That's one heck of a peace agreement to force the removal of the head of state of a NEUTRAL country.
My exact words were "
removal of either FDR (via a general election)"
Could you walk me through how you concluded the potential removal of a head of state was part of a peace agreement?
By
via a general election I was referring to the 1940 US General election where FDR was elected on a platform of keeping the US out of Europe. Following the fall of France, the British war chiefs concluded the war against Germany could not be won without the support of the US. Despite his election platform, the British believed FDR was the candidate to bring the US into the war and sought to influence the 1940 US election in his favour. Without FDR as president, it is uncertain Britain could have sustained the OTL war beyond 1940.
How did you come to that conclusion? The Germans never paid more than 2.2 Billion RMs per year as part of their reparations after WW1. As cited previously, the French looting was almost more than that in 1940 alone (1.8 Billion RM) and was over double that in 1941 (5 Billion RM). A defeated but not looted France couldn't pay more than what the Germans took from them IOTL.
1. Asset valuation - when preparing financial accounts, the assets are ordinarily valued on the assumption the entity is a
going concern i.e. the entity will continue to operate and therefore the assets used in the business will continue to serve their existing purpose. The reason this assumption is made is the value of an asset in use is ordinarily far greater than the sum of the asset parts - for example if a café stops operating, you have a coffee machine and a collection of furniture - not a business. Auditors ordinarily go out of their way to explicitly confirm the
going concern assumption and will require another (ordinarily far lower) asset valuation if it cannot be demonstrated.
I am not familiar with Nazi looting methodologies, but I suspect the numbers you are citing are the cost to the French economy, not the value to the German war effort. For example, if French factory machinery is seized, but melted down, stored in a shed or simply not effectively used - the benefit to the German economy will be substantially lower than the cost to the French economy. That would even be the case if the Nazi looting was organized/systematic with the express intent to maximize the support for the German war effort. Anecdotally, I doubt this was the reality much of the time. In the vast majority of cases, "the loot" would be worth far more to the French than the looters, so logically, extortion rather than looting makes more financial sense.
Further the retention of French productive assets may enable them to better contribute to the Nazi war effort with ongoing reparations.
2. Agency collection - looting is not the most efficient way to separate a citizen from their wealth. In most cases the experts would be the respective tax/revenue authorities operating in each nation. It is more efficient to collect wealth at source for example through wages, banks or property ownership. The Nazi regime simply issues the French administration the requisite reparation invoice and the French have to go about figuring out how to collect sufficient funds to get rid of the fuckers.
3. Precedent - OTL following the 1871 Franco-Prussian war the French dedicated 9-16% of their GDP to pay the Prussian/German reparations within 3 years and the Prussian/Germans promptly departed. Even if the Nazi reparation rates only matched the 1871 Prussian numbers, the value to the
German economy is likely to be at least comparable to OTL looting, without wearing out those jackboot heels on French doors.