from punitive settlements usually known as indemnities. The reparations were intended for reconstruction and as compensation for families who had been bereaved by the war. Sally Marks wrote that the article "was designed to lay a legal basis for reparations" to be paid. Article 231 "established an unlimited theoretical liability" for which Germany would have to pay but the following article "in fact narrowed German responsibility to civilian damages". When the final reparation figure was established in 1921, it was based on an Allied assessment of [the] German capacity to pay, not on the basis of Allied claims. The London Schedule of Payments, of 5 May 1921, established the full liability of the combined Central Powers at gold marks. Of this figure, Germany was only required to pay gold marks (), a smaller amount than they had previously offered for terms of peace. Reparations were unpopular and strained the German economy but they were payable and from 1919 to 1931, when reparations ended, Germany paid fewer than gold marks. The Reparation Commission and the Bank for International Settlements gave a total German payment of gold marks, whereas historian Niall Ferguson estimated that Germany paid no more than gold marks. Ferguson also wrote that this sum was only 2.4 per cent of German national income between 1919 and 1932, while Stephen Schuker places the figure at an average of 2 per cent of national income between 1919 and 1931, in cash and kind, making a total transfer equal to 5.3 per cent of national income for the period. Gerhard Weinberg wrote that reparations were paid, towns were rebuilt, orchards replanted, mines reopened and pensions paid but the burden of repairs was shifted from the German economy to the damaged economies of the victors. Effects on German political opinion and revisionism Domestic German opposition to Article 231 has been held to have created a psychological and political burden on the post-war Weimar Republic. German politicians seeking international sympathy would use the article for its propaganda value, convincing many who had not read the treaties that the article implied full war guilt. German revisionist historians who subsequently attempted to ignore the validity of the clause found a ready audience among 'revisionist' writers in France, Britain, and the United States. The objective of both the politicians and historians was to prove that Germany was not solely guilty for causing the war; if that guilt