Published in Koloniale Rundschau, Heft 9/10, pp. 385–395, Thurnwald’s article presents colonial development as a foundation of German postwar economic security. Its argument proceeds from anticipated commercial hostility and continued state regulation to raw-material requirements, colonial production, transport, and labor. The central distinction separates indispensable supplies requiring political protection from international commerce whose interruption would not threaten national survival.
Thurnwald anticipates that wartime antagonisms will outlast peace. He attributes Germany’s prospective commercial isolation partly to British propaganda:
Die Engländer rühmen sich, daß die Deutschen mindestens ein Menschenalter brauchen werden, um den Haß auszutilgen, den Groß- Britannien gegen die „Barbaren“ und „Hunnen“ ausgesät hat.
English translation: The English boast that the Germans will need at least a generation to eradicate the hatred which Great Britain has sown against the "barbarians" and "Huns."
This polemical premise supports the claim that formal peace would not restore displaced German enterprises or severed trading connections. Wartime alliances have become economic associations, encouraging states to secure supplies within politically aligned territories. A return to prewar economic openness therefore appears an unsafe basis for planning.
Die Staatskontrolle in allen Zweigen des Wirtschaftslebens wird noch geraume Zeit nach Beendigung des Krieges andauern.
English translation: State control in all branches of economic life will continue for a considerable time after the end of the war.
Continued intervention follows, in his account, from war debts, pension obligations, shortages, and constrained means of payment. Regulation would govern imports and exports, while public participation in enterprise would help meet fiscal demands. He expects comparable tendencies among allied and enemy states. The Central Powers’ geography offers a basis for an integrated economic area with complementary production and consumption.
Continental integration nevertheless cannot furnish all the fibers, rubber, oils, and other warm-climate products required by German industry and households. Thurnwald links these imports to agriculture: residues from processed oilseeds support livestock and thus milk and meat supplies. Ottoman territories might provide some crops, but tropical production remains essential. Economic security consequently requires productive territories beyond central Europe.
His critique of world trade rests on the possibility that a British-led imperial grouping could restrict Germany’s access to raw materials and markets. Although the opposing alliance might dissolve, policy should not depend on that favorable outcome:
Bei jedem Unternehmen soll man aber die schlimmsten Möglichkeiten in Betracht ziehen, und darauf das Kalkül aufbauen.
English translation: In every undertaking, however, one ought to take the worst possibilities into account and build one's calculation upon them.
The program does not reject exchange altogether. It seeks to make essential consumption independent of potentially hostile suppliers, leaving less consequential trade open to international connections. Where foreign purchases remain necessary, Thurnwald proposes guarantees of reciprocal purchases of German manufactures. World commerce becomes acceptable insofar as its interruption would be manageable.
Colonies provide the territorial answer to this vulnerability. Thurnwald distinguishes productive colonies from settlement colonies and concentrates on Germany’s prewar possessions, while also considering Portuguese territories and the Congo. Their modest previous contribution to German imports becomes an argument for fuller development rather than evidence against their usefulness. He attributes that limited contribution to established foreign trading connections and the comparatively recent development of German colonial production.
The project also requires secure transport. An eastern route through a strengthened Ottoman Empire toward East Africa would reduce exposure to vulnerable western approaches. Ottoman agriculture and tropical colonial production would complement one another. This proposed self-sufficiency is transcontinental: it depends on alliances, communications, and control of distant resources, not simply domestic production.
The labor discussion exposes the coercive and racial assumptions sustaining the economic program. Thurnwald envisages European recruitment among veterans and Germans displaced from livelihoods abroad. For indigenous labor, he considers plantations, smaller enterprises, and cultivation mediated by white traders, acknowledging variation according to crops and local conditions. Yet plantation expansion also leads him to advocate compulsory service. Proposals to import Asian and other tropical populations as supervisors and intermediaries, and to encourage population mixture according to a supposed racial hierarchy, make labor subordination integral to the scheme.
The five concluding recommendations consolidate reduced dependence on world commerce, reciprocal purchasing arrangements, and coordinated colonial development. The article connects wartime economic management to imperial expansion: metropolitan security rests on protected supply chains, while the burdens of producing that security fall substantially on subordinated colonial populations.
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