World War II reparations
The Allies agreed as part of the Potsdam Agreement, that the Soviet Union collects and distributes the Polish share of reparations.
These territories were incorporated into communist Poland and the Soviet Union respectively and resettled with citizens of these countries, pending a final peace conference with Germany.
[10] In the case of Poland, the acquired territory was a compensation for the Polish Eastern Borderlands (Kresy), which were annexed by the Soviet Union.
[9] France occupied the Saar protectorate from 1947 to 1956, with the intention of using its coal and steel industrial output to boost the French economy as reparations for the war.
These efforts were mostly thwarted by the Western Allies and ultimately only approximately 69 square kilometres (27 sq mi) of German territory was annexed in 1949.
Under the Dutch-German treaty made in The Hague on 8 April 1960, West Germany agreed to pay to The Netherlands the sum of 280 million German marks in compensation for the return.
[14] Later the Western Allies softened their stance in favour of the Marshall Plan, while Eastern Germany continued to deliver industrial goods and raw materials to the Soviet Union until 1953.
[16][17][18] Similarly the (relatively limited) railway electrification was also dismantled with the notable exception of most of the Berlin S-Bahn which retained its third rail infrastructure for the most part.
[28][24][27][29][30][31] On 10 September 2004, the Polish parliament (Sejm) passed a resolution stating that: "The Sejm of the Republic of Poland, aware of the role of historical truth and elementary justice in Polish-German relations states that Poland has not yet received adequate financial compensation and war reparations for the enormous destruction and material losses caused by German aggression, occupation and genocide.
"[32] A month later, on 19 October 2004 the Polish Council of Ministers put out a statement stating: "The Declaration of 23 August 1953 was adopted in accordance with the constitutional order of the time, in compliance with international law laid down in the UN Charter.
"[34][35] According to law professor at the University of Warsaw, Władysłav Czapliński, the reparation question has been closed with the conclusion of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, negotiated in 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, and the Four Powers (United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and France), to which Poland voiced no protest.
[37] In the meantime, Poland and Germany concluded several treaties and agreements to compensate Polish persons who were victims of German aggression.
In 1972, West Germany paid compensation to Poles that had survived pseudo-medical experiments during their imprisonment in various Nazi camps during the Second World War.
[40] The reparation issue arose again in late 2017 with comments made by Polish government officials from the ruling Law and Justice.
[49] On 4 January 2023 the deputy minister of foreign affairs of Poland Arkadiusz Mularczyk stated that "We do not recognize this German position, we reject it in its entirety as absolutely unfounded and erroneous."
This sum rose significantly due to the growing size of the reparations seized by the Allies and Greece ultimately received compensations in the form of money and industrial goods with a worth of about 25 million dollars.
[63] West Germany paid reparations to Israel for confiscated Jewish property under Nuremberg laws, forced labour and persecution.
[citation needed] Immediately after the end of the war, the Netherlands demanded 25 billion Guilders as compensation for among other things the Dutch winter famine of 1944–1945.
But shortly later pursued a policy of radical redrawing of the longstanding Dutch-German border and the transfer of a large part of German territory to the Dutch as reparations.
West Germany also paid 8 million German marks as reparations for forced human experimentation on Yugoslav citizens.
Italian reparation payments amounted to about 366 million USD and were paid to the Soviet Union, as well as Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Ethiopia.
Only minor payments were made to other Asian countries, specifically to Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, and Thailand.
