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Reparations Reconsidered: A Rejoinder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Sally Marks
Sally Marks
Affiliation:
Rhode Island College
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Extract

In the issue of June 1971, there appeared David Felix's “Reparations Reconsidered with a Vengeance,” which constitutes an assault upon my article, “Reparations Reconsidered: A Reminder,” in the December 1969 issue. Unfortunately, Mr. Felix has attacked an article which I did not write rather than the one which I did write. My brief ten-page essay addressed itself exclusively to the question of how much Germany was initially asked to pay and consisted of little more than a close textual analysis of the London Schedule of Payments of May 5, 1921. My main point, which Mr. Felix accepts, was that this document established the German reparations debt at a nominal value of 50 billion gold marks, not the figure of 132 billion gold marks widely cited in the general literature concerning the period. Secondly, I pointed out that Germany had offered to pay a considerably larger amount less than two weeks before. Mr. Felix ignores this point while attacking my conclusion based upon it to the effect that the London Schedule constituted a victory for the Germans. Finally, I remarked briefly that, with a high ostensible figure and much lower actual payments, the Germans had an excellent propaganda position and made the most of it, leading the English-speaking world to believe that the reparations burden was both outrageous and unpayable. I concluded that “We shall never know what Germany could have paid, had she seen any reason to do so, but we can easily demonstrate that the settlement was not outrageous, even in German eyes” (p. 365).

Type
Suggestions and Debates
Information
Central European History , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , December 1972 , pp. 358 - 361
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1972

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References

1. Felix, David, Walther Rathenau and the Weimar Republic: The Politics of Reparations (Baltimore, 1971), p. 185.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., p. 12.

3. See, for instance, Public Record Office, London, Foreign Office memorandum, Nov. 23, 1922, F.O. 371/7487.

4. In view of Mr. Felix's imposing bibliographic footnote, I should perhaps specify that I draw a distinction between the general literature about the period and the specialized literature on reparations. It is a far cry from short histories of the Weimar Republic and surveys of interwar diplomacy to Étienne Weill-Raynal's three massive and littleknown tomes on the reparations question, of which there are only six or seven copies in the United States.

5. It should be added that the Treasury, the Foreign Office, and the Cabinet all argued that, since the Germans had in fact succeeded in destroying their currency, there was no alternative to granting a long moratorium on payments. Not surprisingly, the French took a dim view of awarding a reparations moratorium as a bad-conduct prize.

6. Felix, Walther Rathenau, p. 188.

7. Mr. Felix notwithstanding (p. 176), Germany was given reparations credit for the transfer of the Saar mines to France. See Versailles Treaty, Part III, Article 50, Annex, Section 5. Germany was credited was credited with reparations payment in kind of 400 million gold marks, a figure above the tax valuation of 346 million gold marks. United States, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: The Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (Washington, 1942–1947), XIII, 170; Great Britain, Cmd. 1616, Financial Agreement between Belgium, France, Great Britain, Italy, and Japan (London, 1922);Google Scholar Reparations Commission, Official Documents (London, 1923), IV, 7.