In a desperate attempt to wipe the country’s debt, the Greek government has recently resorted to an unorthodox demand. Greek officials have argued that Germany is the one who needs to pay Greece reparations for the Nazi era war crimes against their country.
The left wing Syriza coalition who holds power in Athens reunites all kinds of radical politicians, including nationalists. It is the latter group who most vocally advocates that Germany needs to repent for the damage the Nazis inflicted upon Greece and its people, and the nationalists estimate the reparations amount to approximately $340 billion, a number staggeringly close to the actual debt Greece has to pay.
What is most interesting is the fact that although the German government claims reparations were paid in full a long time ago, the German public, the young ones especially, are not so convinced. An incident involving two German tourists visiting Greece made a lot of buzz in the press. Ludwig Zaccaro and Nina Lange walked last week into the mayor’s office in Nafplio with a reparations check worth $74 billion.
The bill represented war reparations Germany supposedly owns Greece for crimes committed during the Nazi occupation of their country during World War II. “We thought, Germany should start by paying its own debts before demanding the Greeks pay theirs,” Lange explained her gesture.
A great number of politicians are already starting to question Germany’s credibility in demanding that Greece pay its debt. A former German presidential candidate, Gesine Schwan, thinks most of the statesmen in Berlin refuse to take the Greek request seriously because they fear they would set a Pandora’s box-type of event in motion. “They forget that Germany opened that Pandora’s box itself when it started the war,” Schwan argued.
While there is no doubt that Greeks suffered a great deal under the Nazi occupation – Jews and partisans in particular – the idea that Germany still has to account for those crimes was only popular among a minority of Greece’s historians. Nonetheless, prime-minister Alexis Tsipras commissioned a parliamentary investigation into the Nazi atrocities in his attempt to make Germany pay for them.
If one thing is certain is that the new dispute has only estranged the two governments from each other. The Greek and German finance ministers, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Schaeuble, are all but in open conflict over the “who must pay what” debate. It falls two the two state leaders to settle for an agreement. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Greek premier Alexis Tsipras will be meeting in Berlin late on Monday.
Although many Europeans are willing to forgive Greece’s debt, officials fear such an outcome would only create a precedent that would harm the faltering euro. If Germany lets Greece go, investors might then be asking who’s next.