in occupied Alsace and Lorraine, 92–93 in occupied Poland, 53–60, 92–94 in occupied Slovenia, 93 forced labour, 335–36 in occupied European countries, 96–98 in occupied Greece,76–77 in occupied Poland, 25–26, 36–40, 237–40 Jewish forced labour, 26, 40, 97 ‘Reich deployment’, 32, 37–38, 40, 97 forced resettlement, 155, 157, 355n41 east of the Oder-Neisse line, 155–58 in Nazi occupied Poland, 107 ‘Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation’, 271, 278, 307, 316

Index • 421

Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ (EVZ), 15n3, 276–79, 345, 348 Four Year Plan Authority, 24, 69, 80, 83, 95, 103, 176 France, 9–13, 15n2, 89–93, 95, 98–99, 101, 104, 108, 117, 120, 122–23, 133, 140, 168–69, 172–74, 197, 207, 210, 222n81, 235, 255, 259, 265 French government, 61n6, 172, 183 François-Poncet, André, 194 Frank, Hans, 23, 36 Friederike von Hannover, 248n12 Friedrich, Klaus-Peter, 127n72 G Gabriel, Sigmar, 315 Gauck, Joachim, 291, 306–7, 309 Gdansk (Danzig), 21, 23, 39, 41, 55, 147, 157 Geneva Convention, 202 genocide, 3, 5, 18n39, 30–31, 41, 43, 50, 60, 91, 94, 105–7, 109, 115, 132, 332 Genscher, Hans-Dietrich, 214–15, 230, 259, 262 General Government, 23–28, 30–32, 34, 36–52, 54–59, 89, 95–101, 103, 105, 110, 119–20, 147, 216, 331 Administration, 25, 27, 32, 41, 43–44, 46, 59 General Governor, 23 Judiciary, 31 labour administration, 25, 31, 37, 39, 97 General Plan East, 53–60, 93 Georg[ios] II., 65 German armaments industry, 48, 67, 82, 91 German Clearing House, 47 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 143–44, 159–63, 190, 217–18, 233, 249n29, 257, 259–60, 262, 264, 266, 275, 313, 318, 324n49, 339–42, 344, 350 German dominated Europe, 7–8, 71, 82, 90 German-Greek Future Fund, 307, 310 German-Greek Youth Office, 307, 309 German occupied Europe, 15 German-Polish Youth Office, 271, 309, 316

German ‘remembrance culture’, 2, 217, 289, 299–321 German ‘reconciliation initiatives’, 229, 270–71 German reparations debt baseline and current values, 336–345 current reparations debt, 345–46 extent of, 327–352 forced labour, 335–36 humanitarian damage, 332–35 inequal handling of compensations, 346–52 material damage, 329–31, 337 methodological and research issues, 327– 29 German reparation payments since WW II, 339–45 German war economy, 24–25, 35, 69, 91, 95, 98, 114 German-Soviet Border and Friendship Treaty, 23, 61n8 ‘Germanisation’, 14, 25, 27, 30, 39, 53–55, 57–58, 61n10, 63n72, 93–94, 123, 124n2, 153, 355n41 ‘Germanisation of the soil’, 22, 25, 57–58 Germany. See under Allied occupation of Germany; Federal Republic of Germany (FRG); German Democratic Republic; Nazi Germany Gimbel, John, 179n14 Glezos, Manolis, 305, 308 Goldmann, Nahum, 188, 190 Gomułka, Władysław, 215 Göring, Hermann, 36, 101 Goschler, Constantin, xii, 216, 316–17 Graevenitz, Kurt-Fritz von, 73, 245, 251n71 grassroots initiatives (compensation issue) 206, 276, 303, 306, 347 in Germany, ix, 303, 306, 317 in Greece, ix, 303, 317 Great Britain (United Kingdom), ix, 13–14, 135, 139–40, 166, 169, 172–74, 197, 202, 207, 210, 259, 265 British Commonwealth, 166–67, 169 British military government (Germany), 243 War Cabinet, 139

422 • Index

‘Greater European Economic Area’, 89, 104, 111, 123, 336 ‘Greater Germanic Empire’, 89, 91–92, 94, 105, 107, 123, 124n2 Greece Coalition of the radical left (Syriza), 292–93, 300–301 Foreign Ministry, 101, 227 Supreme Court of (Areopagus), 288, 290–91 Greek ambassador, 234, 296n9, 303, 308 Greek Central Bank, 68–70, 72–73, 78, 84n13, 227, 285 Greek Court of Audit (reparations report), 87n68, 235, 293–95, 299, 301–2 Greek debt crisis, 291–93, 309 Greek forced occupation credit (loan), 70, 238–39 Greek government, 70, 87n65, 175–77, 225, 227–28, 231–32, 236, 238–40, 243–44, 283–87, 291, 293, 301, 303, 309–10 Greek martyr communities, 75, 229, 234– 35, 282, 285–86, 290, 306–10 Greek minister of justice, 288 Greek Ministry of Finance, 79, 87n69, 231, 248n7 Greek National Council for the Demand for Reparations, 310 Greek National Liberation Front (EAM), 67, 74, 86n50, 248n18, 301 Greek parliament, 301–4, 310, 317–18, 353n21 non-partisan Committee for the Assertion of claims, 301–2 Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), 67, 74–75, 81, 86n50 Greek president, 302, 307, 311 Greek United Democratic Left (EDA), 230 Greek victims of Nazi persecution, 231, 235, 287, 297n22, 350, 353n21 Greek War Crimes Office, 231 Gromyko, Andrei, 145n15 H Hague Convention on Land Warfare, 4–6, 13

Hahn, Paul, 73, 80, 84n24, 86n60, 87n69 Hallstein Doctrine, 210–11, 253 Hammermann, Gabriele, 297 Hansen, Alvin, 131 Harmssen, Gustav Wilhelm, 339 Hartmann, Peter, 296n9 Heraklion, 69 Hettlage, Karl Maria, 234 Heydrich, Reinhard, 108 Himmler, Heinrich, 55–57 Hirsch, Martin, 256n3 Hitler, Adolf, 36, 44, 57, 61n6, 101, 134 Hitler-Stalin Pact, 22 Hoover, Herbert, 11 Hull, Cordell, 135 Humphrey Committee, 173 Hungary, 16n16, 90, 177, 215, 221n69, 266, 272, 333, 358n hunger crisis, 42 Husák, Gustáv, 215 hyperinflation, 46, 271 in occupied Greece, 72, 82, 99–100, 112, 177 in occupied Poland, 46 I I.G. Farbenindustrie AG, 35, 173 Auschwitz plant, 52, 206, 352n11 in liquidation, 206, 256n5 Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit, 59 Inter-Allied Reparations Agency (IARA), 167–75, 178n7, 183, 248n7, 266, 302, 328, 330, 340, 342, 344 General Secretariat, 175 Tripartite Commission, 170, 176 Inter-Allied Reparations Conference, 87n65, 168–69, 173, 333 International Committee of the Red Cross, 4, 205 International Court of Justice (The Hague), 288–89, 319, 357 international law, xi, 1–9, 12, 51, 101, 104, 132, 151–53, 155–56, 162–63, 168, 187, 193, 197, 200, 233, 262–63, 265–66, 271, 276, 286–87, 289, 302–3, 312, 313, 318–20, 329–30, 333, 341, 355n46

Index • 423

international humanitarian law, 1–6, 8, 120–21, 132, 193, 305, 329, 335–36, 339 International Military Tribunal, 5. See Nuremberg Trial of Major War Criminals International Peace Conference (1946), 177 treaty with Bulgaria, 177 treaty with Italy, 177–78 international war law, 4 Ioannina, 79 Israel, 188–93, 199, 201, 255, 274, 290, 316, 332, 343, 348–50 Treaty (Luxembourg Agreement), 188– 94, 265, 355n44 Italy, 13, 16n16, 66–67, 69–70, 73, 90, 98, 112–14, 116, 123, 126n47, 174, 177, 207, 210, 235, 266, 289, 314, 333, 358n Foreign minister of, 289 Italian Constitutional Court, 289 Government, 289 J Jagiellonian Library, 36 Janz, Friedrich, 234 Jestrzębski, Robert, 312 Jewish Agency, 188 Jewish communities, 86n50, 109, 188–89, 192–93, 211, 223n83 in Greece, 69, 77–80, 106, 244–45, 176– 77, 244, 246–47, 249n33, 290–91, 297n30, 309–10 in Poland, 22, 30, 55, 57, 106–7 of Thessaloniki, 79–80, 83, 86n60, 102, 176–77, 244–47, 285–86, 290–91, 301, 303–4, 309–10, 344 K Kaczyński, Jarosław, 312 Kaczyński, Lech, 278 Kagan, Saul, 190 Kalavryta, 75, 228–29, 308 Karakantas, Stelios, 243 Karakousis, Panajotis, 293–94 Karamanlis, Konstantinos, 231, 233, 236–37

Karlsch, Rainer, 144, 340 Kassel (‘documenta’ art exhibition), 305–6 Kastrup, Dieter, 263 Katzenstein, Ernst, 246 Kaufmann, Erich, 187, 197–98, 200 Keiser, Günt[h]er, 238, 239 Kellerhoff, Sven Felix, 318 Kellogg–Briand Pact, 4, 17n34, 120 Keynes, John Maynard, 10, 12–13, 17n33, 131, 133, 145n17 Kielce, 24, 59 Kilian, Jürgen, 86n61, 87n70, 353n13 Klemann, Hein, 63n53, 123 Klingner, Martin, 308 Klinkhammer, Lutz, 297n27 Klissura, 75, 229, 308 Königsberg (Kaliningrad), 147, 354n40 Kohl, Helmut, 257, 260–61, 263, 266, 271, 283, 285, 296n11 Konstantopoulou, Zoi, 301, 304–5 Koppe, Fritz, 245–46 Köstenbach, 251n71 Kozakiewicz, Mikołaj, 261 Kraków, 23, 36, 44–45, 52, 59, 61n7 Kreugerbond, 195 Krupp group, 69, 76, 206, 226 Kuczynski, Thomas, xii, 277, 280n17, 335 Kudryashov, Sergei, 63n53, 123 ‘Künsberg Special Unit’, 69, 102 Küster, Otto, 191, 200–201, 221n53, 221n55 L Labour Administration, 25, 31, 97 in occupied Poland, 37–40, 97 Lanter, Max, 353n13 Lausanne Conference, 11 Law and Justice Party (PIS), 300, 312 Lemkin, Raphael, 132 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 17n22 List, Wilhelm, 242 Łódź (Litzmannstadt), 25, 44, 48, 55, 57, 60 Central ghetto, 25 Logothetopoulos, Elisabeth, 323n38 Logothetopoulos, Konstantinos, 73, 323n38 London, 5, 11, 27, 131, 138, 147, 152, 155, 191, 194–95, 197, 215, 258, 292

424 • Index

London Debt Agreement, 160, 194–199, 203, 207–8, 211, 227, 233, 235, 238– 40, 263, 265, 284, 292, 326n77 Article 5 (2), 198–99 Court of Arbitration, 240, 326n77 Dutch delegation, 198, 209 German Delegation on External Debt, 195 Norwegian delegation, 198 Three Power Committee, 195–98 Lovinger, Joseph, 247 Lubin, Isador, 145n23 Lublin, 23, 32, 40, 56–57, 59 Lwów (Lemberg), 24, 59 Lyngiades, 75 M Madajczyk, Czesław, 123 Main Trust Office East (Haupttreuhandstelle Ost – HTO), 35, 103 Maiski/Majskij, Iwan M., 131, 136, 138–40 Malkin Committee, 131, 134, 139 Mardas, Dimitris, 301 Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program), 137, 172–73, 195 Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), 172 Mathiopoulos, Basil, 237–38 Mazowiecki, Tadeusz, 260 McCloy, John J., 192 Mendelssohn, Kurt Yonah, 188–89 Merker, Paul, 217 Merten, Max, 78, 230, 232–33, 245, 248n22 Mertens, Dr., 245 Metaxás, Ioannis, 67, 73, 84n6, 102, 108, 112, 176 Metz, 93 Middle East, 66, 91 Mihailović, Dragoljub (‘Draža’), 111 mining industry in occupied Greece, 69 in occupied Poland (Upper Silesia), 48 Minow, Gerd-Rüdiger, 304, 322n15 Mitsotakis, Konstantinos, 282 Modrow, Hans, 259 Moeller, Volker, 230

Molotov, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, 141–42, 144–45n6, 149 Moltke, Freya von, 229–30 Monckton, Sir Walter, 146n24 Morawiecki, Mateusz, 316 Morgenthau-White Plan, 137–38, 145n15 Moscow, 113, 115, 131, 135, 139–40, 143, 152, 258, 271 Conference of Foreign Ministers, 136, 143, 168, 179n14 Mularczyk, Arkadiusz, 312, 315 Münkler, Herfried, 318 Mussert, Anton, 111 Mussolini, Benito, 73 N Namibia, 5, 266 Naples, 116–17 Nazi dictatorship, 5, 7, 22, 29, 37, 83, 89, 105, 107, 137, 144, 152, 185, 188, 190, 196, 200, 202, 289, 328, 351, 358n Nazi Germany, 7, 21, 134, 177, 197, 351 Nazi leadership, 22–23, 26–27, 33, 36, 41–42, 44, 72, 73, 89–90, 93, 101–2, 105, 108–9, 113 Nazi occupied Europe (comparison), 88–128 collaboration and occupation policy, 109–12 destruction of the Nation State, 88–90 expropriation and cross holding, 103–5 fate of capital cities and metropoles, 114–18 looting of art and cultural assets, 101–3 ruin of the economy, 94–100 territorial dismemberment, 90–92 typology of German occupation policy, 121–124 Nazi occupation of Greece, 65–87 aims, 65–67 collaborationist regimes, 67, 73–75 German-Greek trade monopoly (DEGRIGES), 72 Military command zone of SalonikaAegean, 66–67, 73 Military command zone of Southern Greece, 66–67, 73, 78

Index • 425

occupation zones (Bulgarian, German, Italian), 66–67, 70 Reich plenipotentiary, 67, 70, 73 Special Representative of the Foreign Office for Economic and Financial Affairs, 72–73, 79 Nazi occupation of Poland, 21–64. See also General Government annexed Western territories, 35, 37–38 central industrial belt, 24, 48–49, 52 district of Białystok, 24, 31 district (Gau) Danzig-Westpreußen, 23 district of Katowice, 23 district of Lublin, 23, 40, 57 ‘German People’s List’, 25–26, 39 Reichsgau Wartheland, 26 strategic aims of occupation, 22–28 Upper Silesia, 24, 26, 34, 47–48 Nedić, Milan, 111 Nehama, Joseph, 245–46 Nestler, Siegfried, 87n69 Netherlands, 99, 110, 120, 122, 133, 166, 172, 207, 209–10, 265, 328, 357 Neubacher, Hermann, 72–73, 79–80 ‘new Ostpolitik’ (and reparations), 210–215 Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Reparations in Eastern Europe, 211– 213 New York, 190 North Africa, 67, 69, 71, 91, 333 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 184–85, 188, 211, 258–60 Norway, 104, 110, 114, 133, 166, 207, 210, 222n81, 235, 239, 357 NSDAP, 60, 102 Nuremberg Trial of Major War Criminals, 4 O Oder-Neisse line, 147–48, 155–58, 200, 260–61, 264, 350, 352n11, 354n40 ‘Operation Paperclip’, 171 Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), 357–58 Osram group, 226, 248n7 Ostrowiec, 24 Ottawa Conference of NATO and Warsaw Pact, 259

P Pangalos, Theodoros, 296n6 Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), 240, 283 Papadakis, Georgios, 232–33 Papagos, Alexandros, 226 Papandreou dynasty, 236–39 Andreas Georgiou, 238–39, 249n40, 283 Georgios, 237, 249n40 Papen, Franz von, 250n51 Papoulias, Karolos, 306 Paris, 23, 87n65, 90, 92, 101, 116–17, 147, 168, 175, 177, 188, 258, 265, 328, 331 Reparations Conference, 168–69, 228, 330, 331 Treaty of, 187 Pauley, Edwin Wendell, 139 Pavlopulos, Prokopis, 302 peace conference / treaty dispute (with post war Germany), 154 Perišić, Zvonko, 212 Pétain, Philippe, 111 Phelps, Dudley Maynard, 353n12 Pilavachi, Aristide, 227–28 Piraeus, 76 Pöhl, Karl-Otto, 247 Poland. See under General Government; Nazi occupation of Poland ‘Alliance of the Democratic Left’ (SLD), 300 Main Commission for the Investigation of Hitler’s Crimes in Poland, 215 Provisional Government of National Unity, 148–50, 152 Third Republic of, 312 Western border of, 147–49, 258, 261 Polish Foreign Ministry, 154 Polish government in exile, 147, 151–152, 328 Polish parliament (Sejm), xii, 260–61, 278, 314, 317 Analysis Office of, 312–15 Parliamentary Working Group to Estimate German Reparations, 313–14 Polish prime minister, 315, 317 Polish (United) Workers’ Party, 152 Polish National Museum, 36

426 • Index

Polish People’s Republic, 161–63, 215–17, 313 Council of Ministers, 151, 161–62, 279, 313, 324n52 Council of State, 161–62 Polish-Soviet Reparations Agreement, 149– 153, 158–59, 330, 354n40 Polish waiving of reparations, 159–63 Polish War Compensation Office, 33, 152–53, 314 report on Polish war losses, 153–154, 330, 333 population losses and demographic consequences, 8, 120–23, 273, 332–34 in occupied Greece, 81–82, 151, 333–34 in occupied Poland, 33, 47, 49, 51, 53, 333–34 in the Soviet Union, 121, 332 Portugal, 135 Potsdam Agreement, 143, 155–56, 166, 190 Potsdam Conference, 14, 140, 147–49, 155–56, 160, 162, 313, 330, 340 Prague, 116–18, 215, 279 Poznań (Posen), xii, 23, 55, 60, 215 Preussag AG, 24, 35 Princz Agreement, 275, 287 Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 89, 94, 96, 99, 107, 109, 117, 120, 124 Q Quisling, Vidkun, 111 R Radiopoulos, Aris, xii, 303 Radom, 23–24, 59 Rallis, Ioannis, 73–74, 112 Red Army, 21, 27, 52, 80, 114–18, 143, 354n40 ‘trophy brigades’, 141 Reemtsma group, 68, 242–44 Reich Commissariat Ostland, 100 Reich Commissariat Ukraine, 100 Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood, 54–55, 92, 94 Reich Credit Treasury, 45, 102 Reich debt, 83, 285 Reich Main Security Office (RSHA/ RMSO), 54–58

Secret State Police (Gestapo), 29–30 Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production, 48, 113 Reich Ministry of Economics, 72, 243 Reich Ministry of Finance, 44, 83 Reich’s credit treasury notes (Reichskreditkassenscheine) in occupied Greece, 68, 70 in occupied Poland, 44–45 Reichsbank, 44–45, 80, 84n24, 86n60, 171, 220n45 Reichsvereinigung Kohle, 48 Reichswerke Hermann Göring, 24, 35, 48 Reinhardt, Hermann, 237–38 Rendel, Sir George, 197 reparations forms and components, 2–3, 137 Greek reparation claims, 173–78, 25–51, 293–95, 238 in international law, 1–9 in international humanitarian law, 3–6 in trinational law of warfare, 57 methodological aspects, 1–9 Polish reparation claims, 147–65, 338 protection clause, 207 universal reparations claim, 2–3, 228 Soviet Reparations Claims, 136–37, 139–40 reparation deliveries, 138, 342 ‘classical’ interstate reparations, 6 dismantling, 136–137, 39, 141–43, 168 financial compensation, 136 foreign assets and foreign currency, 135 from current production, 136, 138–39, 142 German merchant fleet, 150, 159, 168, 170 ‘indirect’ reparations (Greece), 236–40 ‘savage’ reparations, 6, 141, 143 territorial cessions, 147–48, 317 ‘reparation victims’, 253–54 ‘resettlements’, 5, 8, 54, 56, 93, 107, 216, 340, 342, 350, 353n22, 355n41 from Eastern Oder-Neisse line, 148, 155–58 in occupied Alsace and Lorraine, 92–93 in occupied Poland, 27, 33, 53–57, 92 in occupied Slovenia, 93

Index • 427

resistance, 5, 11, 107–9, 111–12, 115, 117–118, 120, 156, 202, 208–10, 216, 222n70, 224n110, 235. See also Warsaw, ghetto uprising; Warsaw, uprising in occupied Greece, 65, 67, 74–75, 77, 81, 86n50, 108, 112, 232, 240, 245, 248n18, 305, 308 in occupied Poland, 21–22, 27–32, 38, 40, 43, 57, 106–7, 110, 151–53 resistance movement in Greece (‘Free Greece’), 71, 74–76, 79, 81, 85n42, 230 resistance movement in Poland (‘underground state’), 27, 50, 106, 110 restitution, 204–6 Federal Office of Foreign Restitution, 204 Federal Restitution Act, 205 Greek-German negotiations, 241–44 of looted art and cultural assets, 35, 204 of looted gold, 135, 170, 245–47 of looted property, 204–6 West German restitution policy, 205–6 Richter, Heinz A., 311, 323n38 Rinnooy Kan, Alexander, 198 Ritschl, Albrecht, 292, 338 Röhr, Werner, xii Roma and Sinti (‘gypsies’), 31, 202, 206, 221n57, 347 Romania, 16n16, 17n24, 21, 66, 80, 177, 272 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 138–39, 141 ‘Rosenberg Special Unit’, 69, 77, 101–2 Roth, Claudia, 303 Roth, Michael, 307–10 Ruchniewicz, Krzysztof, xii, 216, 316–17 Rueff, Jacques, 169 Rumpf, Helmut, 236 Ruhr and Rhineland, 137 Russia, 12, 22, 59, 91, 109, 271. See also Soviet Union Russian Federation, 272 S Saar region, 172, 178n5, 183 Saltiel, David, 304, 309–10 Samarás, Antonis, 292–93 ‘Sauckel Action’, 40

Sbarounis, Athanasios I., 175 Schäffer, Fritz, 199 Schäuble, Wolfgang, 311 Scheel, Walter, 211, 214 Schieder, Wolfgang, 297n27 Schlemmer, Thomas, 297n27 Schmelt organisation, 40 Schmidt, Helmut, 214–15 Schoof, Peter, 304 Schramm, Ehrengard, 229–30 Schramm, Percy Ernst, 229 Schröder, Dr. jur. Gerhard, 239, 246 Schröder/Schroeder, Gerhard (Chancellor), 285 Schuman Plan, 183 ‘scorched earth’, 80–81, 113–14, 117, 132, 330 in occupied Greece, 81–82, 113–14 in occupied Poland, 28, 50–52, 113–14 second Quebec Conference, 138 Serbia, 12–13, 17n37, 91, 93, 108, 111 Sfountouris, Argyris, 305, 308 Shinnar, Felix Eliezer, 191 Shoah (Holocaust, ‘final solution’), 3, 14, 43, 105–6, 189–193, 245, 273–76, 285, 290, 304, 309–10, 332, 349 ‘Operation Reinhard’, 27, 30 Shoah survivors, 189, 190–91, 272, 274–76 Simferopol, 93 Simitis, Konstantin (‘Kostas’), 285 Skarpelis-Sperk, Sigrid, 308 Slovakia, 272, 275 Slovenia, 89, 91, 93 ‘small allies’, 7, 175, 177, 197, 199, 207–8, 226, 232, 259–60, 294, 328, 346, 357 Smirnov, 149 Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), 253, 255, 256n3, 309, 315 Soviet Joint Stock Companies, 142–43, 161 Soviet Military Administration (SMAD), 143 Soviet prisoners of war, 31, 40–41, 50, 96, 203, 217, 272, 278 Soviet Reparations Commission, 149 Soviet reparations consignments to Poland, 158–59 Soviet sphere of influence, 7, 138, 205, 210–11, 260

428 • Index

Soviet Union / USSR, x, xii, 9–10, 12, 23– 24, 26, 41–42, 48, 51, 55, 58, 61n17, 66, 89–96, 98–99, 102, 105, 109, 114, 116, 119–23, 131–33, 135–36, 138–41, 143–144, 147–50, 158–63, 165n40, 167–68, 190, 212–13, 217, 258–62, 265–66, 269n31, 271, 317, 330–32, 340, 343–44, 346, 350, 353n22, 354n40, 357 Extraordinary Commission for Ascertaining and Investigating Crimes Perpetrated by the German-Fascist Invaders, 136, 144n6 State Committee for Defence (GKO) 141 Soviet waiving of reparations, 160–61, 266 Spahn, Jens, 303 Spain, 135 Spoerer, Mark, 338 SS, 22, 27, 29–31, 36–38, 40, 43, 46, 54–57, 59–60, 78–79, 93–94, 101–2, 105, 107–8, 229, 272, 304 ‘Ahnenerbe’ Foundation, 36 Higher SS and Police Leader, 73, 75, 107–9, 112 Security Police and SD, 22, 27, 29–32, 68, 73, 75, 78, 92, 107–8 Waffen SS, 118, 200, 275, 280n9, 351 Staikouras, Christos, 294 Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich, 139, 148 Stamoulis, Jannis, 286, 288 starvation policies (genocide), 41–43, 49– 50, 91, 96, 106, 109, 116, 203 Steinmeier, Frank-Walter, 305, 309–10 Strasbourg, 93, 285, 290 Sutton, Nigel E. P., 169 Sweden, 132, 135, 169, 207, 210 Switzerland, 101, 135, 169–70, 196, 207, 210, 220n45 Szydło, Beata, 315 T Teltschik, Horst, 263 terror Policy in occupied countries, 8, 24, 107–9, 116, 118, 121, 124, 210, 214, 314, 332–333, 358n in Greece, 79, 109, 228 in Poland, 27–34, 41, 44, 49, 52–53, 60, 109, 151, 320, 332–33

Thatcher, Margaret, 262 The Hague, 4–6, 13, 191, 288–89, 319, 332 Thessaloniki, 65–66, 69, 73, 76, 77–80, 83, 86n60, 91, 102, 106, 176–77, 232, 244–47, 283, 285–86, 288, 290–91, 301, 303–4, 309–10, 344 Court of Appeal, 290 Supreme Civil Court, 290 Tito, Josip Broz, 214–15 Toumbas, Ioannis, 239 Todt Organisation, 76–77, 85n37, 97, 288, 336 Tousis, Andreas, 231–32 Tranos, Konstantinos, 234 Transitional Agreement / Treaty, 160, 185– 188, 193–94, 197, 199–200, 202, 204, 208, 227, 222n70, 241, 243, 253, 254, 256n2, 263–65 Treaty of Versailles, 2–3, 6–7, 9–10, 12, 194, 240, 265, 325n73 reparations provisions of the, 7, 11–12, 133, 318 Trotsky, Leon, 17n22 Truman, Harry S., 139, 141 Tsipras, Alexis, 293, 300–303 Tsolakoglou, Georgios, 67 Two-plus-Four-Treaty, 257–69 American-West German negotiating bloc, 260, 263–64 Cabinet Committee on German Unity, 261 exclusion of reparations, 262–63 German-Polish Border Treaty, 264 peace treaty (avoiding), 262–63 Polish advances, 260–61 reparations amendment (proposal), 356– 358 U Ukraine, 23, 51, 56, 58–59, 89, 91, 93, 100, 114, 271–73 underground economy, 40, 119–120 in occupied Greece, 120 in occupied Poland, 42–43, 49–50, 53, 116, 119–20 United Nations (UN), 4–5, 170, 205, 357 Charter of the UN, 4 Charter on Human Rights, 5

Index • 429

Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 206, 222n70 Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), 87n66 Security Council, 4 War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), 173 United States of America (USA), 14 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 388 Federal Reserve, 134 Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 134 State Department, 131, 137, 259, 273– 75, 279, 285 Treasury Department, 137–38, 145n23 War Department, 137 White House, 258 US Army, 117–18, 141, 171 task forces for ‘savage’ reparations, 171 US Military Government, 142, 158, 185, 188, 190 V Varga, Eugen Samuilovich, 131–36 Varoufakis, Yanis/Janis, 301 Venizelos, Evangelos, 296n17 victims of National Socialism, 3, 8–9, 105, 120–21, 134–35, 140, 151, 155, 167, 174, 185, 188–90, 200–201, 203, 205–6, 209–15, 217–18, 252, 255, 256n6, 271–76, 279, 291, 300, 304, 320–21, 332–33, 340–41, 343–44, 346–352, 353nn14–15 Greek victims, 71, 79, 87n65, 176–77, 227, 231–35, 240, 242, 287–89, 297n22, 304–6, 308–10, 333–34, 350, 353n21 Polish victims, 32–33, 116, 153–54, 157, 213, 215–17, 261, 271, 314, 316–17, 332, 334, 350, 353n22 Vichy Regime, 111 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 313 Viner, Jacob, 131 Vistula, 27–28, 51–52, 114, 278 ‘Voluntary Assistance Fund’, 270–279 for Eastern Europe countries, 271–273 for Jewish aid organisations, 273–75 for Poland, 271–273 Voutsis, Nikos, 303

W war First World War, 4, 11–12, 14, 22, 58, 91, 104, 132–33, 139, 173, 198, 227, 240, 265, 283, 312 Second World War, ix, xi, 3–6, 8, 12, 14, 33, 61n1, 63n72, 74, 102, 120, 122, 184, 196, 198, 210, 227, 230, 236–37, 260, 262, 264–66, 276, 291, 294, 299, 301, 312, 314, 317, 320, 326n77, 327, 329, 336–39, 341, 345–46, 350, 357 war of aggression, 3–4, 17n35, 89–90 war of annihilation, 26, 33, 109 war crimes, 1, 3, 12, 136–37, 173, 184, 202, 245, 253, 265, 286, 289, 303, 320, 347, 358 in occupied Greece, 226, 231–232, 245, 303 in occupied Poland, 21–22, 31 Warsaw, 21–25, 28, 30–32, 34, 42, 48–49, 52, 59, 114–16, 118, 153, 211, 215, 257–60, 278, 300, 312, 314, 319 destruction of, 52, 60, 114, 153 ghetto uprising (1943), 27, 31 Pawiak prison, 30 uprising (1944), 36, 114, 278, 312 Washington, D.C., 131, 138, 145n15, 170, 173, 196, 220n45, 250n51, 258–59, 262–63, 274, 279, 291 Holocaust Memorial Museum, 285 Wehrmacht (Nazi armed forces), 22, 26–27, 29, 31, 38–39, 42, 44, 46, 48, 51, 57, 65, 68, 72, 75–77, 80, 93–102, 104, 106–9, 113–15, 155, 200, 233, 242, 288, 302, 351 12th Army, 65, 68–69, 242 Armaments Office of the Supreme Command, 68 Army Group Centre, 27, 51, 113 Army Group North Ukraine (Army Group A), 51, 113, 115 Department for the Protection of Art, 101–2 Wehrmacht-Abwehr, 73 Weizsäcker, Richard von, 240 West German (Bonn) ministerial bureaucracy, 185–86, 194, 199, 207,

430 • Index

209, 225, 232–33, 238, 249n36, 250n60, 252, 253 West German political class, 194, 211, 306 West German power elite, 183–218 West German reparations bureaucracy, x, 8, 199, 201, 203–4, 206–8, 215, 217, 225, 252–55, 256n3, 256n10, 270, 272–73, 285–86, 314, 341, 346–47 West German ruling classes, 184, 257 Western Allies, ix, 23, 113, 133–34, 136, 140–42, 148, 160, 171, 173, 176, 179n14, 184–87, 193–95, 198, 220n45, 226, 324n49, 354n39 Western hemisphere, 121, 166, 186, 190, 194, 198, 205, 226, 232, 275, 316, 330–31, 357 White, Harry Dexter, 137–38 Wilson, Woodrow, 9, 13 Wolff, Bernhard Rudolf, 187 Woller, Hans, 297n27 Wollheim, Norbert, 206

World Jewish Congress, 188 Wrede, Walther, 126n48 Wrocław, 316 Y Yalta Conference, 133–34, 136, 148, 264 Yeltsin, Boris Nikolayevich, 271 Young Plan, 11, 13–14 Yugoslavia, 65–66, 83n1, 89–93, 95, 108–9, 111–12, 115, 120, 122, 123, 124n3, 125n10, 132–33, 135, 166, 170, 211–15, 221n69, 236, 239, 260, 272, 328, 333 Ypsilanti, Thomas, 234 Z Zamość Action, 27, 30, 32, 56–59 Żerko, Stanisław, xii, 317 Zervas, Napoleon, 232