Knowledge of expansion on the geopolitics of Karl Haushofer
Titel:
Knowledge of expansion on the geopolitics of Karl Haushofer
Auteur:
Diner, Dan
Verschenen in:
Geopolitics
Paginering:
Jaargang 4 (1999) nr. 3 pagina's 161-188
Jaar:
1999
Inhoud:
The article deals with the intellectual history, as well as the political impact, of Karl Haushofer's concept and notion of geopolitics. It attempts to contextualise his thinking and actions in the period between the two world wars as well as during the Nazi period. Haushofer's geopolitics is perceived as a quasimaterialist ideology, which was politically directed against the stipulations of the Versailles peace treaty, but can also be interpreted as a concept with a specific German and continental ideology which opposed the abstract forms of social intercourse common to maritime and naval cultures, based on trade and exchange, as represented historically by Britain and, later, the United States. The cultural, societal and political contrast between cultures of the land and cultures of the sea are seen as one fundamental presupposition in Haushofer's thinking. The article deals with the body of knowledge he developed, his personal history under Nazism, and the impact of his thought on German territorial revisionism in the 1920s.