the history of geopolitical thought, Haushofer belongs to a second generation of thinkers inspired by figures such as Friedrich Ratzel and Halford Mackinder. In line with Mackinder, Haushofer argued that sea power and land power gave rise to completely different sorts of political science strategy. Unlike Mackinder, he suggested that the main ocean powers, principally the UK and also the U.S., constituted “pirates of the sea”, interested in putting their management of trade routes within the service of political domination. Thus, the sea powers were keen to stay land powers divided among themselves – to regulate the balance of power. Haushofer argued in 1925 that Germany and Russia, as land powers, should type a counter-alliance. He also hoped to add China, then another land power, and Japan, the weakest of the three ocean powers, to what he termed the “East Eurasian Continental Bloc”. He also referred to as for German alignment with anticolonial nationalists so as to place pressure on United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and also the alternative colonial powers. Anglo-American thinkers were not diverted. Holger Herwig’s account of Haushofer’s life tries to restore the thesis that Haushofer directly and indirectly – via his sometime student and analysis assistant at the University of city, Rudolf Hess – influenced Adolf Hitler’s geopolitical thinking. He holds that “one needs to appreciate that Geopolitik (Autarky, Lebensraum) came directly from Haushofer to the student Hess so from him to the ‘tribune’ Hitler”. Herwig further suggests that Haushofer instructed Hess – and maybe dictator – throughout eight visits to a province jail in 1924, when dictator and Hess were control in neighbour cells for their involvement within the 1923 lager beer Hall coup.
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