The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1945. Geopolitics

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVIII, Issue 23318, 29 September 1945, Page 4

The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1945. Geopolitics

IT was announced this week that Karl Haushofer, the German professor who controlled the Munich Institute of Geopolitics, has been released by the Allies from an investigation camp and is now under house arrest. Haushofer, who had been elevated to the rank of MajorGeneral by Hitler, is now so old that the Allies are said to be no longer interested in him. Yet it may be that this is the man who gave Hitler the inspiration for his dream of world domination. One of the Hitler legends is that the late Fuhrer relied upon astrologers for advice. Perhaps he did, but Haushofer had more than the abacadabra of superstitious mysticism to offer his master. He had theories which were closely enough related to reality Io be remotely practicable, and from the Munich Institute of Geopolitics flowed the ideas which later formed the basis of the Nazi war against the peoples of Europe.

It is ironical that a book written by an Englishman, Sir Halford Mackinder, in the year following the First World War, probably furnished the ideas which were later developed by Haushofer in Munich. Mackinder’s nations were distorted and oversimplified by Haushofer, but the German in his writings acknowledged his debt to the Englishman. Mackinder’s theory can be briefly staled. He sees the continents of Europt, Asia and Africa as a ‘"World Island,” a single unit to which other countries are satellites. The world-island has a ‘"Heartland’’ extending roughly from the Volga to the mountains of East Siberia and the Manchurian border and from the Arctic Ocean to the Himalya. To this Heartland the key is Eastern Europe. “Who rules the Heartland,” says Mackinder, “commands the World-island; who commands the World Island commands the world.’’ It has been stated that since the Versailles Treaty was virtually a settlement by sea Powers, the concealed aim of Hitler’s strategy, ' based upon the theories of Haushofer, was to acquire the Heartland, a vast region invulnerable to sea power. The conquest of Russia was to be a means to that end. There can be little doubt that the germ of the Second World War is to be found in Mackinder’s theory that command of Eastern Europe gives command of the Heartland and the world. Mackinder had been forced to his theory by a belief that in our time the human race had rounded a decisive corner. The Columbian era. the era of exploration and colonisation, had ended; there were no more new lands and from now on humanity must live in a closed geographical system. Further, his conception of the World Island produced another fundamental thesis: that an era of military power had also come to an end. Up to now imperial power had always been derived from sea power, with its ability to paralyse trade and to transport armies with the maximum speed. But henceforth the development of railway systems and the probable development of air power (which Mackinder had foreseen 40 years ago) would outflank, frustrate and overthrow sea power. The World Island could now be crossed faster than it could be circumnavigated, trade and supplies -could move across it secure from ■ navies, the bases upon which sea power was dependent could be taken from the land side. He believed the fact that nations on the margin of the« Heartland controlled such points as Gibraltar, Suez, Panama and the English Channel was irrelevant. In Mackinder’s estimation the development of Russia was the greatest single fact of the nineteenth century. Russia’s place in the Heartland put her at the centre of the strategic focus. Together, Russia and Germany could unquestionably • control this world empire. Haushofer, and those who supported his interpretation of Mackinders theories, sought to remedy the mistake of 1914 by effecting the alliance with Russia which had been the policy of Bismarck and every other worker for Pan-Germanism. Those of the German geopoliticians who survive will argue that once the Nazi Party overruled the General Staff and attacked Russia, then the world empire for which the war had been started was lost. There is a statement of Mackinder’s in his book Democratic Ideals and Reality which is an topical now as it was when it was first published jn 1919: “It is evident that the Heartland is as real a physical fact within the World-Island as is the

World-Island within the Ocean, although its boundaries are not quite so clearly defined. Not until about 100 years ago, however, was there available a base of man-power

sufficient to begin to threaten fhe liberty qf the world from within the citadel of this World-Island. No mere scraps of paper, even though they be the written constitution of the League of Nations, are under the conditions of to-day a sufficient guarantee that the Heartland will not again become the centre of a World War. Now is the time, when the nations are fluid, to consider what guarantees based on Geographical and Economic Realities, can be mgde available for the future security of Mankind.” It may be that the theories of Sir Halford Mackinder have been absorbed in other capitals besides Berlin. The old rivalry between the Teuton and the Slav has been settled permanently in favour ol the Slavs, provided they can be unified, and the process of unification is being carried on resolutely by Russia regardless of the views oi Western countries. When this consolidation has been completed in Eastern Europe, Russia will be in the position the Nazis hoped to reach after n successful war patterned upon the dreams of Major-General Professor Karl Haushofer.