Beyond Haushoferism: Geography, Geopolitics and National Socialist Rule at Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University

Abstract

ABSTRACT For decades, German geographers’ entanglement with Nazi rule has been described as primarily related to geopolitics and, more specifically, to the figure of Karl Haushofer – the ‘black sheep’ of an otherwise ‘scientific’ discipline. While research has been dismantling this ‘Haushoferism’ since the 1980s, the academic geography environment in which Haushofer was embedded in Munich has not been studied thus far. The present article seeks to fill this lacuna. In doing so, it aims to enhance our understanding of the relationship between geography, geopolitics, and Nazi rule. Through a biographical analysis, we investigate the work of three key geography scholars at Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU): the two consecutive chairholders in geography (Erich von Drygalski [1906–1935] and Fritz Machatschek [1935–1946]) and Haushofer’s closest academic disciple (Gustav Fochler-Hauke). Building on archival research, complemented by an analysis of these geographers’ writings, we focus on 1) the relationship between geographical and geopolitical thought development at LMU and 2) the entanglement of Fochler-Hauke and Machatschek with Nazi rule. Our analysis shows that geographical and geopolitical thought were inextricably linked. Whereas much research has focused on (Haushofer and) the development of geopolitics, geographers’ increasing transformation into Kämpfende Wissenschaftler [fighting scholars] has been neglected. This applied, practical-political orientation of geography, which aimed to sustain and support the expansionary National Socialist project, characterised the development of the discipline at LMU during the Nazi period.