PROPHET OF AGGRESSION.

Evening Star, Issue 25599, 27 September 1945, Page 4

PROPHET OF AGGRESSION.

A name to conjure with for dominant Germans was that of General Professor Karl Haushofer, reported now to bo a prisoner of the Allies, who are less concerned! about declaring him a war criminal because he is too ill to be likely to live long in any case. Haushofer's theories had more influence in inciting and directing the second World War than those of the renegade Englishman, Houston Chamberlain, on, the first. After serving as a military observer in Japan ajid commanding a division in the Kaiser's war, he became professor of political geography at Munich, aud developed theories, not originally his own of sinister, about natural geographical spheres of power which culminated in his science of " geopolitics," described as "a tool of Nazi statecraft to grab ' lebensraum.' " A State, it was declared! by Haushofer, is a living organism which must feed on the " lebensraum," or living space, of smaller States, else it would die. He impressed Hess, he impressed Hitler, who i departed from his theories, however, when he made war with Russia. There was a rumour then that Haushofer had fallen-from grace, and had been executed by a firing squad. _ A strong institute was set up in Munich to elaborate and promulgate his theories. These went far enough to make him, more than any other man, the intellectual father of the Axis, of the Far Eastern and also of the Western war. He was credited with virtually dictating the famous chapter of ' Mein Kampf' which outlined the foreign policy followed by Hitler to the letter. The coming of the Pacific war was- forecast by Haushofer as early as 1912. Japan, it was declared, was bound to expand eastward and southward. The "spiritual" kinship of Japanese and Germans, which events have proved, was preached by him, and, when his first idea_ for a German-Japanese-Russian alliance against the Western Powers was found impracticable, he pronounced that the triangle Rome-Berlin-Tokio was the only means to "secure the cultural•political connection between East and West against the' Bolshevist threat." While Germany would control Europe, Australia and New Zealand were included in the future Japanese sphere. Western America would go to Japan, and-Eastern America to Germany. All this was not expected to be achieved at once. Germany was to leave Russia to the last, trusting to undermine it, economically and politically, when the rest of Europe was under control. Japan would take risks if she were to embroil herself with the United States, Great Britain, and the Dutch East Indies at one time'. She should only do that when all of Europe was firmly in German, hands. But Japan ignored warning words just as Germany did in the matter of Russia, and both the aggressors have crashed. Haushofer was wiser than either Tokio or Berlin. That might not say much for his wisdom, but the general evidence shows him as clearly a remarkable man.