Bristol Hannover Council
Out of Hitler’s Shadow . . . the London debt agreement
** On February 19 the British-German Association in London hosted a talk between two leading German historians with the title Out of Hitler’s Shadow.
The subject was the little known London Debt Agreement of 1953, under which most of West Germany’s reparations and debt obligations were eradicated or at least postponed indefinitely.
Given that West German debts at the time were 10 times the size of its GDP, this was a monumental step in the recovery of West Germany and indeed Western Europe, and one that was to prove as important in its way as the Marshall Plan to economic recovery.
Tobias Straumann, who has written a book on the subject, says that the influence of the Treaty of Versailles and the Post-World War 1 reparations agreements was decisive on decision makers who had lived through that earlier period.
West Germans were treated extremely generously under the London Agreement, and this contrasted with way that the USA treated UK debt after the Second World War which remained a burden on the UK economy for decades.
Straumann was asked what lessons he drew from the Debt Agreement for our times, in particular any settlement following an end to the war in Ukraine.
He recognised that the USA would not be as dominant as it had been in 1953 decision making, but concluded that a generous solution to outstanding debt would have to be found, coupled with tough conditions.
BHC members can now view the talk on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/
IAN TURNER
