Editing World War I reparations (section)

===Allied damages===
Most of the war's major battles occurred in France and Belgium, with both the [[Zone rouge|French countryside]] and Belgian countryside being heavily scarred in the fighting. Furthermore, in 1918 during the German retreat, German troops devastated France's most industrialized region in the north-east ([[Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin]]) as well as Belgium. Extensive looting took place as German forces removed whatever material they could use and destroyed the rest. Hundreds of mines were destroyed along with railways, bridges, and entire villages. [[Prime Minister of France]] [[Georges Clemenceau]] was determined, for these reasons, that any just peace required Germany to pay reparations for the damage it had caused. Clemenceau viewed reparations as a way of weakening Germany to ensure it could never threaten France again.{{sfn|Slavicek|2010|pp=41–43, 58}}{{sfn|MacMillan|2003|p=202}} His position was shared by the French electorate.{{sfn|Brezina|2006|p=20}} Reparations would also go towards the reconstruction costs in other countries, including Belgium, which were also directly affected by the war.{{sfn|Weinberg|1994|p=14}} Despite domestic pressure for a harsh settlement, British [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|Prime Minister]] [[David Lloyd George]] opposed overbearing reparations. He argued for a smaller sum, which would be less damaging to the German economy with a long-term goal of ensuring Germany would remain a viable economic power and trading partner. He also argued that reparations should include war pensions for disabled veterans and allowances for war widows, which would reserve a larger share of the reparations for the [[British Empire]].{{sfn|Slavicek|2010|p=44}}{{sfn|Brezina|2006|p=21}}{{sfn|Yearwood|2009|p=127}} Wilson opposed these positions and was adamant that no indemnity should be imposed upon Germany.{{sfn|Martel|2010|p=272}}

Damages in France and Belgium included the complete demolition of more than 300,000 houses in German-occupied France, the stripping of more than 6,000 factories of their machinery and the smashing of textile industry in Lille and Sedan, the destruction of nearly 2,000 breweries, the blowing up of 112 mineshafts in [[Roubaix]] and [[Tourcoing]], the flooding or blocking-off of more 1,000 miles of mine galleries, the ripping up of more than 1,000 miles of railway, the dropping of more than 1,000 bridges, as well as the looting of churches. German wartime requisitions of farm animals imposed on the civilian population within occupied France and Belgium included roughly 500,000 head of cattle, approximately 500,000 head of sheep, and more than 300,000 head of horses and donkeys. In cleaning up after the war, the French authorities had to remove over 3 hundred million metres of barbed wire and fill in more than a quarter of a billion cubic metres of trenches, with much farmland rendered essentially useless for years after the war due to [[Unexploded ordnance|unexploded ordinance]] and contamination by poison gas that continued to leak from buried gas-cylinders which had to be removed.<ref name="Martin 273-274">{{cite book |last1=Gilbert |first1=Martin |author1-link=Martin Gilbert |editor1-last=Taylor |editor1-first=AJP |editor1-link=AJP Taylor |title=History of World War 1 |date=1974 |publisher=Octopus Books |isbn=0706403983 |pages=273–274}}</ref>

Allied losses of civilian shipping at sea due to the primarily-German U-boat campaign had also been severe, particularly for Britain. Nearly 8 million tons of British civilian shipping had been sunk by German U-boats, with many civilian crew killed. France, Italy, and the United States of America had lost another 2 million tons of merchant shipping, again with heavy losses amongst crew. Another 1.2 million tons of neutral Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish shipping had also been sunk. The sinking of five British hospital ships also caused considerable bitterness.<ref name="Martin 273-274" />