Karl Haushofer

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Karl Haushofer
Free State of Bavaria, Allied-occupied Germany
Allegiance German Empire
Branch Imperial German Army
Years of service1887–1919
RankMajor general
Spouse(s)
Martha Mayer-Doss
(m. 1896; died 1946)
Children
University of Munich

Karl Ernst Haushofer (27 August 1869 – 10 March 1946) was a German general, professor, geographer, and

crimes against peace and genocide.[1] At the same time, however, Gen. Haushofer's half-Jewish wife and their children were categorized as Mischlinge under the Nuremberg Laws. Their son, Albrecht Haushofer, was issued a German Blood Certificate through the influence of Rudolf Hess, but was arrested in 1944 over his involvement with the July 20th plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi Party. During the last days of the war, Albrecht Haushofer was summarily executed by the SS for his role in the German Resistance
.

After being interrogated by Fr.

Occupied Germany
.

Life and early career

Haushofer belonged to a family of artists and scholars. He was born in

Kriegsschule, Artillerieschule and War Academy (Kingdom of Bavaria). In 1896, he married Martha Mayer-Doss (1877–1946) whose father was Jewish. They had two sons, Albrecht Haushofer and Heinz Haushofer (1906–1988). In 1903, he accepted a teaching position at the Bavarian War Academy.[2]

In November 1908, Haushofer was ordered to Tokyo as a military attaché to study the Imperial Japanese Army and as a military advisor in artillery instruction. He travelled with his wife via India and South East Asia and arrived in February 1909. He was received by Emperor Meiji and became acquainted with many important people in politics and the armed forces. In autumn 1909, he travelled with his wife for a month to Korea and Manchuria on the occasion of a railway construction. In June 1910, they returned to Germany via Russia and arrived one month later. However, shortly after returning to Bavaria, he began to suffer from a severe lung disease and was given a leave from the army for three years.[2]

During his convalescence, from 1911 to 1913, Haushofer would work on his

Munich University for a thesis on Japan titled Dai Nihon, Betrachtungen über Groß-Japans Wehrkraft, Weltstellung und Zukunft ("Reflections on Greater Japan's Military Strength, World Position, and Future"). He established himself as one of Germany’s foremost experts regarding the Far East, and co-founded the geopolitical monthly Zeitschrift für Geopolitik (ZfG), which he would co-edit until it was suspended towards the end of World War II.[2]

Haushofer continued his career as a professional soldier after the annexation of Bavaria by Germany, serving in the army of

Imperial Germany
and returning to teach War History at the Military Academy in Munich.

During World War I, he commanded a brigade on the Western Front. But he was disillusioned with Germany's readiness for the tests of warfare.

When the United States entered the war, it cemented two especially bitter hatreds for Haushofer. The first was for the U.S. America was a "deceitful, ravenous, hypocritical, shameless beast of prey," he wrote. "Americans are truly the only people on this world that I regard with a deep, instinctive hatred."

At the same time, Haushofer developed an especially virulent strain of anti-semitic feeling. In letters to his wife Martha, whose own father was Jewish, Haushofer wrote of Jewish "treason against Volk, race and country." He repeated false but common slanders alleging that Jews declined to fight for their country of citizenship, and were guilty of war profiteering.

The solution to these ills besetting Germany, he declared, would be a powerful and charismatic leader. "A man! A kingdom, an imperial crown for a man worthy of the name!" "You see how ready for a Caesar I am," he wrote in another letter to Martha, "and what kind of a good instrument I would be for a Caesar, if we had one and if he knew how to make use of me."[3]

Haushofer would both find and influence Germany's next Caesar. After retiring from the army with the rank of generalmajor (major general) in 1919, he forged a friendship with the young Rudolf Hess, who became his scientific assistant and later rose to be the deputy leader of the Nazi Party, second in authority only to Hitler.

In 1919, Haushofer successfully defended his second dissertation, and became Privatdozent for political geography at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and was made a professor in 1933, although he declined a formal position and salary, because that would have affected his military pension.[2]

Geopolitik and relationship with Hitler

Haushofer entered academia with the aim of restoring and regenerating Germany. He believed the Germans' lack of geographical knowledge and geopolitical awareness to be a major cause of Germany’s defeat in World War I, because Germany had found itself with a disadvantageous alignment of allies and enemies. His specialty was to combine the fields of geography, history, economics, demography, political science, and anthropology into a new discipline that came to be called Geopolitik. Haushofer himself could not plainly describe this "new science," but its principal thrust was the view the state as a person or organism, shaped over time by its unique geography and history into a specific national character. In this context he coined the term Lebensraum - "room to live" - to describe the territory that a healthy and expanding state needed to sustain its population. This notion would be adopted by Hitler and the Nazi party in its most aggressive and militaristic interpretation.[4]

In 1923, Hilter was jailed following his failed "Beer Hall Putsch," and Rudolf Hess surrendered to be imprisoned alongside his leader in Landsberg Prison.

Haushofer became a teacher of politics and philosophy to both Hess and Hitler. According to scholar Holger Herwig, "Like a dry sponge, Hitler soaked up what Haushofer offered."

Every Wednesday between 24 June and 12 December 1924, Prof. Dr. Haushofer made the 100-kilometer-long round trip from Munich to Landsberg. Once each morning and once each afternoon he offered what he called the "young eagles," Hess and Hitler, hours of intense personal mentoring....
"Bringing Haushofer and Hitler together," Joachim Fest, Hitler’s most prolific biographer, observed, "is the most important . . . personal contribution that Rudolf Hess made to the creation and the face of National Socialism."[5]

Haushofer's son Albrecht considered that his father's most powerful contribution to Hess and Hitler was his own substantial credibility as a soldier and scholar: "One has to imagine what it meant in the Bavaria of that time," he wrote, "when a man of my father’s stature [general and professor] and popularity constantly traveled out to Landsberg."[5]

From 1925 to 1931 and from 1933 to 1939, Haushofer broadcast monthly radio lectures on the international political situation. That Weltpolitischer Monatsbericht made him a household name in contemporary Germany, and he came to be known in circles far removed from academia. He was a founding member of the Deutsche Akademie, of which he served as president from 1934 to 1937. He was a prolific writer, publishing hundreds of articles, reviews, commentaries, obituaries and books, many of which were on Asian topics, and he arranged for many leaders in the Nazi party and in the German military to receive copies of his works.[2]

After the establishment of the

Axis powers
, acting in accordance with the theories in his book Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean.

Under Hitler's regime, Haushofer became both rich and immensely influential. But his influence and his public profile shrank abruptly after his patron, Rudolf Hess, flew to Scotland in May 1941 in a doomed effort to make peace with the United Kingdom. Hess was purged from the Nazi Party, and the Haushofer family, with its close relationship with Hess and its Jewish background, once again came under suspicion.

In 1944 Haushofer's son

Dachau before he was released.[6]

Albrecht went into hiding but was arrested on 7 December 1944 and put into the

Josef Goebbels. When his brother Heinz found his body, Albrecht was still clutching a sheaf of papers on which he had written dozens of poems in his last days trying to make sense of his life, his father's work, and the war.[7]
Those eighty poems were eventually published as The Moabit Sonnets. In the thirty-eighth sonnet, titled "The Father," Albrecht indicts his father for helping to unleash the horrors of Nazi brutality:

Karl Haushofer was devastated by Albrecht's death. And yet - even though the Nazis had murdered his beloved son, and their war had left Germany in ruins around him, Haushofer continued to blame "New York's finance Jews" for the destruction of his beloved Munich.[9]

He was repeatedly arrested by the American forces he so detested. Beginning on 24 September 1945, Karl Haushofer was informally interrogated by Fr.

Nazi war crimes. Citing, "the role of geopolitics in corrupting education into a preparation for war", Walsh accused Haushofer and his associates of being, "basically as guilty as the better-known war criminals."[10] In his later memoir of the Nuremberg Trials, Walsh further alleged that, "The tragedy of Karl Haushofer", was his participation in the, "nationalizing", of academic scholarship and of turning Geopolitik into a weapon supplying, "an allegedly scientific basis and justification for international brigandage."[11]

Death

On the night of 10–11 March 1946, Karl Haushofer and his wife committed suicide in a secluded hollow on their Hartschimmelhof estate at Pähl/Ammersee. Both drank arsenic and his wife then hanged herself from a tree branch.[12][13]

Haushofer left a detailed map to help his son, Heinz, find the bodies. In a suicide note, he declared that he wanted "no form of state or church funeral, no obituary, epitaph, or identification of my grave... I want to be forgotten and forgotten."[14]

Fr. Walsh visited their graves and wrote in his diary, "I could not help but think of the deep tragedy of this death by night, alone, in a lonely gulley, of the last of the geopoliticians! What an inscrutable destiny, that after 19 [years of] teaching and warning [the] U.S.A. about the teachings of Haushofer, I should today be kneeling over his suicide's body in one of the loneliest spots in Bavaria!"[15]

Geopolitics

Haushofer developed Geopolitik from widely varied sources, including the writings of

Halford J. Mackinder.[16]

Geopolitik contributed to Nazi foreign policy chiefly in the strategy and justifications for lebensraum. The theories contributed five ideas to German foreign policy in the interwar period:

Geostrategy as a

normative element in its strategic prescriptions for national policy.[17] While some of Haushofer's ideas stem from earlier American and British geostrategy, German geopolitik adopted an essentialist outlook toward the national interest, oversimplifying issues and representing itself as a panacea.[18] As a new and essentialist ideology, geopolitik resonated with the post-World War I insecurity of the populace.[19]

Haushofer's position in the

international politics, and through his political activities.[21] While Hitler's speeches would attract the masses, Haushofer's works served to bring the remaining intellectuals into the fold.[22]

Geopolitik was essentially a consolidation and codification of older ideas, given a scientific gloss:

The key reorientation in each dyad is that the focus is on land-based empire rather than naval imperialism.

Ostensibly based upon the geopolitical theory of

organic conception of the state that would later be elaborated upon by Ratzel and accepted by Hausfhofer. He justified lebensraum, even at the cost of other nations' existence because conquest was a biological necessity for a state's growth.[24]

Ratzel's writings coincided with the

merchant marine, unlike land power.[26] Haushofer was exposed to Ratzel, who was friends with Haushofer's father, a teacher of economic geography,[27] and would integrate Ratzel's ideas on the division between sea and land powers into his theories, saying that only a country with both could overcome this conflict.[28]

Haushofer's geopolitik expands upon that of Ratzel and Kjellén. While the latter two conceive of geopolitik as the state as an organism in space put to the service of a leader, Haushofer's Munich school specifically studies geography as it relates to war and designs for empire.[29] The behavioral rules of previous geopoliticians were thus turned into dynamic normative doctrines for action on lebensraum and world power.[30]

Haushofer defined geopolitik in 1935 as "the duty to safeguard the right to the soil, to the land in the widest sense, not only the land within the frontiers of the

birthrate and effectiveness of centralized rule.[33]

To Haushofer, the existence of a state depended on living space, the pursuit of which must serve as the basis for all policies. Germany had a high

Austro-Hungary as supporting his assertion.[37]

Haushofer's version of autarky was based on the quasi-

Haushofer and the Munich school of geopolitik would eventually expand their conception of lebensraum and autarky well past the borders of 1914 and "a place in the sun" to a New European Order, then to a New Afro-European Order, and eventually to a Eurasian Order.[39] That concept became known as a pan-region, taken from the American Monroe Doctrine, and the idea of national and continental self-sufficiency.[40] That was a forward-looking refashioning of the drive for colonies, something that geopoliticians did not see as an economic necessity but more as a matter of prestige, putting pressure on older colonial powers. The fundamental motivating force would be not economic but cultural and spiritual.[41] Haushofer was, what is called today, a proponent of "Eurasianism", advocating a policy of German–Russian hegemony and alliance to offset an Anglo-American power structure's potentially dominating influence in Europe.

Beyond being an economic concept, pan-regions were a strategic concept as well. Haushofer acknowledges the strategic concept of the

Heartland Theory put forward by the British geopolitician Halford Mackinder.[42] If Germany could control Eastern Europe and subsequently Russian territory, it could control a strategic area to which hostile seapower could be denied.[43] Allying with Italy and Japan would further augment German strategic control of Eurasia, with those states becoming the naval arms protecting Germany's insular position.[44]

Relationship with Nazi leaders

Biographers of both Haushofer and of Hitler disagree somewhat on the extent of Haushofer's influence on Hitler:

Joachim C. Fest says that Haushofer's contributions to Hitler's ideation were important, but that "Hitler's version of [Haushofer's] ideas was distinctly his own."[46] Haushofer told Walsh that he viewed Hitler as a half-educated man who never correctly understood the Geopolitik principles explained by Hess, and saw Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (in office: 1938-1945) as the principal distorter of geopolitik in Hitler's mind.[47]

Most writers on Haushofer agree that at the very least, through his teaching and his writing, he gave to Hitler and the Nazis intellectual legitimacy - providing Hitler and his cronies with a political and philosophical vocabulary that they would use to justify the goals that they pursued with war and terror. After

National Socialist Party
perverted Hess's study of geopolitik.

Although Haushofer accompanied Hess on numerous propaganda missions and participated in consultations between Nazis and Japanese leaders, he claimed that Hitler and the Nazis only seized upon half-developed ideas and catchwords.[48] Furthermore, the Nazi party and government lacked any official organ that was receptive to geopolitik, leading to selective adoption and poor interpretation of Haushofer's theories. Ultimately, Hess and Konstantin von Neurath, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs (in office: 1932-1938), were the only officials Haushofer would admit had a proper understanding of geopolitik.[49]

Father

Allied victory in preparation for the Nuremberg trials, disagreed with Haushofer's assessment that Hitler and the Nazis terribly distorted geopolitik.[18] He cites Hitler's speeches declaring that small states have no right to exist, and the Nazi use of Haushofer's maps, language and arguments. Even if distorted somewhat, Walsh felt that was enough to implicate Haushofer's geopolitik.[50]

Various more damning allegations about Haushofer's involvement with political extremism have been presented over the years. Louis Pauwels, in his book Monsieur Gurdjieff, describes Haushofer as a former student of the Greek-Russian mystic George Gurdjieff. Others, including Pauwels, claimed that Haushofer created a Vril society and that he was a secret member of the Thule Society.[51] It was theorized that Haushofer had co-written, or helped to write, Mein Kampf. Rumors floated that Haushofer was Hess's father, or, conversely, that the two men were lovers. Holger dismisses these unproven allegations as "mythmaking" and "rumors."[52]

Aware of some of these accusations, after the war Haushofer denied assisting Hitler in writing Mein Kampf, saying that he only knew of it once it was in print, and that he never read it.

natural frontiers, balancing land and seapower, and geographic analysis of military strategy entered Hitler's thought between his imprisonment and the publishing of Mein Kampf.[18] Chapter XIV, on German policy in Eastern Europe, in particular displays the influence of the materials Haushofer brought Hitler and Hess while they were imprisoned.[54] Hans Frank, the governor general of wartime Poland, quoted Hitler as telling him, "Landsberg was my university education at state expense."[55]

Haushofer was never a member of the Nazi Party, and did voice disagreements with the party. Haushofer came under suspicion because of his contacts with left-wing socialist figures within the Nazi movement (led by

race; he believed in environmental rather than racial determinism.[56] In contrast to his personal hostility towards Jews, he declined to associate himself with anti-Semitism as a state policy, especially because his wife was half-Jewish.[57] Haushofer claimed that after 1933 much of what he wrote was distorted under duress: his wife had to be protected by Hess's influence (who managed to have her awarded "honorary German" status).[58]
), and his son and grandson were imprisoned for two and a half months.[59]

Several authors have explored more obscure angles on the contact between Haushofer and the Nazi establishment.

Zen Buddhism, or had been initiated at the hands of Tibetan lamas
– are subject of debate.

The influence of Haushofer on Nazi ideology is dramatized in the 1943 short documentary propaganda film, Plan for Destruction, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

Works

  • Das Japanische Reich in seiner geographischen Entwicklung. Wien: L. W. Seidel & Sohn, 1921.
  • Geopolitik des Pazifischen Ozeans: Studien über die Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Geographie und Geschichte. Heidelberg: Kurt Vowinckel Verlag, 1925; Bremen: Dogma, 2013.
  • Bausteine zur Geopolitik. Heidelberg: Kurt Vowinckel Verlag, 1928.
  • Weltpolitik von heute. Berlin: Zeitgeschichte-Verlag Wilhelm Undermann, 1934 (online).
  • Napoleon I. Lübeck: Coleman, 1935.
  • Kitchener. Lübeck: Coleman, 1935.
  • Foch. Lübeck: Coleman, 1935
  • Weltmeere und Weltmächte. Berlin: Zeitgeschichte-Verlag, 1937.
  • Deutsche Kulturpolitik im indopazifischen Raum. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1939.
  • Geopolitische Grundlagen. Berlin and Wien: Industrieverlag Spaeth & Linde, 1939.
  • Grenzen in ihrer geographischen und politischen Bedeutung. Heidelberg, Berlin and Magdeburg: Vowinckel, 1939.
  • Wehr-Geopolitik: Geographische Grundlagen einer Wehrkunde. Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1941.
  • Japan baut sein Reich. Berlin: Zeitgeschichte-Verlag Wilhelm Undermann, 1941.
  • Das Werden des deutschen Volkes: Von der Vielfalt der Stämme zur Einheit der Nation. Berlin: Propyläen-Verlag, 1941.
  • Der Kontinentalblock : Mitteleuropa, Eurasien, Japan. Berlin: Eher, 1941.
  • Das Reich: Großdeutsches Werden im Abendland. Berlin: Habel, 1943.
  • De la géopolitique. Paris: Fayard, 1986.
  • English Translation and Analysis of Major General Karl Ernst Haushofer's Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean: Studies on the Relationship between Geography and History. Lewiston, New York and Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002. .

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ Epstein, Catherine (6 September 2017). "Review of The Demon of Geopolitics: How Karl Haushofer "Educated" Hitler and Hess by Holger H. Herwig". www.europenowjournal.org. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  2. ^ .
  3. ^ Holger Herwig, "THE DAEMON OF GEOPOLITICS: KARL HAUSHOFER, RUDOLF HESS AND ADOLF HITLER," lecture at the United States Air Force academy, 2016, pp. 5-6.
  4. ^ Holger Herwig, "THE DAEMON OF GEOPOLITICS: KARL HAUSHOFER, RUDOLF HESS AND ADOLF HITLER," lecture at the United States Air Force academy, 2016, pp. 8-9.
  5. ^ a b Holger Herwig, "THE DAEMON OF GEOPOLITICS: KARL HAUSHOFER, RUDOLF HESS AND ADOLF HITLER," lecture at the United States Air Force academy, 2016, pp. 9-10.
  6. ^ Herwig, Holger The Demon of Geopolitics: How Karl Haushofer "Educated" Hitler and Hess, Rowman and Littlefield, London, 2016, p. 193
  7. ^ Herwig, p. 193
  8. ^ Herwig, The Demon of Geopolitics, p. 217
  9. ^ Herwig, The Demon of Geopolitics, p. 194
  10. ^ Patrick McNamara (2005), A Catholic Cold War: Edmund A. Walsh and the Politics of American Anti-Communism, Fordham University Press. Pages 125-126.
  11. ^ Patrick McNamara (2005), A Catholic Cold War: Edmund A. Walsh and the Politics of American Anti-Communism, Fordham University Press. Pages 128.
  12. ^ "Germany: Haushofer's Heritage". Time. 25 March 1946. Archived from the original on 29 November 2010. Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  13. ^ Walsh, Edmund A. "The Mystery of Haushofer" Life (16 September 1946) pp. 107–120
  14. ^ Holger Herwig, "THE DAEMON OF GEOPOLITICS: KARL HAUSHOFER, RUDOLF HESS AND ADOLF HITLER," lecture at the United States Air Force academy, 2016, Page 1.
  15. ^ Patrick McNamara (2005), A Catholic Cold War: Edmund A. Walsh and the Politics of American Anti-Communism, Fordham University Press. Pages 126.
  16. .
  17. ^ Mattern, pp.40–41
  18. ^ a b c Walsh (1949), p.41
  19. ^ a b Mattern, p.32
  20. ^ Dorpalen, pp.16–17
  21. ^ Walsh (1949), pp.4–5
  22. ^ Beukema, Col. Herman. "Introduction" to Dorpalen, p.xiii
  23. ^ Mattern, p.37
  24. ^ Walsh (1949), p.39
  25. ^ Mattern, p.60
  26. ^ Dorpalen, pp.66–67
  27. ^ Dorpalen, p.52
  28. ^ Dorpalen, pp.68–69
  29. ^ Dorpalen, pp.23–24
  30. ^ Dorpalen, p.54
  31. ^ Walsh (1949), p.48
  32. ^ Dorpalen, p.80
  33. ^ Dorpalen, p.78
  34. ^ Dorpalen, pp.38–39
  35. ^ Dorpalen, pp.94–95
  36. ^ Dorpalen, pp.205–06
  37. ^ Dorpalen, pp.207, 209
  38. ^ Dorpalen, p.231
  39. ^ Mattern, p.17
  40. ^ Mattern, p.39
  41. ^ Dorpalen, pp.235-6
  42. ^ Dorpalen, p.218
  43. ^ Mackinder, p.78
  44. ^ Walsh (1949), p.9
  45. ^ Walsh (1949), p. 15
  46. ^ Walsh (1949), p.8
  47. ^ Walsh (1949), pp.35–36
  48. ^ Walsh (1949), pp.41, 17
  49. ^ Pauwels, Louis and Bergier, Jacques. The Morning of the Magicians. Avon Books, 1973
  50. ^ Holger Herwig, "THE DAEMON OF GEOPOLITICS" (lecture), p. 11
  51. ^ Walsh (1949), p. 36
  52. ^ Walsh (1949), p.42
  53. ^ Holger Herwig, "THE DAEMON OF GEOPOLITICS" (lecture), p. 10
  54. ^ Mattern, p.20.
  55. ^ Walsh (1949), pp.40, 35
  56. ^ Spang, Christian W. (4 April 2013). "Anhänge [Appendices]". Karl Haushofer und Japan: Die Rezeption seiner geopolitischen Theorien in der deutschen und japanischen Politik [Karl Haushofer and Japan: the reception of his geopolitical theories in German and Japanese politics]. Volume 52: Monographien aus dem Deutschen Institut für Japanstudien (in German). Munich: IUDICIUM Verlag. p. 942. . Retrieved 2 October 2022. 1944 [...] 28. Juli – 29. August: „Ehrenhaft" Karl Haushofers in Dachau im Zusammenhang mit dem Attentat auf Hitler (20.7.1944). [1944 ... 28 July to 29 August: 'Honorary' detention of Karl Haushofer in Dachau in connection with the attempted assassination of Hitler (20 July 1944).]
  57. ^ Walsh (1949), p.16
  58. ^ for example:
    • Berzin, Alexander. "The Nazi Connection with Shambhala and Tibet" (May 2003)
    • FitzGerald, Michael. Storm Troopers of Satan (Robert Hale, 1990)
    • FitzGerald, Michael. Adolf Hitler: A Portrait (Spellmount, 2006)
    • Sklar, Dusty. The Nazis and the Occult (Dorset Press, 1977)
    • Webb, James. The Occult Establishment (Richard Drew, 1981)

Bibliography

Further reading

External links