ATHENS (Web Desk) – The Greek government has demanded that Germany pays it back €279bn in loans Greece was forced to give the Nazi authorities who occupied the country during World War Two.
Greece’s deputy finance minister Dmitris Mardas has put an exact figure on the amount the country says it is owed for the first time.
Mardas was speaking at a committee set up by the country’s left-wing Syriza government to calculate how much money Germany owed Greece.
He said the committee had obtained “stunning evidence” to support the reparations claim.
In December 1942 Greece was forced by Nazi authorities to loan German 476m Richsmarks to cover the cost of the German occupation, which it says it has never been paid back.€279bn is 125 per cent of Greece’s €223bn GDP; the money is around a tenth of Germany’s GDP.
The modern-day euro figure is the Greek government’s own calculation of what the loan would be worth today.
