Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
line itself, while performing an act of individual agency in doing his intellectual part to win
the war.
Major General Professor Doktor Karl Haushofer was born in 1869 in Munich. His grand-
father, uncle, and father all wrote about cartography and travel. Thus was his life marked.
Haushofer joined the Bavarian army and in 1909 was appointed artillery instructor to the
Japanese army. He became infatuated with the military rise of Japan, with which he ad-
vocated a German alliance. Haushofer fought in World War I as a brigade commander,
and had as his aide the Nazi Rudolf Hess, to whom he would later dedicate several topics.
After the war Haushofer was appointed to the chair of geography and military science at
the University of Munich, where Hess followed him as a disciple. It was through Hess that
Haushofer met the “rising agitator” Adolf Hitler, whom Haushofer would visit and provide
academic briefings on geopolitics while Hitler was imprisoned at Landsberg fortress, fol-
lowing the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. Hitler was writing
Mein Kampf
at the
time, and as a partially educated man, he needed, despite his intuition, to know more about
the real world. And here was this university professor who could fill some of the gaps in
his knowledge. Chapter 14 of
Mein Kampf
, which defines Nazi foreign policy and the Nazi
ideal of
Lebensraum
, was possibly influenced by Haushofer, who was in turn influenced
by, among others, Ratzel, Kjellén, and especially Mackinder. For Mackinder had written
that world history has always been made by the great outward thrusts of landlocked peoples
located near Eastern Europe and the Heartland of Eurasia.
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Strausz-Hupé takes us on a journey along the line of thought by which Haushofer came
to be mesmerized by his contemporary Mackinder. Mackinder, though obsessed with land
power, never actually denigrated the importance of sea power. But he was pessimistic about
the ability of British sea power to prevent a raid on the Heartland by German land power.
And once in possession of the Heartland, Germany could build a great navy to aid in its
conquest of the World-Island. In the twentieth century, Mackinder explained that, more
than ever, sea power required a broader and deeper landward reach to take advantage of
industrialization. The Industrial Age meant a world of big states, and the strong ate the
weak. Haushofer adopted this theory of Mackinder “to the opposite German point of view,”
Strausz-Hupé writes, “and concluded that the path to German world power lay along the
lines that had frightened the English, i.e., consolidation of the German and Russian 'greater
areas.' ” Haushofer, in the words of Strausz-Hupé, goes positively cloudy and mystical and
nebulous when describing Mackinder's Heartland. It is the “cradle of world conquerors,”
“a gigantic citadel reaching from 'the Elbe to the Amur,' ” that is, from central Germany to
Manchuria and the Russian Far East, deep into which Germany can withdraw her vital war
industries while its army and navy can strike outward in all directions.
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