[LINK] "Germany to settle outstanding WWI debt"

[rfmcdonald]

Huh. For some reason, I'd thought the payments were cancelled altogether after the Second World War, although that assumption doesn't make sense given the decidedly anti-German sentiment of the time.

The last installment will be paid on Oct. 3, as the country makes good on a 1953 international agreement, Germany's Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues said Thursday .

Germany issued several series of bonds in the 1920s and '30s to help pay for WWI reparations demanded by the victorious Allies and to bolster its economy. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they suspended all payments.

Following World War II, Germany worked together with the United States, Britain and other European nations to hammer out an international agreement known as the 1953 London Treaty that stipulated how Germany should repay its outstanding debts, including the old bonds.

The treaty dictated that holders of bonds were to bring them in to be reissued so that they could be reimbursed. It also allowed for payment on the outstanding interest accrued from the end of the war in 1945 to the year the treaty was formalized in 1953-- roughly euro150 million ($200 million) -- to be suspended until Germany reunified and then paid in installments over 20 years.

"The sum is actually not so large that it couldn't have been paid off directly following reunification," said Axel Hermann of the Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues. "But Germany stuck to the London Treaty."