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Germany can be sued over Hitler-era bonds, US court says

A US court of appeals Wednesday said Germany can be sued by Florida investors seeking reimbursement for post World War I reconstruction bonds that Adolf Hitler stopped paying in the 1930s, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said.

Published: 12 August 2010 08:06 CEST

Germany can be sued over Hitler-era bonds, US court says

Hitler announces the invasion of Poland in 1939. Photo: DPA

“The court decided that the complaint filed against Germany can proceed to discovery and that the case should not be dismissed because Germany is a ‘foreign sovereign,'” said Michael Elsner, who represents Tampa-based World Holdings in the case.

“We requested damages in the hundred of millions of dollars range, it’s a number over $450 million,” the lawyer added.

The bonds were issued by Germany to rebuild the country after World War I (1914-1918), but repayment was stopped by then chancellor Adolf Hitler in 1933 as he was preparing for World War II, court documents showed.

Elsner said Germany has argued that the bonds were repaid after World War II, but that many were stolen by Russian troops at the time, requiring a special document validation process in Germany before any reimbursement claim can be answered.

A German Embassy official in Washington declined to comment on the case.

Elsner said Wednesday’s ruling meant investors can continue with their lawsuit seeking repayment, adding that the case would now return to the district court in Miami for further instruction.

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France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

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