Most videos below include auto-translation to English and other languages. English-language context is provided where translation is unavailable.
Ilias Papanastasiou: Where Did the Nazis Go After the War?
Economist Ilias Papanastasiou discusses the fate of Nazi figures after World War II and examines the darker chapters of Europe’s postwar history.
Dionysis Drosos: The Moral Dimension of German Reparations
Professor Dionysis Drosos examines the moral dimension of German reparations to Greece, highlighting questions of historical memory, justice, and accountability for wartime actions.
This video traces the history of Greek tobacco—once one of Greece’s most valuable exports—and the devastating effects of the economic crisis, foreign control, and wartime occupation on the country’s tobacco trade.
English Translation
A tobacco leaf from Drama was once more valuable than Greek gold. It was called basma: a small leaf with an extraordinary aroma, grown only in Drama, Kavala, Serres, and Xanthi. In 1929, tobacco accounted for 56 percent of all Greek exports—more than half.
Basma does not need machines; it needs hands. A single stremma requires more than 150 hours of labor, leaf by leaf, by hand, under the sun. The refugees of the population exchange—many of them Greek survivors of the genocide and persecution in Ottoman Turkey and Asia Minor—received a few stremmata each, and from those small plots they generated foreign exchange for an entire country.
The tobacco then made its way down to Kavala. The city filled with warehouses like fortresses, while merchants built mansions. Inside those warehouses, however, the ceilings were low and there were very few windows. They were opened as little as possible to keep the tobacco leaves from drying out. There was one toilet for each floor. Thousands of people breathed tobacco dust in the darkness; tuberculosis took a terrible toll, and work lasted only from spring until autumn. In winter, there was nothing.
Then came the crash. Prices collapsed, and Greece defaulted in 1932. At that point, the only buyer left appeared: Germany. But Germany had no gold either. Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank, established a system under which Germany paid with marks held in restricted accounts. The money could be spent on only one thing: German products.
Greece had no choice. It either sold its tobacco under these terms or watched it rot in the warehouses.
In April 1941, only days after the German invasion, the occupation authorities moved quickly to seize the entire tobacco crop. Clearing arrangements were no longer necessary. They took it without payment. Compensation was still being discussed well into the 1960s.
And yet tobacco survived. In 1954, it still provided half of Greece’s export earnings.
The end came much later—and without an army. In 2006, the European Union decoupled agricultural subsidies from production. Farmers could receive the same payments without planting tobacco. The time came when a producer in Drama who had once cultivated 350 stremmata left his fields empty for the first time in his entire life.
Europe continues to buy tobacco—just not from us.
Did we lose a product, or did we give it away?
English translation of the Greek narration. The original video contains Greek-language narration and captions.
Historian Ilias Papanastasiou examines what happened to Nazi war criminals after World War II, where they went, and how many escaped justice. He explores the networks and political circumstances that allowed former Nazis to find refuge in Europe and beyond.
Professor Dionysis Drosos examines Germany’s efforts to weaken Greek historical memory, minimize the crimes committed during the occupation, and remove German reparations from public debate. He also considers how history is being rewritten in Germany’s favor—with assistance from voices within Greece.
This video presents a talk on the historical memory of the 1944 executions at Kaisariani and the ongoing public debate about how the German occupation of Greece is interpreted today, including the still unresolved issue of unpaid reparations by Germany. Viewers can enable closed captions and automatic translation through YouTube’s subtitle settings.
Journalist Giorgos Harvalias, following the success of his best-seller “Jawohl! Blood, Amnesia, and Subservience”, sheds light on the hidden dimensions of Greek-German relations and the critical question of war reparations in a milestone interview that is truly worth watching.
Ο δημοσιογράφος Γιώργος Χαρβαλιάς, με αφορμή το μπεστ σέλερ του «Γιαβόλ! Αιμα, Λήθη και Υποτέλεια», αναλύει τις αθέατες πτυχές των ελληνο-γερμανικών σχέσεων και το κρίσιμο κεφάλαιο των πολεμικών αποζημιώσεων σε μια συνέντευξη-ορόσημο που αξίζει να παρακολουθήσετε!
STREET INTERVIEW WITH Tzanetos Gouskos in a discussion about the Occupation Loans / συνέντευξη του δρόμου νο1 ΤΖΑΝΕΤΟΣ ΓΚΟΥΣΚΟΣ, τα κατοχικά δάνεια
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: The Beginning of WWII in Greece
Dr Helen Savaki, Germany’s Obligations to Greece: The Great Famine
Dr Helen Savaki, Germany’s Obligations to Greece: The Great Famine
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece Greek Urban Resistance – Reprisals
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Concentration / Extermination Camps
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Paradoxical Beliefs
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Battle of Crete
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Extermination Camps
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Compensation of War Victims
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Battle of Crete
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Germany’s War Reparations
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Extermination Camps
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: The Holocaust of Crete
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Repatriation of Antiquities
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Compensations to Victims
Dr Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Compensations to Victims Part 2
Dr Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Wartime Reparations
Giannis Gouskos – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Occupation Loans
Dr Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Looting of Cultural Heritage
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: End of World War II
Dr Helen Savaki, Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Epilogue
Dr. Helen Savaki – Germany’s Obligations to Greece: Epilogue
Germany Must Pay its Debts to Greece:
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