War reparations

War reparations refer to the monetary compensation intended to cover damage or injury during a war. Generally, the term war reparations refers to money or goods changing hands, rather than such property transfers as the annexation of land.

History

Pre-World War I

• Rome imposed large indemnities on Carthage after the First and Second Punic Wars.

• Post-Thirty Years' War

• The 'unequal treaties' signed by the Qing dynasty in China, Japan, Korea, Siam, Persia, Ottoman Empire, Afghanistan and other countries in the nineteenth century included payments of indemnities to the victorious Western powers, mainly United Kingdom, France and Russia, and later Japan.

• Post Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871
  • According to conditions of Treaty of Frankfurt (May 10, 1871), France was obliged to pay a war indemnity of 5 billion gold francs in 5 years. German troops remained in parts of France until the last instalment of the indemnity was paid off in September 1873, before the obliged date. It was the most successful case of war reparations in history.

Post-World War I

• • Russia agreed to pay reparations to the Central Powers when Russia exited the war in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (which was repudiated by the Bolshevik government eight months later)
  • Germany agreed to pay reparations of 132 billion gold marks to the Entente in the Treaty of Versailles
    • see also: World War I reparations
  • Bulgaria to pay reparations of 2.25 billion gold francs (90 million pounds) to the Entente, according to Treaty of Neuilly

Post-World War II

• Post-World War II, according to the Potsdam conference July 17 to August 2, 1945;
  • Germany was supposed to pay the Allies 20 billion US dollars mainly in machinery, manufacturing plants. Most of reparations to the Soviet Union stopped in 1953.
  • In addition, in accordance with the agreed upon policy of de-industrialisation and pastoralization of Germany (see the Morgenthau Plan) large numbers of civilian factories were dismantled for transport to France and the UK, or simply destroyed. Dismantling in the west stopped in 1950.
  • In the end, war victims in many countries were compensated by the property of Germans, that were expelled after World War II (see Expulsion of Germans after World War II).
  • Beginning immediately after the German surrender and continuing for the next two years the U.S. pursued a vigorous program to harvest all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents in Germany. Historian John Gimbel comes to the conclusion, in his book Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, that the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the UK amounted to close to $10 Billion dollars. (Ref: Norman M. Naimark The Russians in Germany ISBN 0-674-78405-7 pg. 206)

• Post-World War II, according to the Yalta conference 4th - 11th of February 1945;
• German reparations were partly to be in the form of forced labor. By 1947 c.a. 4,000,000 German POW's and civilians were used as forced labor (under various headings; "reparations labor", "enforced labor", etc) in the Soviet Union, France, the UK, Belgium and in Germany itself in U.S run "Military Labor Service Units". (see Eisenhower and German POWs)

• Post-World War II, according to the Treaty of Peace with Japan and the bilateral agreements
  • Japan agreed to pay around 1 trillion and 30 billion yen. For countries that renounced any reparations from Japan, she agreed to pay indemnity and/or grants in accordance with bilateral agreements.

• Post-World War II, according to the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947
  • Italy agreed to pay reparations of about US$125 million to Yugoslavia, 105 million to Greece, 100 million to the Soviet Union, 25 million to Ethiopia, and 5 million to Albania
  • Finland agreed to pay (and paid) reparations of US$300 million to the Soviet Union
  • Hungary agreed to pay reparations of US$200 million to the Soviet Union, 100 million to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia
  • Romania agreed to pay reparations of US$300 million to the Soviet Union
  • Bulgaria agreed to pay reparations of US$75 million, in which $50 million to Greece and $25 million to Yugoslavia
    • according to the articles of these treaties, the value of US$ was prescribed as 35 US dollars to one troy ounce of pure gold

• The government of the United States officially apologized for the Japanese American internment during World War II in the 1980s and paid reparations.

Criticisms

The main criticisms of war reparations have historically been:

• that they are punitive measures against the populace of the losing side only, rather than against the belligerent side, which may be the side that justly ought to make amends
• that in very many instances, the defeated populace's government waged war, and the people themselves had little or no role in deciding to wage war, and therefore war reparations are imposed on innocent people
• that after years or years of war, the populace of the losing side is likely already impoverished, and the imposition of war reparations therefore may drive the people into deeper poverty, both fueling long-term resentment of the victor and making the actual payments unlikely

The most important words of criticism came from John Maynard Keynes. He claimed that overall influence on the world economy would have been disastrous.

Some critics hold that war reparations were an indirect, but major, cause of World War II. After the end of World War I, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles imposed heavy war reparations upon Germany. These reparations payments exacerbated German economic problems, and the resulting hyperinflation ruined the chances of the Weimar Republic with the public, and allowed the rise of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler. Others point to the fact, that post-World War II reparations were calculated on the basis of the damages caused by Germans during World War I. After the Franco-Prussian war, the amount of reparations amount was set at a fixed value. Moreover, the post-World War I amount was subject to frequent recalculations, which encouraged Germany to obstruct payments. Eventually, all payments were cancelled after Hitler rose to power.

The experience of the post-World War I reparations led to the post-World War II solution, where winning powers were supposed to take reparations in machines and movable goods from the defeated nations, as opposed to money.

Recent war reparations

After the first Gulf War, Iraq accepted UN Security Council resolution 687, which declared Iraq's financial liability for damage caused in its invasion of Kuwait. The United Nations Compensation Commission ("UNCC") was established, and US$350 billion in claims were filed by governments, corporations, and individuals. Funds for these payments were to come from a 30% share of Iraq's oil revenues from the oil for food program. It was never anticipated that US$350 billion would ever become available for total payment of all reparations claims, so several schedules of prioritization were created over the years. The UNCC says that its prioritization of claims by individuals, ahead of claims by corporations and governments, "marked a significant step in the evolution of international claims practice."

Payments under this reparations program continue; as of July 2004, the UNCC stated that it had actually distributed US$18.4 billion to claimants.

Recent Legal Developments

There have been attempts to codify reparations both in the Statutes of the International Criminal Court and the UN Basic Principles on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims[1].

See also

• Treaty of Versailles
• Yalta Conference
• Boxer Protocol

References

• Wheeler-Bennett, Sir John "The Wreck of Reparations, being the political background of the Lausanne Agreement, 1932", New York, H. Fertig, 1972.
• Ilaria Bottigliero "Redress for Victims of Crimes under International Law", Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague (2004).

External links

• Japan's Record on War Reparations

Broken link above.

• The United Nations Compensation Commission