DEMOCRATIC IDEALS AND REALITY—Halford J. Mackinder—Holf ($2.50).
THE WORLD OF GENERAL HAUSHOFER—Andreas Dorpalen—Farrar & Rinehart ($3.50).
GERMAN STRATEGY OF WORLD CONQUEST—Derwent Whittlesey—Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).
AN OUTLINE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY —J. F. Horrabin—Knopf ($ 1.50).
In 1908 the Bavarian General Staff sent a young officer, Major Karl Haushofer, to study the workings of the Japanese Army. Traveling slowly via Suez and Singapore, young Haushofer hailed the flag of the Rising Sun with "immense relief." His long journey from the Fatherland had been humiliating: at many stages of the ship's passage—Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Aden, India, Singapore—he had seen a rocky bastion rise from the water flying the British Union Jack. A trained geographer, young Haushofer well knew of Britain's imperial lifeline. But on his trip this line took on a new and shocking significance in his eyes: it became a great steel shackle around the body of Germany.
Much of the story told in these books by contemporary geographers is of how Haushofer devoted his life to breaking this shackle, how he turned the useful subject of political geography (well discussed in Author Horrabin's little book) into militarism's pseudo science of the century—geopolitics: "the art of guiding practical politics." Author Mackinder's book contains theories from which Haushofer borrowed freely; Author Dorpalen has assembled a useful collection of the writings of Haushofer and his disciples; Author Whittlesey has a somewhat similar collection, plus excellent geopolitical maps.
Haushofer and Hitler. World War I raised young Haushofer to the rank of major general. He had a young aide-decamp named Rudolf Hess, who in the post war years attended his lectures on geography at the University of Munich. When the Nazi Beer Hall Putsch failed (1923), Haushofer hid Hess in his mountain home. When Hess was imprisoned with Hitler, Haushofer visited them there.
What did General Haushofer tell Corporal Hitler in the privacy of Landsberg jail? Author Dorpalen thinks he spoke of more than Germany's need for living space —which Hitler incorporated into Mein Kampf. For General Haushofer had by then a whole philosophy of German expansion for which, perhaps, he hoped Hitler might be a useful propagandist. Instead, the corporal adopted the general and, when the Nazi regime was established, Geopolitician Haushofer was installed in Munich as director of a great brain trust known as the Geopolitical Institute.
What Haushofer had to say to Hitler was partly based on a short pamphlet (The Geographical Pivot of History) written in 1904 by British Geographer Sir Halford Mackinder (who expanded it in 1919 into the now reissued Democratic Ideals and Reality). Like Haushofer, Mackinder knew the significance of that stony string of sea bases that joined England to her colonies and dominions. What, he asked, could menace them and the sea power which upheld them? Answer: the possession of a body of land so vast and rich that sea power could never encircle it effectively. Mackinder saw such a body of land in what he called the "World-Island" —Europe, Asia, Africa. He imagined it as a mighty whole, pushing the British naval bases on its edges into insignificance.