Comment Re:Germany should pay war reparations for WWII (Score 3, Interesting) 743
German war spoils were forcibly taken back. Their country was divided in two and all the property gained by them taken away. This resulted in genocide in the newly created nation states whose political borders did not follow ethnic borders. Take Yugoslavia as an example. Or for that matter the Israeli Inquisition on Germany and their allies is still going on 60 years afterwards.
This was a repeat of WWI and was even worse, especially for their Axis allies. The Ottoman empire was effectively dismantled, the Austro-Hungarian Empire ripped apart to the devastation of everyone concerned. Again, the new geopolitical borders did not follow ethnic borders. That's why you have faction strife in the Middle East now, why countries like Hungary lost 75% of their land.
After WWII: Forced emigration - over 3 million Germans had to resettle, raging communist thugs, purges (Tito for example) of their own people, ethnic xenophobia. You name it. Yeah the Allies really stuffed it up badly causing isolation and terrible political unrest.
Those war reparations destroyed Central Europe and they're only just starting to recover.
Now some of you have the educated opinion that Germany should repay Ally losses? That is cruel and unreasonable.
Now Greece wants 303 billion dollars as full reparations when the matter was already settled on the eve of unification in 1990.
Greece's problems are relatively new and are not the result of WWII. It's just a money grabbing attempt by Tsipras.
Even if Greece and the EU can forgive the debt fully, Greece still needs to show that their economy is good enough to support themselves. So far there is no sign of that.