'Gennan disposition of some looted gold, and the impossibility of identifying the origin of other gold, require for the sake of equity a modification of the simple principle of restitution' .1 2 The French Government inclined towards the US view and the British Government decided, in order to avoid 'endless deadlock', to accept the principle that all captured Gennan gold should be used for -restitution. 13 In other words, all gold found in Germany would be pooled and given back to those countries who had lost their gold resexves in proportion to their losses. Discussions in Moscow in the summer of 1945 between members of the Allied Reparation Commission touched upon the relative definitions of booty, loot, restitution, etc., but the classification of types of gold was not attempted. Nor was there any detailed discussion of gold at the Potsdam Conference, although it fell within the scope of the final Protocol in Part m, Reparations .from Gerrnat!Y, which also stated that the Soviet Government made no claim to gold captured by the Allied troops in Gennany.14 Between Potsdam and the Paris Conference on Reparation responsibility for gold lay tk facto with the UK, us and French Governments through their Military Commanders in charge of their zones of occupied Germany.
The Paris Conference on &paration, 9 Novemher-21 Decemher 1945 The Paris Conference was the first intergovernmental forum at which the future of Nazi gold was seriously discussed, and its Fmal Act, embodying an agreement between the eighteen participating powers l5 on Reparation from Germany, the Establishment of an I.nter-Allied Reparation Agency and the Restitution of Monetary Gold, 16 contained specific provisions for the disposal of both monetary and non-monetary gold. The definition of these categories, however, was not addressed. The records of the Conference and other related discussions at this time indicate that delegates made a general assumption that monetary gold meant gold bars and coins, looted from banks and, by implication, from governments, since in many countries private citizens had not been permitted to hold gold. Non-monetary gold was considered to mean 'private' gold in the form of dental gold, wedding rings etc. taken from concentration camp inmates. I7 'Ibis crude, and in some
12
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See Foreign JU/4Iio1lS of tile Uniut1 SI4Us (hereafter FRUS), 1945, vol. iii, pp. 1257-60 . DBPO, Series I, Vol. V: Gmntmy fJ7Ui Wulml Eunpe 11 August-31 Dtctmber 1945 (HMSO, 1990), No.
32.i . Potsdam Protocol or ~ of2 August 1945 is printed in DBPO, Series I, Vol. I, No. 603 . 1bese were the governments of Albania, the USA, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, the UK, Greece, India, Luxembourg, Norway, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, South Mrica and Yugoslavia. 16 Cmd. 6721 of 1946. The Fmal Act came into operation on 24 January 1946. 17 See, for example, record of a meeting in the Foreign Office on 14 November 1945 which considered the explanation by Sir D. Waley (Treasury, British Ddegate to Reparation Commission) that nonmonetary gold meant 'gold articles removed from their victims by the Gennans either before or after ,execution' (f 236/1478). •+ The •5
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