Wolfgang Schäuble at Eurogroup meeting over Greek bailout. Demotix/Jonathan Raa. All rights reserved.It’s become fashionable over recent weeks to suggest that Germans have forgotten their post-war history. The internet is heaving with stories about the 1953 London Debt Accord – the summit where Germany’s creditor nations reached an agreement cancelling more than half of the debt accumulated following the First and Second World Wars.
Take a recent interview between Thomas Piketty and the German newspaper Die Zeit that’s gone viral on social media. When pressed by Die Zeit’s interviewer, the typically restrained superstar economist bursts out indignantly at the suggestion that it’s only fair for Greece to pay what it owes. ‘When I hear the Germans say that they maintain a very moral stance about debt and strongly believe that debts must be repaid, then I think: what a huge joke!’ Piketty exclaims. ‘Germany is the country that has never repaid its debts. It has no standing to lecture other nations.’
Small but vocal minorities of German economists, such as Heiner Flassbeck, have been making this exact point for years. ‘In Germany, unfortunately, the historical lessons are not even discussed,’ Flassbeck declared in 2013. ‘Nobody knows what happened, really, to Germany, what happened to the Germany reparations payments, that they were cancelled.”
