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Rather, loans were taken out, placing Germany in an economically precarious position as more money entered circulation, destroying the link between paper money and the gold reserve that had been maintained before the war. With its defeat, Germany could not impose reparations and pay off her war debts now, which were now colossal. [116]
British public opinion wanted to make Germany pay for the War. [53] Public opinion favoured a "just peace", which would force Germany to pay reparations and be unable to repeat the aggression of 1914, although those of a "liberal and advanced opinion" shared Wilson's ideal of a peace of reconciliation. [14]
Germany agreed to pay reparations of 132 billion gold marks to the Triple Entente in the Treaty of Versailles. When Germany stopped making payments in 1932 after the agreement reached at the Lausanne Conference failed to be ratified, [ 12 ] Germany had paid only a part of the sum.
The reparations levied on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles were, in theory, supposed to restore the damage to the civilian economies, but little of the reparations money went for that. Most of Germany's reparations payments were funded by loans from American banks, and the recipients used them to pay off loans they had from the U.S. Treasury.
The Young Plan was a 1929 attempt to settle issues surrounding the World War I reparations obligations that Germany owed under the terms of Treaty of Versailles.Developed to replace the 1924 Dawes Plan, the Young Plan was negotiated in Paris from February to June 1929 by a committee of international financial experts under the leadership of American businessman and economist Owen D. Young.
132 billion gold marks ($31.5 billion, 6.6 billion pounds) were demanded from Germany in reparations, of which only 50 billion had to be paid. In order to finance the purchases of foreign currency required to pay off the reparations, the new German republic printed tremendous amounts of money—to disastrous effect.
The U.S. government declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. At the end of the war in November 1918, the German monarchy was overthrown and Germany was established as a republic. In 1919, the victorious Allied Powers held a peace conference in Paris to formulate peace treaties with the defeated Central Powers.
Of this figure, Germany was only required to pay 50 billion gold marks ($12.5 billion), a smaller amount than they had previously offered for terms of peace. [65] Reparations were unpopular and strained the German economy but they were payable and from 1919 to 1931, when reparations ended, Germany paid fewer than 21 billion gold marks. [66]