All Seeing Eye runs an occasional Where Are They Now series and in the past we’ve caught up, if that’s the right phrase, with the Iraqi shoe-thrower, the Washington Sniper, the father in the Jacko case and several others.

Tonight, following on from a post on the highly recommended Subrosa blog the other day mentioning the recent completion of British payments to the USA, we look at Germany’s World War 1 repayments….which are still, you’ll be surprised to know, up and going 90 years after the Treaty of Versailles.

When the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, Germany accepted blame for the war and agreed to pay 226 billion Reichsmarks, a sum that was later reduced in 1921 to 132 billion Reichsmarks. Up until 1952 Germany had paid some 1.5 billion Reichsmarks in war reparations to Allied countries. But in 1953 the balance was suspended pending a reunification of East and West Germany.

On October 3, 1990, the old debts went into effect again with 20 years for payment. Germany plans to pay off its World War I debts by October 3, 2010 and this still-open contract for interest and amortisation payments is around €56 million.

Well there you go. It wasn’t just the Brits who have been paying all this time. Ironically, we just finished paying the Americans off in time for McDoom to land us in an even bigger pile of debt than WWII – and it’ll probably take us just as long to pay it all off. Never say this blog isn’t informative.