Young Plan, program for settlement of German reparations reparations, payments or other compensation offered as an indemnity for loss or damage. Although the term is used to cover payments made to Holocaust survivors and to Japanese Americans interned during World War II in so-called relocation camps (and used as well to
..... Click the link for more information. debts after World War I. It was presented by the committee headed (1929–30) by Owen D. Young. After the Dawes Plan Dawes Plan, presented in 1924 by the committee headed (1923–24) by Charles G. Dawes to the Reparations Commission of the Allied nations. It was accepted the same year by Germany and the Allies.
..... Click the link for more information. was put into operation (1924), it became apparent that Germany could not meet the huge annual payments, especially over an indefinite period of time. The Young Plan—which set the total reparations at $26,350,000,000 to be paid over a period of 58 1-2 years—was thus adopted by the Allied Powers in 1930 to supersede the Dawes Plan. Designed to substitute a definite settlement under which Germany would know the exact extent of German obligations and to reduce the payments appreciably, the Young Plan divided the annual payment, set at about $473 million, into two elements—an unconditional part (one third of the sum) and a postponable part (the remainder). The annuities were to be raised through a transportation tax and from the budget. No sooner had the plan gone into effect than Germany felt the full impact of economic depression, and a moratorium was called for the fiscal year 1931–32. When Adolf Hitler Hitler, Adolf (ä`dôlf hĭt`lər)
..... Click the link for more information. took over Germany, he defaulted on the unpaid reparations debt. After Germany's defeat in World War II, an international conference decided (1953) that Germany would pay the remaining debt only after the country was reunified. Nonetheless, West Germany paid off the principal by 1980; then in 1995, after reunification, the new German government announced it would resume payments of the interest.

Young Plan

(1929) Renegotiation of Germany's World War I reparations payments by a committee chaired by the U.S. lawyer Owen D. Young (1874–1962) in Paris. The Young Plan, a revision of the Dawes Plan, reduced the amount due from Germany to $26.3 billion, to be paid over 59 years, and ended foreign controls on German economic life. It went into effect in 1930, but the world depression affected Germany's ability to pay. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he repudiated the obligations of the Treaty of Versailles, including reparations.