Two major polemical works were published in 1919: The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes and Democratic Ideals and Reality by Halford J. Mackinder. The former is famous, the latter much less so but it was a prophetic book and arguably, though quite unwittingly, a sinister one.
Its message, its warning was memorably summarized by the author himself:
'Who Rules East Europe commands the Heartland:
Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island:
Who rules the World-Island commands the World.'
With great perspicacity, Halford J. Mackinder saw that power was shifting from the sea-borne empires to countries that encompassed the great land masses: eastern Europe he designated as 'the geographical pivot of history.'
Although his book was written as a warning and not as a blue-print for world domination it impressed the German geopolitician Karl Haushofer who advocated an alliance between Germany and the USSR in order to defeat the maritime powers. Haushofer's influence on Hitler is not clear. Robert Blake suggests it was direct but Mackinder's biographer, Brian Blouet argues that Hitler had developed his own pernicious ideas of eastern expansion separately.
Democratic Ideals and Reality remains one of the most important works of geopolitics. It is time to reassess it.