Karl Haushofer

Karl Ernst Haushofer (Munich, August 27, 1869 - Pähl, March 13, 1946) was a German politician, soldier and geographer, also noted as a prolific writer. He is considered the founder of Geopolitics as a discipline and one of the main ideologues of Lebensraum .

Biography

Training and professional career

He was born in Munich on August 27, 1869, into a family of artists and academics. In 1887 he began his military career at the Bavarian War College, and three years later he entered as an artillery officer in the Field Artillery regiment Prince Regent Luitpold . He then married on July 8, 1896 with Martha Mayer-Doss, a young woman of Jewish descent. Two years later he is promoted to officer of the General Staff.

In 1903 he was a professor at the Bavarian War Academy and was sent to Japan in 1908 to reorganize the country's military apparatus. He also made trips to China, India and Korea. In one of his travels he meets Lord Kitchener, with whom he exchanges views on a possible war between Germany and Great Britain, the consequences of which would be favorable for the United States and Japan.

In 1913, Haushofer taught geography at the University of Munich, becoming a professor in this field. The following year he was mobilized for World War I as a major general and brigadier commander of the German army on the French front, and in 1916 he fought on the Caucasus front. Three years later, he gave up his military career to dedicate himself entirely to the study of political geography in Munich.

His studies on the political aspects of the world earned him the redefinition of the science we know today as Geopolitics. He was accompanied in his studies by the theses of English historians, such as Thomas Macaulay and Edward Gibbon, Germans, such as Albrecht Roscher and Friedrich Rätzel, and Swedes such as Rudolf Kjellén, who shaped Haushofer's geopolitical thought.

Karl Haushofer (on the left) next to Rudolf Hess, c. 1920.

For the historical events that followed, Haushofer compromised his thinking with his indirect link to the Nazi German ultranationalist movement. From 1919, Haushofer and other leaders (including Rudolf Hess) founded the German Workers' Party, which was later joined by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, as well as the secret society Thule. Although his participation in the party was almost nil, he brought his knowledge of geopolitics to Nazism, which was already gaining favor among the public. Due to his marriage to a Jewess, he had many problems with the Nazis, so his friend Rudolf Hess decided to protect him.

In 1924 he already founded his publication (Zeitschrift Für Geopolitik (“Geopolitical Magazine”) with which he began his activities as a specialist in the international area of German politics. He later founded the “German Academy "On May 5, 1925, and two years later, he made his study of national borders known in Berlin. He had two children from his union with Martha, Albrecht and Heinz. Of them, Albrecht Haushofer would become the protected and sponsored geopolitical by Rudolf Hess in the 1930s.

Nazi period

His problems with the Nazis increased after 1933, when a party commando raided his residence looking for weapons. Months later he manages to keep his position as a university professor thanks to Hess's skill. He is elected president of the German Academy from 1934 to 1937 and during that period he acted as a diplomat on secret missions to London. In 1938, Haushofer fell into disgrace and his situation was further complicated by the disappearance of Hess in 1941. In 1944, he was linked to the judicial process because of the failed attempt against Hitler executed by Claus von Stauffenberg. The Gestapo imprisons him in Dachau. One of his sons, Albrecht Haushofer (diplomat and co-author of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact) was executed at the end of World War II.

He was interrogated by US army officers for his links to the Nazi regime and although he is acquitted at the Nuremberg Trials, the allies seize his pension and his title of honorary professor, which worsens his financial situation, being the trigger for his suicide in March 1946; His wife also assisted him by committing suicide, although there is another hypothesis that MI6 members staged his murder.

Thought

Being one of the main ideologues of Lebensraum or vital space, a term coined by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), he established the importance of the relationship between space and population, ensuring that the existence of a State was guaranteed when it had enough space to attend to its needs. This idea is analogous to the American Manifest Destiny. Haushofer wanted to give the geopolitics of his time an idea of anti-imperialism against the maritime powers of the world, such as the United States and Great Britain; For this, he wanted the most developed countries of Eurasia to face up against these powers and contribute to the emergence of the continental spaces of solidarity nations with a harmonious and supranational deployment.

Works

• Geopolitik des Pazifischen Ozeans (1925)
• Macht und Erde (1932-34)
• Weltpolitik von heute (1935)