2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 173exposition. Interviewed by journalists following his arrival in the city, he
declared that the stories in French newspapers stating that his mission
in Paris extended to seeking a loan on behalf of Germany were wrong:
his mission was purely one of ‘friendship.’^299 The Germany economy, he
stated, although experiencing difficulties in common with other coun-
tries, was ‘a long way from being threatened with disaster’ despite what
was said in the newspapers.^300 This was a rather more sanguine view of
the German economic situation than the one he expressed in his Foreign
Affairs article some months earlier. However, it should be noted that
Schacht, along with the other organisers of the German pavilion, saw
the exposition as an opportunity to persuade other countries to renew
or increase trade with Germany and to this end it was important to por-
tray ‘the Third Reich as a reliable and economically stable, commercial
partner’.^301 Thus, in a speech he gave when inaugurating the German
pavilion, Schacht emphasised Germany’s commitment to rebuilding the
world economy and to peace among nations:
World exhibitions where nations display their achievements in the domain
of economics as in other fields are always a means of peaceful advance of
the nations towards each other [...] The world exhibition in Paris is an
appeal to the nations to build bridges from country to country: bridges of
flourishing trade, for tourism, but also bridges for a more intimate contact
in civilization, and thus bridges for a solid political understanding to the
benefit of all participants. Germany’s exhibition at Paris wishes to contrib-
ute its share in attaining this end.^302Schacht’s concern in relation to the promotion of trade with Germany
lay with the shortages of foodstuffs that had resulted in part from
Germany’s rearmament programme and the shortages of raw materi-
als and foreign currency that this same programme had caused. Shelley
Baranowski writes that food shortages and a shortage of raw materials
(^299) ‘Dr. Schacht in Paris: Money Problems of Germany, “Long Way from Disaster”,’
Straits Times (Singapore), June 19, 1937.
(^300) Ibid.
(^301) Karen A. Fiss, ‘In Hitler’s Salon: The German Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition
International,’ in Richard A. Etlin, ed., Art, Culture, and Media Under the Third Reich
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 318.
(^302) Hjalmar Schacht, 1937, quoted in Andreas Flickers, ‘Presenting the “Window on the
World” To the World,’ 293.