LoN Mandates Factored Into Reparations?

Robert Lansing said:
Thus under the mandatory system Germany lost her territorial assets, which might have greatly reduced her financial debt to the Allies, while the latter obtained the German colonial possessions without the loss of any of their claims for indemnity. In actual operation the apparent altruism of the mandatory system worked in favor of the selfish and material interests of the Powers which accepted the mandates. And the same may be said of the dismemberment of Turkey.

One of the first failures of the League of Nations truth be told.

So, lets change it. What are the effects if Germany's reparations are reduced according to the value of the African Mandates?
 
Bump.

Come on, the idea of the League of Nations getting off to a more altruistic start and averting the disastrous reparations from Germany (and thus, many of the unsavory after-effects) doesn't get any of you going?
 
The problem would have been that the reparation payments were designed to enable Britain and France to pay their debts to the USA. The Mandates were not liquid assets.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Of the four German African colonies, only tiny Togoland was financially self-sufficient before the First World War. The other three colonies required financial subsidies from Germany, and this was also the case with Germany's Pacific colonies. In other words, the overseas German colonies were financial burdens, not financial assets.
 
Of the four German African colonies, only tiny Togoland was financially self-sufficient before the First World War. The other three colonies required financial subsidies from Germany, and this was also the case with Germany's Pacific colonies. In other words, the overseas German colonies were financial burdens, not financial assets.

That really didn't matter in considerations of the time. Most of the French and British colonies in Africa were likewise, net drains, but they were still highly valued by policy-makers.
 
That really didn't matter in considerations of the time. Most of the French and British colonies in Africa were likewise, net drains, but they were still highly valued by policy-makers.

Valued by policy makers, true, but if the seized colonies are considered part of the reparations payments, I would think that the entente would want them to be reasonably profitable financially; otherwise, they are just taking on more losses at a time when they aren't exactly in a sound financial position themselves.
 
Valued by policy makers, true, but if the seized colonies are considered part of the reparations payments, I would think that the entente would want them to be reasonably profitable financially; otherwise, they are just taking on more losses at a time when they aren't exactly in a sound financial position themselves.

Mmm, not if they transferr them immediately or even directly to the US.

Of course you have to have a US that wants an empire...
 
Wasn't one of the important things about Versailles reparations not that the winners worked out what the bill was and presented it to the losers, but that the winners worked out what the losers could pay for the foreseeable future and took that. In such a climate I'd imagine that the winners would just take the colonies and every cent they could squeeze out regardless of the value of the colonies.
 
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