[refurb]

Yup. My understanding was the US was financially supporting Germany so the reparations wouldn’t crush the entire economy.

From what I’ve gathered, Germany’s “we’re not paying any more reparations” was more a political move that got Germans on the side of the govt than anything else.

[ithkuil]

I'm confused. You have to pay me 100 bucks, but no worries, I'll loan you 80 bucks over 20 years to help your finances. You'll have to give me 240 bucks.

[refurb]

I'm not that familiar with the details, but it would be more like:

- You owe me $1B in reparations, with $10M payable each year for 100 years

- You can only come up with $8M this year, so I loan you $2M

- You then borrow from someone else to pay me back

Kind of like a rolling credit that is more about cashflow than debt level. Countries like the US were worried that Germany would just run out of cash at some point.