For any wondering why Hitler managed to amass so many opponents look no further than Sir Halford Mackinder's theory of the Heartland. The German action of invasion and aim of conquest would have affected a revolutionary reordering of the international system in Germany's favor thus shifting world power (and the attendant security that comes with power) away from other states. A German conquest of the Soviet Union and the acquisition of the resources involved would have amounted to a hegemony much stronger than American hegemony. This is why Hitler was stopped.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Pivot_area.png/675px-Pivot_area.png
Sir Halford Mackinder's Heartland concept showing the situation of the "pivot area" established in the Theory of the Heartland. He later revised it to mark Northern Eurasia as a pivot while keeping area marked above as Heartland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopolitics
Mackinder and the Heartland theory
Sir Halford Mackinder's Heartland Theory initially received little attention outside geography, but some thinkers would claim that it subsequently influenced the foreign policies of world powers.[15] Those scholars who look to MacKinder through critical lenses accept him as an organic strategist who tried to build a foreign policy vision for Britain with his Eurocentric analysis of historical geography.[16] His formulation of the Heartland Theory was set out in his article entitled "The Geographical Pivot of History", published in England in 1904. Mackinder's doctrine of geopolitics involved concepts diametrically opposed to the notion of Alfred Thayer Mahan about the significance of navies (he coined the term sea power) in world conflict. He saw navy as a basis of Colombian era empire (roughly from 1492 to the 19th century), and predicted the 20th century to be domain of land power. The Heartland theory hypothesized a huge empire being brought into existence in the Heartland—which wouldn't need to use coastal or transoceanic transport to remain coherent. The basic notions of Mackinder's doctrine involve considering the geography of the Earth as being divided into two sections: the World Island or Core, comprising Eurasia and Africa; and the Peripheral "islands", including the Americas, Australia, Japan, the British Isles, and Oceania. Not only was the Periphery noticeably smaller than the World Island, it necessarily required much sea transport to function at the technological level of the World Island—which contained sufficient natural resources for a developed economy.
Mackinder posited that the industrial centers of the Periphery were necessarily located in widely separated locations. The World Island could send its navy to destroy each one of them in turn, and could locate its own industries in a region further inland than the Periphery (so they would have a longer struggle reaching them, and would face a well-stocked industrial bastion). Mackinder called this region the Heartland. It essentially comprised Central and Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Western Russia, and Mitteleuropa.[17] The Heartland contained the grain reserves of Ukraine, and many other natural resources. Mackinder's notion of geopolitics was summed up when he said:
Who rules Central and Eastern Europe commands the Heartland. Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island. Who rules the World-Island commands the World.
TheRealMaestro ago
I have had the pleasure to read Mackinder's original lecture years ago, as well as his more difficult to obtain Democratic Ideals and Reality, which was published in 1919 and greatly expands upon the thesis he presented in his Geographical Pivot. The idea of the Heartland only emerges in this latter work, where he mentions two Heartlands: the primary Asiatic Heartland, as well as the interior of trans-Saharan Africa as a Southern Heartland, which is similarly impenetrable to sea power. The importance of central Europe here is rather due to the effect of natural bottlenecks produced by Jutland and Anatolia in its ease to seal off to naval power from without, as well as the industrial capacity of Germany.
Sir Halford Mackinder was not nearly so deterministic in his original lecture as the popular closing quotation would indicate; he merely stated that from a geographical point of view [world politics is] likely to rotate round the pivot state, which is always likely to be great, but with limited mobility as compared with the surrounding ... powers. He emphasised the probable development of Russia that was merely nascent in his time; in retrospect this opportunity was rather squandered by the Soviets. His indication of Africa in his later book, and South America in his original lecture, indicate that his purpose was rather to indicate the regions of the world that were relatively undeveloped, but had immense potential and immunity from British naval superiority.
Joe_McCarthy ago
I don't recall if he actually used the word Heartland in the first work. But the essentials of power the area would provide were articulated. The area that the Soviet Union would later make up was explicitly described as the makings of a world conquering empire which despite the insularity of this vast area could send navies to destroy the forces of other states. It's been remarked that the Soviet Union was largely landlocked yet it still maintained a very powerful navy. It is not difficult to foresee what would have been the result had Germany obtained control of this real estate in addition to what they already held in Western and Central Europe. When Allied powers said Hitler's aim was world conquest they had little actual verbal evidence of it. But had he been able to conquer the USSR and consolidated control over it the result would have been tantamount to that in that he would have had a position of unrivaled power over everyone else.
TheRealMaestro ago
The original never used the name Heartland, but always the phrase pivot area as equivalent to those parts of Asia that drain into the Arctic or continental lakes; he appears to have modified his view by 1919 on the special importance of eastern Europe, for he contrariwise concludes his first lecture with the idea that a Sino-Japanese conquest of the pivot area would even so be perilous to world security, since the continental resources would have direct access to the sea. Its application is mostly felt, oddly enough, after the Great War, for the Kaiser himself moved away from the previous alignment to Russia in favour of fellow marginal power (to use Sir Mackinder's terminology) Austria, and explicitly made Captain Mahan's orientation to the sea national policy.
This is of course not in any contradiction to what you say; a hypothetical alliance between Russia and Germany is mentioned as compelling France to favour Britain, wherein 'France, Italy, Egypt, India and Corea would become so many bridge heads where the outside navies would ... prevent them concentrating their whole strength on fleets,' which in this context is remarkably similar to what historically transpired forty years hence: Britain and France ignored Austria and Bohemia, but only took interest after Germany and Russia visibly coöperated (first by treaty, then evidenced in the Memelland). I am even familiar with Entente plans [Operation Pike] to strike Russian Armenia, derailed only because France summarily shattered. Contemporary Americans also explicitly cited the Heartland thesis to justify the use of Lend-Lease to the Soviets before the Japanese strike.