Germany’s debt defaults after the two world wars dwarfs anything Greece has done, economists say
That warning from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others is overwhelmingly backed by a German public outraged by the contrast between Greece’s spendthrift ways, with its penchant for treating tax bills as junk mail, and their own obsession with a tight hold on the purse strings, both personal and as a country.
What the Germans are conveniently ignoring is their own record as one of history’s biggest deadbeats.
In the 1920s, according to a prominent German economic historian, Germany was “like Greece on steroids.” Albrecht Ritschl, a professor at the London School of economics and an adviser to the German ministry of economics, says that Germany’s current prosperity was built on borrowed — mostly American — money, much of it written off.
It all started in 1918 when Germany lost the First World War. In the peace settlement that followed, the victors exacted payment of 269 billion marks or 96,000 tonnes of gold.
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