Greece Story

I was sitting and watching the early morning German public TV news this morning, and a piece came on....detailing the new Greece agenda....demanding reparations from Germany for war-crimes committed in WW II.

Amount?  290 billion Euro (roughly 350 billion US dollars).  Yep, a fair chunk of money. 

The angle on this?  It's written into a bill format and decided upon by Greek parliament in Athens. The Greeks wants the nation to use all diplomatic talk and legal acts to make this happen.

The opposite angle to the story?  Well, it gets to being complicated.

In the spring of 1941, the Greeks were invaded by both the Germans and the Italians.  No one denies this part of the story, but the Italians are rarely if ever mentioned in Greek history today.  If you go by the historians part of the story, roughly 50,000 Greeks 'starved' in this invasion period, and 50,000 Greek troops were killed. 

The Germans by this point, had a bit of a financial problem brewing....the economy was heading south.  They (the Germans) came to the Greek National Bank and found it fairly 'full', and instead of grabbing the sum of money (which you would expect), they arranged for a loan....interest-free....and this was all detailed out on paperwork.  I know, it sounds funny that they made this into loan instead of grabbing the money, but that's what happened.

In today's money....it was around 11-billion Euro.  But let's remember....this was all interest-free.

Has this sum ever been paid back?  No.  But let's remember....it's a loan on paper, and it's strictly between the German government and the Greek National Bank (not the Greek government), and it's interest-free, so that sum never increased.  Oddly, the Greek National Bank has never pursued the money, which you'd ask a lot of questions over, and no one can explain the lack of interest.  Some suggest that a fair chunk of this money was Jewish money which had shifted in the 1920s/1930s from Germany into Greece, but there's no real evidence to prove that story. 

Even if you did offer to pay the money back....the question arises, do the share-holders of the Greek National Bank of 1941 get the money, or does the government of Greece get the money? 

So you are left with the damages and lives lost funding.  In 1960, West Germany (not DDR) came back to the Greeks and offered up funding the damages caused and the lives lost.  A sum was agreed upon and paid out.  Most of those folks involved in the 1960 episode are long-gone now. 

So this new bill?  In some ways, the Greeks are trying to forget the 1960 episode, and pretend that there is a new bill in existence.  If they were truly serious about this?  Well, you'd go through the EU court system, and they'd eventually pull up the 1960 West Germany-Greek settlement, and ask for details on why that sum wasn't now respected.  This explains why the EU court isn't being used.

The Greeks are mostly out to pump up political agendas within the country and give faint hope that billions of Euro will dished out by the Germans. 

The sad part of this story?  The average German is reading over this story, and frustrated about the whole thing (which they themselves had no part of in 1940 to 1945), and when it comes to vacation-planning, Greece is crossed-out as a potential vacation spot. 

So this will be great cafe chatter in Greece for the next year, as they talk over the billions potentially coming in, and anger that the Germans simply aren't paying off their bill.