Occupied Greece lent Nazi Germany billions. Now it seeks repayment, but is afraid to ask

The German occupation of Greece ended 80 years ago. Berlin still refuses to discuss an occupation-era loan extracted from the Bank of Greece, saying reparations issues have been settled

German troops raise the swastika over the Acropolis in April 1941

When the Nazis began their retreat from Greece on 12 October 1944, the country lay in ruins. As they withdrew, the Nazis blew up roads, bridges and railways. Three quarters of Greece’s vaunted merchant fleet had been lost to U-Boats in the Atlantic. After three-and-a-half years of occupation, agricultural production had halved. GDP had fallen to a third of its pre-war level. Bank deposits had fallen by 99 percent. Half a million people were dead – most of them civilians, from starvation and mass executions.

Greece came to the Paris Conference in December 1945 demanding $13.7bn (in 1938 dollars) for destroyed infrastructure and repayment of occupation costs, but this was a small part of the overall claims from occupied Europe. Britain, France and the US tallied total reparations demands at $329bn, which they found excessive. Determined not to repeat the mistakes of Versailles, they did not set a nominal figure on what Germany would pay. Instead, they apportioned to each claimant a percentage of an undetermined total of movable German property such as trucks, trains and factory machinery.

Greece was awarded 2.7 percent. The Greek delegation signed the Paris agreement several days late, and submitted a memorandum saying they had done so “reluctantly” because “the state of the country leaves no other option”. Greece’s parliament did not ratify the agreement until 1955, six years after the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency (IARA) had stopped shipping industrial plant from Germany, which became the chief form of reparations payment.