Their son, Albrecht Haushofer, was issued a German Blood Certificate through the influence of Rudolf Hess, but was arrested in 1944 over his involvement with the July 20th plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi Party.
He established himself as one of Germany’s foremost experts regarding the Far East, and co-founded the geopolitical monthly Zeitschrift für Geopolitik (ZfG), which he would co-edit until it was suspended towards the end of World War II.
After retiring from the army with the rank of Generalmajor (major general) in 1919, he forged a friendship with the young Rudolf Hess, who became his scientific assistant and later rose to be the deputy leader of the Nazi Party, second in authority only to Hitler.
In 1919, Haushofer successfully defended his second dissertation, and became Privatdozent for political geography at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and was made a professor in 1933, although he declined a formal position and salary, because that would have affected his military pension.
Haushofer himself could not plainly describe this "new science," but its principal thrust was the view the state as a person or organism, shaped over time by its unique geography and history into a specific national character.
In this context he coined the term Lebensraum - "room to live" - to describe the territory that a healthy and expanding state needed to sustain its population.
[4] In 1923, Hitler was jailed following his failed "Beer Hall Putsch," and Rudolf Hess surrendered to be imprisoned alongside his leader in Landsberg Prison.
He was a prolific writer, publishing hundreds of articles, reviews, commentaries, obituaries and books, many of which were on Asian topics, and he arranged for many leaders in the Nazi party and in the German military to receive copies of his works.
During the prewar years, Haushofer was instrumental in linking Japan to the Axis powers, acting in accordance with the theories in his book Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean.
But his influence and his public profile shrank abruptly after his patron, Rudolf Hess, flew to Scotland in May 1941 in a doomed effort to make peace with the United Kingdom.
When his brother Heinz found his body, Albrecht was still clutching a sheaf of papers on which he had written dozens of poems in his last days trying to make sense of his life, his father's work, and the war.
"[15] Haushofer developed Geopolitik from widely varied sources, including the writings of Oswald Spengler, Alexander Humboldt, Karl Ritter, Friedrich Ratzel, Rudolf Kjellén, and Halford J.
[17] While some of Haushofer's ideas stem from earlier American and British geostrategy, German geopolitik adopted an essentialist outlook toward the national interest, oversimplifying issues and representing itself as a panacea.
[22] Geopolitik was essentially a consolidation and codification of older ideas, given a scientific gloss: The key reorientation in each dyad is that the focus is on land-based empire rather than naval imperialism.
[19] The root of uniquely German geopolitik rests in the writings of Karl Ritter who first developed the organic conception of the state that would later be elaborated upon by Ratzel and accepted by Hausfhofer.
[24] Ratzel's writings coincided with the growth of German industrialism after the Franco-Prussian war and the subsequent search for markets that brought it into competition with Britain.
While the latter two conceive of geopolitik as the state as an organism in space put to the service of a leader, Haushofer's Munich school specifically studies geography as it relates to war and designs for empire.
[32] Haushofer even held that urbanization was a symptom of a nation's decline, evidencing a decreasing soil mastery, birthrate and effectiveness of centralized rule.
[35] Closely linked to that need was Haushofer's assertion that the existence of small states was evidence of political regression and disorder in the international system.
[41] Haushofer was, what is called today, a proponent of "Eurasianism", advocating a policy of German–Russian hegemony and alliance to offset an Anglo-American power structure's potentially dominating influence in Europe.
[43] Allying with Italy and Japan would further augment German strategic control of Eurasia, with those states becoming the naval arms protecting Germany's insular position.
After World War II, Haushofer would deny that he had taught Hitler, and claimed that the National Socialist Party perverted Hess's study of geopolitik.
[48] Furthermore, the Nazi party and government lacked any official organ that was receptive to geopolitik, leading to selective adoption and poor interpretation of Haushofer's theories.
Ultimately, Hess and Konstantin von Neurath, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs (in office: 1932-1938), were the only officials Haushofer would admit had a proper understanding of geopolitik.
Geopolitical ideas of lebensraum, space for depth of defense, appeals for natural frontiers, balancing land and seapower, and geographic analysis of military strategy entered Hitler's thought between his imprisonment and the publishing of Mein Kampf.
[18] Chapter XIV, on German policy in Eastern Europe, in particular displays the influence of the materials Haushofer brought Hitler and Hess while they were imprisoned.
[54] Hans Frank, the governor general of wartime Poland, quoted Hitler as telling him, "Landsberg was my university education at state expense.
Haushofer came under suspicion because of his contacts with left-wing socialist figures within the Nazi movement (led by Gregor Strasser) and because of his advocacy of essentially a German–Russian alliance.
[57] Haushofer claimed that after 1933 much of what he wrote was distorted under duress: his wife had to be protected by Hess's influence (who managed to have her awarded "honorary German" status).
The influence of Haushofer on Nazi ideology is dramatized in the 1943 short documentary propaganda film, Plan for Destruction, which was nominated for an Academy Award.