Demon of Geopolitics

Holger H. Herwig is professor emeritus at the University of Calgary. His books include the prize-winning The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914–1918 and The Marne, 1914.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1: Modest BeginningsChapter 2: Key to the Mystery: Dai NihonChapter 3: Seminal Experience World War IChapter 4: Revolution and Reaction: Munich 1918–1923Chapter 5: “The Young Eagles”: Landsberg 1924Chapter 6: The Demon Fledges: Geopolitik in the 1920sChapter 7: The Demon Soars: Geopolitik in the 1930sChapter 8: The Demon Crashes: Geopolitik in World War IIConclusion: Prophet Risen?List of AbbreviationsNotes Glossary

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.