On January 9, 1934, Degussa's managing board reported to its stockholders on the first business year completed under National Socialism. Calling sales “normal” and “fairly satisfactory” in the period from October 1932 through September 1933, since “in the course of the year worsening export difficulties were somewhat offset by a certain improvement in the domestic market mentioned already in the last report,” the directors nevertheless sounded a cautionary note:

Almost four years later, as Ernst Busemann began drafting the final report on the business year 1936/37, the air had long since gone out of “the boycott movement abroad” in reaction to the brutalities that followed the Nazi takeover. Yet, the foreign trade situation remained troubling, and he planned to emphasize once more that “we place the greatest weight on the cultivation of exports (foreign business).”

The similar preoccupation of these comments was – and is – profoundly misleading. To be sure, they reflected a constant concern that went with doing business in a relatively resource-poor country such as Germany.