Karl Haushofer
Karl Haushofer | |
---|---|
Free State of Bavaria, Allied-occupied Germany | |
Allegiance | German Empire |
Branch | Imperial German Army |
Years of service | 1887–1919 |
Rank | Major 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
After being interrogated by Fr.
Life and early career
Haushofer belonged to a family of artists and scholars. He was born in
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
Haushofer continued his career as a professional soldier after the annexation of Bavaria by Germany, serving in the army of
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
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
Albrecht went into hiding but was arrested on 7 December 1944 and put into the
My father broke away the seal.
He did not see the rising breath of evil.
He let the demon soar into the world.[8]
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.
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
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:
- organic state
- lebensraum
- autarky
- pan-regions
- land power/sea power dichotomy.
Geostrategy as a
Haushofer's position in the
Geopolitik was essentially a consolidation and codification of older ideas, given a scientific gloss:
- Lebensraum was a revised colonial imperialism;
- Autarky a new expression of tariff protectionism;
- Strategic control of key geographic territories exhibiting the same thought behind earlier designs on the Suez and Panama Canals; a view of controlling the land in the same way as those choke points control the sea
- Pan-regions (Panideen) based upon the Pan-American Union and hemispheric defense,[23]whereby the world is divided into spheres of influence.
- Frontiers – His view of barriers between peoples not being political (borders) or natural placements of races or ethnicities but as being fluid and determined by the will or needs of ethnic/racial groups.
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
Ratzel's writings coincided with the
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
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
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
Relationship with Nazi leaders
Biographers of both Haushofer and of Hitler disagree somewhat on the extent of Haushofer's influence on Hitler:
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
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
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.
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
Several authors have explored more obscure angles on the contact between Haushofer and the Nazi establishment. – 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. ISBN 0-7734-7122-7.
See also
- Geojurisprudence
- Intermediate Region
- Alfred Pringsheim
- Nazi Ideologues, Philosophers, and Sociologists
References
Notes
- ^ 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.
- ^ ISBN 041545705X.
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Herwig, Holger The Demon of Geopolitics: How Karl Haushofer "Educated" Hitler and Hess, Rowman and Littlefield, London, 2016, p. 193
- ^ Herwig, p. 193
- ^ Herwig, The Demon of Geopolitics, p. 217
- ^ Herwig, The Demon of Geopolitics, p. 194
- ^ Patrick McNamara (2005), A Catholic Cold War: Edmund A. Walsh and the Politics of American Anti-Communism, Fordham University Press. Pages 125-126.
- ^ Patrick McNamara (2005), A Catholic Cold War: Edmund A. Walsh and the Politics of American Anti-Communism, Fordham University Press. Pages 128.
- ^ "Germany: Haushofer's Heritage". Time. 25 March 1946. Archived from the original on 29 November 2010. Retrieved 9 September 2012.
- ^ Walsh, Edmund A. "The Mystery of Haushofer" Life (16 September 1946) pp. 107–120
- ^ Holger Herwig, "THE DAEMON OF GEOPOLITICS: KARL HAUSHOFER, RUDOLF HESS AND ADOLF HITLER," lecture at the United States Air Force academy, 2016, Page 1.
- ^ Patrick McNamara (2005), A Catholic Cold War: Edmund A. Walsh and the Politics of American Anti-Communism, Fordham University Press. Pages 126.
- ISBN 0-8476-9907-2.
- ^ Mattern, pp.40–41
- ^ a b c Walsh (1949), p.41
- ^ a b Mattern, p.32
- ^ Dorpalen, pp.16–17
- ^ Walsh (1949), pp.4–5
- ^ Beukema, Col. Herman. "Introduction" to Dorpalen, p.xiii
- ^ Mattern, p.37
- ^ Walsh (1949), p.39
- ^ Mattern, p.60
- ^ Dorpalen, pp.66–67
- ^ Dorpalen, p.52
- ^ Dorpalen, pp.68–69
- ^ Dorpalen, pp.23–24
- ^ Dorpalen, p.54
- ^ Walsh (1949), p.48
- ^ Dorpalen, p.80
- ^ Dorpalen, p.78
- ^ Dorpalen, pp.38–39
- ^ Dorpalen, pp.94–95
- ^ Dorpalen, pp.205–06
- ^ Dorpalen, pp.207, 209
- ^ Dorpalen, p.231
- ^ Mattern, p.17
- ^ Mattern, p.39
- ^ Dorpalen, pp.235-6
- ^ Dorpalen, p.218
- ^ Mackinder, p.78
- ^ Walsh (1949), p.9
- ISBN 0-393-04671-0
- ISBN 0-394-72023-7
- ^ Walsh (1949), p. 15
- ^ Walsh (1949), p.8
- ^ Walsh (1949), pp.35–36
- ^ Walsh (1949), pp.41, 17
- ^ Pauwels, Louis and Bergier, Jacques. The Morning of the Magicians. Avon Books, 1973
- ^ Holger Herwig, "THE DAEMON OF GEOPOLITICS" (lecture), p. 11
- ^ Walsh (1949), p. 36
- ^ Walsh (1949), p.42
- ^ Holger Herwig, "THE DAEMON OF GEOPOLITICS" (lecture), p. 10
- ^ Mattern, p.20.
- ^ Walsh (1949), pp.40, 35
- ^
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. ISBN 9783862050406. 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).]
- ^ Walsh (1949), p.16
- ^ 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
- Dorpalen, Andreas.The World of General Haushofer: Geopolitics in Action (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942). ISBN 0-8046-0112-7
- Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf. Karl Haushofer: Leben und Werk. 2 vols. (= Schriften des Bundesarchivs 24) Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard 1979.
- Halford Mackinder. Democratic Ideals and Reality, Washington, DC: National Defence University Press, 1996.
- Mattern, Johannes. Geopolitik: Doctrine of National Self-Sufficiency and Empire, The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore: 1942.
- Ravenscroft, Trevor. The Spear of Destiny. Weiser Books, London: 1983.
- Walsh, Edmund A. Total Power: A Footnote to History. Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York: 1949.
Further reading
- Bassoni, N. (2019). "Karl Haushofer as a “Pioneer” of National Socialist Cultural Diplomacy in Fascist Italy." Central European History, 52(3), pp. 424–449.
- Coogan, Kevin, Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the postwar fascist international (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1998). ISBN 1-57027-039-2
- Heske, Henning, "Karl Haushofer: his role in German politics and in Nazi politics," Political Geography 6 (1987), pp. 135–144.
- ISBN 978-1-4000-6983-5
- Murphy, David Thomas, The Heroic Earth: Geopolitical Thought in Weimar Germany, 1918–1933 (Kent, Oh.: Kent State University Press, 1997)
- Rees, Philip (ed.), Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890, 1991, ISBN 0-13-089301-3
- Spang, Christian W., "Karl Haushofer Re-examined – Geopolitics as a Factor within Japanese-German Rapprochement in the Inter-War Years?" In C. W. Spang, R.-H. Wippich (eds.), Japanese-German Relations, 1895–1945. War, Diplomacy and Public Opinion. (Routledge, London/New York: 2006) pp. 139–157.
- Spang, Christian W., Karl Haushofer und Japan. Die Rezeption seiner geopolitischen Theorien in der deutschen und japanischen Politik, Munich: Iudicium, 2013. ISBN 978-3-86205-040-6.
- Tuathail, Gearoid; et al. (1998). The Geopolitics Reader. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-16271-8.
External links
- Deutsches Historisches Museum: Biography of Karl Haushofer (German)
- Encyclopædia Britannica entry
- The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition entry on Karl Haushofer
- Who's Who in Nazi Germany, by Wiederfield and Nicolsa, Haushofer entry at the Wayback Machine (archived 12 May 2005)
- Geopolitics, the United States, the Eurasian Continental Bloc, and China by Bertil Haggman
- "The Last Days of World War II – Last Secrets of the Axis" – An online documentary by History Channel about Karl Haushofer and his role on Eurasia alliance
- Japan und die Japaner - eine Landes und Volkskunde (1933) at The Internet Archive
- Newspaper clippings about Karl Haushofer in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW