As for money damages, with so much of Europe in chaos and ashes, it was difficult to determine how much Germany even owed.
One U.S. team of Army engineers estimated it would take over two years to arrive at a guesstimate. But superseding any concerns about what was owed was the Allies' most important question of all: how much could Germany afford without bankruptcy and chaos, handing it over to the Bolsheviks? (With revolutionary movements in several German cities by the end of the war, this was a real concern to the Allies who invaded Russia at the end of the war with 200,000 troops, aiding the White Russians against the Bolsheviks. Wilson sent 13,000 U.S. troops and a heavy cruiser as America's contribution.)
Initially, Britain wanted $120 billion, France $220 billion and the US $22 billion. They later submitted much smaller bills and the final calculation in 1921 ordered Germany to pay $34 billion in gold marks, apportioned 52% to France, 28% to Britain and the rest divided between Belgium, Italy and others.
The U.S. had loaned Britain and France over $7 billion plus another $3.5 billion from U.S. banks. At Versailles, Britain proposed and the U.S. vetoed the idea of cancelling all inter-Allied debts.
Between 1924 and 1931, Germany paid 36 billion marks to the Allies, 33 billion of which was borrowed from investors who bought German bonds issued by Wall Street firms. Germany then used that money to pay reparations to England and France, which in turn used it to repay U.S. loans. Anthony C. Sutton, writing in "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler" observed, "The international bankers sat in heaven, under a rain of fees and commissions" made by lending other people's money to Germany.
As for personal culpability, Kaiser Wilhelm, grandson of Britain's Queen Victoria, went into exile in Holland. Britain's King George V, the kaiser's cousin, eventually gave up the idea of a war crimes tribunal but sent Germany a list of several hundred he thought should be tried. Of that number, 12 were. Most were set free at once except for two submarine captains who escaped prison within weeks of being sentenced.
There are other factors leading to Hitler's rise that U.S. history books are more prone to forget -- the very significant complicity of U.S. corporations.
* Between the wars, John Foster Dulles, later Eisenhower's Secretary of State, was CEO of Sullivan and Cromwell (S&C), at which his brother, Allen, later Eisenhower and Kennedy's CIA chief, was a partner. Foster structured deals that funneled U.S. investments to German companies like IG Farben and Krupp. S&C "was at the center of an international network of banks, investment firms and industrial conglomerates that rebuilt Germany after WWI."(1)
* The Dawes Plan, created to rebuild German industry after World War I and provide reparations to England and France had on its board Charles Dawes, first director of the U.S. Budget Bureau and Owen Young, president of General Electric Co. By 1944, German oil (85% synthetic, produced with Standard of NJ technology) was controlled by IG Farben, created under the Dawes Plan and financed by Wall Street loans packaged by S&C. An internal Farben memo, coincidentally written on D-Day, 1944, said Standard's technical expertise in synthetic fuels, lubricating fluids and tetra-ethyl lead was "most useful to us," without which "the present methods of warfare would be impossible." (2)
* Even after Hitler took power in 1933, Foster Dulles continued to represent IG Farben and refused to shut down S&C's Berlin office until partners, tired of having to sign letters, "Heil Hitler," rebelled in '35. Throughout the war, Foster protected the U.S. assets of Farben and also Merck from confiscation as alien property. Arthur Goldberg, who served with Allen in the OSS, the CIA's forerunner, and later on the Supreme Court, claimed both Dulles brothers were guilty of treason.(1)
* An open secret through the '20's was Henry Ford's financial support for Hitler. A December 20, 1922 NY Times story claimed links between new uniforms and side arms for 1,000 young men in Hitler's "Storming Battalion" and Ford's portrait and books the Fuehrer prominently displayed in his well-staffed Munich office.(2) In 1938, Ford received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle award.
* In February 1933, Hermann Goering held a fundraiser at his home for the National Trusteeship, a front group from which Rudolf Hess paid Nazi Party election campaign expenses. Industrialists and financiers pledged 3,000,000 marks including 400,000 from IG Farben and 60,000 from General Electric Corporation's subsidiary, AEG. On the board of IG Farben's U.S. subsidiary were Edsel Ford, Walter Teagle, board member of the NY Federal Reserve and Standard Oil of NJ and Carl Bosch, on the board of Ford's German subsidiary, Ford AG. One week after that massive infusion of funds the Reichstag was burned. A week later, national elections swept the Nazis into power.
* In a 1936 memo, William Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, reported that I.G. Farben gave 200,000 marks to a p.r. firm "operating on American public opinion."
1) The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America's Secret Government" David Talbot 2015
2) "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler" Antony C. Sutton 1976
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