Persuasive cartography in Geopolitik and national socialism

Abstract

Persuasive cartography in Nazi Germany is generally believed to be the product of the German school of Geopolitik centered on a mythical institute in Munich. Although Geopolitik and national socialism shared many causes, the persuasive maps that were designed by progenitors of both doctrines differed not only in their graphic form but also in their political content. The main document that is customarily cited to support the argument that persuasive mapping in Geopolitik and national socialism were synonymous, Giselher Wirsing's atlas The War in Maps (published in 1941 by the German Library of Information in New York), is shown to be a purely national socialist production without notable input from practitioners of Geopolitik.