Compensation

Israel

After it had turned its Arab neighbors into lethal enemies with its genocidal war of 1948, Israel had to maintain huge armed forces to secure its spoils of war and prevent an Arab revenge. These armed forces were utterly disproportionate to Israel’s financial and economic abilities. Hence, within a few years, Israel was in serious financial trouble. They needed money, lots of it, predictably and reliably.

As soon as the National Socialists managed to form a government in Germany in 1933, Jewish organizations called for economic and financial boycotts against Germany, and even declared war on Germany. The National Socialists reacted with their own boycott. From there on, things steadily escalated in threats and counterthreats. With National-Socialist Germany losing the war, all German anti-Jewish measures and threats also disappeared. However, with the alleged harm done to the European Jewish communities by National-Socialist wartime policies, Jews understandably continued their hostile attitude to anything German.

With the Cold War gaining traction in 1948, the United States of America needed West Germany to prosper economically, so that it could do its military share in the confrontation with the Eastern Bloc. This required, however, that West Germany forged trade agreements and got financial loans in order to rebuild its completely devastated economy. Most of its European neighbors were not pleased by the prospect of a resurging Germany.

In addition to her neighbor’s resistance, Germany also faced Jewish opposition. Many influential Jews in media, finance, trade and politics did what they could to undermine any West-German attempts to rise from the ashes. West-German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer acknowledged that power when quipping in 1952 that “World Jewry is a great power!” Adolf Hitler had the same opinion, except that he drew radically different conclusions from it. It was left to Adenauer to rescue Germany from its postwar collapse. Against a majority of his own conservative party, he was looking for a way out by acknowledging the injustice done to Europe’s Jews, and by paying for it – in return for Jews suspending their resistance to Germany’s recovery efforts.

Israel’s dependence upon the U.S. allowed the Americans to strong-arm the Israeli government into negotiating with West Germany. After lengthy negotiations, the so-called Luxembourg Agreement was signed on 10 September 1952. It obligated West Germany to pay Israel 3 billion deutschmarks over a stretch of 12 years as compensation for Israeli expenses to accommodate Jewish refugees. In return, Israel agreed to use most of this money to buy goods and equipment from Germany to build, modernize and expand its infrastructure, among other things.

As a result of this agreement, large parts of Israel’s postwar infrastructure were German-made. This gifted German infrastructure contributed significantly to stabilizing Israel’s economy, and permitted it 15 years later, in 1967, to go on another imperialistic conquest against its Arab neighbors.

Germany, on the other hand, managed to pull off its Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle), meaning its phoenix-like rise from the ashes to an economic and financial powerhouse, once again dominating all of Europe. Although initially violently opposed by many Jews, particularly in Israel, who did not want to accept German “blood money,” this agreement proved to be enormously beneficial for both sides.

Other Countries

Between 1959 and 1964, Germany signed compensation agreements with 12 western European nations relating to compensation payments to citizens of those countries for injustices suffered. Over the years, roughly one billion deutschmarks were paid out as a result of these agreements.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, similar agreements were signed between Germany and Eastern European countries, although due to the late point in time, the inflation-adjusted payments were much lower.

Individuals

Right after the end of World War Two, the Allied occupational powers enacted laws and regulations in Germany for the compensation of National-Socialist injustice. These were later harmonized and accepted by West-Germany as German law in 1952 with the so-called Transition Treaty, granting West-Germany partial sovereignty.

Over the coming decades, this initial law was followed with a series of German laws allowing survivors of National-Socialist persecution to file claims against the West-German (and later reunified German) government for loss of property, damage to careers, as well as physical and mental injury and pain, among other things. Compensations were made either as one-time payments or as monthly pensions. Most but not all applicants were Jews or Jewish organizations.

When adjudicating applications for compensations of injustices suffered by the Third Reich, German postwar authorities instructed clerks to be generous, and not to question or doubt claims about events allegedly suffered.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union prevented anyone in Eastern-Bloc countries from accepting compensation money from the West-German government. After Germany’s reunification in 1990 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a large, so-far untapped pool of individuals were entitled to compensation. Enticed by this renewed feeding frenzy at the troughs of a larger Germany, Jewish organizations threatened with calls for boycotts or multi-billion-dollar lawsuits against

• major German companies who had used forced laborers during the war;
• Swiss banks which presumably profited from dormant bank accounts of Holocaust victims;
• European insurance companies which allegedly had not paid out life insurances and other benefits to owners or beneficiaries listed in insurance contracts of victims and survivors;
• as well as the French and Hungarian governments for having aided and abetted in deporting Jews to Auschwitz.

The blackmail worked. Starting in the mid-1990s, billions upon billions were paid in return for these Jewish organizations waiving their right to file lawsuits. It is doubtful that much of the billions paid actually benefited any destitute survivor. Considerable amounts were also spent for Holocaust-indoctrination projects.

Next in line were demands to pay compensation to the “next generation of survivors,” who suffer emotionally due to the resultant trauma from having to learn about their parent’s horrific experiences. Hence, Germany was asked to pay for the consequences of Holocaust indoctrination. This demand has not been met so far.

As of late 2022, Germany has paid almost 82 billion Euros in compensation from all major agreements. And payments continue to grow: in mid-2023, Germany agreed to give another 1.3 billion Euros for calendar year 2024, and increasing for the following two years, despite declining numbers of survivors.

Compared to Germany’s economy with an annual gross domestic product of some four trillion Euros, payments of 82 billion Euros spread out over 80 years is a relatively small amount. On the other hand, every billion given to Jews or Jewish organizations is one less billion for German needs And every billion given away inevitably comes back to bite the West by further leveraging Jewish power or by further promoting feelings of Holocaust guilt.

(See the public data accessible on Wikipedia about compensation and Wiedergutmachung (literally: “making good again”); see moreover Finkelstein 2000, 2005.)