Some facts re the end of the 1st World War I.
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Ended first with the cessation of armed hostilities between the warring powers at the famed “11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month,” that is November 11, 1918. The official, or diplomatic, end of World War I came later at the Treaty of Versailles, June 28, 1919.
Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging what was then the bloodiest conflict in history, leaving nearly ten million soldiers dead.
The initial sum agreed upon for war damages in 1919 was 226 billion Reichsmarks, a sum later reduced to 132 billion, £22 billion at the time. Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging what was then the bloodiest conflict in history, leaving nearly ten million soldiers dead. The initial sum agreed upon for war damages in 1919 was 226 billion Reichsmarks, a sum later reduced to 132 billion, £22 billion at the time.
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Stork
I was curious to know what that amount would be in today's money, so I used the inflation calculator on the Bank of England's website. £22 billion in 1919 is £1,079,910,000,000 today (for Americans, that's $1,410,000,000,000.) That seemed pretty high to me, (over £1 trillion????) so I double-checked it on another conversion website, and got close to the same number. I can't imagine how anyone expected Germany to pay that much.
I wondered if Germany actually paid all of the 132 billion marks that the Treaty of Versailles said they should. Wikipedia says "The German Government estimated it had paid the equivalent of 67.8 billion gold marks." It also says, "The Reparation Commission and the Bank for International Settlements state that 20.598 billion gold marks was paid by Germany in reparations." The same paragraph has 2 others saying that Germany paid between 16 and 20 billion marks of that 132 billion. So, if those latter 3 are correct, Germany only paid about 15% of what the Treaty told it to pay. It says, "A final installment of US $94 million was made on 3 October 2010," just 8 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_reparations#Amount_paid_by_Germany
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