The famous and inglorious father of German geopolitics, Karl Haushofer, has been a central figure in this new discipline from its formal appearance in 1924 until 1945. His connection with the Hitler regime resulted in one-sided and partially incorrect assessments of his work and the role he played. This situation continued throughout the post-war period. And only in the last decade a number of authors have developed a more balanced perspective, without, however, rehabilitating his or his pseudoscience.
Karl Haushofer (photo presented in the article) was born on August 27, 1869 in Munich in a Bavarian aristocratic family and combined scientific, artistic and creative talents. His grandfather, Max Haushofer (1811–1866), was a landscape professor at the Prague Academy of Arts. His uncle, Karl von Haushofer (1839–1895), in whose honor he was named, was an artist, author of scientific works, professor of mineralogy, and director of the Munich Technical University.
Karl Haushofer: biography
Karl was the only son of Max (1840–1907) and Adelheid (1844–1872) of the Haushofers. His father worked as a professor of political economy at the same university. Such a stimulating environment could not but affect Karl, who had many hobbies.
After graduating from the gymnasium in 1887, he enlisted in the regiment of Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria. Karl became an officer in 1889 and looked at the war as the highest test of the dignity of man and nation.
A huge role was played by his marriage in August 1896 to Martha Mayer-Doss (1877-1946). A highly-educated strong-willed woman had a great influence on her husband's professional and personal life. She encouraged his appeal to an academic career and helped him in his work. The fact that her father was Jewish would create problems for Haushofer during the Nazi rule.
In 1895–1897 Karl taught a series of courses at the Bavarian Military Academy, where in 1894 he began to teach modern military history. However, shortly after the first publication with an analysis of the military maneuver that criticized one of his commanders, in 1907, Haushofer was transferred to the 3rd Division in Landau.
Travels
Karl seized on the first opportunity to escape from there, accepting the offer of the Bavarian Minister of War for a post in Japan. Staying in East Asia became decisive in his career as a geographer and geopolitics. From October 19 to February 18, 1909 he went on a trip with his wife through Ceylon, India and Burma to Japan. Here, Haushofer was seconded to the German Embassy, and then to the 16th Division in Kyoto. He met twice with Emperor Mutsushito, who, like other local aristocrats, made a strong impression on him. From Japan, Haushofer made a three-week trip to Korea and China. In June 1910, he returned to Munich by the Trans-Siberian Railway. This only visit to the Land of the Rising Sun and a meeting with the aristocracy contributed to the formation of his idealized and outdated opinion about Japan.
First book
Seriously ill while traveling, Haushofer did not teach for a long time at the Bavarian Military Academy before taking unpaid leave in 1912-1913. Martha inspired him to create their first book, Dai Nihon. Analysis of the military power of Great Japan in the future ”(1913). In less than 4 months, Martha dictated 400 pages of text. This productive collaboration will only improve in many subsequent publications.
Scientist career
The first concrete step towards Haushofer's academic career was the entry of a 44-year-old major in April 1913 into the University of Munich as a doctoral student under the direction of Professor Erich von Drygalski. After 7 months, he received his doctorate in geography, geology and history, defending a dissertation entitled “German participation in the geographical development of Japan and sub-Japanese space. Its stimulation by the influence of war and military policy ”(1914).
His work was interrupted by service during the First World War, mainly on the Western Front, which he completed with the rank of division commander. Immediately after returning to Munich in December 1918, he began to work under the previous leadership on the dissertation “The main directions of the geographical development of the Japanese Empire” (1919), which he completed in 4 months. In July 1919, the defense was followed by a lecture on Japanese inland seas and a nomination in private docents (after 1921 - honorary title) in geography. In October 1919, Karl Haushofer, at the age of 50, resigned as Major General and began his first course of lectures on the Anthropogeography of East Asia.
Meet Hess
In 1919, Haushofer met Rudolf Hess and Oscar Ritter von Niedermeier. In 1920, Hess became his student and graduate student and joined the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany. Rudolph was imprisoned with Hitler in Landsberg after an unsuccessful attempted coup of 1924. Haushofer visited his student there 8 times and, on occasion, met with the future Fuhrer. After coming to power in 1933, Hess, Hitler's deputy, became the patron of geopolitics, his defender and a link to the Nazi regime.
In 1919, von Niedermeier, a doctoral candidate in Drygansky, a captain of the German army and later a professor of military sciences at the University of Berlin, invited Haushofer to develop German policy towards Japan. In 1921, he persuaded him to prepare secret reports on East Asian affairs for the German Ministry of Defense. This was the reason for Karl's participation in secret tripartite negotiations between Germany, Japan and the USSR in December 1923 and the growing recognition in political circles as the best German expert on Japan.
Karl Haushofer: geopolitics
The beginning of the publication of his concepts was marked by the publication in 1924 of the book “The Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean”. In the same year, the publication of the journal Geopolitics began, the editor of which was Karl Haushofer. The main works of the scientist concerned the role of borders (1927), pan-ideas (1931) and attempts to establish the foundations of defense geopolitics (1932). But the magazine has always remained its main tool.
It was a kind of family business, because two of his gifted blue, Albrecht and Heinz, especially the latter, were active participants in it. Both received a doctorate in 1028, became teachers in 1930, and held high government posts under Hitler: Albrecht in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Heinz in the Ministry of Agriculture.
Until 1931, Karl Haushofer published Geopolitics in collaboration with young geographers Hermann Lautenzach, Otto Maull and Erich Obst. During the heyday of the newspaper in the late 1920s, they published a general introduction to science, "Components of Geopolitics" (1928). In this book, the authors considered geopolitics an applied science related to modern politics, which is engaged in the search for patterns of political processes in relation to the space for making political forecasts. Three years later, however, disagreement over how their “scientific” journal should evaluate contemporary politics led to the departure of the junior editors. Haushofer remained the sole editor from 1932 until the publication ceased in 1944.
Career
After Hitler came to power in January 1933, the career of geopolitics and his role began to grow due to close relations with Rudolf Hess. In a short time, a number of measures were taken to improve his academic status. Initially, his habitation was changed to "Germanism Abroad, Border and Defense Geography." In July 1933, at the request of Hitler’s representative in Bavaria, Franz Javier Ritter von Epp, Haushofer’s school and army friend, he was granted the title and privileges, but not the position and salary of the professor. In parallel, various representatives of the University of Munich and the Ministry of Culture of Bavaria nominated him to the post of university rector - a step taken to use Hitler’s right hand to protect the institution from Nazi manipulation. Karl called on Hess to stop these attempts. On the other hand, Hess advocated the creation of a department of defense geography or geopolitics for Haushofer, but the Minister of Culture of Bavaria refused him this. Haushofer remained a peripheral member of the Munich Geographic Office, although his status has grown significantly in the eyes of the public.
German world
During the reign of the Nazis, he held leadership positions in three organizations that promoted German culture and Germans abroad. He did not join the Nazi party, as he found many practices and programs unacceptable. On the contrary, he tried to play the role of a mediator between party and non-partisan elements, albeit unsuccessfully, due to the growing pressure of Nazisation and confusion of politics and internal struggle that reigned in the party and government in the early years of the Nazi regime.
In 1933, Hess, who was involved in the ethnic affairs of Germany, created the Council of Ethnic Germans, headed by Haushofer. The council was empowered to conduct policies towards ethnic Germans abroad. Haushofer's main task was to maintain contact with Hess and other Nazi organizations. Conflict of interest with party bodies led to the dissolution of the Council in 1936.
Also in 1933, the Academy, fearing Nazification, proposed Haushofer to take a more significant post. A member of the Academy since 1925, he was elected vice president in 1933 and president in 1934. Although Karl resigned due to a conflict with the leadership, he remained a member of the internal council as permanent representative of Hess until 1941.
The third important organization, which for some time was headed by a scientist, was the People's Union for the Germans and German culture abroad. At the initiative of Hess, Haushofer became its chairman in December 1938 and held this position until September 1942, playing the role of a nominal figure, since once an independent union became an instrument for propagating the ideas of the great German Reich.
Ideas and Theories
The Nazis' rise to power left a mark in the writings of the scientist, although more in form than in content. This is especially noticeable in his short monograph, The National Socialist Idea in a Global Perspective (1933), which launched the Academy’s New Reich series. In it, National Socialism was portrayed as a worldwide movement of national renewal, with a special spatial dynamism of poor societies, to which the author ranked Germany, Italy and Japan. In 1934, the widely spread “Modern World Politics” (1934) followed - a popular digest of previously published ideas that supported the principles of Nazi foreign policy, which until 1938 approximately coincided with the aspirations of Haushofer. Among many books on Japan, Central Europe, and international affairs published after 1933, Oceans and World Powers (1937) played a special role. It combined the geopolitical theories of Karl Haushofer, according to which the sea power of the state is of paramount importance.
The rapid loss of influence and growing disappointment in the regime characterize the last years of the life of geopolitics after he left the university. In the same year, he was humiliated and demonstrated his lack of political influence by banning the second edition of The Borders (1927) after a protest from the Italian government regarding his interpretation of the German ethnic issue in South Tyrol. Moreover, after fulfilling the duties of an adviser at the Munich Conference in September 1938, which led to the annexation of the Sudetenland, Karl admitted that his advice to Hitler to refrain from further expansion was ignored in the dictator's desire for a world war.
The theory of the continental bloc of Karl Haushofer has become one of his most important concepts. It was based on a pact between Berlin, Moscow and Tokyo. The project was implemented from August 1939 to December 1940, until it was buried by the war of Germany with the USSR. The theory concerned a future confrontation between maritime and continental superpowers.
Karl Haushofer - the author of the theory of the continental bloc - was critical and very hostile to Poland, which resulted in his ardent support for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which eliminated this country.
