Migration 6

The German Reich must strive to acquire colonies. In the realm itself there is too little space for the large population. It is precisely the somewhat daring, strongly advancing elements that could not be active in the country themselves, but find a field for their activity in the colonies, that are constantly being lost to us. We need more space for our people, and therefore, we must have colonies.

Horst Gründer (1999): „… da und dort ein junges Deutschland gründen“. Rassismus, Kolonien und kolonialer Gedanke vom 16. bis 20. Jahrhundert. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, p. 327.

Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967) was the first Chancellor of the Federal German Republic from 1949-1963.

Konrad Adenauer is known as the first Federal Chancellor of Germany after the Second World War. But he was also deputy president of the German Colonial Society from 1931 to 1932. This statement on the German Empire’s colonial policy was made during his official activity as Mayor of Cologne. The ideology of the "people without space" underlay the pursuit of settler colonisation and emigration after the First World War. Before that, in the immediate aftermath of the war, the victorious powers had taken over German "protected areas" and accused the Germans of both incompetent and particularly violent colonisation practices. The Allies wanted to limit "Wilhelmine imperialism", for which reason they agitated aggressively against the so-called "lie of colonial guilt".

DW (22.09.2021): Namibia: A timeline of Germany's brutal colonial history.

1927