Occupation Costs
The costs of the occupation were charged to the Germans, about $2.4 billion per year. Of course, these occupation costs also meant that Germany did not need to pay for its own defense. One estimate for the year 1948 placed this cost to the German economy, through requisitions of goods, materials and direct payments, to be 46 percent of local tax receipts. The Germans were charged for such costs as "one ton of water bugs to feed a U.S. general’s pet fish, a bedspread of Korean goatskin, thirty thousand bras".
Read more about this topic: Industrial Plans For Germany
Famous quotes containing the words occupation and/or costs:
“For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled—because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)