Looks Like Germany May Have To Pay Up

 

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  • #20027

    Harris&Ewing Kron Prinz Wilhelm, German ship, interned in US in tow 1916 German magazine Der Spiegel digs deep(er) into the ‘Greece question’ this wee
    [See the full post at: Looks Like Germany May Have To Pay Up]

    #20039
    Variable81
    Participant

    @ Ilargi,

    “It’s just that their government after 70 years is still skirting its obligations towards the victims.”

    Yikes. That statement reeks of entitlement.

    I wonder what obligations North Americans have to the Native Peoples? Or to enslaved African Americans who were brought here to work on plantations as slaves? Or Asian immigrants who were coerced into high-risk / low-pay labour in mines & railways. Or nowadays, where everywhere in Toronto I see Filipinos working at McDonalds, Tim Hortons and other menial jobs for minimum wage so we here in the near-heart of Empire can enjoy the middle-class standard of living we think we deserve (i.e. whereby a “lower class” – Filipinos, other immigrants, the poor – do all of the work we find otherwise undesirable).

    Again, it’s not that I’m arguing atrocities weren’t committed during WWII, but I think it’s lubricious to suggest we can ever determine what is “owed” to the victims beyond immediate remuneration/restitution that is within reason. Further, I think that statement goes completely against what I’ve come to learn here on the Automatic Earth – that unrealistic promises (i.e. pension plans, high asset values, and in this case – long-term reparations?) will not be honoured, and that there are huge consequences to trying to hold a people to paying something that is due when either a) it is unreasonable to expect them to pay or b) they cannot afford to pay it.

    Again, while I’m not suggesting Nazi Germany is innocent in the role it played during WWII, but I do strongly believe that it’s the victors who write the history books – those who suggest otherwise are foolish at best. I found this an enlightening look as some of the otherwise unreported pieces of WWII that one does not get to read about in most history text books or hear from their teachers in school: https://thegreateststorynevertold.tv/

    Cheers,
    GBV

    #20040
    jal
    Participant

    “it’s the victors who write the history books ”

    That is why, “Two atrocities make One right.”

    #20042
    mr.mud
    Participant

    “Now the key issue is whether the successor to the German Reich, the Federal Republic of Germany, is responsible for paying back loans extorted by the Nazi occupiers.”

    The key issue then is are successor governments responsible for debts incurred by immoral past government actions. If they aren’t then why would Greece be responsible for the debts incurred by the loans its military dictators incurred to buy weapons and line their pockets?

    #20043

    Excellent point, Mr. Mud.

    #20044
    dalgal1999
    Participant

    RE:“it’s the victors who write the history books ” Germany lost the war, FYI. RE: “reeks of entitlement” Are you serious? What the U.S. will eventually have to pay (rightly) is immaterial to the issue at hand: the pillage of Greece (& potential all southern Europe) by European, mostly German, bankers being carried out under the guise of “morality”–an astonishing term to be bandied about by the Germans, the French, or Belgium (as in Belgian Congo). The North wants cheap labor, Greek islands and facilities, and sloughing off responsibility for theft, as the history of debts exacted under Nazi occupation is on point.

    #20045
    Tulsatime
    Participant

    Seems that the cover of forced Nazi loans is much better than the reality of the ECB as an umbrella looting organization for said Germans. And that is contrasted against the chaos of exit, whether jump or push. All that Euro funny money will evaporate like gasoline on hot pavement, to the great detriment of all things financial. Perhaps it is better to just go ahead and have at it, push the big red button and get the meltdown out of the way. Somehow I don’t see that as an option that is being considered.

    #20046
    Variable81
    Participant

    @ dalgal1999,

    Not suggesting the exploitation of Greece and the EU periphery by German and Brussels based banks isn’t dirty pool; just that the idea of the Greeks being owed anything by the Germans after all these years is, at the very least, unproductive given the situation Europe currently finds itself in (and at the most, completely ridiculous). Also, I was under the impression that this blog (which I’ve been following since 2009/10) wasn’t about suggesting who owes who what, but instead pointing out the exploitation of the people by political/economic cliques through ponzi-finance and what should be done now to avoid further exploitation (as well as big-picture ideas on energy, sustainability, economy and realpolitik).

    Interestingly enough, if we are talking blame about who slighted the Greeks, I find it interesting that the UK traded away the futures of Romania and Bulgaria for the future of Greece (though it would seem all these places didn’t have the brightest of futures under any imperialist/exploitative regime): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentages_agreement

    Lastly, I came across this speech and found it fascinating:

    Unfortunately, someone yells out “the Jews!” midway through the speech – and perhaps that’s who Hitler was actually referring to. But were someone from today’s age, with no understanding of who Adolf Hitler is nor what happened during WWII, to hear this speech I think they’d think he was talking about the people at the top of the financial food chain, the heads of central banks around the world, and perhaps the heads of governments who are supposed to be defending our rights and freedoms.

    In short, one might think he wasn’t rallying against a specific ethnic and/or religious group, but a group of international power players… a “1%” if you will… who exploit everyone around the world for their own benefit, yet belong nowhere. And when you consider that 53 – 58 nations declared war on Germany between 1933 (https://www.radioislam.org/islam/english/jewishp/germany/express.jpg) and 1945, as well as the upstart manner in which Germany refused to play by the rules of international financiers, perhaps it is a more realistic reason as to why the world’s most devastating conflict took place – a nation that rises up against the interests of the international power players cannot (and could not) be allowed to survive (modern-day Iraq and Libya seem to suggest this is the case).

    Sorry if I seem to be going off the beaten path here… but I think there are a lot of questions that need to be asked about the period between 1910 – 1950 and how the history books were written by the victors. The Automatic Earth seems like an intelligent and enlightened enough place to have that discussion; if we’re questioning all the bogus financial and political spin that we’re fed every day by financiers and heads of government, I don’t see why we wouldn’t also question the history they’ve written over the last 80+ years.

    Cheers,
    -GBV

    #20049
    John Day
    Participant

    In the current situation of trying to get blood from a turnip, it seems fair to try the tactic of offsetting-penalties, there being, in fact 2 bloodless turnips, each owing the other blood. If the unsettled reset of 70 years ago feathers nicely into the reset necessary today, then so may it be.
    All humans suffered horribly, and estimates are that 70 million died in WW-2, mostly civilians, and millions in Dresden and Tokyo were burned alive, on the theory that it would depress and dishearten the war efforts of their nations. “Total War” was the catch phrase. It was Churchill’s baby, but the Americans adopted it , too. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were undefended civilian cities.
    This article from Veterans Today revisits World War as parts one and two.
    https://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/03/21/ww2myths/
    It quotes Noam Chomsky’s figures that the US has been responsible for 60 million deaths since WW-2.
    Who is the “US”? My kids?
    It is time for global debt jubilee, accompanied by equitable redistribution of resources, and more humanly and naturally composed ways of living, like small scale local farming, for instance…

    #20057
    conswalo
    Participant

    Wow. Raul, that is the dumbest blog I have seen from you. Completely agree with Variable81. Where are you from Raul? Spanish? Portuguese? Should those countries have to pay up for the atrocities committed in South America against the indigenous tribes? Or maybe you are from South America, in which case what is your bloodline? Maybe you need to pay some people who have less European blood than you? And your article contains one absolute untruth and lie that I took particular offense to: “That the Germans in the 1950s and 1960s, at home and in schools, chose not to tell their children anything about their crimes cannot serve as an excuse to silence the children of their victims. Germany will need to eat a lot of humble pie with its beer.” – maybe you could have added “humble pretzel” to be more offensive.

    I am German. Born in 1981. My parents (born in 43 and 47) were told about the atrocities by their parents. Even I, born when I was, visited a concentration camp on a field trip in primary school. Get your facts straight buddy. You may do well reading this: https://www.quora.com/How-is-World-War-II-history-taught-in-Germany

    Personally I think the Greeks should just default, and start fresh. That is something they have the option of doing. And it would teach the Germans (and other) banks a lesson too… that if you lend money to someone who may not pay it back, it is your own fault, and you can take the losses. And not ask the taxpayer to bail you out. Any taxpayer.

    I fear we are heading towards another world war, and idiots like you will be responsible due to writing garbage like this.

    And one more thing Raul, in terms of learning from history, can you remember what led to the rise of Hitler? Was it maybe ridiculous reparation claims by the victors of world war 1? Seriously, your article here is disgusting, stupid, and ignorant. You are a dangerous fool.

    Will never read anything from you again if I see it on Zerohedge.

    I created an account here just to tell you this. Slap yourself and think a bit harder, you may hate german’s, however that may make german’s hate you, and where does that lead us? Seriously. You probably don’t even realize you are war-mongering. Disgusting.

    #20066
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    Ikargi, your paradigm is wrong, hence you reach wrong conclusions and, this time around, you angered a lot of the ordinary people for whom you care.
    Your thought process is limited to the nation state and the cartoon caricatures that claim to run them.
    This is a fatal flaw in your thought process. “Germany” doesn’t exist. People exist. The average German people are victims of a supranational banking cartel that has put their pensions up to pay for Greece’s eventual default so the private corporate fronts of the Debt Money Monopoly don’t have to take the loss.
    Your claim that Merkel is the most powerful woman in the woman in the world is a joke. She’s a puppet who was financed into office precisely because she was a willing Debt Money Monopolist puppet. If she wasn’t going to BS the people, there are others who would – and they would’ve been financed in Merkel wouldn’t agree to fool people like you.
    The following videos will help to expose the establishment fable…
    The Jones Plantation

    Working Class Hero – John Lennon

    >>I hope – and I think – that Germany will pay up. It seems to me to be the only way to save the European Union it has made its economy so dependent on.<<
    Do you really think that will save the EU, a group of nations oppressed into forced bankruptcy by a private supranational banking cartel? If so, you are missing the Skeleton Key required to comprehend the world in which you live.
    Don’t fall for the divide serf against serf program of the international Banksters. All of us serfs need to stand up against the Debt Money Monopoly criminal class and put an end to their Debt Money Tyrannical system of worldwide oppression.

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