Lausanne Conference of 1932 facts for kids

The Lausanne Conference was an important meeting held in 1932. Representatives from the United Kingdom, Germany, and France gathered in Lausanne, Switzerland. Their main goal was to discuss and change the payments Germany had to make after World War I. These payments were called World War I reparations.

These reparations were a part of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I. Germany was supposed to pay a lot of money to the winning countries. But by 1932, the world was facing a huge economic crisis called the Great Depression. This made it very hard for Germany to keep paying.

Why the Conference Happened

A year before the conference, in 1931, a plan called the Hoover Moratorium had already paused these war payments. This pause was meant to help countries deal with the growing financial problems.

At the Lausanne Conference, the leaders realized that Germany simply could not afford to restart its payments. The global economic crisis was too severe. However, countries like Britain and France had borrowed a lot of money to fight the war. France and Belgium, in particular, had suffered a lot of damage. Their towns and factories were destroyed during the fighting. German forces also caused damage as they left at the end of the war.

The Agreement Reached

So, the countries at the conference made an informal agreement. They decided that Germany's war debt would be mostly cancelled. But there was a big condition. This cancellation would only happen if the European Allies could also agree on their own war debts with the United States. The Allies owed money to the U.S. for loans given during the war.

What Happened Next

In December 1932, the U.S. Congress did not approve the plan to reduce the Allies' war debts. This meant that, technically, Germany's original payment plan from 1929, called the Young Plan, should have continued.

However, the system of reparations had basically fallen apart. Germany did not make any more payments after the Hoover Moratorium in 1931. By 1933, Germany had only paid a small fraction of what it was supposed to pay under the Treaty of Versailles. The Lausanne Conference effectively marked the end of these large war reparation payments.

See also

• World War I reparations
• Lausanne Conference of 1922–23
• London Economic Conference of 1933