Editing Karl Haushofer (section)

==Geopolitics==
{{Main|Geopolitik}}

Haushofer developed Geopolitik from widely varied sources, including the writings of [[Oswald Spengler]], [[Alexander Humboldt]], [[Carl Ritter|Karl Ritter]], [[Friedrich Ratzel]], [[Rudolf Kjellén]], and [[Halford J. Mackinder]].<ref name="Geopolitics of the World System">{{cite book|author=Saul Bernard Cohen|title=Geopolitics of the World System|year=2003|publisher=Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc|isbn=0-8476-9907-2 |pages=21–23}}</ref>

Geopolitik contributed to Nazi foreign policy chiefly in the strategy and justifications for [[lebensraum]]. The theories contributed five ideas to German foreign policy in the [[interwar period]]:
* [[organic state]]
* [[lebensraum]]
* [[autarky]]
* [[pan-region]]s
* land power/[[sea power]] [[dichotomy]].

Geostrategy as a [[political science]] is both descriptive and analytical like political geography but adds a [[norm (sociology)|normative]] element in its strategic prescriptions for national policy.<ref>Mattern, pp.40–41</ref> While some of Haushofer's ideas stem from earlier American and British [[geostrategy]], German geopolitik adopted an essentialist outlook toward the national interest, oversimplifying issues and representing itself as a [[panacea]].<ref name="Walsh41"/> As a new and essentialist [[ideology]], geopolitik resonated with the [[Weimar Republic|post-World War I insecurity]] of the populace.<ref name = Matern32>Mattern, p.32</ref>

Haushofer's position in the [[University of Munich]] served as a platform for the spread of his geopolitical ideas, magazine articles, and books. In 1922, he founded the Institute of Geopolitics in Munich, from which he proceeded to publicize geopolitical ideas. By 1924, as the leader of the German geopolitik school of thought, Haushofer would establish the ''Zeitschrift für Geopolitik'' monthly devoted to geopolitik. His ideas would reach a wider audience with the publication of ''Volk ohne Raum'' by [[Hans Grimm]] in 1926, popularizing his concept of lebensraum.<ref>Dorpalen, pp.16–17</ref> Haushofer exercised influence both through his academic teachings, urging his students to think in terms of [[continent]]s and emphasizing motion in [[international politics]], and through his political activities.<ref>Walsh (1949), pp.4–5</ref> While Hitler's speeches would attract the masses, Haushofer's works served to bring the remaining [[intellectual]]s into the fold.<ref name="Beukema, pxiii">Beukema, Col. Herman. "Introduction" to Dorpalen, p.xiii</ref>

Geopolitik was essentially a consolidation and codification of older ideas, given a scientific gloss:

*[[Lebensraum]] was a revised colonial imperialism;
*Autarky a new expression of tariff [[protectionism]];
*Strategic control of key geographic territories exhibiting the same thought behind earlier designs on the [[Suez Canal|Suez]] and [[Panama Canal]]s; a view of controlling the land in the same way as those choke points control the sea
*Pan-regions (''Panideen'') based upon the [[British Empire]], and the American [[Monroe Doctrine]], [[Pan-American Union]] and [[hemispheric defense]],<ref>Mattern, p.37</ref> whereby the world is divided into spheres of influence.
*Frontiers&nbsp;– His view of barriers between peoples not being political (borders) or natural placements of races or ethnicities but as being fluid and determined by the will or needs of ethnic/racial groups.
The key reorientation in each [[:wikt:dyad|dyad]] is that the focus is on land-based [[empire]] rather than naval imperialism.

Ostensibly based upon the geopolitical theory of [[United States Navy|American naval]] expert [[Alfred Thayer Mahan]], and British geographer [[Halford J. Mackinder]], German geopolitik adds older German ideas. Enunciated most forcefully by Friedrich Ratzel and his Swedish student Rudolf Kjellén, they include an organic or [[anthropomorphize]]d conception of the state, and the need for self-sufficiency through the top-down organization of society.<ref name = Matern32/> The root of uniquely German geopolitik rests in the writings of Karl Ritter who first developed the [[organic state|organic conception of the state]] that would later be elaborated upon by Ratzel and accepted by Hausfhofer. He justified lebensraum, even at the cost of other nations' existence because conquest was a biological necessity for a state's growth.<ref>Walsh (1949), p.39</ref>

Ratzel's writings coincided with the [[Second Industrial Revolution#Germany|growth of German industrialism]] after the [[Franco-Prussian war]] and the subsequent search for markets that brought it into competition with [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|Britain]]. His writings served as welcome justification for imperial expansion.<ref>Mattern, p.60</ref> Influenced by Mahan, Ratzel wrote of aspirations for German naval reach, agreeing that sea power was self-sustaining, as the profit from trade would pay for the [[merchant marine]], unlike land power.<ref>Dorpalen, pp.66–67</ref> Haushofer was exposed to Ratzel, who was friends with Haushofer's father, a teacher of [[economic geography]],<ref>Dorpalen, p.52</ref> and would integrate Ratzel's ideas on the division between sea and land powers into his theories, saying that only a country with both could overcome this conflict.<ref>Dorpalen, pp.68–69</ref>

Haushofer's geopolitik expands upon that of Ratzel and Kjellén. While the latter two conceive of geopolitik as the state as an organism in space put to the service of a leader, Haushofer's Munich school specifically studies geography as it relates to [[war]] and designs for [[empire]].<ref>Dorpalen, pp.23–24</ref> The behavioral rules of previous geopoliticians were thus turned into dynamic normative [[doctrine]]s for action on lebensraum and world power.<ref>Dorpalen, p.54</ref>

Haushofer defined geopolitik in 1935 as "the duty to safeguard the right to the soil, to the land in the widest sense, not only the land within the frontiers of the [[Reich]], but the right to [[Volksdeutsche|the more extensive ''Volk'']] and cultural lands."<ref>Walsh (1949), p.48</ref> Culture itself was seen as the most conducive element to dynamic special expansion. It provided a guide as to the best areas for expansion, and could make expansion safe, whereas projected [[military]] or [[commerce|commercial]] power could not.<ref>Dorpalen, p.80</ref> Haushofer even held that [[urbanization]] was a symptom of a nation's decline, evidencing a decreasing soil mastery, [[birthrate]] and effectiveness of centralized rule.<ref>Dorpalen, p.78</ref>

To Haushofer, the existence of a state depended on living space, the pursuit of which must serve as the basis for all policies. Germany had a high [[population density]], but the old colonial powers had a much lower density, a virtual [[mandate (politics)|mandate]] for German expansion into resource-rich areas.<ref>Dorpalen, pp.38–39</ref> Space was seen as military protection against initial assaults from hostile neighbors with long-range weaponry. A buffer zone of territories or insignificant states on one's borders would serve to protect Germany.<ref>Dorpalen, pp.94–95</ref> Closely linked to that need was Haushofer's assertion that the existence of small states was evidence of political regression and disorder in the [[international relations|international system]]. The small states surrounding Germany ought to be brought into the vital German order.<ref>Dorpalen, pp.205–06</ref> These states were seen as being too small to maintain practical [[Wiktionary:autonomy|autonomy]] even if they maintained large colonial possessions and would be better served by protection and organization within Germany. In Europe, he saw [[Belgium]], the [[Netherlands]], [[Portugal]], [[Denmark]], [[Switzerland]], [[Greece]] and the "mutilated alliance" of [[Austro-Hungary]] as supporting his assertion.<ref>Dorpalen, pp.207, 209</ref>

Haushofer's version of autarky was based on the quasi-[[Malthusian]] idea that the earth would become saturated with people and no longer able to provide food for all. There would essentially be no increases in [[productivity (economics)|productivity]].<ref>Dorpalen, p.231</ref>

Haushofer and the Munich school of geopolitik would eventually expand their conception of lebensraum and autarky well past the borders of 1914 and "a place in the sun" to a [[Neuropa|New European Order]], then to a New Afro-European Order, and eventually to a [[Eurasia]]n Order.<ref>Mattern, p.17</ref> That concept became known as a pan-region, taken from the American Monroe Doctrine, and the idea of national and continental self-sufficiency.<ref>Mattern, p.39</ref> That was a forward-looking refashioning of the drive for [[colony|colonies]], something that geopoliticians did not see as an economic necessity but more as a matter of prestige, putting pressure on older colonial powers. The fundamental motivating force would be not economic but cultural and spiritual.<ref>Dorpalen, pp.235-6</ref> Haushofer was, what is called today, a proponent of "[[Eurasia Party|Eurasianism]]", advocating a policy of German–Russian hegemony and alliance to offset an Anglo-American power structure's potentially dominating influence in Europe.

Beyond being an economic concept, pan-regions were a strategic concept as well. Haushofer acknowledges the strategic concept of the [[Heartland Theory]] put forward by the British geopolitician Halford Mackinder.<ref>Dorpalen, p.218</ref> If Germany could control Eastern Europe and subsequently Russian territory, it could control a strategic area to which hostile seapower could be denied.<ref>Mackinder, p.78</ref> Allying with [[Italy]] and [[Japan]] would further augment German strategic control of Eurasia, with those states becoming the naval arms protecting Germany's insular position.<ref>Walsh (1949), p.9</ref>