<P> During World War II, Nazi Germany extracted payments from occupied countries and compelled loans . In addition, countries were obliged to provide resources, and forced labour . </P> <P> After World War II, according to the Potsdam conference held between July 17 and August 2, 1945, Germany was to pay the Allies US $23 billion mainly in machinery and manufacturing plants . Reparations to the Soviet Union stopped in 1953 . Large numbers of factories were dismantled or destroyed . Dismantling in the west stopped in 1950 . </P> <P> Beginning before the German surrender and continuing for the next two years, the United States pursued a vigorous program of harvesting all technological and scientific know - how as well as all patents and many leading scientists in Germany (known as Operation Paperclip). Historian John Gimbel, in his book Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, states that the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the UK amounted to close to $10 billion . German reparations were partly to be in the form of forced labor . By 1947, approximately 4,000,000 German POWs and civilians were used as forced labor (under various headings, such as "reparations labor" or "enforced labor") in the Soviet Union, France, the UK, Belgium and in Germany in U.S run "Military Labor Service Units". </P> <P> According to the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, Italy agreed to pay reparations of about US $125 million to Yugoslavia, US $105 million to Greece, US $100 million to the Soviet Union, US $25 million to Ethiopia, and US $5 million to Albania . </P>

When did germany pay off its ww2 debt