Office of the Historian

Hiss Collection

Soviet Proposal on Reparations From Germany1
February 7, 1945, noon

Basic Principles of Exaction of Reparations From Germany

1. Reparations are to be received in the first instance by those countries which have borne the main burden of the war and have organized victory over the enemy.

All other countries are to receive reparations in the second place.

2. Setting aside for the moment the use of German labour by way of reparations, this question to be considered at a later date, reparations in kind are to be exacted from Germany in the two following forms:

a)
removals in a single payment at the end of the war from the national wealth of Germany located on the territory of Germany herself as well as outside her territory (equipment, machine-tools, ships, rolling stock, German investments abroad, shares of industrial, transport, shipping and other enterprises remaining in Germany, etc.) these removals to be carried out for the purpose of military and economic disarmament of Germany.
These removals are to be completed within two years of the end of the war.
b)
Annual deliveries of commodities during 10 years after the end of the war.

3. The total sum of the German reparations in the form of removals from her national wealth as well as in the form of annual deliveries of commodities after the end of the war is fixed at 20 billion dollars.

This amount shall be distributed as follows:

a)
USSR—10 billion dollars,
b)
United Kingdom and U. S. A.—8 billion dollars,
c)
All other countries—2 billion dollars.

  1. Original, undated, but endorsed to the effect that it was submitted by Molotov at the Foreign Ministers’ meeting on February 7. See ante, p. 702. A copy in the Bohlen Collection contains certain variances of spelling and wording.↩