Lastenausgleich ("Burden Equalization") was the post

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

program and laws to recompense Germans and ethnic Germans who fled their homelands for their lost properties. This was a very complicated law that transferred enormous wealth to the immigrants over a period of decades. It may well have provided a strong basis for the

Wirtschaftswunder The ''Wirtschaftswunder'' (, "economic miracle"), also known as the Miracle on the Rhine, was the rapid reconstruction and development of the economies of West Germany and Austria after World War II (adopting an ordoliberalism-based social marke ...

or German "economic miracle" in the post-war era. Economic analysis of this activity could influence modern tax laws for understanding how transfer of wealth through higher minimum wage laws and direct transfers can influence a modern economy. The value of "lost" property during the war was paid at a rate of 50% of its value quarterly over as much as 30 years. By 1982 over 115 billion DM (about $70 billion US dollars as of 1999, when Germany adopted Euros as its currency) has been spent. This outweighs hugely the value of something more than $1 billion Germany received through the

Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred over $13 billion (equivalent of about $ in ) in economic re ...

Books

* Michael L. Hughes. ''Shouldering the Burdens of Defeat: West Germany and the Reconstruction of Social Justice''. University of North Carolina Press. Chapel Hill 1999

References

{{Authority control Aftermath of World War II in Germany Human rights by issue Compensation methods Development in Europe