Article: First World War officially ends on Sunday

[sandi66]

Article: "First World War officially ends on Sunday"

Posted By: hobie <Send E-Mail>

Date: Wednesday, 29-Sep-2010 16:13:42 Hi, Folks -

Thanks to Reader P. for the pointer to this article.

Current political and financial matters are keeping our attention on the future and in the present moment.

However, as Poof has been telling us, our present and future are strongly tied to matters set in motion in the past and which now are coming to resolution.

Found here:

uk.news.yahoo.com/38/20100929/twl-first-world-war-officially-ends-on-s-6ae0455.html

=====

First World War officially ends on Sunday
Yahoo! News By Gaby Leslie

The First World War will officially end on Sunday when Germany pays off the last of the enormous debt which was set by the Allies 92 years ago.

The final £60 million instalment is part of a £22 billion debt imposed for starting one of the bloodiest conflicts in history will be cleared on what will also be the 20th anniversary of German reunification.

The Allied victors - primarily Britain, France and America set the reparations in 1919's Treaty of Versailles - a peace agreement - as both compensation and punishment for waging the four year war, which left 10 million soldiers dead, and European towns and cities devastated.

Germany's Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues said that the bond issued to pay remaining debts stemming from 'The War To End All Wars' will be written off on 3 October.

Germany's best-selling daily newspaper, Bild, said: "On Sunday the last bill is due and the First World War finally, financially at least, terminates for Germany."

The initial sum agreed upon for war damages in 1919 was 226 billion Reichsmarks, but was later reduced to 132 billion, £22 billion at the time.

However, the bill would have been settled much earlier had Adolf Hitler not refused to pay the reparations during his dictatorship. The bill was also frozen again when West and East Germany split, and renewed again after reunification in 1990.

Most of the war reparations go to private individuals, pension funds and corporations holding debenture bonds.

=====

uk.news.yahoo.com/38/20100929/twl-first-world-war-officially-ends-on-s-6ae0455.html

--hobie

www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes;read=183837

[sandi66]

War Deb Issue

Foreign Affairs, Harding and Foreign Affairs
The desire of the United States to secure repayment for cash loans and goods extended to European Allies during and after World War I was a highly publicized issue during the 1920s. The stance did much to destroy the loyalties and goodwill that had developed during the conflict.

Beginning in 1917, the U.S. began to extend cash and supplies to its European allies, expending more than $7 billion in government funds by the time of the armistice in November 1918. Following that, an additional $3 billion was directed to relief and reconstruction efforts of both the Allies and new European nations that grew out of the Paris peace negotiations. The sum of $10 billion (see table) was often described as a “war debt,” but a portion of that total was incurred after the war was over.

Even before peace had formally been concluded, various Allied nations began to press the United States to scale back or cancel entirely these obligations. Indeed, there was some justification for reconsidering the entire debt issue:

Most of the borrowed money had been spent in the United States for supplies and war matériel, and had provided a tremendous stimulus for the American economy, which was then the envy of the world. Many Europeans believed that the U.S. had already been repaid.

Some of the debtor nations argued that the war had been a common cause and that one victorious power should not profit at the expense of others. Further, the U.S., insulated by wide oceans, had entered the war late and allowed the European allies to do most of the fighting and dying.

Practical economic realities also seemed to dictate a rethinking of the debt issue. It was unlikely that the Europeans would be able to repay their obligations in gold, as the U.S. wanted, because that commodity was needed to back up their faltering currencies. The other payment alternative would have been to send European goods to America and build a trade surplus, but U.S. protective trade policies made this nearly impossible.
The Harding administration made it clearly understood that the United States had no interest in cancellation. This position was widely supported by the public, which felt that those who incur debts should repay them. This tight-fistedness was not well received in Europe, where the image of Uncle Sam slowly gave way to “Uncle Shylock.”
In February 1922, Congress established the World War Foreign Debt Commission to negotiate repayment plans with the debtor nations. The Commission eventually concluded 15 agreements that contained terms based upon the debtors’ abilities to pay. In aggregate, a final principal amount of $11.5 billion was accepted, to be paid off over 62 years with interest rates averaging slightly above two percent. If paid in full, this would have yielded more than $22 billion.

Problems existed almost from the inception. The Harding administration maintained that war debts and German reparations were unrelated issues. In fact, they were not. Germany had been saddled with an unrealistically high postwar obligation of $33 billion, but was actually able to make payments for a number of months. This crushing obligation, however, could not be discharged and the Germans defaulted in less than a year. It quickly became apparent that the Allied recipients of the reparations payments were unable to pay the U.S. after the German default.

This international problem was passed on to the Coolidge administration, following the death of Harding in August 1923.

www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1359.html