2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 171officials and publicists in regard to the formulation of such arguments
seemed to be ‘accompanied by some reluctance to have...[Germany’s]...
demographic situation examined.’^292 This reluctance had become appar-
ent, he stated, to those charged with preparing the materials for the
peaceful change conference in Paris in 1937. Further to this, he thought
it significant that at that conference an exponent of Germany’s views on
the colonial question not only declined to invoke the population pressure
argument, but declined to invoke the economic case for colonial retro-
cession to Germany. Chalmers Wright suggested that this was somewhat
surprising given that much effort had been channelled in Germany into
elaborating the economic case for colonial revision and that this case
had been restated by Schacht for the benefit of an international audience
only several months earlier. As discussed below, the exponent in ques-
tion stated that Germany wanted its colonies back not because it needed
territories for emigration or raw materials, ‘nor even principally on the
ground of honour, but more as a matter of right and of legal justice.’^293
In relation to this, Chalmers Wright observed that it had become
‘increasingly obvious, not only that the “population pressure” argument
in favour of colonial revision “had been falling somewhat into the back-
ground,” but that all the “scientific” arguments which have been devel-
oped in Germany are put forward or withdrawn in accordance with the
requirements of political expediency.’^294 Given this, it should of no sur-
prise that even though the demographic and economic cases for retro-
cession did indeed fall into the background, references to Germany’s
alleged lack of living space and dire economic problems would still fea-
ture in Germany’s colonial propaganda including the colonial propa-
ganda issuing from Hitler himself.^295
(^292) Chalmers Wright, Population and Peace, 51.
(^293) Ibid., 51.
(^294) Ibid., and T. E. Gregory, ‘The Economic Bases of Revisionism,’ in Manning, ed.,
Peaceful Change, 63.
(^295) Chalmers Wright, Population and Peace, 49, 356. In a speech to the Reichstag in
January 1937, at the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on October 3, 1937 and on November
21 in a speech at Augsburg, Hitler reiterated the point that Germany’s living space was too
small and that the colonies would have to be returned. See also Wood, Peaceful Change
and the Colonial Problem, 133. Wood recorded the following based on a speech that Hitler
delivered before the Reichstag on January 30, 1939: ‘“The German nation must live; that
means export or die,” said the Chancellor. The only alternative to exports is the “extension