The discussion about the Greek demands for compensation and reparations for German war crimes is always tricky and dominates the news agenda in Germany and Greece. In the last two years, the demands for compensation are discussed again, not only because the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and SYRIZA party have raised this public issue forcefully. The issue of reparations addressed the German President Joachim Gauck when he visited the "martyred village" Lyngiades in Greece, 2014. His statement at the memorial in Lyngiades was: "I am ashamed that the democratic Germany knows so little about the german crimes commited in Greece".

In the aftermath of war, Greece has been compensated insufficiently compared to the other victims of German aggression. Reparation claims against the Federal Republic of Germany had been postponed in the London Agreement of 1953, and should be regulated after a final peace treaty with the Allies. But the German reunification was consciously not conceived as a peace treaty in order to avoid further reparations.

Berlin paid 115m Deutschmarks to Athens in 1960 for compensation. Greece stated that the 1960 deal did not cover key demands, including payments for damaged infrastructure, war crimes and the return of a forced loan exacted from occupied Greece. Germany insists the issue of compensation was settled in 1990 legally and politically before Germany was reunified.

Regarding the payment of these reparations, the sources are highly contradictory. In official lists we have a total number of 96,570 people in 17 volumes. But not all demands were accepted. Hagen Fleischer came to a number of almost 52,250 recognized occupation victims that received german reparations.  

Literature 

Hagen Fleischer: “Vergangenheitspolitik und Erinnerung: Die deutsche Okkupation Griechenlands im Gedächtnis beider Länder“, in: Die Okkupation Griechenlands im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Griechische und deutsche Erinnerungskultur, hrsg. von Chryssoula Kambas und Marilisa Mitsou, Köln-Wien-Weimar 2015, S. 31- 54

Hagen Fleischer, „Der lange Schatten des Krieges und die griechischen Kalenden der deutschen Diplomatie“, in: Hellas verstehen. Deutsch-griechischer Kulturtransfer im 20. Jahrhundert, hrsg. von Chryssoula Kambas und Marilisa Mitsou, Köln-Wien-Weimar 2010, S. 205- 240

Hagen Fleischer, Despina Konstantinakou, „Ad calendas graecas? Griechenland und die deutsche Wiedergutmachung“, in: Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung: die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa, hrsg. von Hockerts, Hans Günter, Moisel, Claudia, Winstel, Tobias, Göttingen 2006, S. 357- 457.