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I have betrayed my conscience far too long
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.
This poem was found in his pocket.
The burden of my guilt before the law
weighs light upon my shoulders; to plot
and to conspire was my duty to the people;
I would have been a criminal had I not.
I am guilty, though not the way you think,
I should have done my duty sooner, I was wrong,
I should have called evil more clearly by its name
I hesitated to condemn it for far too long.
I now accuse myself within my heart:
I have betrayed my conscience far too long
I have deceived myself and fellow man.
I knew the course of evil from the start
My warning was not loud nor clear enough!
Today I know what I was guilty of…
by Albrecht Hanshofer
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