Koncepcje geopolityczne Karla Haushofera

Abstract

This paper presenting the geopolitical achievements of well-known German geographer Karl Haushofer begins with a summary of Haushofer’s life and major achievements in politics and research. While the subject’s contacts with Hitler are recalled, it is stressed that – notwithstanding his opinions regarding nationalistm and superpower status – Haushofer acceptedneither Nazism nor anti-Semitism. The article goes on to present the main geopolitical concepts of its subject, of which the first concerned the new order (neue Ordnung), an advocation of major changes in Germany, not least in respect of a revised Treaty of Versailles. While these opinions from Haushofer were nothing more (lacking a scientific basis), they did initiate important political processes in Germany. The second concept discussed concerns world Pan-regions, as construed in relation to history, geography and philosophy, with a view to the world being divided into large territorial units both politically and geographically based. One of t Haushofer’s best-known definitions has world reduced to just the Pan-European, Pan-American, Pan-Russian and Pan-Pacific regions. Pan-Europe is (naturally) within the German zone of influence, with its capital in Berlin. It extends across Europe (excluding Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia), as well as throughout Africa and the Middle East as broadly conceived. The Pan-Russian region in turn consists of the European part of Russia plus Byelorussia and Ukraine, western and eastern Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan and the whole Indian peninsula. The Pan-Pacific region was based on China with Tibet and Mongolia, the Russian Far East, South-Eastern Asia, Australia and New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. The whole of that area was regarded as under the influence of Japan, leaving the Pan-American continent as supposedly dependent on the United States. The third analysed concept was a project for a so-called geopolitical “triangle”, which had a clearly political character and was created in 1940 as a reflection of the political pact between Germany, Italy and Japan. Haushofer sought to analysing the political and territorial consequences of this pact. One of the most important Haushofer concepts was the idea of the Euro-Asiatic Continental Block (Die Kontinentalblock Mitteleuropa–Eurasien–Japan). This was based on the geopolitical pact between Berlin, Moscow and Tokyo. The project was put into effect between August 1939 and December 1940, before finally being buried with Germany’s invasion of the USSR. This concept in fact referred to the well-known Mackinder ‘Heartland’ theory, and anticipated a future confrontation between land and maritime superpowers. A further part of the text focuses on Haushofer’s views of Poland, which were both critical and hostile, and hence in line with its author’s strong support for the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact that liquidated the Polish state. This paper concludes with an analysis of Haushofer’s scientific works and his outlook on the world. Though opposing Hitler during the last phase of World War II, Haushofer was nevertheless representative of extreme nationalism. However, if the political opinions can be put to one side, it is possible to note the major contribution made by Haushofer’s works to the development of political geography.