 Ladies and gentlemen, my presentation at the Looting of Germany is a translation of the title of my latest book, which in German is called Beuteland. Beuteland literally means a prey country. And of course, Germany has an above average prey value because of its location of its geopolitical location in the middle of Europe and because of its resources and because of its financial strength and strong economy. The reason why I researched the subject is twofold. Firstly, it is always a pleasure to question politically correct narratives. And in this case, it is the history of post-war Germany up to this date, as it is called by the German government, the German ruling class, and its Western allies. And it goes like this. Germany was liberated in 1945. Then the victors introduced democracy in 1945. The Americans generously assisted Germany after the war and helped to rebuild the economy. Germany never paid reparations according to President Truman. And the American ambassador to Bonn or the narrative that there is no alternative to European integration and even to the European Union and to the Euro and the narrative that the Euro is an enormous advantage for Germany. And even that the Euro is a question of war and peace and so forth. Now secondly, I came across some astonishing statistics from the German Bundesbank and the European Central Bank, even the Italian Central Bank. And all these statistics show that the Germans, the citizens, are not particularly rich. In fact, the median assets of German households are lower than their respective Italian ones. So how can this be? I mean, one reason could be that taxes and social security contributions are very high in Germany. Nearly 50% of GNP compared to less than 15%, just before the First World War, which by the way proves that the monarchy was a much more liberal system than we have today. And liberal as far as property and freedom are concerned. Another reason might be that Italians pay less tax. They avoid paying tax whenever possible. And so their shadow economy is very large. You only become rich by paying less taxes, of course. Now the truth is that the German state has a triple rating. It is solvent. It is financially sound, but only at the expense of German citizens and taxpayers. This is a very important point. Now another explanation for this not very exciting German wealth is what you could call the looting of Germany. And this is my story. It was President François Mitterrand, and the editor of Le Figaro, French newspaper, who compared the Treaty of Maastricht, which, as you know, introduced the euro in 1999, to the Treaty of Versailles, which concluded the First World War. It was the British historian Nile Ferguson who once said in an interview with Der Spiegel, German weekly magazine, that German payments for European integration correspond to payments resulting from the Treaty of Versailles, by correspondingly meant nearly as large. And I, if you don't mind, I quote the Greek philosopher Panayiotis Condulis, who once remarked, quote, you don't genuinely believe that anybody would be interested in German guilt if Germany had no money. Now to begin with, nobody talked of liberation in 1945. Nobody, except, of course, for the victims of the concentration camps. For instance, I checked all memoirs by politicians. For instance, Konrad Adenau, the first chancellor of the Federal Republic, speaks in his memoirs of occupation, not of liberation. No. Or somebody like Erhard Epler, very well-known social democrat, remarked in a television interview, I didn't feel liberated. And he was, of course, a strong opponent, always, of Nazis and so on. And then there was the famous directive, JCS 1067. JCS for Joint Chiefs of Staff. This was signed by President Roosevelt in March 1945 and laid down the guiding principles of the future policy of occupation in Germany. Now what is more interesting, paragraph four of this directive formulated the thesis of collective guilt of the German people and stated, quote, Germany will not be occupied for the purpose of liberation, but as a conquered enemy nation, as a defeated enemy nation. Now, ironically, Austria was treated quite differently. In 1943, the Western Allies declared Austria to have been Hitler's first victim. And the victim had to be liberated, of course. I mean, liberation, of course, excludes collective guilt. If you are guilty and nasty and very bad, you are not liberated, but defeated. And in the Treaty of 1955, the four powers renounced their right to German property in Austria and handed it over to the Austrians. Now coming to paragraph five of the directive, paragraph five forbade General Eisenhower to take any measures to rebuild the German economy. And equally important, the JCS 1067 defined the war booty, namely all assets of scientific and industrial research, trade secrets, patents and so on. Now what resulted from JCS 1067 was the biggest ever robbery of intellectual property in the history of mankind. John Gimbel, an American historian has written a superb book on the subject titled Science, Technology and Reparations, Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany. I'll give you a few examples. In the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin, Reichspatentamt, 70 Americans and Germans who had to assist them copied more than one million pages on 70 miles of microfilm. In Germany practically everything of value, I mean as far as possible within three years, was systematically investigated and removed from universities, research, institutes and industrial companies and taken to America in order to be made available to American companies. The Americans were very impressed, they were even impressed with a German butter machine or a machine to wrap chocolates because they didn't have it in the same quality. To quote John Green, he was involved on the highest level as the director of the American Office of Technical Services. He wrote in May 47 that today's imports of German technology would be America's exports of tomorrow. And another official of the Ministry of Trade spoke of, quote, the biggest transfer of knowledge on a huge scale which has ever been executed from one country to another. Another official said German technology would save the American economy billions of dollars in the course of the next decades and advance American research by several years. And this was of course especially true for the chemical industry and even more so for airplanes and rockets as you know. Now responsible for this so called document program, it was called, was the field information agency technical acronym Fiat. Founded by Eisenhower's Supreme Headquarter in 45 and it concluded its work in 47. And then there was another project you've probably heard about, project paper clip, sometimes called project overcast, which organized the transfer of German and Austrian scientists to the United States, up to 1,000 persons. This was secret in the beginning in the United States also in England and when it came out the public was very angry because they said Nazis coming here to America or to England. And the funny thing is the German scientists in England had to pay their taxes twice in England and in Germany. But somebody like Van Haar van Braun was a former member of the National Socialist Workers Party, and of the SS, but they didn't care, he was vital for their rocket program. Of course it is impossible to quantify this kind of intellectual transfers, to quantify it financially. John Gimbal tried to do that and he arrived at a figure of 10 billion dollars, which in today's money would be, this is by the way very difficult to ascertain, it would be between 10 and 20 times as much in today's money. But anyway, when you just compare the value of one German company like Siemens, which on the stock exchange right now is worth 95 billion euros, and if you take away from them practically everything, their whole knowledge, their patterns and everything and hand it over to their competitor, how much would Siemens lose in value? I think one third would be not too high, would be a conservative estimate. Now if you add to this document program, to the intellectual reparations, the long list of other reparations, excluding the dismantling of whole industrial plants, which only ended in 1951 in West Germany, dismantling of industrial plants, forced exports of coal and other goods. For instance, coal was prime energy of course in these times, not oil. Germany had to sell their coal, which they needed desperately really to foreign countries for 10 dollars per ton, whereas the world market price was around 25. And many other things, or if you count the costs of occupation, for instance in 1948, occupation in West Germany, in the three West German zones absorbed one third of tax revenue in West Germany. In today's values that would be more than 200 billion euros, comparing it to today's tax revenues, more than 200 billion euros. So you get an idea of the enormous price the Germans paid for losing the war. And I didn't mention the Russians and the French, whose occupation was much harsher than the Americans and the British occupation. Ah, and I nearly forgot the expropriation of private property, of German foreign private property, which according to one calculation in 1952 amounted to 18 billion Deutsche Mark and according to other estimates between 20 and 30 billion in Deutsche Mark of the 50s, in today's purchasing power that would be at least 10 times as much. Now, don't understand me, don't misunderstand me. I do not argue against reparations per se. They are unavoidable if a country loses a war. And when the war ends, only then it is stated who was guilty or not, who has to pay or not. But anyway, normally reparations are agreed upon in a peace treaty, like with Japan, like with the other European allies of Germany in 47, with very modest reparations. For instance, Japan in their peace treaty was only obliged to pay one billion dollars in reparations. So it was handled completely differently from the German case. So in Germany's case, it was irregulately arbitrary plunder without bookkeeping. And this reason why even the German government does not know to this date how much has been taken away, because there was no accounting. It was just, it was arbitrary. And of course, taking away private property is not allowed under international law. That is just, that is theft, theft. And later on in a treaty with the Western allies, the Bonn government had to promise in 1954 that it would never ask for restitution of private property and that German courts would not be allowed to hear such cases. Okay, now, as it turned out, the Germans were lucky. The wartime alliance collapsed. The alliance between the West and the Soviet Union, the Cold War broke out. And the U.S. Army started pleading Germany's case, not the State Department, the Army. And America adopted a policy designed to prevent Germany from staying a vacuum in the middle of Europe and being a soft spot for communist infiltration. So in 1947, JCS 1067, the one which I quoted extensively, was replaced by a new directive. And this one was much more lenient, much more lenient. But even after 49, after the constitution of the new German state, there were many restrictions on German industry which only ended in 1955. And I could give you a lecture now about the Marshall Plan, which is always, that is also a myth. The Marshall Plan didn't rebuild the German economy. There was credit of $1.4 billion. The French and the British got much, much more and with less effect. So, and Ludwig Erhardt, who is sadly forgotten in Germany today, Ludwig Erhardt, even in the 60s, he warned against the Euro and the European Union how it evolved later. But he saw it coming here. Ludwig Erhardt once said, the German Wirtschaftswunder, economic miracle, was achieved by us solely, not by a credit of $1.4 billion, so it had to be repaid nearly entirely. All right. Now, 55 brought the end of formal occupation in Germany. Germany didn't become a sovereign state. This was only the case in 1990 with the 2 plus 4 treaty. And so Germany became an American satellite, which it still is today to a certain extent. Now, the problem for Angela Merkel is that she's still not sure where the real power lies in Washington with Donald Trump or with the East Coast establishment. So, I think she still bet on the deep state, but we will see how it turns out. Now, I'm going to spare you the other billions of reparations and other payments. Most of them voluntarily in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. I also mentioned the 90s, because Germany paid an enormous sum for the Iraq war for a war which they didn't want. They didn't want to take part. They thought it would be the wrong war, which was the case, as we know. But anyway, they were forced to pay very high sum for the Iraq war. Well, instead I'm going to leave to European integration and to the European Monetary Union, which started in 1999. And I'm referring to the German role as European paymaster, which is, by the way, often misunderstood as a form of German hegemony. But this is not true. I think it was Alain Mink, the Frenchman who once said Germany has no power. And I sometimes wonder what the whole EU would look like if everybody had to pay their own bills. Then it would be a completely different animal. Well, as you know, every European state pays into the common, into the Brussels budget. And now, when a government gets back more than it pays in, it is a net recipient of subsidies. And when it gets back less, it is a net contributor. And there are two methods of calculating net contributions. But I won't bother you with this. In any case, a certain part of national expenditure always flows from Brussels, which doesn't make sense because bureaucracy costs are deducted, then a lot of money is misused or prone to corruption. And because a local bureaucrat would know better how to spend money than a bureaucrat in Brussels. For instance, in 2014, Germany paid 28.8 billion euros into the European budget and got back 11.5. The net figure is 17.5 billion, double the amount of 2009. Of course, Germany could have avoided all the hassle and the complicated money flows back and forth by just paying 17.5 billion into the budget. Then in Brussels, they would have less work to do. And what is more important, all these signs with the inscription co-financed by the European Union, which you can see all over Germany, would be unnecessary. When you confront a German politician with Germany being paymaster, they always say, well, we get a lot of money out of Brussels, but they don't do the whole calculation. And a lot of people believe them. It's wonderful. You get money from Brussels. You give them five, you get back three, for instance. Well, to cut a long story short, Germany has been the European paymaster from the beginning. And that is why Nile Ferguson went so far as to speak of a mutually agreed system of war reparations. And the figures I'm going to tell you now have been investigated by Professor Willecker and myself for all relevant time periods. And we had to do it because these figures are normally not available. Anyway, from 1976 to 1990, Germany financed 60% of the European Transfer Union. You could as well call it ETU instead of EU. And the others, just 40%. And what is interesting, in the years immediately after reunification, after 1999, Germany paid net 73.7% of the whole Brussels budget. And the only explanation is they wanted to reconcile their partners with the new reality of a unified Germany. This is what Ferguson meant when he talked of more of mutually agreed reparations, otherwise it wouldn't be. Well, later on, Germany's net contribution receded to 40% then 30%. And in the next years it will go up again because of Brexit. I mean, last year, for 2016, we have not yet the relevant figures. But for 2015, we have them. And in 2015, Britain was the second largest contributor after Germany. You see how much money they want to extract from the British now. They try to blackmail them, 50 billion or 70 billion, whatever. So it's all about money. They talk about values all the time, but they mean money. Or put it differently, when somebody keeps talking about values, most of the time he wants to destroy other values and to discredit them. I mean, just to mention something else. Of course, Europe could exist without the EU and without this kind of integration. And without the euro, of course. You don't need a transfer union. But this is Emmanuel Macron's idea. And he kept quiet during the elections in, during the election campaign in Germany. But I'm absolutely sure after the German elections on September 24, I think, he will present his demands to Angela Merkel. Then he will present his, he wants a common eurozone budget. He wants an arrangement for European national debts and bank debts. In the eurozone, we have 1,000 billion euros of non-performing loans, as they are called. Very high level in Italy, for instance, in Greece also, of course, but it's 1,000. So the whole thing is still very shaky. And let me phrase it like this. Emmanuel Macron wants to sap Germany's financial strength. This is exactly what will happen. How much the German government will concede? I don't know. We just have to see what happens. Now, in addition, there are the enormous debt claims of the German Bundesbank under the target to transfer system. And this, it is complicated, but I have to mention it. And I'm going to simplify it a little bit. But these target to transfer this transfer system was no problem until 2010, when the euro crisis broke out. The figures were more or less flat. Then the, and I'm talking about the Bundesbank debt claims against the euro system, the debt claims. After the crisis, it went up strongly. Then when the crisis seemed to vanish, it went down again. And now, this year, it hit an all-time high of more than 800 billion euros. 800 billion euros. These debt claims, which are of course liabilities of the data countries, they are no interest whatsoever. They are not tradable. They cannot be exchanged into real assets. They even lack a payback term. So what are they worth? In case the euro breaks up, they will be lost to an unknown extent. And the Bundesbank will have a problem. And by the way, the Netherlands, with their own target to claims, are in a similar position. Now, by coming back to Germany, target two has the very consequence that at least part of German exports are financed by Germany themselves. And secondly, that the current account surpluses create no real value, like in the 50s and 60s. In the 50s and 60s, we had the European payment union, and the surpluses and deficits of the others had to be settled in gold and dollar. And from this time, stem the German gold reserves. But this is a completely different accounting system. Normally, you should be able to buy for 800 billion euros if that was possible, gold. It's not possible, of course, this amount of gold available. You could even say that the euro prevents Germany from becoming rich. For instance, a German sovereign wealth fund of which I'm an advocate is not feasible within the European framework. And I'm completely convinced that in the end, the euro will have damaged all participants, including France, all beat for different reasons. And it was never introduced for economic reasons. It was a political deal between Kohl and Mitterrand who traded the French consent to German reunification with the abolishment of the Deutsche Mark. That is the true story behind the euro. Now, to conclude, you must believe me that I didn't want to indulge in German self-pity. I just wanted to describe international relations as they are. And I also know that many things detrimental are self-inflicted, but this is a different story. And behind the curtain of ideology, political formulas and propaganda usually lurks the question of money. The question of money who pays, who profits, who is able to loot. My nations have no interest. And I really think that all these power plays and all these silly wars which still go on are vain and infertile. And the sheer existence of superpowers and constructs like the U or the Euro are necessarily harmful to people and their freedom. Well, in Germany, we have a proverb which goes like this. If everybody sweeps in front of his own door, the whole street stays clean. Thank you.