Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

THE UPROOTED AND DISINHERITED 319losses are concerned, there is no difference between attack and defense.In defending Verdun, we lost just as many men as the Germansattacking us. But the Germans had a chance of winning the war bytaking Verdun, while our only chance was not to lose it. . . . Hence:offensive, offensive, and again offensive! Defensive must in no case beregarded as the basic tactic. The best it can accomplish is to cause theadversary loss of time until the moment when we are enabled to attack. .. . With a handful of soldiers, with a few cannon and barracks, with anarmy such as we shall have in five years, split, disorganized, badlytrained, with mediocre cadres, nothing can be accomplished. We aredoomed to destruction. An undisciplined troop either lets itself be killedor flees. Our new army . . . will flee, it will be defeated by anybody. . .Hitler's learned friend, General and Professor Karl Haushofer, haddeveloped a new type of military science based on a division of theworld into great land and sea masses. Previously the power dominatingthe sea had dominated the world; today, however, Haushofer, himself apupil of Rudolf Kjellen, the Swedish geographer, taught that thiscondition had been reversed. Immediately after the World War he hadbeen of the opinion that the great battle fleets would gradually betransformed into 'scrap iron' by growing swarms of U-boats andairplanes. Both planes and submarines depended for their power on landbases from which they could not stay away for any protracted period.But that is not the chief reason for the rising importance of the mainlandin world politics. Through the development of the continental tradeeconomy, the great inner spaces have become 'less dependent on thecoast'; in modern world politics, domination of the production centers isdecisive, no longer domination of the trade routes.Haushofer took for granted the decline of the British Empire, basedon English domination of trade routes; all territorial relations, basedonly on trade and especially maritime relations, would soon be broken.This would first happen in Asia with its great land blocks of China andRussia, and Japan would not necessarily be the winner in the 'Eurasianspace catastrophe.' For Japan is also a power based on sea lanes; buttoday we stand, as Haushofer puts it, 'at the great turning-point in thefavorable position of the island