Thea Halo  Author of Not Even My Name.

With the Greek crisis being played out before our eyes,
Germany is being accused of a variety of draconian policies and taking a
hard line against Greece, and by extension the Greek people, to further
Germany’s aims. Many have brought up WWII as an example of how the
Nazis forced the Greek central bank to provide loans to Germany during
World War II after pillaging the country and massacring Greeks, leaving
countless orphans and a destitute and starving population in its wake.
Yet worn torn nations forgave Germany’s war debt to help Germany get
back on its feet, so to speak. But as Greek officials and Spiegel Online
point out, Germany never paid back the loans Greece was forced to make
to the Nazis. According to economist Michael Hudson, the most successful
debt jubilee in recent times was gifted to Germany, the country now
most opposed to doing the same for Greece. The German Economic Miracle
followed massive debt forgiveness by the Allies.

Yet, Germany shows zero empathy for Greece to relieve her debt. (See links below)

Germany’s disregard for Greek lives didn’t begin during WWII, however. It can also be traced back to WWI. For Germany, any policy that advanced its economic or commercial interests, no matter how horrendous and inhumane was and, apparently, still is acceptable.

Just prior to WWI, Talaat and Enver, two of the three key Pashas ruling the Ottoman Empire’s Young Turk Party, formally known as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), were firmly committed to Germany’s vision … at least the part they thought they understood. As Minister of War, Enver suggested that the German General, Otto Liman von Sanders, be appointed Inspector General. It gave von Sanders an extraordinary amount of control over the Ottoman military. According to U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., Germany dragged Turkey into the Great War with the support of only a few of those top Young Turk officials. It was a war the Ottomans were poorly equipped to fight.

At least one month before the Ottomans openly declared war on 29 October, 1914, Germany’s growing control over the Empire became clear. Germany was already requisitioning Ottoman supplies in Germany’s name for her own use. Referring to a September 29, 1914 document for the requisitioning of a shipload of oil cake, the German Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Baron von Wangenheim (1912-1915), boasted to Morgenthau that he had requisitioned the lot by the steamship Derindje for the German Government. To Morgenthau, this proved “Germany was exercising the powers of sovereignty at Constantinople.”

It wasn’t the only thing Germany and the Young Turks were requisitioning. The confiscation of farm animals and everything else needed for the war left citizens destitute and starving. And without their men who were drafted for the war, there was no one to work the land or care for the family, which caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, not only on the battlefield, but at home. Soldiers were sent to fight poorly dressed for war. Some had no shoes, and reports of Turkish soldiers pounding on doors and begging for bread were rampant. Morgenthau reported: “The Turkish Government paid its soldiers 25 cents a month, and gave the families a separation allowance of $1.20 a month. As a result thousands were dying from lack of food and many more were enfeebled by malnutrition.”

So where do the Greeks come into the picture? Indigenous Greeks had lived in what became Turkey for over three millennia, two millennia before the first Turkish tribes invaded. German historian, Hilmar Kaiser, collected German World War I propaganda that “was addressed to both Ottoman and German audiences” in which both Anatolian Greeks and Armenians were targeted. Kaiser writes, “the mass murder of Armenians had opened up new opportunities for German trade and investment.” This held true for the mass murder and displacement of Ottoman Greeks and Assyrians as well, as noted in The Times headline: “Extermination of Greeks in Turkey. A German Plot Disclosed.” German engineering of the genocidal policies against the Anatolian Greeks was widely recognized.

M.
Politis, Minister for Foreign Affairs, today laid before the Chamber
four new documents proving conclusively that the persecutions of which
the Greeks at Aivali and in other parts of Asia Minor were the victims
were carried out in accordance with a plan for the extermination of the
Greek race in Turkey devised by the German General Staff, which aided
and supervised its execution.

Greek
men were conscripted into labor battalions where they were worked and
starved to death–again leaving women, children and the aged to fend for
themselves–and whole Greek villages were emptied with no provisions
for the survival. In fact, to insure their demise, it was forbidden to
buy or sell to the displaced Greeks, or help them in any way. In some
areas of Anatolia, the Greeks were simply massacred.
With King
Constantine I on the throne of Greece, Germany was sure Greece would not
protest against the annihilation of the Greeks under Ottoman rule. Or,
if she did, make only token protestations for appearances. Born of
Danish and Russian parentage, but more importantly, married to the
sister of the Germany kaiser, Wilhelm II, Constantine would make sure
Greece would also remain neutral during WWI while he was king, a war
planned by Germany and Austria.
As late as June 1, 1918, Greek
massacres were continuing. As the Chicago Daily Tribune reported:
“Million Greeks are massacred: Thrown into Sea – Germans Made the Turk
More Efficient in His Murders.”

At least 1,000,000
Greeks, men, women, and children have perished as a result of organized
massacres and deportations by ‘the Turco-Teutons’ in Asiatic Turkey, …
‘Those of us who were between the ages of 16 and 60 were drafted into
the army,’ Macrides said. ‘Our women and children and the older men were
placed temporarily in homes and orphanages until the time when the
opportunity offered to dispose of them in the approved Turco-Teuton
fashion, which in this instance turned out to be by wholesale drowning.’

Morgenthau
reported that the Young Turks were so successful against the Greeks,
they decided to go after the other Christian ‘races’ as well, the
Armenians and Assyrians. Between 1913-1923, Greek deaths amounted to
over one million, 353,000 of whom were Pontic Greeks, Assyrians 275,000,
and Armenians 1.5 million, bringing the total Christian deaths to three
millions or more.
This is not meant to imply that the Ottoman
Turks are off the hook for the mass murder of their Christians subjects.
According to then German Minister at Athens, Baron Hans Freiherr von
Wangenheim (1909-12), as early as July 24, 1909, the Young Turks had
already decided to “wage a war of extermination against the Christians
of the Empire. .. They would begin in the heartland of Anatolia, where
Turkey had the greatest control, and where outsiders had the least
access to observe what was being done to the Christians.” The Young
Turks were apparently waiting for a convenient moment. The Great War and
Germany gave them that moment. With such control in Turkey, Germany
could have prevented the mass murder and displacement of Anatolian
Greeks. Instead, as The Times reported, the “German General Staff, ….
aided and supervised its execution.”
As British historian Arnold Toynbee understood it:

Germany’s
economic activity in Turkey has been not for prosperity but for power,
not for peace but for war. In developing Turkey, Germany is simply
developing the ‘Central Europe’ scheme of a military combine
self-contained economically and challenging the world in arms[29].
Germany is concerned with Turkey, not for her splendid past and future,
but for her miserable present; for Turkey–as she is, and only as she
is–is a vital chequer on the chess-board where Germany has been playing
her game of world power, or “des staatlich-machtlichen Interessens,” as
Dr. Wiedenfeld would say. Therefore Germany does not eye the lands and
peoples under Ottoman dominion with a view to their common advantage and
her own. She selects a “piece” among them which she can keep under her
thumb and so control the square. [Sultan] Abd-ul-Hamid was her first
pawn, and when the Young Turk Party swept him off the board she adopted
them and their colour; for by hook or by crook, through this agency or
that, Turkey had to be commanded or Germany’s play was spoilt.

As Greece’s largest stakeholder and most obstinate negotiator, Germany
now had her way. As Toynbee pointed out during the WWI period, “She
[Germany] selects a ‘piece’ among them which she can keep under her
thumb and so control the square.” The representative of that piece,
former-Greek Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis was the first
casualty. That the Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, actually asked
Varoufakis to step aside for further negotiations probably revealed too
great a weakness on Greece’s part. Apparently, Varoufakis didn’t fit
under Germany’s thumb. Closing the banks and making the demands placed
on Greece even more onerous then before Syriza was elected, seemed to
calculate a rebellion by the Greek people to get rid of Syriza as well.
The demand for privatization of even more Greek public assets further
strips Greece of the ability to make revenue from those assets. In fact,
Greece is being ransacked and left unprotected, like a house with no
windows and doors. Even then, the IMF and a number of top economists
admit that Greece’s debt is unsustainable. So when will the roof be
demanded? As Ellen Brown points out, the Greek debt can be cut without
hurting the bondholders.

A coup d’état certainly seems an
appropriate term to use. Or as Varoufakis termed it, “political
terrorism”. The suffering of the Greek people, who bear the brunt of
this terrorism, has fallen on deaf ears.

You have to give Germany
credit for one thing, however. After two failed world wars, they’ve
finally learned how to wage war without troops, without military
machinery and the great financial burden that entails, and without
leaving visible, gaping wounds and millions of dead bodies and
demolished houses scattered around the world. Germany also no longer has
a need for concentration camps and crematoriums. Germany can now wreck
the lives of millions of people and take over whole countries without
any of those unsightly signs of war. And unlike Germany’s last two wars,
its new method of waging war has Germany’s reputation somewhat battered
for some, but for others Germany is praised as a tough but justified
negotiator. The new propaganda against the “lazy Greeks” is working in
some camps, even though, while the former Greek government was not
blameless, all roads lead to Goldman Sachs. Were EU officials too inept
to notice something was wrong with Greece’s accounting? Or was there
something more sinister at play when they ignored what some say were
obvious signs? Whatever the answer to those questions, Germany has
learned it’s much easier and cheaper to wage war and dominate whole
nations through finance! Ah! The new world order!

For a further understanding of the Greek debt crisis, the following websites are recommended:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/greek-study-provides-evidence-of-forced-loans-to-nazis-a-1024762.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/08/71809/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/grexit_or_jubilee_how_greek_debt_can_be_annulled_20150716
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/how-goldman-sachs-profite_b_7820794.html

huffingtonpost