Albrecht Haushofer

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Albrecht Georg Haushofer (January 7, 1903, Munich - April 23, 1945 Berlin) was a German geopolitician and professor of geopolitics and political geography at the University of Berlin between 1940 and 1944. He is the author of several tragedies in verse, and a representative of conservative resistance in Germany during World War II.

Born in 1903, he was one of two sons of General Prof. Dr. Karl Haushofer (1869 - 1946), a famous German geopolitician, and his half-Jewish wife Martha Mayer-Doss (1877 - 1946). His brother was Heinz Haushofer. Albrecht studied at Munich University under his father and alongside Rudolf Hess, who would later become Hitler's deputy. After Hess's imprisonment following the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 Albrecht was a frequent visitor to Landsberg Prison. Following graduation, Albrecht became Secretary General of Germany's Society for Geography, and later editor of the Periodical of the Society of Geography. In his official capacity he would travel the world, lecturing and gaining a wide experience of international affairs.

In 1931, he became Hess' advisor on foreign affairs, and despite his personal reservations about the intentions of the Nazi party, he acted as an advocate of German foreign policy across Europe throughout the 1930s.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Albrecht was involved in Hitler's attempts to negotiate peace with the French and British, acting as an intermediary. It has been speculated that Haushofer may have encouraged Hess's flight to Scotland, or that he may have been an unwitting accomplice in a British plot to use the prospect of peace with Britain to lull Hitler into a false sense of security and open up a second front against the Soviet Union.

Albrecht's fortunes declined following Hess's flight, as the course of the war turned against Germany and high ranking members of the Nazi party looked dissapprovingly upon his part-Jewish ancestry. Finding himself among those who concluded that the only way to prevent disaster befalling Germany was to remove Hitler and the Nazi party, Albrecht joined the 1944 bomb plot and was arrested by the Gestapo in December 1944 following the plot's failure.

In the Berlin-Moabit prison, he wrote the "Moabite Sonnets," which were not discovered until after his death. Haushofer was shot by an SS commando on April 23 1945 as Russian troops entered Berlin. His body, and those of other prisoners executed alongside him was discovered by his brother Heinz Haushofer on May 12 1945.

According to a story that former CIA analyst Ray McGovern tells [1], one of the sonnets, titled Schuld or "Guilt," was on his person at the time of his execution. The original and translation read as follows:

Schuld Guilt
...schuldig bin ich I am guilty,
Anders als Ihr denkt. But not in the way you think.
Ich musste früher meine Pflicht erkennen; I should have earlier recognized my duty;
Ich musste schärfer Unheil Unheil nennen; I should have more sharply called evil evil;
Mein Urteil habe ich zu lang gelenkt... I reined in my judgment too long.
Ich habe gewarnt, I did warn,
Aber nicht genug, und klar; But not enough, and clear;
Und heute weiß ich, was ich schuldig war. And today I know what I was guilty of.[2]

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[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ There is Such a Thing as "Too Late", antiwar.com, August 20, 2005
  2. ^ This line is a play of words with the meanings of "schuldig". Another reading of this phrase would be "what had been my obligation".