Description

The 1929 Young Plan: A program dictated by the victorious Allied Powers that ordered Germany to pay reparations for starting World War I. It was presented by the committee headed by Owen D. Young after it became apparent that Germany could not meet the huge annual payments demanded by the 1924 Dawes Plan. The Young Plan set the total reparations at $26 Billion to be paid over 58.5 years. The Young Plan called for an annual payment of $473 million, one third was unconditional, the balance postponable. The money was to be raised through a transportation tax and from the budget. No sooner had the plan gone into effect than Germany felt the full impact of the 1929 crash and a moratorium was called for the fiscal year 1931–32. When Adolf Hitler took over Germany in 1933 he refused to pay and the Allies were too intimidated by him to do anything. After Germany's defeat in World War II, an international conference in 1953 decided Germany would pay the remaining debt only after the country was reunified. Nonetheless, West Germany paid off the principal by 1980; then in 1995, after reunification, the new German government announced it would resume payments of the interest.

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