Rift deepens with Berlin incredulous at Greek minister’s claim to
seize German property and repatriate antiquities unless Berlin pays
€341bn for war crimes.The Greek village of Distomo, where a 1944 Nazi massacre took place.
Germany
has reacted with anger and defiance to Greek government demands for
multibillion-euro reparation payments over first and second world war
atrocities which have further deepened the rift between the two
countries.
Greece’s justice minister Nikos Paraskevopoulos said Athens was
prepared to approve a court ruling to seize German property in the
country – including the Goethe Institute, the German Archaeological
Institute, German schools and holiday homes if Berlin refused to pay
€341bn (£240bn) in compensation.
The demands, which also included the return of 8,500 archaeological
treasures and artifacts currently in Germany, were met with incredulity
in Berlin.
Seizures of property that could extend to holiday homes of private
German citizens would be used to compensate victims of a second world
war Nazi massacre of 218 Greek civilians in the village of Distomo, the
government said.
Bela Anda, a former spokesman for Gerhard Schröder when he was German
chancellor, now an editor at tabloid Bild, branded the threats
“bizarre, presumptuous and impertinent”.
“The government of Tsipras positions the lever where Germany is most
vulnerable – the crimes committed by Germany in the first and second
world wars. It’s moral blackmail,” he said.
The demands stem from a Greek finance ministry report published in
December 2014 which calculated on the basis of expert assessment that
Germany “owed” Greece €9.2bn for the first world war, €322bn for the
second world war and €10bn for money Greece was forced to lend the Nazi regime in 1942.
Resentment in Greece over Nazi atrocities remains high, and has been
greatly exacerbated by frustrations over its bailout and the widespread
feeling that Germany is largely to blame for Greece’s woes.
German chancellor Angela Merkel and her finance minister Wolfgang
Schäuble have been repeatedly depicted in the Greek media in Nazi
uniform.
Upping the ante
The German television channel ZDFneo has responded with a music video which has gone viral, which makes fun of both sides of the dispute and mocks both the Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and Schäuble.
Greek politicians have been upping the ante in their dispute with
Germany ever since last months’ renegotiation of the country’s €240bn
international bailout, in which both sides claimed victory for a deal
that gave Greece a four-month reprieve and gave Athens more leeway over
economic reform.
Relations appeared to hit a new low when the defence minister Panos
Kammenos, of the rightwing populist party Independent Greeks, this week
threatened to send Islamic fundamentalists to Germany among tens of
thousands of migrants currently in Greece in revenge for the austerity
measures that Berlin is widely seen to have imposed on Athens.
“If you deliver a blow to Greece, then you should know that migrants
will be given papers and sent to Berlin,” Kammenos told a meeting of his
party, in remarks passed to the media. “If members of the terror
militia ‘Islamic State’ are among them then Europe only has itself to blame because of its attitude towards Greece with regards to the debt question.”
The reparations demands have increased the tension still further. The
issue dominated the news agenda in Germany on Thursday, with some
commentators saying that Germany should review at least certain aspects
of Greece’s claims.
The respectable daily, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (faz.net)
accused the Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras of “living in cloud
cuckoo land”, saying that the issue had been resolved years ago.
“Germany has always lived up to its responsibility for what is anyway an
injustice that can never be repaired – and paid for it. To pull this
card now ... is dangerous mischief in the time of the euro rescue.”
Die Welt called on German politicians to remain resolute in their
handling of Greece, accusing Athens of using the reparations issue to
deflect attention from its failure to tackle economic reform. “The
Athens government is refusing to carry out existential reforms. It
prefers instead to befuddle its people with the fiery booze of
anti-German rhetoric,” the paper wrote in its main editorial. “If they
continue to rage, to toy with the idea of sending Islamists to Germany,
to close the Goethe Institute, the only answer can be to remain
steadfast.”
While polls indicate most Germans are against further compensation
payments, the issue remains divisive. Members of the Left party have
insisted Berlin should compensate Greeks with €11bn for a so-called
“occupation loan” which the Bank of Greece was forced to make to Nazi
Germany in 1942.
“It is Germany’s moral duty to pay the money, even if there are
different opinions on international law,” Annette Groth of the Left
party, told Reuters.
The Cottbus-based Lausitzer Rundschau backed the idea, writing in its
editorial this morning that Germany should be prepared to consider
compensation payments linked to the “occupation loan”.
“Ten billion euros for education projects, infrastructure measures,
or as start-up money for companies ... maybe concentrated on the very
villages and regions in which the Germans staged their worst massacres
... would be a forward-looking signal of active recompense 70 years on,”
it wrote.
The German government has so far refused to comment on the specific
threats to seize property, appearing determined not to rise to the bait.
On Wednesday, it rejected the reparation claims in general, saying that
it had paid Greece 115m Deutschmarks in 1960, as part of a global
agreement covering war reparations with 12 countries, to which Athens
signed up.
“The question of reparations and compensation payments has been both
legally and politically resolved,” a government spokesman Steffen
Seibert said. His statement was backed up by similar reactions from the
foreign and finance ministries.
German reunification
Berlin also points to the 1990 Two-plus-Four Treaty, which was signed
by the then East Germany and West Germany as well as second world war
allies ahead of German reunification which was meant to end to any
claims.
Silja Vöneky, an expert in international law at the University of
Freiburg said that sovereign assets belonging to the German state –
including the Goethe Institute and German schools – may not be
confiscated. She pointed to the 2012 ruling by the International Court
of Justice under which states cannot be forced to pay compensation for
war crimes by rulings from foreign courts. The ruling followed a claim
brought by the relatives of victims of the 1944 Distomo Massacre in
Greece who sought the confiscation of German property as compensation.
The court ruled that individuals could not take a state to court and
that the Greek government itself would have to take a case before the
international court.
Ulf Brunnbauer, a German historian at Regensburg University, said he
found Greece’s demands “thoroughly understandable” but
“counterproductive”. Speaking on German public radio, DLF, he called for
a closer dialogue between the government and Greek historians over
German crimes committed during its three-and-a-half-year Nazi occupation
of the country. “I think that’s very necessary,” he said.
Former Greek government spokesman Evangelos Antonaros told the same
radio station that the Tsipras government would turn the row with
Germany into one of the defining elements of its time in office, largely
because it would help keep it in power.
“Germany has been turned into the scapegoat and the bogeyman,”
Antonaros said. “Unfortunately, it clicks with the majority of the
people … though the more sensible voices are warning of the dangers of a
very severe crisis in relations between Greece and Germany.”
Diplomatic tensions between Greece and Germany escalated even further
on Thursday after Athens formally protested against remarks made by
Schäuble about his Greek counterpart.
Greek officials confirmed that Athens’ ambassador to Berlin had
delivered a formal demarche with the German foreign ministry to protest
against Schäuble’s “offensive comments” after reportedly characterising
his flamboyant Greek counterpart as “foolishly naive” to the media after
Monday’s meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels.
Greece’s minister of state, Nikos Pappas, a close friend of Tsipras
has also hit out personally at Schäuble, saying: “It is clear that the
failure of the plan to suffocate Greece has brought some embarrassment.
Mr Schäuble is the main supporter of failed policies in Greece and
Europe.”
