Naked Capitalism has the article A Pragmatic Approach to External Debt: The Write-Down of Germany’s Debts in 1953.

The Greek debt crisis has prompted a surprising number of references to an obscure agreement signed in London 60 years ago. The 1953 London Debt Agreement (LDA) marked the end of a long period of German default on external debt owed to both governments and private entities. The LDA cut the debt roughly in half, rescheduled what remained, and tied repayments to export revenues. Greece, in one of history’s great ironies, signed the LDA as a creditor nation. Prime Minister Tsipras has argued that Germany should appreciate the lesson of 1953 and offer similar debt forgiveness to Greece today. Both Germany’s and Greece’s partisans have misrepresented the LDA and in so doing obscured the motivations of Germany’s creditors in 1953. The LDA offers an important lesson, but only if understood accurately.

This is one of those articles I like to read so that I will be armed with information to ward off the inevitable misinformation from the corporate press.