The Reparation Bill

Abstract

The Treaty of Versailles required Germany to make immediate payments of 20 billion gold marks ($5 billion), the rest of the reparation debt to be calculated by the Reparation Commission and announced in 1921. In working out the total debt, the sum initially suggested by the Allies was nearly eight times that proposed by Germany, and there was disagreement on the valuation of deliveries in kind already made. At the beginning of May, 1921, the Reparation Commission presented the final bill in an ultimatum to Germany, setting the sum at 132 billion gold marks ($33 billion) plus interest, and establishing a complicated schedule of payments extending over an undefined period. Because of the uncertainty of how the Commission would value nonmonetary deliveries, and because the sum of 132 billion gold marks was to bear interest, the final bill did not establish definitively the total burden on Germany.