Die Akte Griechenland is a highly interesting article about the bond debt Germany owes according to the Alexis Tsipras, among others, Greece. Some aspects discussed in it are tragicomic others of course most grim.
According to the 'Haager Landkriegsordnung von 1907' Greece had to finance it's occuption, which rapidly posed big problems. Per capita the specific cost in Reichsmark was the highest of all Europe but the exchange rate got fixed and the Greeks (had to) massively devalued their currency with the printing press which meant that the German soldiers could afford less and less. Italy and Germany tried to get the Greek state to do more but there were understandably a couple of problems:
1) The war hit (rather obviously) all the three sources of hard currency like shipping, tourism and remittances very hard.
2) Greece was already heavily in foreign debt before the war
3) The Greek public sector was large, overstaffed and not very competent.
To raise the income the tax evasion was to be curbed by following the 'German model'.
The reading becomes very grim when one discovers how the Greek currency was eventually supported - by buying it up with the looted wealth of the murdered Greek jews, especially gold. The German report comes up with 476 million RM of liabilities which however have to be balanced with Greek ones towards Germany for food from German-controlled areas, German goods and (sic) gold from the restricted German reserves. For those the documentation was not fully available, and the 'final' report was wrapped up four days before the Soviets launched their great offensive against Berlin. Interestingly the exact number has been widely accepted while the rest has not been considered.
Personally the article has reinforced my opinion that laying to rest those claims and conflicts has been incredibly important for the common European good and enabled in part the economic miracle which followed the war.
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