Why didn't the other Central Powers have to pay reparations too? (Short Animated Documentary)

0:00 In the years following the end of the First World War,

0:02 Germany's reparations often take center stage, with the amount to be paid,

0:06 who would get what, and how, if at all,

0:08 Germany could ever cover the costs being the most

0:10 pressing question in European foreign relations at the time.

0:13 But Germany wasn't alone in its defeat and had

0:15 of course fought World War I alongside AustriaHungary,

0:18 Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire.

0:20 However, unlike Germany, these states, or at least their successors,

0:23 weren't ordered to pay huge sums in reparations over the following decades,

0:26 which raises the question, why not?

0:28 Why didn't the rest of the defeated central powers have to pay up too?

0:32 So during the Paris Peace Conference,

0:33 the victorious powers were trying to look out

0:35 for their own best interests while negotiating the terms of surrender.

0:38 Besides things like disarmament and territorial losses,

0:41 one of the major stumbling blocks was the matter of financial reparations

0:44 and importantly how much each of the defeated parties would pay and to whom.

0:47 This was sorted via five treaties, one for each of the defeated central powers.

0:51 Because remember, AustriaHungary was technically two states just

0:54 with the same monarch and some unified ministries.

0:56 The first and most important of these treaties

0:58 was obviously the Treaty of Versailles,

1:00 which stripped Germany of all of this territory,

1:02 severely restricted the size and capabilities of its armed forces,

1:05 and notably forced it to pay massive reparations

1:07 with the exact amounts being decided at a later date.

1:09 Note, this will be a running theme.

1:11 Now, for Germany, this was a relatively simple

1:13 thing to enforce because Germany was well still Germany.

1:16 Its government and institution still remained intact.

1:18 And whilst the people in charge were different,

1:20 Germany now being a republic didn't mean that it was a different state.

1:23 And in fact, the official name for Germany

1:25 at this time was still the German Empire.

1:27 Anyway, for the other defeated Central Powers,

1:29 things weren't so simple, with the notable exception of Bulgaria,

1:31 who had joined the Central Powers in 1915 to avenge

1:34 their losses in the previous Balkan War in 1913.

1:37 Bulgaria did fairly well at first, expanding to this.

1:39 But in 1918, the on managed to push up into the Balkans from Greece,

1:42 and realizing that further resistance was pointless,

1:44 the Bulgarians asked for an armistice in September.

1:47 Now, obviously, the first thing that Bulgaria had to do

1:49 was give back the lands that they'd seized from the Anton.

1:51 and the onant then had to decide on what it would lose further.

1:54 In the treaty of Noisia Sen, the Serbians ended up gaining these lands.

1:58 The Greek thieves and much like the Germans,

1:59 the Bulgarians were forced to limit the size of their military.

2:02 And like Germany, Bulgaria was also made to pay some reparations,

2:05 but the amount was only a very tiny fraction of what the Germans had to pay.

2:08 Unlike the Germans though, the Bulgarians also had to pay restitutions

2:11 in kind for damages inflicted during the war.

2:13 This was a set amount of coal, cattle,

2:15 and other goods which were to be delivered to its neighbors.

2:17 And when combined with the financial damage of the war

2:19 and most notably the loss of these ports,

2:21 it all had a major negative effect on Bulgaria's economy and people.

2:24 These problems were exacerbated by the population transfers from its neighbors,

2:28 as well as the hundreds of thousands of now unemployed soldiers.

2:30 And as a result, Bulgaria became

2:32 a poorer and much more radicalized, unstable state.

2:34 Bulgaria's path was similar to that of Germany in that theant soon lowered its

2:38 total load before just ending the fast

2:40 of Bulgarian payments altogether in the 1920s.

2:43 Whereas for AustriaHungary, the idea of reparations was much more difficult.

2:46 The first issue for the onant was that the empire had just fallen apart.

2:50 And figuring out who there had any authority

2:51 to actually sign the peace treaty wasn't easy.

2:54 As the dust settled,

2:54 the German speakers had formed a semi-informal German Austria,

2:57 which they claimed controlled these lands.

2:58 But realistically, its authority was quite limited.

3:01 Whereas Hungary was an even bigger mess,

3:03 which was fighting wars with both Romania and the newly founded Czechoslovakia,

3:06 as well as dealing with communist revolution and royalist countercuss,

3:09 which meant that negotiating with them wasn't exactly easy.

3:11 The second issue was deciding how the break

3:13 up of the dual monarchy would be achieved.

3:15 and the representatives of the former empire's ethnic minorities had strong

3:18 opinions on what they should get and what they already held.

3:20 Whilst the disillusion of AustriaHungary itself wasn't seen

3:22 as a terrible thing for the allied great powers,

3:24 it did make aortioning blame and thus reparations incredibly difficult.

3:28 For example, the checks and slovacs upon their independence took

3:30 a sizable chunk of the dual monarchy's industrial output with them.

3:33 And so those factories and the workers in them that had

3:36 helped fuel the Hapsburg war machine couldn't exactly be punished.

3:38 It would be a hard sale to the Czechoslovakians that they

3:40 could have their independence but that they also owed Italy,

3:42 Serbia and Romania money for their part in the war.

3:45 In the end, the treaty of Sanjgerine onlay saw Sislethania,

3:48 the Austrian half of the empire broken up

3:50 into this with the newly created Austria being

3:52 nominated as the successor state to that half

3:54 of the empire and thus inheriting the blame.

3:56 Its representatives also managed to upset the Anton by asking for territorial

4:00 concessions from its newborn neighbors under the guise of Wilson's 14 points.

4:03 And they really struck a nerve when they

4:05 proposed that Austria be allowed to unify with Germany.

4:07 To the victorious onant, the idea that Germany could gain such a large chunk

4:10 of territory after the devastation of the war was insulting.

4:13 And as a result, Austria was prevented

4:14 from referring to itself as German Austria,

4:16 and it was forbidden from ever uniting with Germany.

4:18 Its army was also limited in size,

4:20 but on a brighter note, it was given these lands from Hungary.

4:22 So, what about reparations?

4:24 Well, the Austrians were told that they would have to pay up,

4:26 but it was in more of a hopefully maybe one day sense,

4:28 and officially the on would decide the exact amount at a later date.

4:32 However, they knew this would never happen because Austria was broke.

4:35 One in three Austrians at this point

4:36 lived in the capital and there wasn't enough

4:38 agricultural workers to feed them and thus it

4:41 wasn't long until mass impoverishment hit the country.

4:43 As such, the Anton recognized that Austria was

4:45 not only never going to pay anything back,

4:46 but that it would be lucky to even survive as a nation state.

4:49 And so they just sort of agreed to forget about the whole thing

4:52 because putting more stress on Vienna didn't seem like a recipe for success.

4:55 Now, as for Hungary, its problems were similar to those of Austria.

4:58 Its war with Romania and Czechoslovakia continued

5:00 despite the Habsburg surrender and the Romanians

5:02 advanced deep into the country and soon

5:04 helped to overthrow the Hungarian government.

5:06 However, the great powers intervened and the Romanian

5:08 puppet government was removed and replaced with another one,

5:10 thus giving them someone to actually negotiate with and sign the peace treaty.

5:13 In this, the Kingdom of Hungary was reduced to this, losing

5:16 70% of its land and 65% of its population.

5:19 Its military was also severely limited,

5:21 and the Budapest government also had to send

5:22 natural resources to its neighbors as compensation.

5:25 Much like Austria, the Hungarians were told that they'd

5:27 have to pay reparations to the victors, too.

5:29 And also like Austria, it was to be determined at a later date.

5:32 Of course, Hungary was such an economic mess

5:34 that the Anton knew that they wouldn't get anything from them.

5:36 And Hungary's neighbors would simply have

5:37 to be happy with the territorial gains instead.

5:39 Not that they were, and fears of Hungary trying to reclaim

5:42 those lands led to the creation of an alliance between them,

5:44 just to make sure that that could never happen.

5:46 The last central power was the Ottoman Empire,

5:48 which had surrendered in October of 1918.

5:51 Its capitalist Ambul was soon occupied and the two sides began

5:53 to negotiate the Treaty of Sea to end the conflict formally.

5:56 To the surprise of nobody, the terms of this were harsh and it saw

5:59 Ottoman territory reduced to this and its military massively restricted.

6:02 This came alongside the Anton basically taking over the Ottoman

6:05 economy and carving out zones of economic influence for themselves.

6:08 And it was ordered that the Dardinels would

6:10 become an international zone outside of Ottoman control.

6:12 And as for reparations, well, much of the territory taken from the Ottomans was

6:15 now under the control of either Britain or France.

6:17 And so the idea of those two powers paying

6:19 reparations to themselves or to their allies was silly.

6:22 Furthermore, the Anton considered that the Ottoman economy would be so utterly

6:24 broken by the loss of its imperial holdings that they would actually have

6:27 to loan money to Istanbul to stop the state from falling apart

6:30 and that reasonably the odds of said money being paid back was slim.

6:33 Now the Ottoman leadership had accepted its defeat

6:35 and was begrudgingly willing to agree to the Anton demands.

6:37 The Ottoman Parliament, however, was not.

6:40 Not only did it fiercely refuse to ratify the 1920 treaty and pass bill stating

6:44 that the Ottoman Empire was a fully independent

6:46 state and that they wanted their occupiers gone.

6:48 With this in mind, the Anton hoped that the Greeks with designs

6:50 on large swaves of Ottoman territory would do the heavy lifting.

6:53 However, there was a snag.

6:54 A rival government to the Ottoman one in Istanbul was created in Ankara

6:58 led by a certain Mustafa Kamal Pashia and it refused to accept any terms.

7:01 The Anton now enjoying not being at war

7:03 didn't want to send masses of troops to Anatolia.

7:05 And in Britain's case, its dominion simply refused to help,

7:08 except for one that is good old trustworthy faithful New Zealand.

7:11 And this caused a major crisis in London, bringing down the government there.

7:14 The Turkish nationalists took up arms and after

7:16 a few years were able to defeat the French,

7:18 the Armenians, and the Greeks and forced them to negotiate.

7:20 The Antonune recognized the Ankara government

7:22 as the legitimate government of the Ottoman Empire,

7:24 which led to the last Ottoman Sultan leaving Istanbul and thus

7:27 sending a monarchy which had stood for over 600 years.

7:29 In the following treaty of Laan, the Ottoman Empire was formally abolished,

7:32 and Turkey took its place with these borders.

7:34 The Antonant also agreed that Turkey would be a blameless party in World War I.

7:37 And obviously with this, any notion that Turkey would

7:40 ever pay reparations whatsoever was well and truly dead.

7:42 And so these factors combined meant that when a later date

7:45 arrived and the Anton had to decide how much they were owed,

7:48 the figure they arrived at was almost exclusively Germany's problem.

7:51 Meaning that besides the poultry sums that Bulgaria handed over

7:53 and the very limited and shortlived shipments of raw materials from Hungary,

7:56 the burden of reparations fell entirely in Germany.

7:58 whilst the others due to either massive losses in territory,

8:01 resources and population or due

8:02 to simply being Bulgaria avoided crippling repayments.

8:06 I hope you enjoyed this episode

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