Greece’s €279bn Claim for German WWII Reparations, and Berlin’s Reply

German World War II Reparations to Greece - Nazis in Acropolis

In April 2015 the Greek government put a figure on what it says Germany still owes for the Nazi occupation of 1941 to 1944: €278.7 billion. Deputy Finance Minister Dimitris Mardas told parliament that the sum included the value of a loan the occupiers forced Greece's central bank to grant. Germany's answer, then and since, has been that the question of reparations was settled long ago. Neither side has moved, and the claim remains one of the most emotional unresolved issues between the two countries.

The number drew global attention because it arrived in the middle of the debt crisis, when Greece owed vast sums to European creditors, with Germany the largest single contributor to its bailouts. The claim, however, is much older than the crisis, and it rests on the scale of what Greece suffered during the war.

What Greece claimed in 2015

Mardas presented the figure on behalf of the Syriza-led government of Alexis Tsipras. In his words, as reported at the time: "According to our calculations, the debt linked to German reparations is €278.7 billion euros, including €10.3 billion for the so-called forced loan." The rest, he said, related to compensation for individuals and for destroyed infrastructure. Earlier Greek estimates had ranged from about €269 billion to €332 billion, depending on how damage and interest were calculated.

The timing mattered. Greece had received two international bailouts worth about €240 billion from the so-called troika of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and the austerity attached to them had pushed unemployment to record levels. Many Greeks resented Berlin's leading role in setting those conditions, and the reparations claim, which was larger than the bailout total, became a powerful political symbol. Tsipras had already raised it in February 2015, arguing in March that Berlin had never adequately compensated Greece for the destruction of the occupation years.

The announcement also came shortly before Tsipras visited Moscow, a trip watched closely in Brussels and Berlin for signs that Athens might seek Russian support during its standoff with creditors.

The occupation and what it cost Greece

German forces invaded Greece on 6 April 1941 and entered Athens on 27 April. Within days, German soldiers raised the Reich war flag over the Acropolis, the scene shown in the archive photograph at the top of this page. Two young Greeks, Manolis Glezos and Apostolos Santas, climbed the rock one night soon afterwards and tore it down, an act that became a symbol of resistance.

The occupation that followed was devastating. In the winter of 1941 to 1942 a famine killed about 40,000 people in the Athens and Piraeus area alone, and many more across the country. Reprisal killings destroyed whole villages. About 60,000 Greek Jews, at least four in five of the pre-war community, were murdered in the Holocaust. Historians estimate that between 7 and 11 percent of the civilian population died as a result of the occupation; overall war-death estimates vary widely, and the figure of 800,000 often quoted in Greece sits at the top of that range. Roughly 80 percent of industry and 90 percent of bridges were destroyed.

The photo above shows a man searching for names on a memorial plaque in June 2013, on the eve of the 69th anniversary of the Distomo massacre. On 10 June 1944, Waffen-SS troops killed 228 civilians in Distomo, a village in central Greece, including women, children and elderly people. (Photo: Reuters/John Kolesidis.)

The forced occupation loan

A separate part of the claim concerns money that Greece effectively lent to Nazi Germany. From 1942 the occupiers forced the Bank of Greece to finance German and Italian costs, and the balance was recorded as an interest-free loan. By the end of the war it stood at 476 million Reichsmarks. The payments fuelled hyperinflation and helped wreck the Greek economy.

Greek governments argue that this is a straightforward debt, distinct from reparations, because it was recorded as a loan at the time. Estimates of its present value differ greatly. A 2012 report by Germany's parliamentary research service reportedly put it at about $8.25 billion, while Greek estimates have ranged from about €10 billion to €13 billion or more.

What Germany has paid and why it says the matter is closed

After the war, the 1946 Paris Reparation conference initially allocated Greece a share of about $7.2 billion, but the amount shrank sharply and Greece eventually received only around $25 million in money and industrial goods. In 1953, the London Agreement on German External Debts postponed further claims until a final peace treaty with Germany.

In 1960, West Germany agreed to pay 115 million Deutschmarks to Greek victims of Nazi persecution. Berlin regards that as part of a settlement; later Greek governments describe it as a down payment, since it was explicitly intended for individual victims rather than as general reparations.

The key German argument is the 1990 Two Plus Four Treaty, signed by the two German states and the four wartime Allies before reunification. Germany considers it the final settlement of open reparation questions. Greece rejects this, pointing out that it was not a party to the treaty and that the treaty does not mention reparations explicitly. Even within Germany, a 2019 Bundestag research report reportedly described the government's position as defensible but not required by international law.

Victims' families have also gone to court. Relatives of the Distomo victims won a judgment in a Greek court in 1997, upheld by Greece's Supreme Court in 2000, but it could not be enforced in Greece without the justice minister's consent. When they tried to seize German property in Italy, Germany took Italy to the International Court of Justice, which ruled in 2012 that German state immunity had been violated.

What has happened since 2015

The issue did not end with the Tsipras government. In April 2019 the Greek parliament passed a resolution, with broad cross-party support, calling on the government to take all appropriate diplomatic and legal steps to pursue reparations for both world wars and repayment of the occupation loan. Greece delivered a formal diplomatic note to Berlin in June 2019. Greek parliamentary estimates around that time put the total owed at about €270 billion to €310 billion, and the state accounting office estimated that private claims for war dead and invalids could add roughly €107 billion.

Germany replied the same month. A foreign ministry spokesman said the question of reparations had been "legally and politically settled", while Berlin also acknowledged its political and moral responsibility for the crimes committed in Greece and apologised for them. In 2022, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said publicly that the issue remained open.

Why the claim still matters

For Germany, reopening reparations would set a precedent that could invite claims from other countries occupied in the war, such as Poland, which has made similar demands. For Greece, the claim is about more than money. It is a question of recognition: of the famine, the burned villages, the deported Jewish communities and the economic ruin that shaped the country for decades.

Some German politicians have called for compensation of some kind, and ideas such as a fund for victims and their descendants, or repaying the occupation loan as a gesture separate from reparations, have been floated. So far no German government has accepted them. Whatever the legal outcome, the memorials at places like Distomo, Kalavryta and Kommeno ensure that the history behind the numbers will not be forgotten.

Sources: Wikipedia: German reparations for World War II; Wikipedia: Axis occupation of Greece; Wikipedia: Distomo massacre; To Vima: parliament authorises government to demand WWII reparations (April 2019); Ahram Online / AFP: Germany says Greek demand long settled (June 2019); Neos Kosmos: German foreign ministry rejects reparations (2019); Greek City Times: Dendias says reparations remain open (2022). The 2015 statements were originally reported by RT. Photos: German Federal Archives (Acropolis, 1941); Reuters/John Kolesidis (Distomo memorial).

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