154 J.-A. PEMBERTON
In June of that year, Alfred Hugenberg, the former leader of the German
National People’s Party and now the Reich minister of economics, stated
in a report to the 1933 World Monetary and Economic Conference that
Germany would be in a better position to pay its debts if the Germans, a
‘people without space,’ were granted domains in Africa where this ‘ener-
getic race could settle colonies and carry out great works of peace.’^231
This statement caused an outcry in Britain where the general mood
following the National Socialist triumph was even more anti-conces-
sionary, although later on, in the face of the looming threat of war, this
mood would shift somewhat.^232 Hugenberg’s statement was immediately
repudiated by the other members of the German delegation to the World
Monetary and Economic Conference and he was compelled to return to
Germany where he resigned his ministry on June 29. It was subsequently
a matter of debate as to whether Hugenberg was simply expressing a per-
sonal opinion, whether his intervention on the subject of colonies had
been orchestrated in order to supply a pretext for pushing him from his
post, or whether it was an officially sanctioned ballon d’essai, the last two
possibilities not being mutually exclusive.^233
Despite the disavowal of Hugenberg’s memorandum, the colonial
issue did not remain dormant. In. particular, it was pursued by members
of that milieux which before the advent of the new regime, belonged
to political groups supportive of Germany’s earlier colonial policy. For
example, in September 1933, Franz von Papen, then seemingly in ‘good
standing,’ announced that ‘the great majority of 65,000 Germans refuse
to regard the former colonies as lost possessions,’ adding that ‘world sta-
bility cannot be established until Germany regains her place in the tropi-
cal sun.’^234
(^231) Chalmers Wright, Population and Peace, 130–31; and Wood, Peaceful Change and the
Colonial Problem, 83.
(^232) Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 85–6.
(^233) Ibid., 83. Maroger noted that ‘the emotion raised’ by the memorandum Hugenberg
submitted to the economic conference ‘was considerable: people in Germany judged it
preferable to disavow the author.’ Maroger, La question des matières premières et les revendi-
cations coloniales, 17.
(^234) ‘Germany’s Place in the Tropical Sun,’ Saturday Evening Post, September 30, 1933,
quoted in Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 84. See also Maroger, La ques-
tion des matières premières et les revendications coloniales, 25.