Since were two years away from the Centenial of the event I think its time to talk about it.
After the Great war Germany was quite simply put well screwed, they were in debt to their eye balls had to pay war reperations and their economy was in tatters, to the east russia had been taken over by the soviets. Things looked grim for the soviets, but they had a stroke of luck. American paranoia about the communist threat.
The americans wanted to prop up the defeated germans to keep the communists out of eastern europe but they knew they needed some kind of fig leaf to sell it to the american public. So a deal was cut with the German government.
The americans would handle the vast majority of their war reperations, and quite a bit of their national debt and in exchange for the next 100 years american citazins would be garenteed access and free education in german universities. Faced with economic disaster the German government agreed, and in a stroke of a pen over 90% of the reperations debt vanished. Leaving behind a smaller debt they paid back in 5 years.
But what if this didn't happen? What if the Berlin accord did not happen?