To the Editors: Christopher Browning writes that “the Dawes and Young Plans [were] aimed at ensuring that our ‘free-loading’ former allies could pay back their war loans.” I always understood these successive plans (1924 and 1929, respectively) as designed to scale down the reparations burden imposed on Germany by the Versailles treaty, which ended World War I. Our former allies may have found repayment of war loans burdensome, considering especially the deflationary monetary policies they followed in the interwar era; but nowhere have I read that they sought to shirk their obligations, as Browning’s statement implies.
Source : The Bills of The Great War
