The Revision of the Peace

The 1924 reparations settlement constituted a major revision of the Versailles Treaty in that the Reparations Commission was reorganised while both its powers and German payments were sharply reduced. By the time this scheme was achieved, there had been other revisions of the 1919 settlement as well. Most of the reparations provisions of the Paris treaties had been jettisoned. Austrian and Turkish reparations had been abandoned altogether. Hungary had been granted a virtual moratorium on all except small coal deliveries, while Bulgarian reparations had been scaled down to a more realistic 550 million gold francs plus a lump-sum payment of 25 million francs for occupation costs. Despite the reduction of reparations to a trickle, European victors were embarking on lengthy negotiations toward settlement of their American debts on long-term payment schemes. There remained a correlation between these plans and reparations schedules as European countries came to view reparations primarily as a means to pay war debts.