GREECE AND WORLD: Germany pays reparations after 92 years!

Germany ends World War One reparations after 92 years with £59m final payment

Last updated at 1:19 AM on 29th September 2010

Germany will finally clear its First World War debt by repaying nearly £60million this weekend.

The £22billion reparations were set by the Allied victors – mostly Britain, France and America – as compensation and punishment for the 1914-18 war.

The reparations were set at the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919, by the Allied victors - mostly Britain, France and America.

Most of the money was intended to go to Belgium and France, whose land, towns and villages were devastated by the war, and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging it.

The initial sum agreed upon for war damages in 1919 was 226billion Reichsmarks, a sum later reduced to 132billion. In sterling at the time this was the equivalent of some £22billion.

The German Federal Budget for 2010 shows the remaining portion of the debt that will be cleared on Sunday, October 3.

The bill would have been settled much earlier had not one Adolf Hitler reneged on reparations during his reign.

Hatred of the settlement agreed at Versailles, France, which crippled Germany as it tried to shape itself into a democracy following defeat in the war, was of significant importance in propelling the Nazis to power.

Georges Clemenceau, (right), Prime Minister of France, is shown signing the Treaty of Versailles, a peace treaty that officially ended World War One, and demanded the equivalent of £24 billion be paid to the Allies by Germany

Prime Minister of France Georges Clemenceau (right) signs the Treaty of Versailles, an agreement of peace that officially ended World War One, and demanded Germany pay the Allies the equivalent of £24 billion