THOMAS DIBACCO: Europe’s long-running struggle over Greece’s debt

OPINION:

After three days of Washington meetings recently, world financial officials of the International Monetary Fund dealt with Greece’s massive debt problem with stern warnings about the necessity for the nation to overhaul its near-crashed economy. To wit, to pay back loans by reforming its government, collecting taxes and cutting the bureaucracy. Since 2009, it’s been noted, about $86 billion in unpaid taxes punctuates Greece’s ledger books, a sum more than sufficient to keep the economy afloat. But the verbal threats have done little to change the nation, and May 11 is the deadline to satisfy creditors that the nation is on track to get its economic house in order.

In fact, demands and deadlines have been heard since 2010 when the European Union began its bailout program, but as of April 6, a new Greek argument has been injected into the fray, namely, that the German government pay $303 billion reparations for the harm that the Nazis did to Greece in their occupation from 1941 to 1944. Without doubt, for such a small nation, Greece was the object of enormous hostility from the Nazis but also from Italy and Bulgaria, which devised a three-part occupation.

First were the monetary demands, with the Germans in 1942 forcing the Greek Central Bank to lend 476 million Reichmarks at zero interest, of which, in 1960, only 115 million was repaid.

Neither Germany nor the United States has been receptive to additional demands for reparations to Greece. Just before German unification in 1990, West Germany and East Germany signed an agreement with the United States, Great Britain, France and Russia, formally ending all surrender issues. When Greece subsequently demanded reparations from Germany, the latter replied that the matter was closed because it had surrendered to the Allies and not to Greece. Subsequent individual suits of Greek relatives proved futile.

As for the United States, the Marshall Plan aid that Greece and other European countries received after World War II required that recipients not raise reparations claims against Germany. In short, American fear of communist parties taking over European nations was stronger than the damage inflicted by the Nazis.

Then there was the loss of life inflicted by the Nazis on Greece, which, unlike some other European nations, fiercely resisted their invaders. In 1940, Greece had a population of 7.3 million. In 1944, it had dropped as a result of Nazi atrocities to 6.8 million. No incident of Nazi brutality in World War II was more shocking than what happened after June 10, 1944, when Greek resisters killed a few Germans near the tiny village of Distomo. Within four days, according to a Swedish Red Cross worker who visited the site, the Nazis in retaliation ravaged the entire village — killing 214 men, women and children — a crime so heinous that even a Nazi tribunal was instituted to review it, although without taking any action against the perpetrators.

The dilemma of the 19-nation EU is that there are members who want Greece ousted from membership. France, for example, believes that the EU has prepared for Greece’s withdrawal, and that the departure would not measurably affect the continent’s economy. Even tiny Finland, which has been on an austerity diet for years, boasts a Finns Party that wants Greece tossed from membership.

But there is also Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Germany, which believes that a reformed Greece must emerge. Or, in the alternative — the more likely scenario — the bailout must grudgingly continue, with deadlines and demands angrily noted but mostly ignored because the most important components of Greece’s fate are creditors who want their dough one way or the other. In this reasoning, there is a worse outcome, and that is the adverse economic impact that Greece’s departure would have on the world economy, mostly the United States, which is so bubbled in terms of its alleged gains, that even a psychological pinprick from a small nation would reverberate, starting with the always volatile stock markets.

• Thomas V. DiBacco is professor emeritus at American University.