Germany’s Lost Colonies

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 300, 15 September 1936, Page 13

Germany’s Lost Colonies

The recovery of Germany’s lost colonies is an essential part of the Nazi programme, according to a booklet published in Berlin with official approval. It is entitled “Colonies or Not?” The attitude of the party and the State towards the colonial question,” and is by Dr. H. W. Bauer v Dr. Schacht, president of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics, writes a foreword. “In her old colonies,” he states, “Germany found a valuable expansion of her raw material resources, her trade and her space for settlement. “As recent developments have shown, these are an absolute necessity for an over-populated industrial country. It is therefore economically an? politically impossible to withhold from Germany the administration of her colonial possessions.” Dr. Bauer declares the possession of colonies to be a requisite part of the “equality of rights” at which Germany aims. He writes: ,

“Germany will not have equal rights and equal means among the nations until opportunity has been offered us as an advanced civilised country to take an active part in the opening up of the still undeveloped territories in spacious Africa. “The fact that Germany is no longer a member of the League certainly does not mean that we have given up one jot of our colonial claims. These demands are an integral part of our great efforts to obtain equality of rights. “It was owing to the refusal of this equality that we left Geneva, and we shall never return without its frank recognition. We have to oppose the desire of the others to annex the territories held under Mandate with the German determination to regain our colonies. Hitler’s Own View.

“A certain phrase in the Fuehrer’s book, ‘My Struggle,’ in which he criticises the foreign and colonial policy of the Kaiser Wilhelm era has been separated from the context and used to show that national socialism is not interested in colonies.

“Although the Fuehrer rightly censures the half-heartedness of the former German colonial policy because it neither strengthened the Reich nor provided the opportunity for settlement, that does not mean that he thereby renounces all colonial activity for our people. “That can only be maintained by malicious opponents. The Fuehrer gives his fundamental assent to the colonial ideal and Germany’s colonial necessities.”

The encouragement of a colonial policy, the writer adds, does not mean that opportunities should be neglected for “colonisation at home and in the East.” No explanation is given of this phrase, but it appears to refer to Eastern Europe. As part of the propaganda campaign for the return of Germany’s former colonies, an expansive colonial literature is now growing up dealing with life and conditions in German East and West Africa and with the struggle waged by the German forces in Africa during the war. One of the inost remarkable of these ■books is, “When Will the Germans at Last Come Back Again?” by Fraulein Senta Dlngelrelter. This question, according to the authoress, was asked her on every side by the natives and the German settlers in the African territories now administered by Britain and France.