German reparations for World War II After World War II , both West Germany and East Germany were obliged to pay war reparations to the Allied governments , according to the Potsdam Conference . Other Axis nations were obliged to pay war reparations according to the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947 . Early propositions . An early plan for a post - war Germany was the Morgenthau plan with terms that would have essentially transformed Germany to an agrarian society . The French Monnet Plan would have transferred the Ruhr Area to France . Recipients . Israel . West Germany paid reparations to Israel and the World Jewish Congress for confiscated Jewish property under Nuremberg laws , forced labour and persecution . However , no reparations were paid for killed Jews during the Holocaust , and no reparations were paid to the Romani people . The Netherlands . The Netherlands demanded reparations , but later desired to annex a large part of German territory . They eventually annexed 69 km in 1949 , bought back by West Germany in 1957 . Poland . As a consequence of aggression by Nazi Germany , much of Poland was subjected to enormous destruction of its industry ( 62 % of which was destroyed ) , its infrastructure ( 84 % ) and loss of civilian life ( 16 . 7 % of its citizens during the war ) . Material recompense incurred by Germany has been estimated as approximately €525 billion or $ 640 billion in 2004 exchange values On 23 August 1953 , The People ' s Republic of Poland under pressure from The Soviet Union announced it would unilaterally waive its right to war reparations from East Germany on 1 January 1954 , with the exception of reparations for Nazi oppression and atrocities . West Germany hadn ' t paid reparations to non - Jewish recipients for the damage inflicted in Poland until the Gierek - Schmidt agreement from 9 October 1975 in Warsaw , then it gave Poland 1 . 3 bln DM . After German reunification , Poland demanded reparations again , following claims made by German refugee organisations that demanded compensation for lost property . In 1992 , the Foundation for Polish - German Reconciliation was founded by the Polish and German governments , and as a result Germany paid Polish sufferers ca . 4 . 7 bln zł . There is an ongoing debate among Polish international law experts if Poland still has the right to demand war reparations , with some arguing that the 1954 declaration wasn ' t legal Yugoslavia . The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia received a value of US $ 36 billion , in industrial equipment from the dismantled German factories . West Germany also paid 8 million US $ as reparations for forced human experimentation on Yugoslav citizens . Other forms of payment . According to the Yalta Conference , no reparations to Allied countries would be paid in money . Instead , much of this value consisted of German industrial assets , as well as forced labour . Annexation of territories . France controlled the Saar protectorate from 1947 to 1956 , with the intention of using its coal deposits and possibly annexing the region to France permanently . The same mines had been under French control from the end of the First World War until 1935 . Following the results of a plebiscite , France had to relinquish its control of the Saar region on January 1 , 1957 , however it continued to extract coal from the area ' s mines until 1981 . The Netherlands annexed approximately 69 km of German territory in 1949 , nearly all of which was given back to the West Germany Government in 1957 . Under the Dutch - German treaty made in The Hague on 8 April 1960 , West Germany agreed to pay to The Netherlands the sum of 280 million German marks in compensation for the return . Dismantling of industries . At the beginning of the occupation , the Allies started dismantling the remnants of German industries . The Western Allies later abandoned this plan in favour to the Marshall Plan . Intellectual property . The Allies confiscated significant values of German patents , copyrights and trademarks . Forced labour . See German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union , Forced labour of Germans in the Soviet Union and Forced labour of Germans after World War II .