[ptaipale]

Greece should have flirted with Russia earlier? I don't get that.

Of course, regarding requirements for compensation from Germany, it would have made sense to ask those in 1980, i.e. before joining an economic community with Germany, a community whose purpose was to put back wars and their compensation requirements, and start up a free trade area and bind economies together to avoid further clashes and wars.

[markvdb]

Greece couldn't have asked in 1980. There was a debt conference in the early 1950s -by the world war winning superpowers of the time- that postponed compensation questions until the reunification of Germany (then thought to be coming soon). In 1990, after the reunification, the same superpowers convened again, and decided _instead of all countries and without consulting_ to drop the debt.

A mandatory loan from the Greek government to finance the German war effort would be at around 11 billion euros now. It is a multiple of that for many other EU countries.

I'm not saying that this "repay the war debt" is a good idea, but there certainly are a lot of hard to contest historical arguments for the validity of a small part of their claim.

[phaer]

Just for the record: Greek governments did demand war compensation before 1980, but Germany argued that that question has to wait until unification. After 1989 it was "too late"