Resolution of the Reparations Issue

ATHENS/BERLIN (Own report) – The Prime Minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras has announced a new initiative to force Germany to pay reparations and compensations to Greece. During a memorial service for the victims of a massacre committed by the German Wehrmacht in the western Greek village of Kommeno, on Tuesday, Tsipras declared that, should the Germany government persist in refusing to pay reparations, Athens will seek “through diplomatic channels – and if necessary at the judicial level – ” to take action against Berlin. In early September, the Greek parliament is scheduled to discuss a recently completed report quantifying the German reparations debt at 269 billion Euros. German government assertions that the reparations issue has been “closed” are unfounded. In fact, payment of the binding 1946 reparations sum, recognized by the London Debt Agreement of February 1953, had been deferred, but not annulled. Only a fraction of it has been paid. As confirmed by Horst Teltschik, former advisor to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Bonn had sought to evade its reparations obligations by explicitly not qualifying the 2 + 4 Treaty a “Peace Treaty.” It had been feared that, with a peace treaty, suddenly “reparations demands from over 50 countries would land on the table,” Teltschik explained.

The Brussels Agreement

BERLIN/ROME/PARIS (Own report) – In several western and southern European countries, the agreement on Greece reached in Brussels signals a looming collapse of the continental post-war order and Germany’s revival as an ostentatious dictatorial power. Whereas social-democratic observers do not exclude an attenuation of the contradictions, southern European conservative media are among those who speak of a revival of German hegemonic ambitions, which had largely determined or triggered the First and Second World Wars. The consequences of the French-Italian submission during negotiations in Brussels are generating those fears, because Paris had not succeeded to and Rome had not even seriously attempted to thwart the German dictates of sovereignty over Greece. Both, Italy and France are aware of the dangers of becoming the next victim of German financial dictatorship. They are competing for admission in a northern European core Europe, whose membership will be decided by Berlin, in the case of a possible collapse of the European Union. Current events are directly linked to German foreign policy endeavors in the 1990s and the territorial expansion of Germany’s economic basis through the so-called reunification.

War by Other Means (II)

BERLIN/KIEV/MOSCOW (Own report) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel is convinced that the West will be “victorious” in the power struggle with Moscow. Merkel told the Munich Security Conference on the weekend that the Ukraine conflict “cannot be won” with military means. That is why “a new way must be found.” Comparing the current power struggle to the Cold War, she reaffirmed, “I am a hundred percent convinced that, with our principles, we will win.” Earlier, Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, had expressed a similar view proposing that a “double strategy” be applied in the West’s power struggle with Russia. According to the journal of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), the power struggle, which currently cannot won with military means, should be returned “from the military to the economic level.” To this effect, Berlin has launched a diplomatic offensive that should lead to talks in Minsk on Wednesday.

Russia considers censuring West Germany

Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of Russian parliament’s lower house, on Wednesday ordered legislators to consider an appeal from a Communist Party deputy to denounce the reunification of Germany as an illegal land grab of East Germany by its western neighbour.

The collapse of Socialist rule in East Germany – officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR) – heralded the end of the Cold War, and was met with jubilation in the West.