The 1953 London debt agreement has become a critical issue in the European and international public sphere since the beginning of 2015, when Syriza came to power. But what do we really know about this agreement ? What was the context in which 50% of the German foreign debt was written down by its former creditors ? Here is a seminal piece written by sociologist Timothy Guinnane in 2006, in which he warned against the misunderstanding of the historical circumstances of the early 1950s.

http://www.econ.yale.edu/growth_pdf/cdp880.pdf