They wanted the colonists to stay under their rule. When they went off to form a new nation, this was scary for them because now they had an opposing threat.
<span>When armed conflict between bands of American colonists and British soldiers began in April 1775, the Americans were ostensibly fighting only for their rights as subjects of the British crown. By the following summer, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, the movement for independence from Britain had grown, and delegates of the Continental Congress were faced with a vote on the issue. In mid-June 1776, a five-man committee including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin was tasked with drafting a formal statement of the colonies’ intentions. The Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence–written largely by Jefferson–in Philadelphia on July 4, a date now celebrated as the birth of American independence.</span>
The Versailles Treaty (signed in 1919) and the London Plan of Payments of 1921 required Germany to pay 132 billion gold marks (33 billion US dollars [all amounts are present, unless stated]) for restitution to cover civil damage suffered during the war.
