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Space and Polity

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Creating Genocidal Space: Geographers and the Discourse of Annihilation, 18801933

Sarah K. Danielsson
a a

Department of History, City University of New YorkQueensborough, 22205 56th Ave., Bayside, New York, NY, 11364, USA Version of record first published: 21 Apr 2009

To cite this article: Sarah K. Danielsson (2009): Creating Genocidal Space: Geographers and the Discourse of Annihilation, 18801933, Space and Polity, 13:1, 55-68 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562570902780944

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Space and Polity, Vol. 13, No. 1, 55 68, April 2009

Creating Genocidal Space: Geographers and the Discourse of Annihilation, 1880 1933

SARAH K. DANIELSSON
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[Paper rst received, March 2008; in nal form, December 2008]

Abstract. The connection between geography, geographers and the events of genocide needs to be explored further. This article provides an intellectual overview of the most prominent German geographical intellectual traditions in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, focusing on the work of Friedrich Ratzel and Ferdinand von Richthofen. It argues that this particular strand of geographical thought, including the invention of concepts such as lebensraum, provided powerful arguments for wholesale extermination and annihilation. The article points out that the close connection between imperial governments, their policies and geographers enabled the latter to play an important role inuencing imperial actions. Although there is evidence to suggest the connection between these geographical theories and the events of Nazi-occupied Europe, the more immediate connection is the genocide in German Southwest Africa in 1904 1905. The article concludes that this geographical discourse provided arguments that, under circumstances of a struggle for geographical space, whole populations must be eradicated i.e. in contrast to the euphemistic term lebensraum (living space), the geographic thinkers were in reality talking about a genocidal space. The name of geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844 1904) is familiar to students of genocide. His popularisation of the Lebensraum concept ensured his infamy in the historical scholarship of early 20th century Europe. The German NationalSocialist regime (1933 1945) had used the Lebensraum concept as a rationale for their eastern European expansion and the genocidal actions it entailed. The use of Ratzels geographical notion cast a shadow on the political geography he pioneered in the very late 19th century. However, it is notoriously difcult to prove the inuence of specic ideas, especially if the author of those ideas is no longer alive when the ideas are used to justify acts of extreme violence, as in the case of Nazi Germany. Among scholars, the opinions on the role of Ratzels concept of Lebensraum range from those who say Ratzel was the architect of the National-Socialist idea, to those who say that the Nazi usage of the term was a gross perversion of Ratzels concept.
Sarah K. Danielsson is in the Department of History, City University of New YorkQueensborough, 222 05 56th Ave., Bayside, NY 11364, New York, USA. E-mail: SDanielsson@qcc.cuny.edu
1356-2576 Print/1470-1235 Online/09/010055-14 # 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13562570902780944

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The fear of having Ratzels intellectual contribution called a precursor to National-Socialist ideology has prompted some biographers of Ratzel to argue that his theories were simply scientic concepts, which were later hijacked by politicians who used them for purposes Ratzel never intended (Hunter, 1983). The gap in time between Ratzels work in the 1890s through the early 1900s and the rise to power of the Nazi regime in 1933 has been partly used as evidence for this claim. The lack of immediate intellectual genealogy enabled scholars to claim that the Nazis misinterpreted Ratzel. Among the rst to make this argument was Carl Troll, geography professor at Bonn, who wrote in 1949 about the state of geography in Germany during the Nazi years. He made a predictable distinction between the pre-1933 and the 1933 45 condition for the discipline in Germany. Arguing that the Nazi regime held the profession prisoner, Troll softened the Lebensraum concept considerably compared with Ratzels initial version. He argued that the concept was intended to denote what he called habitat, and not the expanding space for a Volk that Ratzel had clearly articulated.1 Many of the reasons for this kind of apologia are obvious and need not be rehearsed here. One reason that should stand out is the fact that the widespread inuence of Ratzels geographical theory on the discipline of geography in Germany and abroad threatened to taint a large segment of the profession. The easiest way to avoid this connection was to distance Ratzel from Nazi ideology, place emphasis on obvious National-Socialist geographers such as Karl Haushofer and thereby divert attention from the Ratzelian concept. However, a careful study of the evolution of geographical thought in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century reveals that the intellectual history was much more complex. More accurately, the geographical inuence on National Socialism came from a long tradition of geographical thought that culminated in the ideas of Ratzels student Rudolf Kjellen and his invention of geopolitik. Yet this fact does not absolve the Ratzelian school of thought. As it turns out, Friedrich Ratzel together with his contemporary Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833 1905) dominated the German geographical community in the 1880s and 1890s and generated an intellectual discourse that directly inuenced one genocide (1904 1905) and fostered students whose work directly inuenced another (1941 1945). Their work built on earlier geographical and ethnographic studies within the German scholarship, but their innovative geographical approach was to investigate the human component of geography. Von Richthofen and Ratzel would move German and international geography towards incorporating what they called the study of humanity as an integral part of geographical study. They were the main players in an intellectual history that included diffusion theory, which formed the basis for justifying imperialism as a natural phenomenon. Among other aspects, the intellectual history provided a combination of Darwinian science and racial theory that lker as a threat; it was a geographical theory that nordirectly labelled groups of Vo malised the annihilation of peoples. This article provides an overview of the intellectual historyas a basis for a broader study as well as a brief discussion of the impact of the geographical thoughts in the early 20th century. Genocide and Geography The concept of genocide, originally developed by Raphael Lemkin in the 1940s, has undergone numerous redenitions in the past half-century. After a slow

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start following the UN genocide convention, genocide studies as a separate category of historical analysis gained momentum in the 1980s. Unfortunately, the confusion surrounding the meaning of the concept has only increased with that momentum, reaching a point where there is a great deal of disagreement over what is meant by the termpractically no two scholars agree on its meaning (Kiernan, 2007; Levene, 2008; Mann, 2005; Semelin, 2007; Weitz, 2003; among many others). This is not the space for a critique and redenition of the concept. As a groundwork for my study of geographers, my focus will be on the few basic principles that identify genocide. What is thoroughly beyond dispute is the fact that genocide involves the killing of humans en masse, in some form or anothera group of humans representing certain constructed identities are the target of that mass killing (Huttenbach, 1988). In other words, the action we associate with genocide is the act of killing, or annihilation, of the individuals associated with a specic constructed identity. A fundamental part of the process leading up to genocide involves the identication, or identity formation, of a group perceived as distinct from other, equally constructed, groups (perpetrator groups included). Geographers clearly participated in this process of identity formation and construction but once that was accomplished they also played a major role in arguing that the group stood in the way of, or threatened the favoured groupespecially in genocidal acts committed under the cloak of colonialism and imperialism. It is important to take note, then, that genocide, as a term used to describe a distinct historical phenomenon ultimately invokes the attempt, not only to kill a part or eradicate the identity itself, but annihilate the physical beings associated with that identity. The convoluted use of culturecide as synonymous with genocide reies a dangerous essentialisation of cultural attributes. Although the purposeful eradication of cultural practices accompanies genocide, it is not in itself sufcient to be called genocide. In fact, it is when culture is essentialised, or racialised, that its eradication spells the annihilation of the human beings associated with that culture. An important part of the intellectual history under consideration here is the argument that cultural expressions are the combined result of race and geographyan argument that essentialised culture in dangerous ways. Something that has to be vigorously researched relating to each genocidal event is the rationale for killing. It is important to point out that there is no uniform, single cause for genocide; even within perpetrator groups, motives are dependent on varying social, economic or political factors. Historically, it is a real concern when thinkers and theoreticians can escape culpability because they were simply writing, not actually giving orders or pulling triggers. Yet, considering the importance placed on scholars in general in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as public educators, and especially scientists in creating public opinion, the involvement cannot be exaggerated. In this case, we will look at an intellectual history that involved academics and scientists who advocated extermination for the sake of space. Using a language of struggle for resources, as well as tacit and explicit claims for extermination, German geographers provided the articulation of scientic reasons for physical annihilation for two genocides in the early 20th century. My topic on geographers, geographical theory and its impact on genocidal practices comes from an interest in the role of intellectuals in impacting political policy and their role in providing legitimisation and what we might call intellectual and scientic imprimatur and covering for especially genocidal regimes. I am also

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interested in the degree to which ideology and the intellectual work of scientists, humanists and social scientists are the originators/instigators of genocidal thinkingand not just the effect of the immediate social, political or economic considerations of the genocidal period. What historians have to ascertain, which this article attempts to help explain, is the relationship between the geographers arguments regarding land control and the treatment of the people that inhabited the geographical space. The role geographers played in the development of concepts of annihilation centres on the intellectual and academic discourses, the public policy discourses and the practical implications. The geographical arguments created genocidal space, both directly on the physical ground and guratively, as intellectual acceptance for genocide. Geographers created a physical designation for genocidal space, offering a scientic argument for genocide. Some questions are, how did an intellectual climate of accepting genocidal actions emerge in the German geographical community? How was the intellectual space for extermination articulated and practically carried out? The historical context for answering these questions is colonialism, imperialism and the shift towards New Imperialism in the second half of the 19th century. Recent scholarship has focused on the connection between genocide and colonialism or imperialism. There can be no doubt that, at the very least from the 1870s to the 1940s, European imperialism provided the immediate climate, both intellectually and practically, for extermination. Furthermore, geographers roles in the imperialist project are well-known and have been explored by several authors (Moses, 2008, among others). One of the central issues is geographers connectionss to the imperial regimes and the policy-making process. Much ink has been spilled in recent years on the connection between geography and politics, and specically the politics of empire. The role of geographers has been examined especially in the context of the British and American empiresconclusions being fairly uniform that the geographical work was highly politically charged, both in theory and in the eldwork (among countless others, see Driver, 2001; Livingstone, 1992). An Intellectual History of Annihilationist Discourse Nineteenth-century geographical work in the German language began with Humboldt and Ritter and ended with von Richthofen and Ratzel. From the 1850s onwards, study of German intellectual history reveals a development that started in Darwinian and racist science and culminated in the early 20th century in genocidal justication. The progression of thought is not unfamiliar, but the involvement of geographers has been only partially researched to date. During the second half of the 19th century, geographerssometimes called ethnographers and anthropologists as wellspent considerable time using both eldwork and theoretical ruminations to answer questions about the relationship between the study of humans and their geographical environment. One emerging perspective on humans and their geographical environment was that human activities were seen to follow natural laws, dictated by the geographical environment or innate racial qualities. In other words, it fatefully placed a scientic label on human societies, thereby normalising human actions such as imperialism. This was not simply Social-Darwinism, if by Social-Darwinism we mean the Spencerian notion. Instead, it was the use of Darwinian science viewing humans as a species and drawing conclusions similar to those made of

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other members of the animal kingdom. It was a view of humans as a species that had to adapt to its geographical environment, or perish. A central theme in the intellectual history was the categorisation and thereby active construction of identity. The common feature was the idea of race as a biological fact that determined the social and societal fate of a people. Very quickly, lker, racially dened, theories of conict between groups of people or Vo became a staple of German geographical thought. The theme soon emerged of a kind of struggle for existence perceived to take place between races. There was a whole intellectual discourse that posited the primitive races as both a danger and as a conundrum that had to be solved. One can perhaps best categorise the racial discussion as the perceived nature argument in a nature nurture axis. The nurture side of the argument would be provided by von Richthofen and Ratzel in the form of a discussion of the ideal actions of human societies in response to the geographical environment. What Ratzel and von Richthofen produced and furthered in their geographical work was a view of societies as living organisms. Their greatest contribution to the eld of geography in Germany, as well as internationally, was the melding of the physical reality of the earth with the political potential, or reality, of human life on that earth. Ratzel criticised Gobineaus and Chamberlains racial categories, but provided racial categories of his own (Ratzel, 1885 88). Both Ratzel and von Richthofen tied racial concepts to the environment. Using his understanding of the environment, for example, von Richthofen would argue in his lectures that white domination of tropical regions would soon be necessary. In one lecture, von Richthofen put forward the view that the tropical races had not been able to take advantage of the regions resources and that races of the temperate zones, as he put it, must take over for the sake of humanity, and added that the White man is needed to make the Black man work (von Richthofen, 1908, pp. 160 and 463). The devastating assumption that humans differed signicantly and could be divided into distinct groups was taken for granted, the questions only revolved around how different and in what ways. This basic assumption became the backbone of ethnographic and geographical work in the second half of the 19th century. In the middle of the century, Louis Agassiz had published his work on race that once again argued a polygenist division of humans into distinct species (Agassiz, 1850). It represented the most severe form of racial categoris des races humaine ation. Goubineau had published his study, Essai sur linegalite in four volumes which would turn out to be one of the most inuential studies on human difference. These studies among others seemed to set racial divisions as a solidied backdrop to the geographical studies of the day. When speaking of human groups, race became an accepted categorisation, even though what was meant by the term was under constant dispute. The involvement of geographers in this debate was immediate. Many geographers considered themselves particularly capable of proving how and why racial groups differed. However, it is important to note that these hierarchical divisions of humans were by no means uncontested. In the German context, the prominent geographer and ethnographer Theodor Waitz had published works that, through detailed study and empirical evidence, cast serious doubts on the scientic basis for the divisions of difference indicated by his contemporaries. Waitz assumed all along, with the ones he critiques, that race was something real, but in his own study and his investigation of racial theories, he concluded that the claims of psychological and intelligence difference could not be supported by evidence,

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nor could the claims about physiological difference. What Waitzs position reveals is that the intellectual trajectory on human difference in geographical thought from the 1850s onward was not inevitable. However, the belief in human essential difference was a prerequisite for arguing for extermination. Both von Richthofen and Ratzel would choose to ignore the contributions of Waitz and others like him and focus their attention on building theories of distinctive difference on their own. An important inuence on the geographical and ethnographic discourse between the 1850s and the 1880s was Adolf Bastian (18261905). Bastian discussed the geographical impacts on cultures and claimed a uniform and shared elemental structure at the base of every culture, but arguing that greatly differing cultural aspects had developed partly as a result of geography. The theory became standard interpretation for a few decades until Ratzel and von Richthofen began a modication. The deterministic nature of Bastians argument was highly problematic. Because of the connection claimed between biological factors and culture, the term culture in the German geographical discourse had been essentialised. This is a vital point because its inuence on German geography helped to provide the basis for culture-annihilation. For example, in Ratzels estimation, the contact between cultures always resulted in the destruction of some cultures, meaning the destruction of the social entity as a whole. It was in the context of this intellectual climate that the ideas of Ratzel and von Richthofen developed. The geographers Friedrich Ratzel (1844 1904) and Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833 1905) were contemporaries, although von Richthofen was a few years older. Von Richthofen was geology professor in Bonn and later became geography professor in Leipzig and Berlin. Ratzel spent time teaching at the High School in Karlsrule and then replaced von Richthofen in Leipzig when the latter got promoted to the chair in Berlin in 1886. Their geographical work, although conducted in separate spheres, were complementary and contributed greatly to the German eld of geographys groundbreaking status in political and human geography. By the time of their sudden deaths in 1904 (Ratzel) and 1905 (von Richthofen), the two had made their marks on geographical studies both abroad and in Germany. Whereas von Richthofen was the eminent physical geographer, Ratzel was the theoretician of political geography. Von Richthofen had travelled in the US and China, Ratzel had made a trip through the US and Mexico, but they were not explorers in any important sense of the term. The one with the most prominent intellectual pedigree was von Richthofen who had been trained by the famous geographer Carl Ritter. Ratzel had spent time in zoology before pursuing geography and he had worked as a journalist before he took his rst academic job. Von Richthofen had been largely responsible for putting German geography on the international map. He brought the Berlin Geographical Society from obscurity to a place of prominence in geographical circles and left perhaps his biggest mark as an educator of a generation of German geographers. Von Richthofen, who is credited with coining the term seidenstrasse (the silk road) in 1877, travelled in the US and east Asia and was primarily concerned with the physical characteristics of the land (von Richthofen, 1877 1912). His running commentary focused on the benet of resources and the usefulness of certain land and water areas for a people. The works on China, as well as his well-attended university lectures, had among other central themes the expansion of the German empire into these regions. He wanted further German imperial expansion in east Asianot,

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he said, for political reasons, but based on geographical concerns for the availability of resources. Von Richthofens work often referred to the local use of resourcesiron ore in China, for examplethat could come to benet the German empire (von Richthofen, 1898). Whereas Ratzel was concerned with agrarian exploitation, von Richthofen focused on natural resources. Von Richthofens tireless advocacy for the German empires future in Asia extended to his students whom he often encouraged to pursue geographical work in Asia for the benet of the German empire (von Richthofen, 1933). Von Richthofen argued that China should consider itself lucky to have the German empire colonising its border regions (von Richthofen, 1898, pp. 304 305). He believed that this was the only way that the Chinese could receive benet from their resources. He indicated often that he believed imperialism should be guided by geographical principles and that the need to expand land control was a necessary and natural progression of a nation. To his students, von Richthofen preached the virtues of empire: the needs of the race, arguing among many other things that the tropical zones had to be inhabited by what he called the temperate races because of human necessity. The resources were being wasted, according to von Richthofen, by the natives who could not appreciate them. He spent his life arguing for a greater German presence in the world, but he also made a signicant contribution to the German geographical discourse by arguing that the union of human and physical geography was necessary. At the time before von Richthofen gave his inaugural address in Leipzig in 1883, physical geography, was seen as scientic, whereas human geography, in general, was not. Von Richthofens inaugural address, however, stated clearly that unication of the two branches was the mission he set for his geographical work (Hartshorne, 1958, p. 105). The lecture set the tone for what was to come. Von Richthofens focus on available resources was not simply economic exploitation. One remarkable feature of von Richthofens view of colonisation and geography is that it challenges the perceived divide between a view of economic lites were known imperialism and emigrationist imperialism. The German e to argue the point of what policies to pursue based on a fundamental difference in ideology; in some cases, the division would be very strong. However, von Richthofen, who was in some senses in the economic imperialist camp, also argued for the agricultural and settler side of German imperialism. Von Richthofen saw expansion as a stewardship that fell to those nations who won the struggle for domination. It was a fair competitionhe would sometimes call it a friendly competitionbetween those who adapted to new circumstances and those who did not (von Richthofen, 1898, p. 310). Von Richthofens works were much more practical perspectives, compared with Ratzels more theoretical arguments. Yet there can be no doubt that the two followed a similar fundamental trajectory in their arguments. The bottom line was a perspective on human societies as something uid and dynamicor, to use Ratzels term, organic. The signicance of von Richthofens ideas can be measured partly through his students, who often pursued his pet projects (Danielsson, 2005). Von Richthofens student Eduard Hahn (1856 1928) had made a major impact on the views of cultural progress by arguing that the emergence of plough agriculture was central for the development of civilisation (Hahn, 1896). Signicantly for how the native populations in the German colony in Southwest Africa were viewed, Hahn argued that human societies were degenerate if they focused on animal

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breeding and grazing. He saw this form of economy as a sign that the human development was regressing instead of progressing. Ratzel would also emphasise this view of agricultural societies. The one who most clearly stated the humanity and geography connection was Friedrich Ratzel. There is a difference between Ratzels earlier and later writings, representing the evolution of his thoughts. Nevertheless, one recurring theme of the growth of states in a geographical space gured throughout his writing and was honed along the way. One constant from his years spent travelling in the lker would naturally be US was that he maintained that some races or vo destroyed in the struggle between cultures. It started in Ratzels observations in the US and Mexico in the mid 1870s. Here, he commented on the retreating Native Americans and the dilemma of the number of Negros in the US and the necessary decline of primitive economies. He wrote of Europeans nding in North America space to live at the expense of others (Ratzel, 1877 1880). These ideas followed him throughout his career, and grew into the Lebensraum concept. Ratzel argued that the discipline of geography must study humans as an integral part of its focus and that the natural science part of geography must always be related to human activities. He interpreted this to mean that the study of human diffusion across the globe should take central stage (Ratzel, 1882 91). However, this was only the rst and fundamental step in Ratzels imperialist agenda. Friedrich Ratzel published a series of inuential books and articles, such as lkerkunde Politische Geographie (1897), Anthropogeographie (1882 1891) and the Vo (1885 1888) and put forward both racial theory and his most famous ideas of a link between Boden (territory/land) and Staat (state). Staat meant any grouping of people, from tribes to what he called great powers. He argued repeatedly that society can only be understood through consideration of the external surroundings of a race. Lebensraum was articulated by Ratzel as a race land bond, it also clearly used race as the fundamental factor on which all else depended (Connery, 2001, p. 188). Ratzels whole intellectual body of work centred on a uniform understanding of Man and his Earth and was expounded throughout Anthropogeographie (Ratzel, 1882 91; Buttman, 1977). Ratzels works on political geography and the history of mankind followed the groundwork laid down in Anthropogeographie and made gross generalisations based on geographical positioning and environment (Ratzel, 1897, 1903). In Politische Geographie (1897), Ratzel had already agued that no society could survive without extensive areas of land. Ratzels later idea of Lebensraum built on this argument and placed heavy emphasis on migrationwhich was a consequence of the need to expand living space; and colonisationthe actual occupation and exploration of new space. Ratzel argued that a great society needs both migration and colonisation, based on the increasingly popular diffusion theory in geographical circles. Emigrationist colonisation was not new to Ratzelian thought, but Ratzel co-opted this view, which had become part of the platform for the Kolonialverein in 1882 and underpinned German imperial efforts in the late 1880s (Smith, 1980, pp. 65 66). Ratzel was an active member of conservative political pressure-groups and often made public statements for the urgent need for empire. It was indeed in his concept of Lebensraum, from an article in 1901, that Ratzel made his greatest mark. What is particularly important is that the concept had an

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immediate and wide impact on geographers, political scientists and anthropologists. The concept had been partly derived from psychologist Gustav Frechner but perhaps the greatest inuence on Ratzels ideas of Lebensraum came from his friend and fellow zoologist, Moritz Wagner. Wagner had advanced a migration theory similar to the diffusion theory, which Ratzel incorporated in vital parts (Wanklyn, 1961; Hunter, 1983). Wagner said that migration was a natural consequence of life, but what he called natural selection occurred when groups of people competedto the deathfor the same territory. In the concept, a Volk must seek raumconsisting of arable land or resourcesin order to survive and ourish. Migration was a necessary step. In other words, the state expanded as people migratedthe pushing-out of peoples that competed for the same land was seen as a perfectly natural and necessary end-result. Wagner also contributed to the polygenist theory of humans. Ratzel wrote in his pamphlet on Lebensraum Between the movement of life which is unceasing, and the extent of the earth which is unalterable, there is a struggle. And from this struggle the war for space was born (Ratzel, 1901/1966, p. 153). In other words, whereas the earths resources remain a constant, the movement of life creates a struggle for the raum. In Ratzels view, a state could never be static but must constantly be on the move. Most troubling is perhaps how the ideology normalised the idea of struggle for defeat or victory, for life or death. Lebensraum, or living space, could easily be interpreted as genocidal space. At the very least, this intellectual history was more than simply scientic geographical theory without political implication. Ratzels idea of a volk and its struggle was also lkermord. It was associated after the 1880s in intellectual history with the term, vo also a term associated with the German actions in Southwest Africa in 1904 05. lkerIndeed, Lemkin, who invented the term genocide, initially used the term vo mord to describe the exact same phenomenon that he later labelled genocide. Ratzels focus on the state had predated his famous Lebensraum article from 1901 (Ratzel 1901/1966). His goal was to take the state (or the social entity) out of the air, as it were, and place it rmly in connection with the land, on the ground. Lebensraum was the term he nally used to describe the growth of states in geographical space. In his investigations, Ratzel attempted to observe human society as he would any species. As if he could take the perspective of an outside observer of Man and his Earth, Ratzel produced laws of the state that are dependent on the geographical environment. He pointed out the centrality of a struggle between Man, the environment and other life-forms (including other humans). One interesting aspect, also common among conservative thinkers of the time, was the conation of Kultur as culture and Kultur as agriculture (Smith, 1980, p. 61). What is clear is that colonisation in Ratzels mind meant land occupation and exploitation. The presumed immediate impact of this need was the displacement of the local populationthe pushing out of the peoples native to the area. By extension, it meant that the original inhabitants of that region would lose their Lebensraum, their land necessary for their survival. We already see clear indication of the understood annihilationist effects of this process. The theoretical change in geography, by von Richthofen and Ratzel, coincided not coincidentallywith the rise of New Imperialism (Gogwilt, 1988, pp. 52 53)

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Indeed, Ratzel had as the very basis for his studies the German presence in Africa. At the heart of the articulation of his geographical theory was the German cultural lkerkunde, Ratzel spoke contact with natives in Southwest Africa. In Ratzels Vo about the West Africans as ugly, brutal and indecent (Ratzel, 1885 88, p. 85). He was not alone in this kind of assessment, but its inclusion in his inuential scientic description of peoples and their place on earth helped to provide a decidedly dehumanised view of the west Africans in the German colony. By their melding of human science with natural science, Ratzel and von Richthofen had moved German geography rmly into the imperialist camp. However, this position was critiqued from prominent quarters as well. Georg Gerland, chair of geography at the University of Strassbourg and contemporary with von Richthofen and Ratzel in the 1880s and 1890s, attacked both von Richthofens denition of geography and Ratzels marriage of what he called historical geography (anthropogeography) with geography. Gerland thought that the combination of human science with natural science was highly problematic. Anthropogeography had no scientic standing, according to Gerland, and he attacked the idea of geographical inuences on human societies. This legitimate concern went unheeded, but it suggests that a discussion of the validity of von Richthofens and Ratzels approach could have taken place. However, the overall trend in geography was enamoured with the new approach. This short summary of the ideas developed by German geographers in the late 19th century should not be interpreted as a statement that German geographers were alone in this genocidal articulation. Both French and English (as well as American) geographers contributed in no small measure to this development. Halford John Mackinder, the British geographer, had been strongly inuenced by Ratzel and he in turn inuenced Haushofer (Gogwilt, 1998, p. 51). Mackinders geopolitical focus and his agreement with von Richthofen and Ratzel about the combining of human and natural sciences is evidenced starting with his 1887 address to the Royal Geographical Society. Here, he agreed with von Richthofen and Ratzel that it should be geographys goal to bridge the natural science of geography with the study of humanity, which also meant culture and race (Mackinder, 1887/1951). As several studies have shown, Mackinder was just as connected to British imperialism as von Richthofen and Ratzel were to German imperialism (Driver, 2001, p. 201; Livingstone, 1992, pp. 194 195). Mackinder argued that European environments had made Europeans ready for the task of diffusing and spreading across the globe, resulting in world domination. A French counterpart who also attempted to make the race-land connection was Paul Vidal de la Blache, who wrote between 1877 and 1903. He made statements about geography and culture as well as the development of national identity (Claval, 1998; Beck and Delort, 1993). Genocide from Theory to Practice When we talk of the immediate impact of von Richthofens and Ratzels work, the appropriate historical context is the German colony in Southwest Africa. What is beyond dispute is von Richthofens and Ratzels involvement and support of the colonial movement in Germany during their lifetimes. Ratzel worked as a journalist before and throughout his academic career and he actively participated in political causes, all of which was reected in his scientic work. The same is true for von Richthofen; his political commentary was blatantly included in

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his work. Conversely, the impact of these geographers science on their politics is easy to discern. The need for land persuaded the two geographers to participate avidly in favour of imperialism. Ratzel was an active member of the Kolonialverein from 1882 and then the Kolonialgesellschaft from 1887 and he was concerned about the German emigration that remained steady until the 1890s (Smith, 1980, p. 66). Bolstered by the perspective that the emigration wave was due to Germany having excess population, he would advocate the urgent need for Germany to gain access to more landhe focused on agrarian land. Von Richthofens concern had the same origin. Germanys rate of emigration could only be explained as space that could not support its inhabitants. Von Richthofen looked primarily at the economic needs Germany would fulll by gaining control over natural resources abroad. Throughout the works of both geographers is displayed a palpable urgency driven by a belief in the necessity of German imperialism. There was also evident anxiety whether emigrants who settled in colonies maintained their Germanness and ties to the empire. What is clear from both von Richthofens and Ratzels work is that is was never purely scientic, if by scientic we mean objective. The scholarship was used and, most signicantly, was intended to be used for political purposes. It is also clear that the intellectual jump from Ratzel to National-Socialism is incorrect. Although Ratzel had inuence on Nazi ideology, it was primarily Ratzels students Haushofer and Kjellen that provided most of the geographical articulation for the Nazi regime. Decades before the Nazi regime used the geographical arguments to create one of the most famous genocides in history, von Richthofen and Ratzel had the greatest inuence on the dress-rehearsal for that genocide, an event where many of the concentration and killing techniques were tested and tried: namely, the genocide in German Southwest Africa (or Namibia) in 1904 05. When Ratzel published his pamphlet Lebensraum in 1901, it had immediate impact on the colonial power (Madley, 2004, p. 188; Kiernan, 2007, pp. 378 379). A legitimisation of land occupation was provided and with the discovery of diamonds the necessary raum (space) for the German settlers suddenly increased precipitously. The Lebensraum argument and its emphasis on struggle was immediately co-opted and what followed was genocide. The settling of Southwest Africa had been done with the aim of creating an agricultural economy. Besides the clearly racist view towards the natives, the view of Southwest African society had already been tainted by the concern for the expansion of agriculture in a land that was dominated by the Herreros, who were cattle herders. Hahns work and Ratzels focus on agriculture had labelled the animal breeders as degeneratein other words, the society was seen as not only inferior but regressing. The combined geographical thought argued that the native population were not adequate stewards of the land, claiming outright that their practices were harmful to the local availability of resources. The geographical theory was not necessarily genocidal, but it opened up the possibility, or provided the justication. The area had become a German colony in the 1880s, but did not reach importance until the 1890s with the discovery of diamonds and other resources. Immediately, the concept of emigrationist colonisation was employed. Germans were encouraged to move to the area and were given land inhabited by the Herrero and the Nama peoples. The locals were simply violently pushed off their land and from their homes.

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Herrero and Nama had attempted to co-operate with the Germans, but when the restrictions and loss of land became too severe the Herrero decided to ght back. When the Herrero tried an organised effort at resistance in 1904, the German patience quickly ran out. The Herrero uprising differed signicantly from the German responseone obvious difference was that the Herrero ghters were ordered by their leaders only to attack German grown men and not women, children or the elderly. In order to deal with the uprising, the German government sent General Lothar von Trotha, who had already been involved in a brutal suppression of local people in the Rwanda region. When the infamous Vernichtungsbefehl, extermination order, was given in 1904, the German colonial power under the leadership of Lothar von Trotha had already been moving decisively towards annihilation. The most notorious of Trothas methods was that he shepherded the Herrero into the Kalahari Desert in the north, placing sentries along the entire border, ordering them to shoot on sight any males and forcing women and children back into the desert. Eighty per cent of the Herrero were exterminated and the remaining population were placed in concentration and labour camps. The key element in this quick succession of destruction was the idea that the native population constituted a threat to the German need for living space when they did not freely give up their land for colonisation. The violence in Southwest Africa ended partly because of an outcry in Germany as well as criticism from Englandnot that England had much of a moral high-ground: elements of the Boer war, including the use of camps, had been incorporated in Southwest Africa. A similar development took place in eastern Europe in the 1940s, when the Nazis tried a concerted effort at wholesale demographic restructuring and expansion of Lebensraum, resulting in a calculated genocide. The so-called Ostplan, which was part of the National-Socialist demographic plan for the east, has still not been adequately researched. Its connection to the late 19th and early 20th century geographical debates is very evident. Yet the main arguments used by the National-Socialist regime had come from Rudolf Kjellen, the Swedish geographer and political scientist and student of Ratzel. Kjellens idea of Lebensraum and the interplay between geography and human societies articulated in clear terms what he saw as the biological solution to problems encountered by a nation or race in the geographical environment and in the state (Kjellen, 1924). It was here that outright extermination was voiced as a necessary product of gaining Lebensraum. Kjellen argued as early as 1900 and as late as 1924 that it was the struggle for raum (space) that comprised the most important parts of human lker, which history. Citing Ratzel, Kjellen claimed that the struggle between Vo made claims for the same land, had resulted in many peoples being exterminated over history as a result of this normal struggle. Kjellen made the point that it is perfectly natural that two peoples cannot survive side-by-side, but that the will to self-preservation and the will to power were the driving-forces behind the struggle to the death between peoples. In his most inuential work, Der Staat als Lebensform, (The state as living organism) from 1924, Kjellen argued that the uctuating geographical designation of a people must be in accordance with the races needs for resources and land. Much more succinctly than any of his predecessors, Kjellen also argued that the solution to the national problem as he put it, was not just geographical, but biological. Kjellens arguments were the most blatantly genocidal of them all. In the nal analysis, the arguments provided by geographers did not always call directly

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for genocide or extermination, but they suggested it as a natural, if not necessary, option. Neither Ratzel nor von Richthofen participated personally in the killing, but their scientic arguments had a direct impact on the nature and actions of the colonial power as well as the attitudes towards the native population. They participated in an international intellectual history that set the tone for genocidal justication in a time of New Imperialism. One of the difculties is in showing to what degree von Richthofens and Ratzels intellectual contributions were precursors to certain policies and to what degree the intellectual positions were post facto justications; to what degree arguments had been directly inuenced by the experience of the colonial encounter and to what degree the nature of that encounter was a result of this discourse. However, it is clear that the broader intellectual history of the origins of the genocidal events in the rst half of the 20th century cannot be understood without the debate in the geographical intellectual community. The expanding space described in Ratzels notion of Lebensraum and its other incarnations is better described as a genocidal space. The sum of the particular geographical discourse I have described amounted to the destruction of the competing groups inhabiting a geographical space, as much as it implied the expansion of a favoured group.

Note
1. The various authors and theorists surveyed in this text use various terms such as volk, race and culture to describe what they characterise as separate groups of human beings. As in the case of Ratzel, they also claim to mean different things by their terms. However, with insignicant variations, the terms are used to designate difference among human groups that are essentialised. Therefore, the terms volk and culture are racialisedI use the terms interchangeably.

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