The only way Germany would be able to pay out $10 billion was through loans from the United States, which would likely never be paid back. The American government had made that mistake before, after World War I, and the American people would not stand for it again. Byrnes had come up with a different course of action—“namely, that each country would obtain its reparations from its own zone [of occupation] and would exchange goods between the zones,” Byrnes said.
