I was watching a History Channel program called “Last Secrets of the Third Reich” But it was mostly a look at Karl Haushofer. I’ve been sort of aware of him and his involvement in the Nazi party. But this program pretty much portrayed him as a genius puppet master that orchestrated a masterful global conspiracy since just after WWI. Like he put the Nazis in power, organized to have bomber plans sold to the Japanese, manipulated Churchill and Roosevelt and so on. They pretty much said Hitler’s stupidity was the only kink in his otherwise perfect plan to conquer the world.
I’ve never heard anybody ever give Haushofer that much credit, and with the tendency of the History channel to portray things somewhat “creatively” I’m really curious to what the general consesus on what he was responsible for is. I really didn’t know all that much about him, and if he was that important why havn’t I heard more about him? Are there any good books that detail his life? By good I mean accurate and readable(so many WWII books are either conspiracy crap, or read like technical white papers)
A search on Yahoo! brought up several sources on Haushofer. According to Britannica he was one of the leading advocates of “geopolitics” in the 1920’s as a professor at the University of Munich.
William L. Shirer, mentions him three times in Rise and Fall of The Third Reich. Twice in connection with Rudolph Hess who apparently was quite taken with Haushofer’s ideas and acquainted Hitler with them, and once in connection with his son, Albrecht, who was executed as part of the bomb plot against Hitler. Shirer didn’t portray Haushofer as a major player in the rise of Hitler and Naziism.
I think the show was actually ‘Last Secrets of the Axis’, not what I said in the OP.