Wilhelmine Geopolitics
The origins of much of the policy later advocated by geopoliticians and implemented by the National Socialists would come out of the pre–World War I German imperial ambitions. They crafted the idea of Mitteleuropa which would provide the foundation for later conceptions of lebensraum and economic domination which would later inform geopolitician's theories on pan-regions.
The accession of Wilhelm II to power released much of the German desire for "a place in the sun", demanding a policy of annexation to increase Germany's resources and prestige in Europe. Having come late to proper nationhood, Germany perceived itself as in a vulnerable position compared to the older and more established colonial nation-states. An anti-liberal and anti-socialist campaign was led to mobilize the petty bourgeois, those who lost the most to industrialization's fluctuations. This movement was linked to anti-Semitism, first on a religious basis, then racial, then fused into a new racial nationalism. The effort to create a Central European customs union was justified as an attempt to save German culture from the British, American, Russian and possibly Chinese domination. Not simply economic in motivation, it was had a cultural, will to power dimension. Wilhelm himself saw Germany's struggle as a conflict for existence against the races that feared German growth. He fully expected the "Anglo-Saxons" to side with the "Gauls and Slavs" in what he thought would be the last great war between the "Teuton and the Slav." He saw no hope in diplomacy—this struggle was not a question of politics but of race. The racial mobilization of the petty bourgeois into a racially nationalist movement for expansionism, the conception of international politics as a struggle to save racial culture and values, and Germany's racial conflict being against the Slavs primarily, informed Germany's perception of its own place in Europe.
Germany's justification for seeking world power was based on being a young nation with high population growth, a low average national age, significant immigration and urban expansion. Germany was thus stirred to begin pushing for greater lebensraum and markets to accommodate their industrial expansion. Its borders were perceived to be too small to sustain its rapid growth, leading to a desire to split the entente that was encircling it and preventing expansion. The most prominent German academic thought, including that of Friedrich Ratzel, declared dead peaceful competition between European states. Not top-down influences on the population, the academics were serving more as mouthpieces for larger societal forces. Mitteleuropa emerged as a concept in an attempt to reassert German power in the European system, and in a sense undo the decision to fall under Prussia's small-Germany solution rather than Austro-Hungary's big-Germany plan. To secure Germany's place in Europe, many German people viewed World War I as simply defensive action against the victimization of encirclement and assault waged by the European Great Powers, pushing until the end for safeguards and guarantees for the future of the German Empire.
German nationalist sentiments were roused in the pre–World War I years by books like General Friedrich von Bernhardi's Deutschland und der nächste Krieg clamoring for the elimination of France, the establishment of a Central European federation, and the assumption of world power through colonial acquisitions. The core of the Second Reich's program was to create a Mitteleuropa of economic domination under German hegemony safe from France and Russia. This would be augmented by colonies chiefly in Central Africa. Not only would fear of French and Russian power drive German imperialism but also growing American power was a further cause to unite Mitteleuropa under Germany, according to Walther Rathenau's 1912 report, augmented by the resources from Mittelafrika and Asia Minor after the disarmament of Britain.
Germany would display a consistent policy of annexation toward Mitteleuropa, attempting to establish a core consisting of a customs union with Austro-Hungary, to which smaller states would have to adhere. Conceived by Rathenau and Arthur von Gwinner, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg would later adopt it, followed by Hans Delbrück and Johannes Bell under the orders of the Chancellor. Mitteleuropa was pushed over the protests of the industrialists for essentially political reasons. Germany needed to be able to effectively compete with larger trading nations, so that this Austro-Hungarian Germany would not be dependent on imports, with the additional benefit that Germany would have a claim to successor status if Austro-Hungary were to disintegrate. This would allow Germany to move away from protectionism in their internal markets, toward aggression in the international markets, according to Delbrück. Further, German leaders had a desire to spread their values and cultural cohesion, in effect establishing something like the Anglo-Saxon world, whose culture was viewed as a more important force than their unrivalled fleet. What was essentially being pursued was autarky, free from dependence on imports, with political and cultural rather than economic goals.
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