Not available to order
Publication date:
10 March 2016Length of book:
292 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442261143
Karl Haushofer, a Bavarian general and professor, is widely recognized as the “father of geopolitics.” In 1945 the United States sought to put him on trial at Nuremberg as a major war criminal for being “Hitler’s intellectual godfather” and the true author of Mein Kampf. In this definitive biography, noted historian Holger H. Herwig assesses the fiction and reality behind these claims. Making comprehensive use of Haushofer’s previously unavailable private papers, Herwig analyzes Haushofer’s geopolitical concepts, his relations with his student Rudolf Hess, and his mentorship of Hitler and Hess at Landsberg Prison in 1924. Herwig offers unique insights into Haushofer’s crucial behind-the-scenes influence in providing the Nazis with his theories of Autarky and Lebensraum, the rationale for Germany’s control of Europe and the world. This riveting book ends with Haushofer’s final verdict on himself: “I want to be forgotten and forgotten.” But the author concludes with the admonition that the “demon” of Geopolitik demands much closer scrutiny in this new age of geopolitics.
Herwig's objective is to give an accurate picture of Haushofer and his brand of geopolitics. Herwig notes that Haushofer's geopolitical mentors included Ratzel; Mahan; Kjellen, who coined the term geopolitics in 1917; and Mackinder, who viewed geography merely as an aid to statecraft. Herwig covers Haushofer's role in ‘educating’ Hitler while he was confined in Landsberg Prison. Hitler's reading included historians Ranke and Treitschke, Marx and Nietzsche, military theorist Clausewitz, Bismarck, and social Darwinist Chamberlain. Questions considered are whether Haushofer was a National Socialist in spirit and how Hitler's race version of geopolitics differed from Haushofer's traditional imperialist power politics version. Haushofer's assessment of his life's work is also related to why he was not tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg, though the newspaper propagandist of National Socialism, anti-Semite Julius Streicher, was. Finally, the significance of the term demon in the title, taken from a poem by Haushofer's son, is explained: the social Darwinism of Haushofer's brand of geopolitics, not part of contemporary writings, provided a vocabulary for Hitler's planned aggression. Geopolitical concepts, seeded at Landsberg, grew into a twisted policy application of Haushofer's Geopolitik.