German colonies before the war (1938)

Milhaud 2025-08-26
German colonies before the war (1938)

This map was drawn by Richard Quincy Yardley and his wife Peggy in 1938 and published that same year in the American magazine Ken.

The map, which is propagandistic in nature, refers to Adolf Hitler's statements about recovering the African colonies that Germany lost after the First World War. Hitler is depicted as a sun in the upper left corner, with rays pointing to all the former German colonies:

  • German East Africa, which included present-day Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanganyika, the mainland part of Tanzania.
  • Cameroon, which included, in addition to much of Cameroon, parts of present-day Nigeria, Chad, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic.
  • Togoland, which included present-day Togo and part of Ghana.
  • German South West Africa, which corresponded to present-day Namibia.

In the top right-hand corner, there is also a reference to the League of Nations, which is blamed for being too weak to do anything about Germany's expansionism.

Sources

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