While German and Allied armies struggled for supremacy in southern Italy in the winter of 1943, Ernst Eduard Berger addressed the well-known geopolitician Karl Haushofer in a letter as “one of the oldest pioneers of cross-national cultural collaboration.” Berger was a key figure in German cultural policy toward Italy, a former secretary of the Italian Cultural Institute in Cologne, and later a director of the German Academic Exchange Service's branch in Rome. That December, Berger was stationed in Venice, where he was to have been appointed secretary general of the newly founded German Institute, an umbrella organization for the many cultural and academic institutions operating on the territory of the “occupied ally.” Berger was responding to a letter that Haushofer had sent him on September 18, in which he ostensibly praised the former for an article he had written about cultural diplomacy in Italy. But he also took the opportunity to tell the story of his own involvement in German cultural policy during the 1930s, depicting himself “as one of those (sadly few) working on German-Italian cultural relations” who had dealt with them at a time when the two countries were ill-disposed toward one another. Although he no longer played any role in German-Italian relations, Haushofer showed a clear understanding of the main issues at stake, stressing the importance of working behind the scenes via unofficial contacts to enhance official relations between the two regimes.Footnote 1
The exchange of letters between Haushofer and Berger raises several important issues. Since World War II, scholars have focused their attention on the influence of Haushofer's theories on the National Socialist Weltanschauung and on Adolf Hitler's war strategy, examining the veracity of wartime Allied propaganda and its assertions that Haushofer was one of the real masterminds behind aggressive National Socialist policies. Only recently have his life and works been approached from a more transnational perspective, allowing a reexamination of his role as a “bridge builder” with the Far East, as well as the important role that his experiences in Japan from 1908 to 1910 played in shaping his geopolitical theories.Footnote 2 Haushofer's involvement in the development of German foreign policy toward Italy, however, is an issue that has received scant attention in the biographies of this well-known geopolitician. Hans-Adolf Jacobsen's seminal study offers several hints about Haushofer's activities in Italy between 1935 and 1941, sketching some of the main contacts that he established at the time with fascist intellectuals and politicians. But this biography only offers an impressionistic picture of Haushofer's time and activities in Italy: furthermore, it fails to contextualize them in the broader framework of German-Italian political relations. Similarly, Jacobsen touches on Haushofer's opinions about Italy as a geopolitical factor in the interwar period, but he does not analyze them in depth and considers them to be “very ambivalent,” characterized by both an admiration for Mussolini and a sense of anger against Italy's “neo-Roman imperialism.”Footnote 3 Other historians who have since dealt with Haushofer's relations with Italy have either uncritically accepted Jacobsen's judgments (many borrow the judgments of Jacobsen uncritically) or simply overlooked those relations. The only exceptions are works focusing on Italian geopolitics, but these studies are generally limited to the diffusion of German geopolitics.Footnote 4
The following discussion provides a different reading of Haushofer's activities in Italy: one that takes a broader chronological timeframe into account, while at the same time attempting to contextualize these activities within the development of German-Italian cultural and political relations. Based mainly on archival sources, it is deeply embedded in studies that have recently prompted a reevaluation of cultural contacts between National Socialist Germany and fascist Italy as a key factor for understanding the nature and long-term aims of the Berlin-Rome Axis, especially in its European dimension.Footnote 5 Instead of focusing on the largely ineffective wartime alliance, this examination looks at the transnational “faces of fascism” and the origins of the Axis during the 1930s. To that end, it focuses on cross-border entanglements, the building of official or unofficial networks, as well as the selective transfer of practices or ideas between Germany and Italy at the time. The so-called “fascist minimum”—that is, the minimum of ideological beliefs shared by both fascism and National Socialism—is obviously important in this context because such an approach not only promotes a cultural interpretation of fascism, but also provides a response to the reiteration of national paradigms in the historiography of fascism.Footnote 6
The highlighting of “cross-border exchange, interaction, and cooperation between fascists in Europe” is no easy task. Because ultranationalism was the defining feature of all forms of fascism, transnational collaboration did not exclude the primacy of the national tradition in which the specific form of fascism was rooted; in fact, the cultural-political field remained a battleground of the utmost importance. One of the main scholarly arguments about cultural relations among fascist regimes is, therefore, whether nationalist rivalry completely undermined collaboration—i.e., whether the “cultural Axis” was actually a cultural struggle. No consensus seems to exist on this issue among historians. Some embrace the idea of a constant cultural-political antagonism between Italian fascism and National Socialism, pointing out the substantial differences in their respective understandings of “cultural primacy,” whereas others have more recently defined a “cultural minimum” for European fascism, as well as an interpretative pattern for analyzing the selective forms of collaboration among different fascist regimes. According to the latter, rivalry and cooperation, nationalism and “internationalism,” stand in a dialectical relationship: contacts between self-conscious nations strengthened national self-confidence. As a result, cultural policy between such regimes was characterized by “substantial collaboration with vigorous competition at every stage.” The synthesis of this dialectical relationship was a specific idea of Europe as a “Europe of nations,” a Darwinist new social order, where the fittest nations would lead the others in both political and in cultural matters.Footnote 7 The two interpretations are not inherently incompatible—for example, in cases where the first does not deny a “fascist minimum” and the second does not exclude mutual rivalry from the struggle for hegemony.
Historians agree on the how and when of German-Italian rapprochement. Since 1922, Hitler saw Italian fascism as a groundbreaking movement, a new model of authoritarian regime that promised to overcome the abhorred liberal system. By means of unofficial agents such as the Nazi activist Kurt Lüdecke, Hitler sought to establish some sort of connection with the Italian fascist movement even before the infamous March on Rome of October 1922. During the 1920s, Mussolini almost ignored “German fascism,” but, after the surprising success of National Socialism in the September 1930 election, he paid greater attention to the Hitlerian movement. The important role played by another informal mediator between the two movements, Giuseppe Renzetti, who lobbied Rome for better relations with German ultranationalists, must also be kept in mind. The sudden emergence of National Socialism nevertheless represented a source of trouble for Mussolini because it challenged Italian claims to hegemony over fascistlike parties in Europe at a time when the Italian Duce had declared fascism to be the “universal” solution for the European postwar crisis.Footnote 8
In the summer of 1933, shortly after the Nazi “seizure of power,” the ideological rivalry that would reach its peak at the international fascist congress held in Montreux in December 1934 intensified the already existing foreign-policy conflicts between Italy and Germany. With the so-called Four-Power Pact of June 1933, Mussolini sought to take advantage of the recent formation of Hitler's regime to contain German revisionism and to foster his aspiration to play a key role in the new European balance of power. But the pact failed. That October, Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and, from a position of political isolation, launched a program of rearmament. At the same time, Austria was becoming a major bone of contention between Rome and Berlin. Hitler, like any Pan-Germanist thinker or politician, openly hoped to annex his former homeland. Mussolini firmly opposed that, however, not least because a powerful neighbor at the Brenner Pass could challenge Italian possession of South Tyrol and galvanize the local German minority there. When Austrian Nazis killed Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in the summer of 1934, Mussolini mobilized the army and threatened to wage war to defend Austrian independence. This led to the Stresa Front of April 1935, an agreement among Britain, France, and Italy to contain German violations of the European status quo.Footnote 9
Ongoing ideological rivalry and foreign-policy disputes meant that German-Italian relations were in complete disarray from the summer of 1933 to the spring of 1935. A first turning point came when Italy began its war of aggression against Abyssinia in October 1935, provoking the hostility of the Western powers and a fruitless economic embargo by the League of Nations, which Germany refused to join. Mussolini angrily responded that Italy would not give up its colonial empire to serve British and French interests in Europe. A rapid rapprochement between Germany and Italy suddenly began, culminating in the October 1936 agreement, which formalized a state of “friendship” between the two regimes. Their ideological rivalry did not decrease, but it was now channeled into growing bilateral collaboration. German-Italian rapprochement was strengthened politically by their joint support for Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Cultural exchanges and cooperation grew in several fields, such as music and the arts, economic and colonial policies, as well as jurisprudence and leisure policy for the working classes. By the same token, the Berlin-Rome Axis became a “magnetic field” for other fascistlike movements in Europe, as it attempted to depict itself as an international alternative to liberal and communist forms of internationalism. A second turning point was the radicalization of both regimes in 1938. That year, the Anschluss resolved the Austrian question, and, after the short intermezzo of the Easter Pact, any Italian oscillation between the Western powers and Germany came to an end in favor of the latter. At the same time, Rome joined the Anti-Comintern Pact with Berlin and Tokyo in November 1937, marking the emergence of a new political and cultural alliance of global dimensions—one that aimed to challenge the existing world order.Footnote 10
This brief sketch of developments is important for both contextualizing and understanding Karl Haushofer's role in German cultural politics toward Italy. He began dealing with Italian fascism in the mid-1920s, when his journal, the Zeitschrift für Geopolitik (ZfG), became one of Germany's “spiritual weapons,” intended to compensate for the material weapons removed by the Treaty of Versailles.Footnote 11 It was, however, only between 1934 and 1935 that Haushofer's direct involvement in German cultural politics really began, when, on Rudolf Hess's behalf, he went to Rome with the goal of improving relations between fascism and National Socialism at a time when they had reached rock bottom. As president of the German Academy, a cultural institute founded in 1925 in Munich, Haushofer only acted as an unofficial agent. He nevertheless established a network of contacts with Italian scholars and politicians, meeting with some of the leading figures who would later work toward German-Italian rapprochement. He also publicly called for an end to mistrust between fascism and National Socialism, stressing their common cultural and political mission in Europe. He continued his unofficial activities in from 1937 to 1938, dealing with two other major questions of the “cultural Axis,” namely, tripartite relations with Japan and German-Italian colonial collaboration. The years 1938 and 1939 represented a turning point, even in the realm of small-scale Haushoferian cultural politics, for then he had to deal with both German and Italian hostility towards his cultural-political activity. Haushofer nevertheless promoted one of the most interesting instances of cultural entanglement between the Axis powers, largely by transferring his own knowledge, thus marking the birth of Italian geopolitics in 1939. The early 1940s witnessed a transformation of his cultural diplomacy into wartime propaganda: he celebrated the Tripartite Pact as an “alliance of destinies,” endorsed the “crusade against communism” as a need for security and living space, and, later on, justified the German occupation of Italy as a renewal of a thousand-year struggle for Rome and as the culmination of the construction of a Pan-European empire.
Studying the development of Haushofer's relations with Italy can provide new insights into the cultural politics of the Berlin-Rome Axis. First, it covers a lengthy time span (1934–1944) that includes different moments in German-Italian relations; Haushofer's direct involvement in German cultural diplomacy toward Italy is thoroughly documented in this period, thanks, in part, to the diaries of his wife, Martha.Footnote 12 The first phase of Haushoferian activities in Italy does show one of the hidden channels of contact opened by the German regime during the difficult period of between 1934 and 1935. Reliant on Rudolf Hess in the web of Nazi polycracy, Haushofer acted as a “pioneer” for the betterment of German-Italian relations, one who used unofficial means to pave the way for an official rapprochement in the second half of the 1930s, a role that has been completely overlooked in the extant historiography. His cultural-political activities in this realm are even more significant given that Haushofer was anything but an Italophile: not only was he personally involved in the defense of German minorities abroad, but he was also deeply entrenched in Pan-Germanist culture, influenced by intellectuals such as Felix Dahn, whose works depicted the struggle between German and Latin culture as the key feature of European (and world) history.Footnote 13 In other words, Haushofer embodied the many ambiguities that characterized relations between Nazi Germany and Italy. Finally, he felt a fascination for Italy that could transform into harsh contempt at any moment. Despite this—or perhaps because of it—Karl Haushofer dealt with several major cultural and historical questions underlying German-Italian relations over the course of a decade. His speeches and articles mirror a wide array of propagandistic themes and academic discourses concerning the two countries, the idea of Europe, and the meaning of a “universal” fascism. Haushofer thus represents a case study that allows for the integration of current research on fascist internationalism, considers both its practical and theoretical sides, and offers many elements that allow us to rethink the development and ambiguities of the so-called “cultural Axis.”
Successes and Failures of a “Private” Diplomacy
The year 1934 was an important one for Karl Haushofer and his relations with Italy. In an effort to exert indirect control over the German Academy, Rudolf Hess fostered Haushofer's appointment to its presidency, giving him a pre-eminent position for the organization of cultural-political activities abroad.Footnote 14 Moreover, 1934 saw the publication of Weltpolitik von heute, one of Haushofer's most significant works, in which he expressed his opinions about the course that Germany had to follow. Haushofer's view was quite clear: Germany, Italy, and Japan were defined as “powers of renewal,” who should join forces against the “powers of conservation”—in the first place England and France—to gain the “living space” that they deserved. It was not solely an opportunistic choice. Haushofer affirmed that such an alliance was written in the history of these three countries, because they shared common features deriving from singular historical parallelisms—above all, the heritage of feudal traditions, the cultivation of an imperial idea, and the synchronism of their national resurgence in the mid-1800s.Footnote 15
It was not by chance that Karl Haushofer began to visit Italy in the spring of 1934. As president of the German Academy, fully aware of the necessity of overcoming the political misunderstanding between Rome and Berlin, he was best positioned to develop an unofficial cultural diplomacy. In his letter to Ernst Berger in September 1943, Haushofer described the distinguishing features of his activities in Italy over the previous decade, giving us a sort of map of his contacts in Italy, and a self-representation of the role he had hoped to play in the context of the political cooperation between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Listing several events, Haushofer bore witness to “some very happy results from cleverly interpreted cultural relations,” affirming that unofficial contacts were of the utmost importance in enhancing official relations, even between totalitarian states. Moreover, he compared the German-Japanese rapprochement to the German-Italian one, writing that both began by means of “a very tight circle of persons,” where the intellectual depth of these people played a primary role. Recalling his collaboration with several cultural institutes in Italy, Haushofer confided that “the side meetings during the lecture tours were often more important than the conferences themselves,” while the best occasions for developing enduring relationships were not official summits or luxurious gatherings, but unpretentious situations where “modest approaches” could clear the way for long-lasting mutual trust; this, he thought, should be the ultimate aim of any cultural diplomacy. In other words, Haushofer's activities in Italy were based on a network of contacts, “face to face” meetings with intellectuals and officials who shared the same aim of fostering the political alliance between Rome and Berlin.Footnote 16
Before 1934, Haushofer had not had any contacts in Italy, and the letter to Berger says nothing about the creation of his network there. In order to reconstruct the first steps of his cultural diplomacy, therefore, we need to focus on his first visit to Rome and his meeting with Baron Roberto Ricciardi on April 18, 1934.Footnote 17 Ricciardi was a southern Italian aristocrat, a landowner whose principal estate was Ponte Barizzo in the Sele River valley. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies, elected on the single party list of the National Fascist Party in 1929. He was also a board member of a newly created Istituto per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente (Institute for Middle and Far East, IsMEO), a cultural institute which, under the direction of Giuseppe Tucci and the presidency of Giovanni Gentile, developed cultural exchange with Middle and Far Eastern countries. IsMEO was only a cultural institute in appearance. Its true aims were to improve economic and political relations with Asia, mainly in competition with the British Empire. India was consequently one of the most important areas of interest, and Ricciardi was deeply involved in cultivating contacts in Indian cultural circles and in studying the Indian political situation. He was, therefore, acquainted with Gino Scarpa, the former Italian consul in Kolkata and a sort of “personal agent” of Mussolini in delicate diplomatic questions.Footnote 18 The leaders of IsMEO—probably through Scarpa himself—entered into contact with some Indian nationalists such Taraknath Das and Subhas Chandra Bose, who were also in close contact with Haushofer. Hence, it is quite possible that the meeting between Haushofer and Ricciardi in April 1934 was brought about or encouraged by an Indian—that is, directly by an Indian nationalist or by somebody involved in Indian affairs.Footnote 19 While the origins of this meeting remain unclear, its importance does not. Ricciardi was, in himself, the key that opened Italy for Haushofer.
His 1934 Italian journey may have been remarkable because of the meeting with Ricciardi, but the true cultural diplomacy of Karl Haushofer began one year later, when he was asked to hold a conference within the framework of a collaboration between the German Academy and the Italian Institute of German Studies chaired by Giovanni Gentile and directed by Giuseppe Gabetti.Footnote 20 Haushofer also took the initiative in asking for a meeting with Benito Mussolini. The attempt to meet the Duce failed, and this failure was perhaps the first omen of the problems that were to undermine all of Haushofer's activity in Italy. As noted, during 1934 and 1935 German-Italian relations were in disarray. Moreover, after the Nazis’ seizure of power in Germany, the Italian authorities intensified monitoring of several semiofficial German organizations devoted to the diffusion of Germanism or the defense of German cultural identity abroad. As an influential member of Pan-Germanist groups, Haushofer rapidly became notorious among Italian diplomats, who sent dispatches to Rome stressing his role and his statements.Footnote 21 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was, at the time, run by Mussolini himself.
In March 1935, Haushofer asked for a meeting with Mussolini via Gabetti and the German ambassador. The meeting never occurred. Gabetti affirmed that the Duce had no time for a meeting with the geopolitician. Looking at official documents, the request was submitted on March 25 and seen by Mussolini. The dictator wrote a blunt “No” on the request. There is no single document that could suggest the motive for this denial, neither to validate the report of Gabetti, nor to give any hint of different reasons.Footnote 22 All things considered, it is possible that Mussolini refused any meeting, because it seemed inappropriate to meet a German personality involved in anti-Italian activities—and a protégé of the “deputy führer” —during such an awkward moment in Italo-German relations. Without admitting that Mussolini was fully aware of Haushofer's role in Germany, the characterizations noted above were frequently suggested by Italian consular representatives in the Third Reich, and they were probably sufficient motivation to avoid any such encounter. The question of South Tyrol and, more generally, Haushofer's reputation as “anti-Italian” became a sword of Damocles that hung over Haushofer's cultural diplomacy toward fascist Italy.
The meeting with Mussolini was, however, just one aspect of the cultural-political “mission” of March 1935. Its core was the conference that Haushofer held on March 21 at the Institute of German Studies, which dealt with cultural borders and mutual influences between the Germanic and the Italic worlds. In his conference speech, Haushofer further developed some elements already outlined in Weltpolitik von heute, focusing on historical parallelisms between Italy and Germany and putting these in the framework of a European imperial idea. He concluded that the Alps should not be considered a barrier, but rather a conduit, with architects, painters, and poets crossing the “imperial passes,” just as earlier had emperors, popes, and condottieri, “bearers of both the spiritual and secular weapons, Guelphs and Ghibellines, friends and enemies: in some way they had to be the heralds of culture.”Footnote 23 Behind the mask of erudite arguments, the message was clear. The national pride of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany should not hinder political and cultural collaboration under the aegis of a Europeanism built upon a German-Italian cornerstone, the historical precedent for which was the Holy Roman Empire.
Haushofer had other opportunities to expand his network of contacts. On the one hand, he got in touch with Gabetti and Ulrich von Hassell, and on the other, Karl and Martha Haushofer spent time with Baron Ricciardi. The aristocrat organized two significant encounters for his German guests. One was a car trip to Castel Gandolfo together with the consul Gino Scarpa. At the end of 1935, Scarpa went to Germany on Mussolini's orders to study Nazi ideology and racist theories. Haushofer was forewarned of this mission and Scarpa met him during his stay in Germany.Footnote 24 Ricciardi also introduced Karl and Martha Haushofer to Countess Mara Carnevale-Braida. She was a high-ranking noblewoman, well connected in Italian diplomatic circles and those of the navy. Mara Carnevale-Braida became a close friend of Martha, and the Haushofers often visited her villa in Lerici. She and Ricciardi were two of the three Italians (with Massi) on the list Karl Haushofer drew up in 1939 of persons who might be “helpful if need be.”Footnote 25
The journey of March 1935 must be seen as the true beginning of Haushofer's public diplomacy in Italy because of the important meetings he held, but, above all, the specific timing. In mid-March 1935, the international situation was very tense. Hitler's plans for re-armament became clear on March 16, when the German government reintroduced conscription. While Haushofer and his wife visited the Roman Museum at the Baths of Diocletian, Mussolini issued a “precautionary” recall to duty for the class of 1911. More generally, almost every meeting on Haushofer's agenda concerned the most pressing issues of European politics. During lunches with Ambassador Hassell or Gabetti, Karl and Martha Haushofer discussed the “gloomy political situation,” and probably attempted to understand the mood of Italian public opinion as far as they could. When Haushofer was back in Munich, he met with Rudolf Hess to report his impressions from Italy. The Italians were not upset by German re-armament, he said, but they were deeply displeased by the development of racism in Germany, because they felt themselves disparaged.Footnote 26
Despite this promising beginning, upon his return to Germany Karl Haushofer found himself unexpectedly involved in another controversy between Rome and Berlin: the arrest of the South Tyrolean Baron Paolo Sternbach. As a preliminary move before the conference at the Institute of German Studies, during its general assembly on March 16, the German Academy appointed several correspondent members—a common practice for all cultural academies. Among these were three Italian citizens: Gabetti; Lorenzo Rovere, the former director of the Turin Museum; and Sternbach. The latter was praised for his “merits […] in safeguarding Germanism.”Footnote 27 This was enough for the Italian authorities. On March 28, the police searched Sternbach's estate. The Baron was arrested and confined to Sicily. In addition to some minor accusations, he was blamed above all for his acceptance of the German Academy appointment. Haushofer's letter was considered evidence of the Baron's anti-Italian activities. The case of Baron Sternbach is quite complicated, and there is no space here to cover it all. In order to understand Haushofer's role, it is important to note that he followed these matters in person, meeting the consul Francesco Pittalis and supporting the liberation of Sternbach. He also attempted to better the general situation, arguing that the political connotations of the case would simply make the personal position of Sternbach worse, and suggesting that the German press should avoid fueling the argument. These efforts were to no avail. The Italian authorities ignored his statements, while the German press continued to publish news, and false news, about the detention of Sternbach in Italy. The Baron was liberated on Mussolini's direct orders after barely four months of incarceration.Footnote 28 The only result Haushofer obtained was further to compromise his reputation. Indeed, the reaction of Pittalis on hearing of the removal of Haushofer from the presidency of the German Academy in June 1937 encapsulates efficaciously the official Italian attitude towards the German geopolitician. “Haushofer” he said, was a “very popular figure in Munich, a scheming and very ambitious person of vast, but rather shallow, culture […]. His dismissal from the presidency of the German Academy is not for us a significant loss, because, although he formally fostered good cultural relations with Italy […], he had and has less-than-kindly feelings for our country.”Footnote 29
However, before June 1937, Haushofer had a third opportunity to carry on his cultural-political activity in Italy in the official role of president of the German Academy. In December 1936, he asked Gabetti to arrange a new conference at his institute. Haushofer also took the initiative to ask for a meeting with Mussolini, using the mediation of Giovanni Gentile, the same program as was set up for the spring of 1935. As in that previous attempt, Haushofer failed to meet the Duce, but succeeded in his other purposes, with just a minor change in the program. He could not hold his conference at the Institute of German Studies, and so Gabetti offered him the use of the newly inaugurated room of IsMEO in the Palazzo Brancaccio, where he spoke before an elite group of scholars, politicians, and representatives of the Japanese and German embassies.Footnote 30
In his lecture “Similarities of Political and Cultural Development in Italy, Germany, and Japan,” Haushofer revealed one of the key features of his cultural-political activity, focusing on the building of a “spiritual bond” between Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo by means of historical parallelisms and an insistence on the “common geopolitical fate” of the three countries. This time the speech also represented a sort of compendium of the cultural side related to the thesis depicted in Weltpolitik von heute. The international context, however, had radically changed in the previous two years. Italian aggression in Ethiopia had fostered rapprochement between Rome and Berlin, and on 24 October 1936, the two countries had signed the treaty of friendship that Mussolini was to rebaptize the Axis. Moreover, from the end of 1936 on, both Italy and Germany had fought together on the side of Franco in the Spanish Civil War. The alliance between the “powers of renewal” of the West was almost a fait accompli, and Germany had signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan on November 25 of the same year. Haushofer's conference at IsMEO mirrored this new political situation and could be read as a cultural-political preparation prior to Italy joining the pact in November 1937.
In his speech, Haushofer took for granted the similarities and the two-thousand-year stream of mutual influences between Germany and Italy. He also introduced a more daring comparison between the two Western countries and the far-Eastern archipelago. For this purpose, he listed several geographical and historical parallelisms, such as the affinities between Western chivalry and bushidō, the same political role of literary works like Dante's Divina Commedia and Chikafusa's Jinnoshotoki, and finally the synchrony (and the similarities) of the Japanese Meiji Restoration and the unifications of Germany and Italy. Following this stream of thought, Haushofer stressed that these parallelisms had generated surprising “spiritual affinities,” the political synthesis of which was fascism. Quoting Mussolini's interview with the Völkischer Beobachter in 1937, in which he compared democracies to “shifting sands” and fascism to a “granite peak,” Haushofer affirmed that the Italian dictator had in this way expressed the core concept of the Japanese imperial idea.Footnote 31 In other words, Haushofer was suggesting that the same values lay at the basis of both European fascism and Imperial Japan, but, while the latter had always respected such values during its history, Italy and Germany had only rediscovered and renewed them thanks to fascism itself.
In more prosaic terms, the conference at IsMEO represented the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between the ZfG and the institute journal, Asiatica. Both periodicals began a sort of dialogue in which the “father” of German geopolitics began to consider Asiatica to be an Italian geopolitical review.Footnote 32 Besides the conference, Haushofer's stay in Rome permitted development of various cultural-political contacts and was followed by a visit to Campania close to Easter, when Karl and Martha Haushofer were guests of Baron Ricciardi. The Haushofers were accompanied by Ricciardi on a visit to observe the progress of works to reclaim marshlands by the sea; they also witnessed public ceremonies of the fascist youth organizations, who were planting trees in the marshland. The Haushofers gained a good impression of the development of this ill-fated territory. Karl stressed this in his report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to the Ministry of Propaganda, and to his university. Shortly after his return to Munich, Haushofer had a meeting with Rudolf Hess, passing on his observations to the National Socialist Party.Footnote 33
The Haushofers returned to Italy two more times that year. Between March and April 1938, Karl Haushofer decided to see with his own eyes the “geographical centre of the Impero,” visiting Messina, Agrigento, and Palermo. On the way back, he and his wife remained for some days in Ponte Barizzo as guests of Ricciardi. Karl Haushofer wrote a meaningful article in the ZfG about his visit to southern Italy and the lessons he learned from the experience; it was also a short essay in geopolitical history.Footnote 34 Prior to the latter journey, Karl and Martha Haushofer had been invited for dinner by Adolf Dresler, who aimed to be appointed ambassador to Rome in place of Hassell and was therefore looking for Haushofer's endorsement.Footnote 35 Although this apparently insignificant event was probably a result of the good relations between Albrecht Haushofer and Joachim Ribbentrop, it also shows that Karl Haushofer was perceived as an influential figure in defining German foreign policy, at least among his acquaintances, and particularly concerning Italy. Then, as now, his role in the National Socialist regime was largely overestimated. However, he did not lack contacts within the German regime's elite. In September 1938, he suggested Hess invite Roberto Ricciardi and Mara Carnevale-Braida to visit Germany, where they took part in the Reichsparteitag at Nuremberg. During the celebrations the countess was introduced to Adolf Hitler, and both Italian aristocrats seemed most impressed by the propaganda machine of the Third Reich.Footnote 36
Shortly after the Nuremberg Rally, Haushofer was expected in Rome to participate in an important academic event organized by the Italian Royal Academy. He was to be one of more than sixty panelists at the eighth Volta Congress focused on Africa. This congress aimed to bring together scholars and politicians involved in African affairs, but it was not merely to be a gathering of Africanists and colonial officials. Rather, the congress would represent a sort of geopolitical dialogue. Its real subject was the concept of “Eurafrica” (i.e., the economic, demographic, and, hence, political complementarity of Europe and Africa). Undoubtedly, the reason behind the Italian Royal Academy's announcement of such an event was the constitution of the fascist empire, with the conquest of Ethiopia and its entrenchment within Italian East Africa, but the Volta Congress of 1938 was also profoundly connected to that of 1932, which had been devoted to the theme of Europe.
The stated aims of the promoters—above all, those of conference president Francesco Orestano—were quite clear: to analyze colonial development in Africa, suggest an enhanced degree of cooperation among the European colonial powers, and to openly advocate new methods of exploitation.Footnote 37 The underlying political targets were easy to identify. Generally speaking, the congress would provide a space to discuss Africa's colonial future from an exclusively European point of view in order to bring about a sort of European “Monroe Doctrine” towards Africa. In addition, the Italian route to colonialism was taken as an alternative to the “greedy” and plutocratic colonial practices of France and Great Britain. In particular, by stressing the complementarity between Europe and Africa in demographic terms (i.e., opportunities of settlement) as well as economic ones (access to raw materials), the congress aimed to support the colonial claims of both Italy and Germany. On the one hand, the mere fact that prominent representatives from almost all European countries gathered in Rome to discuss the future of Africa fixed the position of the kingdom amongst the colonial powers, and thus retrospectively justified the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. On the other hand, by continuously highlighting the (allegedly biological) inability of the “old” colonial powers to settle the huge territories that they ruled in Africa, the congress would significantly endorse German pretenses to recover at least the colonies that the Second Reich had lost after the First World War.Footnote 38
Haushofer was invited to participate in the 1938 Volta Congress in February by Orestano himself; beginning in May he began working with Orestano to define the topic he would consider—migration from British India to South Africa. Undoubtedly, it was a thorny matter for Haushofer, one that could easily be perceived as an accusation that London preferred the exploitation of low-cost Indian manpower to the restitution of the territories to Germany. Haushofer fulfilled his duty as best he could, crafting a text in which the recriminations were cleverly watered down with statistical data on the migratory flow and, above all, with a mass of quotations taken from Indian nationalists (such as Nehru) defining Africa as the “America of India.” Nevertheless, in correspondence that summer, Orestano asked Haushofer to mitigate further the potential impact of the lecture. Haushofer's criticism of British colonial policies served the purpose of the congress fully, but his speech could have been construed as a direct attack by the German delegation on the British one. In order to avoid needless controversy among the panelists, Orestano decided to summarize in his introductory speech the opinions expressed by the geopolitician Haushofer using the same harsh tones that he had exhorted Haushofer to expunge from the original text.Footnote 39 In this way, he turned Haushofer's remarks into an official position of the congress presidency.
It was not enough. The eighth Volta Congress was to take place between October 4 and 11, 1938, but the week prior, Europe found itself on the brink of war. The Sudeten crisis and the consequent Munich Agreement deeply influenced the “spirit” of the conference in Rome. On the German side, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs wished to avoid causing any possible unease with England and France. The German authorities had little to no interest in Italian criticism of British colonial policies and saw Haushofer's participation in such an important international meeting only as a possible source of trouble. On October 4, a cipher telegram was transmitted from the Foreign Office in Berlin to the German Embassy in Rome stating, “Professor Haushofer intends to speak about the Indian migration push at the Volta Congress. The lecture […] does not appear to us as suitable in the context of the event.” The Berlin authorities were concerned that the lecture could have a “potentially disastrous effect on India,” and asked the German ambassador to use his “influence with H[aushofer] so that he withdraws the lecture.” Haushofer was promptly summoned by the ambassador. His participation in the gathering was allowed solely because he agreed to shorten the lecture to a mere five-minute speech and cut the disputed passages.Footnote 40
In Haushofer's view, the speech played only a secondary role, however. The eighth Volta Congress became a reference point in Haushoferian rhetoric as the last meaningful gathering of European scholars before the war. Moreover, Haushofer saw a close connection between the conference in Rome and the Munich Agreement, which he considered as stepping stones for developing a new German foreign policy. Whilst the Munich Agreement fulfilled most of the Pan-Germanist aspirations of the National Socialist regime, the Volta Congress—where even some British panelists agreed with the necessity of Germany's return to Africa as a colonial power—offered the opportunity to solve the supposed lack of living space.Footnote 41
Haushofer lost no time in trying to convince the German leadership that this was the right path to follow. After the Volta Congress, he went with his wife to Lerici in Liguria, to spend ten days with Countess Carnevale-Braida and Baron Ricciardi. Then, he returned to Germany, and on November 8 was invited by Rudolf Hess to be godfather at the Namenweihe of his first-born, Wolf-Rüdiger. Adolf Hitler was also there. Karl Haushofer took the initiative and spoke to the führer regarding three questions. First, he criticized Hitler's warmongering speech at Saarbrücken, because renewed threats to Britain undermined the appeasement policy and raised negative feelings in other European countries. Second, referring to the Volta Congress, he guaranteed that it would be possible to reach some sort of agreement with the colonial powers and, hence, that Germany could reacquire its place in Africa. Finally, he told Hitler, in an enigmatic phrase “that a community of interest [with Italy] achieved by arduous labor need not in any way signify a marriage of love.” Adolf Hitler listened to him without reply, and he did not permit another meeting with Haushofer ever again.Footnote 42
Becoming “Godfather” of the Geographical Consciousness of a Nation
The meeting with Hitler on 8 November 1938 demonstrated that the Haushofer's perennially scarce influence on German politics had further decreased. In a strict sense, the public diplomacy he exercised on the peninsula was limited to the years between 1934 and 1938. Nevertheless, six days after the Namenweihe of Wolf-Rüdiger Hess, a letter addressed to Karl Haushofer was posted in Italy that could potentially have opened new paths of action for the German geopolitician. The sender was Ernesto Massi, a young geographer from Trieste. He announced to the “father” of the ZfG that January 1939 would see the publication of a new geopolitical monthly in Italy, Geopolitica.Footnote 43 The editors were to be Massi and Giorgio Roletto, full professor of economic and political geography at the University of Trieste. The journal had the patronage of Giuseppe Bottai, minister of National Education.
The relationship between Haushofer and Geopolitica—as more generally between Germany and Italy at a geopolitical level—is disputed. After the war, Geopolitica was seen merely as an uncritical transfer of “Nazi geopolitics” into Italy, connected to the growing nazification of the Italian regime in the late 1930s. More recently, during the last two decades of the twentieth century, scholars strongly rejected this interpretation, and stressed the more or less complete autonomy of Italy from German geopolitics. This change of paradigm was probably due to the rebirth of an Italian geopolitical school, and the perceived need to emancipate the discipline (above all its Italian version) from the awkward heritage of its Haushoferian (i.e., National Socialist) roots.Footnote 44 Neither interpretation is totally convincing, however. Generally speaking, Geopolitica was a typical example of that “selective transfer” described by Arnd Bauerkämper, which allowed fascist movements to appropriate foreign doctrines and policies without questioning the alleged superiority of their own national traditions. From this point of view, Geopolitica represented both an adoption of the German model of geopolitics—as attested by the close collaboration between Haushofer and Italian geopoliticians—and an autonomous development of Italian geography—which fell within the rethinking of Italian culture that Bottai promoted in order not to lose ground to National Socialism.Footnote 45
In addition, the relations between German and Italian geopolitics were complicated by the fact that geopolitics was not a “neutral” scholarly undertaking but rather served as the “geographical consciousness” of a nation: a rationalization of political practices as far as they concerned territorial policies or expansionism. Based as it was in the 1930s on a social Darwinist worldview, geopolitics aimed to make national leaders conscious of the opportunities, risks, and essential needs derived from inhabiting a certain geographical position and from the interaction between that position and those of other states. Considering German-Italian relations, geographical problems were certainly not lacking. Not only did the Italian possession of South Tyrol give rise to questions of national pride on both sides, but there was also a question of hegemony in the Danube region, which Rome explicitly claimed, yet where a German presence increasingly developed after the Anschluss. On the other hand, both Fascist and National Socialist foreign policy aimed at a radical change in the world balance of power, one that relied on geopolitical assumptions (i.e., a lack of living space, the spatial theory of Großraum) and could be achieved only through mutual collaboration. Just as the two regimes competed and collaborated, so too did the two nations’ geopolitics struggle to defend each one's respective national interests whilst pursuing the same global goals.
The tension between a need for international cooperation and ultranationalistic rivalry is the key element for understanding the ambiguities that characterized Haushofer's relations with the Italian geopoliticians. The first recorded contact between Haushofer and Ernesto Massi is dated August 1933. Massi took the initiative, contacting Haushofer probably out of a youthful fascination for geopolitics and in order to gain international recognition for his first steps as a scholar. He presented himself as the leading representative of the “young” Italian geopolitics, proposing an academic collaboration between the University of Trieste and the University of Munich, publicizing every critique he wrote about Haushofer's works or those of his colleagues and volunteering to draft some contribution about Italy for the ZfG. Haushofer, however, seemed to pay little attention to his proposals for collaboration. From 1937, Haushofer was principally interested in Massi's role in the Fascist Colonial Institute and attempted to gain Massi's support for organizing a tour of inspection by German geopoliticians of Italian East Africa.Footnote 46
Focusing on the first phase of contacts with Massi, it is important to note that Haushofer never suggested a personal encounter with the geographer despite both the manifold occasions offered by Haushofer's visits to the peninsula and Massi's explicit invitations to initiate collaboration between German and Italian geopoliticians. Haushofer did not seem particularly willing to pursue closer links with Ernesto Massi. His main goal was the journey to Italian East Africa, whose aim was to study the developments in the colonization of Ethiopia. In October 1938, he appealed again to the Italian geographer, taking advantage of a casual meeting with Carlo Emilio Ferri, Massi's head of faculty, who was a guest on the estate of Mara Carnevale-Braida. Massi responded on November 14. The Italian geographer acknowledged the impossibility of organizing a visit to East Africa for the German geopoliticians, but hoped for a better outcome in the future because, despite the initial disinterest of both scholars and political authorities, the “sympathy for geopolitics is constantly growing also in Italy.” Indeed, the main news in Massi's letter was the launch of Geopolitica.Footnote 47
Haushofer's November 23 reaction to Massi's letter is most interesting; above all, it demonstrates a sharp change in tone and attitude towards the Italian geographer. Haushofer proposed that Massi publish a work on Italian military geography in Germany, and that he organize a series of conferences for which Haushofer promised a “qualified and grateful public audience.” Haushofer additionally offered to publish an article by Massi on the Italian Empire in the ZfG and agreed to meet with Massi as well, suggesting as the next suitable occasion a lecture he would give in Milan in the second half of March 1939 at Ferri's invitation. Furthermore, Haushofer accepted the invitation to publish a short essay in the first issue of Geopolitica. He concluded his letter stating, “of course, such geopolitical understanding north and south of the Alps will develop as an efficient instrument of long-lasting and forward-looking Axis politics.”Footnote 48 The teacher-disciple rapport made way for an open collaboration, although the “father” of German geopolitics still perceived himself as more of a “godfather” to the Italian one.
A simultaneous correspondence between Haushofer and publisher Kurt Vowinckel is most revealing of Haushofer's ambiguous attitudes toward Geopolitica. Vowinckel offered Haushofer his congratulations for having maintained direct contact with the young geographer who would probably become the future leader of Italian geopolitical scholarship. The birth of Geopolitica, Vowinckel noted, represented an international recognition of German geopolitics, and thus it would indirectly strengthen the position of the ZfG within the Third Reich. Vowinckel, nonetheless, felt it necessary to add this caveat: “of course, we will find out for ourselves more clearly than before the efficacy of the weapons we have forged together over fifteen years.”Footnote 49 In other words, the development of an Italian geopolitics was perceived as both an opportunity and a threat for German geopoliticians, as well as for Germany's political aims. Haushofer shared Vowinckel's views, and in his letter to Berger of September 1943 he called Geopolitica “our Italian rival.”
In his first contribution to Geopolitica, Haushofer reflected on the problems inherent in the geopolitical collaboration between fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany, i.e., the need for international cooperation coexisting with ultranationalistic rivalry, which involved the prospect of a new European order as well. Indeed, the Pan-Europeanism of the Berlin-Rome Axis implied some sort of diarchy: either two separate empires that were inevitably destined to become rivals, or a single European empire in which both Berlin and Rome shared the leadership.
The article focused on a direct comparison between what Haushofer called the “spontaneous” geopolitics practiced by ancient Rome and their “disastrous” effects on building the German nation. Haushofer strongly stressed the thousand-year-old struggle between north and south, recalling that current German-Italian rivalry was above all the historical outcome of this supposed struggle. This argument was again but an erudite mask for dealing with a more prosaic question. German and Italian geopolitics had to make a choice between und (a new European order based on a single empire) or oder (two rival empires)—the same fatal decision that underlay the Axis between Berlin and Rome. To prefer “and” in place of “or” was therefore, geopolitically, an implicitly justified choice, because the two regimes had to collaborate to face their common enemies and realize their expansionistic plans. Haushofer omitted an explanation of how German and Italian geopoliticians could foster an Axis based on this “fatal conjunction.”Footnote 50
Examining some of Haushofer's other writings makes his opinions clearer about the new European order. The principle of undisputed authority, which lay at the foundation of fascism as well as National Socialism, rejected any horizontal diarchy, he noted. Yet at the same time, diarchy indeed gave shape to the Japanese imperial idea, whose history showed that it could survive and even progress in the form of a diarchy as long as that diarchy was vertical. If the Axis between Berlin and Rome should be the newest form of the historical complementarity of the two sides of the Alps, and, hence, the complementarity between German strength and Latin ars, it was obvious to Hauhofer that the Shōgun, the real political power, had to reside in Berlin, while the Tennō, or spiritual authority, had to find its natural seat in Rome. It was not by chance that Haushofer often invoked Dante's political ideas, and hence the medieval doctrine of the “two suns,” according to which imperial and papal authorities were equal but separate powers.Footnote 51 Without metaphors, he justified in geopolitical terms the pre-eminence of National Socialist Germany as the leading power in reshaping Europe, leaving to Italy a theoretical, ideological, or cultural primacy. It is interesting to note that even Italian intellectuals toyed with similar ideas when the tide of World War II turned against Italy and German military pre-eminence became undisputed.Footnote 52
Of course, Haushofer never made this “division of labor” explicit within the Axis in 1939 or in 1940, whether in the pages of Geopolitica or elsewhere. The problem of the Nazi-Fascist new European order was perceived and interpreted as connected to the imperial idea even by Italian geopoliticians. For instance, when dealing with the concept of living space in 1941, one of the most prolific contributors to Geopolitica wrote, “We may consider such living space (presumably distributed between Italy and Germany in the coming Eurafrican system) as the union of two Axis imperialisms or, if we consider the Axis conceptually and ideologically, as a single thing, but simultaneously one imperialism, which (just as in the time of the Roman and Holy Roman Empires) aims at an ordinatio ad unum [subordination to the one] of different nationalities.”Footnote 53 All things considered, the rivalry between German and Italian geopolitics revolved around the new order that fascism intended to give to post-WWII Europe. Hence the main issue at stake was the balance of power in an ideological system that exalted hierarchy as the cornerstone of a new model of society. German and Italian geopolitics shared the same cultural premises, the same theoretical structures, and the same political values. Precisely for that reason, they had to compete and cooperate at the same time.
From this point of view, there was no contradiction in considering Italian geopoliticians “rivals” searching, at the same time, for active collaboration as long as the rivalry remained among fascisms and their mutual support was directed against the common enemy. The intensification of contacts after the launch of Geopolitica proved that both sides had the intention of tightening the bonds between their geopolitical schools. Haushofer and Massi met in April 1939, when the former held two conferences in Milan and Pavia focused on the geopolitics of the Anti-Comintern Pact. A synopsis of these conferences became Haushofer's second contribution to Geopolitica.Footnote 54 Shortly before the two conferences, Massi and Ferri attempted to set an official seal on the friendship between German and Italian geopoliticians, offering an honorary university degree to Rudolf Hess via Haushofer in recognition of his “understanding of geopolitics.”Footnote 55 Moreover, Haushofer had some opportunities to be in contact with Roletto and, during the war, with the young geopolitician Lodovico Magugliani as well.Footnote 56 Yet these relationship are not the best means of evaluating the degree of collaboration between the Italian and German schools of geopolitics; for insight on that subject, we should observe the relations of the Italian school to the war.
From the outbreak of the conflict in September 1939, Italian geopoliticians vigorously supported the German war effort. They defended the stance of Mussolini's government and nonbelligerency, stressing, however, that this stance represented not neutrality, but armed waiting. Despite the apathy and ill-concealed anti-Germanism of Italian public opinion, geopoliticians uncritically embraced the cause of the “war of the Axis,” adopting warmongering themes before Italy's entry into the conflict. Even reading between the lines, it is not possible to find any hint of differentiation or skepticism, values otherwise widespread among Italian intellectuals. Geopolitica, therefore, positioned itself on the fringe of fascist propaganda, the small part that actively encouraged fighting side-by-side with National Socialist Germany, endorsing Italian involvement in the conflict by means of “scientific” arguments and promises of future expansion. In May 1940, an anonymous article (probably written by Massi) justified a war of conquest waged by the Axis powers as necessary for “geopolitical independence,” the third phase of a process that had begun with national unification. These were not empty words. Immediately after the Italian declaration of war on France and Britain on 12 June 1940, Massi wrote an inspired letter to Haushofer, announcing his intention to volunteer and stating his complete acceptance of the geopolitical aims of the conflict.Footnote 57 Massi enlisted in 1941 and was sent to the Eastern Front.
Relations between Haushofer and Italian geopoliticians offer a significant case study for understanding the “ambivalence” of Haushoferian activities in Italy. The ambiguous enmeshing of rivalry and collaboration between two geopolitical schools, the Italian and the German, no less so than between the two regimes, was closely related to the ideological basis they shared, mirroring the opposing initiatives aimed at national primacy and international ambitions to forge a new European order under the aegis of an imperial idea. Fostering the development of Italian geopolitics, Karl Haushofer was probably convinced that, with Massi and Geopolitica, he was dealing with the unofficial voice of fascist foreign policy.Footnote 58 Nonetheless, and despite this misunderstanding, he promoted the dissemination of his own ideas, ways of thinking, interpretative categories, and ideological premises, as well as the political aims intrinsic to his approach. The blind acceptance of the “war of the Axis” by Italian geopoliticians reveals the success of the collaboration between German and Italian geopolitical schools. Despite all the rivalries, Geopolitica became not only a herald of the Berlin-Rome Axis, but also the most effective support for Haushofer's activities in Italy in the early 1940s.
On War and Censorship: Haushofer as “Victim” of German-Italian Cultural Policy?
In order to understand the development of Haushofer's cultural diplomacy in wartime, it is necessary to follow events from the summer of 1939. Two in particular touched the geopolitician's life, one directly, the other indirectly: the seizure of the second edition of his work Grenzen and the so-called South Tyrol Option Agreement between Italy and Germany.Footnote 59 As has been seen, from 1934 on, the Italian regime became familiar with the figure and role of Haushofer, and although different judgments were expressed by officials from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Popular Culture, critical views clearly predominated. Criticism stemmed particularly from the suspicion that Haushofer was a semiofficial voice for the true political aims of the Nazi regime.
On 23 November 1938, Italy and Germany signed the well-known Cultural Agreement, by which the contracting parties committed themselves to remove from the market any publications judged by either party to be detrimental to its honor or interests. After signing the agreement, the Fascist regime began an in-depth examination of works printed in Germany, amongst which were books by Haushofer and his collaborators.Footnote 60 At the beginning of 1939, Mussolini became aware of the newly printed second edition of Grenzen. The work was immediately delivered to Oscar Randi, an official reviewer of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who produced a severe review, stressing that Haushofer had made statements about the borders in South Tyrol that were in absolute opposition to Hitler's solemn promises not to touch them.Footnote 61
The reaction was fierce. The Minister of Popular Culture Alfieri wrote directly to Goebbels demanding the immediate seizure of the book, quoting the exact passages that conflicted with the Reich's official positions. Goebbels, after consultation with Hess, answered that Grenzen was only a reprint of a 1929 work. Italian authorities responded that the request to seize the book had come directly from Mussolini. The Nazi government had no choice but to comply with the request. This news reached Haushofer in mid-July, at a moment of concern for him regarding the “eradication of Germanism” in South Tyrol through the so-called Option Agreement, according to which the German minority had to choose between emigrating in Germany or being forcibly Italianized. In vain, he and Kurt Vowinckel attempted to persuade German and Italian authorities to reconsider their decision, offering to change some and remove other controversial passages. They mobilized every contact they had on the peninsula, but neither Gabetti, signatory to the Cultural Agreement on the Italian side, nor the entire German Embassy in Rome succeeded in helping Haushofer. Geopolitica published a eulogistic critique of Grenzen, stressing that the work was a reprint and that the changes concerned more the form than the content. Geopolitica emphasized the seriousness of the work and its author, as well as the “calm and peaceful development” of its reasoning. Above all, Geopolitica compared Grenzen with Ancel's Géographie des frontières, aiming to arouse the Fascist regime's anti-French feelings. Italian authorities remained firm in their decision nonetheless.Footnote 62
The banning of Grenzen and the futile efforts to prevent it from being banned represented a serious blow to Haushofer, one that cost him a public decoration from Galeazzo Ciano. The simultaneous ordeal of the South Tyroleans, forced to leave their homes or be Italianized, soured Haushofer's attitude toward the Italians and the “new Roman imperialism.” In a letter to Hess dated January 1940, Haushofer affirmed that he no longer believed in the promises of “our Roman playmate” regarding South Tyrol. One year later, he spoke much more clearly with another correspondent: “if we had really had people on the other side of the Alps with a gallant and honorable inner nature, then the time for the great gesture [the restitution of South Tyrol] would have come. But it is now more than two and a half millennia that the city on the Tiber has been accustomed to baking lies in bricks, then later carving them in marble.” Haushofer awaited a “time of justice” whose “wheels,” he comforted himself, “grind slowly.”Footnote 63 Karl Haushofer's grudge had become a cry for vengeance.
During the early 1940s, Haushofer's change of opinion remained restricted to his private correspondence. At the same time, however, during the period of Italian nonbelligerence he had indirectly helped foster Italy's entrance into the war. In September 1939, Haushofer wrote a list of “Germanophile personalities” for the Foreign Office abroad, in which he brought together many contacts from the network he had built up in Italy over the previous decade.Footnote 64 Between February and March 1940, when his wife traveled to Rome, he gave her the duty of fulfilling several important tasks. Some of these concerned the seizure of Grenzen. Others had to do with the current political situation—for instance, a talk with Massi that focused on unspecified “geopolitical issues,” or a meeting with Gentile, in which they discussed the causes of the German aggression against Poland and alleged Polish atrocities against the German minority. In spring 1941, Haushofer was invited to hold another conference at IsMEO. He was hesitant to accept, “in part because of personal and in part because of political reasons.”Footnote 65 Eventually he did.
His last stay in Rome between March 5 and 18, 1941, mirrored the changes in the political and military balance among the Axis powers in favor of National Socialist Germany. The man whose work had been officially condemned less than two years previously was now seen as a representative of the victorious Nazi regime and awarded many honors, while the Ministry of the Interior organized an official visit to the reclaimed lands south of the capital and the costal defenses between Rome and Cape Circeo. Haushofer met old acquaintances, such as Gabetti and Ricciardi, with whom he discussed the question of Grenzen and other “political issues.” In addition, he introduced Ricciardi to the embassy counselor Bruno Stiller, fostering a relationship that continued in the following months. He also got to know the famous Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci. One of the main outcomes of this journey was the strengthening of German-Italian collaboration in the field of Japanology. There was an exchange of publications with local scholars, and IsMEO asked him for a list of German orientalists who might collaborate with the institute or speak at a future conference. Finally, Haushofer was invited to attend other meetings on the geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean in the winter of 1941–1942, and he, meanwhile, attempted to organize a series of lectures in Germany for Tucci. In more general terms, Haushofer noted a “pleasing atmosphere of cultural-political closeness between Germany and Italy,” because Italian military failures had increased a sense of reliance on Italy's German allies and heightened the German leadership's prestige in politics as well as culture. In his final report on the journey sent to the German authorities on March 22, he advised them to avoid displaying a sense of superiority in “ways too clear and offensive.”Footnote 66
The text of his speech at IsMEO contains interesting hints that aid in understanding the further development of Hauhofer's thinking about German-Italian cooperation. Theoretically, the speech had nothing to do with the Western powers. Its topic was “The development of the Japanese imperial idea,” but as noted, the imperial idea played a major role in defining the Axis and its political aims. At the IsMEO conference, Haushofer stressed the “bi-cellular” nature of the Japanese empire, where the southern regions around the inner sea coexisted with the northern “continental” cell of Kamigata. He affirmed the complementarity of these regions, the interaction of which had shaped Japanese development and ways of expansion. The comparison between European and Japanese imperial ideas was more negative than had been the case in 1937. Choosing the same examples he used on that occasion, Haushofer now saw parallelisms of intent, but radical differences in results. The Japanese imperial idea succeeded because it had been able to blend “very different racial flows […] into an almost perfect unity of styles, culture, and customs.”Footnote 67 Between the lines, and mutatis mutandis, the new order of the Axis had to reach a similar synthesis between its “cells” if it wished to bring about a renewal of the European imperial idea.
Despite a lack of unequivocal evidence, it is possible that Karl Haushofer at this time saw the Axis through rather less rose-tinted spectacles. If in the autumn of 1938 he already considered the Axis a mere “community of interest,” by spring 1941 new reasons for disappointment had emerged. On the one hand, the ban of Grenzen and the Option Agreement had profoundly changed his opinion of Italians. On the other, the persistence of an Italian ultranationalism in theoretical conditions of parity with Germany prevented the “harmonious” unifying of Europe (i.e., the realization of the imperial idea) under the flag of the triumphant German armies. This conclusion is partially confirmed by Haushofer's reaction to the events of summer 1943 (i.e., to the sudden fall of fascism and the German occupation of Italy). His September 1943 letter to Berger was the first hint of renewed interest in Italian matters. During the following months, Haushofer began to draft a manuscript. The theme was “Italy as a problem of political and military leadership,”Footnote 68 delivered to the Nazi censors in April 1944.
Between erudite digressions on the main features of the Italian landscape and overextended reconstructions of well-known military campaigns from the battle of Fornovo (1495) to the Risorgimento, Haushofer wrote his last words on his experiences in Italy and the ending of the Axis. He described Italy as a “land of treachery,” where the concept of loyalty was unknown and the epitome of this national character was the House of Savoy—“renowned as disloyal” since the age of Napoleon. Not mincing words, Haushofer compared the Italian armistice with the Allies to the infamous “stab-in-the-back” of 1918, adding that this “new treason” should not surprise those who knew the Italians, because treachery had been the guiding light of Italian history since the sunset of the Roman Empire. Moreover, he wrote, “during the honeymoon of the Axis relationship, the author received from good friends of Italian-German collaboration (which also existed over there) the warning that a successful community of interest happily achieved should not be confused with a marriage of love.” In other words, he acknowledged that one or more of his Italian acquaintances had given him a significant warning about the feelings of the country towards Germany, and that this warning was the source of his “confession” to the führer in the fall of 1938.Footnote 69
“Italy as a problem of political and military leadership” was not only an accusation of Italian disloyalty, but also a call to arms for German readers. Drawing on his juvenile fascination with Felix Dahn and his work Ein Kampf um Rom, Haushofer praised the military performances of Germanic peoples on Italian soil from the invasion of the Goths onwards. For both internal and external reasons, the decadence of Italy was an inevitable phenomenon that had lasted for centuries; even the contours of the territory contributed to disunity and mutual treacheries. Fascism had eventually failed to prevent the “decay” of Italy, because it was not able to “renew completely” the country and people. Haushofer did not give any credence to Mussolini or to the fascists of the so-called Italian Social Republic. Mussolini was just a late Roman who had tried every means of reviving ancient splendor, while the republican fascists were incapable of amending the “characteristic weakness and infidelity” of the Italians. In fact, Germans should only have pity for “a military and culturally loyal minority.” Instead of attempting to keep the Axis alive, the Germans had to take upon themselves the duty of saving Italy (and Italian cultural heritage) from its current enemies as well as from its own inhabitants. They had to follow the steps of Nordic heroes such as Theoderic and Barbarossa, fighting the last struggle for Rome, the “millennial struggle […] for Italy, the garden of Europe, the Reich of tomorrow,” and thus realizing the “ultimate aim of the European imperial idea.”
Although Haushofer's words probably mirrored the opinions of many of his countrymen, the Nazi regime was not yet ready to throw off the mask of the “continuation of the Axis.” Too many interests were at stake, while the condition of “occupied ally” justified the pre-eminence of the Foreign Office and the search for local approval.Footnote 70 Consequently, Foreign Office censors did not permit publication, and so Haushofer's most uncompromising accusation against Italy remained buried in the archives.
Conclusion: A Neglected éminence grise of the Berlin-Rome Axis
The failure to publish his manuscript on Italy may seem like the end of Haushofer's cultural policy. The circle that began with the promotion of the German-Italian alliance in the early 1930s closed with an incitement to Germans to turn the occupation into a sort of conquest—that is, to make manifest the imperial idea that underlay the Axis itself. Both personal and structural reasons contributed to bringing about this seemingly paradoxical outcome. The Option Agreement and the ban of Grenzen undoubtedly facilitated Haushofer's disaffection with a balanced German-Italian alliance, while identification of the Axis with the European imperial idea, the pre-eminence of the principle of hierarchy, and the social Darwinist worldview were all theoretical elements that could justify a “unification of command” in the new Europe.
To consider only the personal side of this significant transformation, Haushofer's attitude followed a particular process, from initial antagonism to understanding, and from seeking a “marriage of love” to a feeling of betrayal. The judgment of Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, who defined Haushofer's relations with Italy as “very ambivalent,” may be turned on its head. The ambivalences Jacobsen observed (concerns about South Tyrol, support for the campaign in Ethiopia, and sympathy with Mussolini but not with Italy as such) were shared by several National Socialists, and ultimately these were the main issues that underlaid tensions within the Axis. From this point of view, Haushofer's involvement in German-Italian cultural relations synthesizes many “ambiguities” of the Axis in the career and experience of a single person.
Speaking structurally, Haushofer's experiences show how collaboration between ultranationalisms was not only difficult to institutionalize, but also to stabilize in positive forms, not because of the lack of a well-defined ideology behind the Axis, but rather due to fundamental elements of this ideology.Footnote 71 Generally speaking, sources of ideological contention should be considered one of the most important aspects to emerge from a reconstruction of Haushofer's ten-year affair with Italy.
Many other questions might be engaged and at least deserve mention here. Haushofer's cultural diplomacy was a pioneering activity both from a practical and theoretical point of view. With no official support, he opened various channels through informal contacts. He developed coherent arguments to bind the Axis to the European imperial idea, and hence to a Pan-Europeanism articulated on the precedent of the Holy Roman Empire, themes adopted by official propaganda only in the late 1930s and extended during the war.Footnote 72 The “pioneer” phase should not be limited to the years 1934 and 1935, for with the increase of cultural-political exchanges in 1937, some of his activities indeed returned to the framework of official collaboration between the Axis powers (e.g., on colonial questions), but others opened new fields of interconnection, such as the development of a common Japanological discourse between German and Italian orientalists, which precociously demonstrated several propagandist themes that fascist officials were to elaborate further in later years.Footnote 73
The “pioneering” character of his activity makes it difficult to identify the concrete outcomes of Haushofer's cultural diplomacy. As far as is known, the main successes were in passing confidential information about feelings within the Axis during the meeting with Hitler in November 1938 and in the dissemination of his geopolitical ideas to Italy in the following year, when Geopolitica became “an efficient instrument of long-lasting and forward-looking Axis politics.” It is also possible that the information passed to Hess between 1934 and 1937 had some effect on influencing German official politics. However, the significance of Haushofer's cultural diplomacy cannot be limited to its potential achievements.
The reconstruction of these activities inevitably leads to reflections on the “cultural Axis” and its development. First, it encourages a focus on the essential, but still scarcely known, period in which the German-Italian alliance was conceived, when, although rivalries seemed to overwhelm affinities, the seeds of the Axis were planted. Second, it suggests that the challenges that purely national questions posed (such as that of the German minority, or the incompatibility between “new-Roman imperialism” and Pan-Germanism) need to be considered seriously in order to understand the potential obstacles to development of transnational relations between ultranationalist regimes. The development and rancorous ending of Haushofer's relationship with Italy suggests, moreover, that a less black-and-white reconsideration of German-Italian cultural politics be made, with the idea that there was neither a solid “cultural Axis” nor a fierce cultural struggle, but rather a place where collaboration and rivalry coexisted, and one could turn into the other with comparative ease as political or even personal conditions changed. Finally, Haushofer's case study provides a glimpse into a completely neglected field of entanglement between Fascism and National Socialism: Japanology, which was a consubstantial element of the “cultural Axis,” as well as a perspective for seeing the dialectical relationship between fascist Pan-Europeanism and extra-European actors. The suggestions in the preceding pages may, it is hoped, represent a basis for future research on these themes.
