An English Translation and Analysis of Major General Karl Ernst Haushofer's Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean

Book excerpt: This new translation and updating of Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean will allow English speakers to enjoy and learn from Karl Haushofer's seminal work. Born into an academic family in Munich in 1869, Haushofer attended Cadet school and joined the Bavarian General Staff. He spent two years in the Far East, returning by way of the Trans-Siberian Railroad in 1910. Impressed with the Japanese, he wrote four books urging an alliance between Germany and Japan. After serving in WWI, he retired with the rank of general and taught at the University of Munich. In 1926 he wrote Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean, which contended that the center of world power had moved from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and advocated an alliance of Germany, Russia, India, China and Japan against the Colonial powers and the USA. He predicted mass migration around the Rim of the Pacific, and urged Japan to move against Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, not China. Hitler's rise to power brought Haushofer into prominence. Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, moves into the Middle East, conquest of China by the Communists, the Indian-Russian alliance, and invasion of Afghanistan almost brought Haushofer's Eurasian empire into reality. Current events in the Pacific Rim continue to bear out Haushofer's predictions.