Reparation

• Author: Jeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

Page 303

Compensation for an injury; redress for a wrong inflicted.

The losing countries in a war often must pay damages to the victors for the economic harm that the losing countries inflicted during wartime. These damages are commonly called military reparations. The term reparation may also be applied to other situations where one party must pay for damages inflicted upon another party.

In the twentieth century, military reparations have been extracted from Germany twice. After Germany's defeat in WORLD WAR I, the Allies conducted a peace conference in Paris at which they drafted the TREATY OF VERSAILLES (225 Consol. T. S. 188 [June 28, 1919]) which was extremely harsh toward Germany. Germany was compelled to deliver to the Allies one-eighth of its livestock and provide ships, railroad cars, locomotives, and other materials to replace those it had destroyed during the war. Germany also had to provide France with large quantities of coal as reparations.

The treaty required Germany to pay large yearly sums of money to the Allies, but it did not set the total amount due. A reparations commission, which was created to determine the amount, decided in 1921 to set total cash reparations at about $33 billion.

Efforts to collect the reparations failed, primarily because the German economy was in dire straits in the 1920s. U.S. financier Charles G. Dawes presided over a committee of experts to deal with this problem. In 1924 the Allies and Germany adopted the Dawes Plan, which reorganized the German national bank, placed stringent economic controls on Germany, and provided for loans to Germany, all to improve the German economy so that the country could make reparations. In 1929 Germany renegotiated its reparations requirements with the Allies. A committee headed by U.S. representative OWEN D. YOUNG reduced the amount Germany owed and ended foreign controls over the German economy. Even this reduced amount of reparations was not paid. When ADOLF HITLER came to power in 1933, he repudiated the Treaty of Versailles and the reparations provisions.

In the twentieth century, the term reparation has come to imply fault. However, in some circumstances nations may pay for damages inflicted by their armed forces without admitting fault or legal liability, by offering compensation

Page 304

In April 2002, Fusako Ishizuka, a Japanese American forced into a U.S. internment camp during WWII, watches a reenactment of the 1942 evacuations that took place in Watsonville, California. Most surviving internees of the...