The German Foreign Ministry to Various German Diplomatic Missions- to counteract British suggestion on colonies
Source: Documents on German Foreign Policy , series D, vol. I, pp.1065-1067. (Pol. X 1113)
BERLIN, March 31, 1938
In continuation of the instruction of November 11, 1937, Pol. X 4323. I am enclosing a memorandum of an address delivered by Lord Noel Buxton, a member of the British House of Lords, at the invitation of the Auslandsclub in Stuttgart on March 10 - i.e., prior to the Austrian events - on the subject of Germany's colonial claims. These statements are deserving of attention, inasmuch as there are various indications that similar views have been under discussions in British Government circles. To that extent the address by Noel Buxton may be considered a trial balloon designed to bring a British colonial program before the German public. In this program, the principle that the colonial question can be solved only in connection with other current questions is known to us. We may assume that among such questions the British also have in mind subjects in the field of limitation of armaments. More important, however, than these general political intimations are the statements pertaining to the satisfaction of our claim itself. According to these statements, there is no inclination on the part of the British to solve the question in the simplest manner by re-establishing the status quo ante , that is, by returning all our pre-war colonies. In the opinion of Lord Buxton this is particularly true with regard to our possessions in East Africa. To compensate for these possessions, the idea of an exchange of territory in Central Africa is being considered, the extent of which, however, is not given in detail. Even here there is no thought, according to the present statements, of restoring or establishing unlimited German sovereignty in particular Central African territories, but rather of an international regime which is to be based on the fundamental principles of the Congo Acts of 1885 and to extend approximately over the Congo Basin as understood in those Acts. The nations participating in the administration of this territory are to assume obligations in accordance with the idea of trusteeship for the benefit of the natives, an idea, which appears constantly in modern British colonial theory. Questions such as the legal position of the natives, their cultural development, and native industry, among others, are to be subject to an international agreement and to international control; and the principle of free and equal economic opportunity is likewise to be guaranteed in this territory. In case similar ideas are expressed there, I request that you call attention, as described in detail in the above-mentioned instruction, to the fact that we are advancing a legal claim to the return of all our colonies, and that we make no claim whatever to any but our own former colonial territories. Nor could we for the present imagine that countries, which exercise sovereignty over colonial territories in Central Africa, would allow themselves to be persuaded by the British Government to return these territories to an international regime.
Finally, if at the time Noel Buxton delivered his address, the British were influenced in part by the idea of diverting Germany from other problems by the introduction of the colonial question, the answer would be that the solution of the colonial question is not of such pressing importance to us, from the point of view of time, that we would be forced to show interest in a partial or unsatisfactory solution.
