In a tenuous connection to Leigh's post about the dire state of German finances after the Great War, I would like to tell you a story that my dad told me the other day, which he heard from a former general manager of the organization involved. As we all know, Germany was required to pay war reparations after WWI. What is not so well known, however, is that they continued to pay them, "like clockwork," until the spring of 1945. So for the entire time that Europe was at war, Germany was continuing to dutifully pay off its debts. They did this through an institution called the Bank for International Settlements, established in 1930 for just this sort of purpose; it continues to act as an intermediary in international financial matters. The reparations were often paid in the form of gold bullion piled up in truck that were driven to a BIS office, often in neutral Switzerland, and handed over through them. Near the end of the war, the Allies were putting pressure on Switzerland to close its borders to Germans because they were afraid high-ranking officers would try to flee carrying valuable looted works of arts or large sums of money, often in gold coins. At this time, a German major was entrusted with the monthly task of driving the reparation trucks, so he drove up to the Swiss border. But the Swiss refused to let him in because he was trying to bring so much gold bullion out of Germany. He tried to convince them, even showing them an order from his superior officer that he was to deliver the gold to the BIS, but he was still refused entrance. Eventually, he drove back into Germany and went to the first branch of Deutschebank he saw, deposited all the money, put the deposit key in an envelope, and drove back to the border. He handed the envelope to the Swiss border guard and told them to deliver it to the BIS, as per their agreement. Months later, the delivery of bullion ceased when Germany collapsed, but throughout the war, Hitler's government oddly continued to honor the agreement that the former German government had made with the enemy.