ABSTRACT
To understand Haushofer as theorist and activist, officer and professor, journalist and politician, it is necessary to delve into his multifaceted career. For, Haushofer was formed as much by his environment and activities as by his education and reading. His career spanned German history from the birth of the Second Reich to the Gtterdmmerung of the Third. The basic contours of Haushofer's geopolitics were hardly original. Hitler throughout his life refused to acknowledge any intellectual indebtedness to the Munich geographer. From Ratzel he adopted the notion of space, which Ratzel by 1897 had already defined as Lebensraum. In the final analysis, Haushofer provides a fascinating study of a central character of modern German history as defined by the novelist Thomas Mann: General Dr. von Staat. For, Haushofer combined in his person three pivotal careers: military officer (1887-1919), university professor, and advisor and confidante to Deputy Fhrer Rudolf Hess (1920-41).
