How much money does Germany owe Greece?

Finance Ministry officials brief Greek Parliament on methods for the calculation of the obligatory loan to Germany during WWII

Greek Parliament’s interparliamentary committee on German reparations was briefed on Thursday by officials from the Finance Ministry on methods used to calculate the loan that Greece was forced to give Germany during World War II. The loan at the time had left the nation stripped of funds while the Nazis stockpiled food to supply their armies overseas using Greek money.

50 Reichsmark marking the Occupation of Greece in WWII

50 Reichsmark marking the Occupation of Greece in WWII

Coordinator of the special working group looking into the method Panagiotis Karakoussis explained the method being used to collect information and to evaluate the extent of the German loan from Greece He said they converted the total amount the Nazis received from the Bank of Greece during the country’s three-and-a-half year occupation into 1941-value U.S. dollars because that was the only relatively stable currency at the time.

German activists protest in front of the German embassy in Athens

The group said it will begin calculating the interest repayments on the original disbursement from January 1, 1945, with an interest rate based on the average return of the 10-year U.S. Treasury bill. To do this, the group has gathered 45,000 documents from the Foreign ministry, 761 files from the Gemeral Accounting Office and 5,000 documents from the State Legal Council. The final report with the exact figure that Germany has owed Greece for decades will be ready by December 31, 2014. It will include an invoice of all the types of German reparations owed to Greeks.