Après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, géopolitique et géographie politique semblent connaître une période de discrédit en France et en Allemagne, justifié par la proximité de Karl Haushofer et de ses adeptes avec les nazis. Pourtant, de nombreux signes montrent que ces deux branches de la géographie humaine sont en fait traversées par des courants contradictoires dans les années 1950 : le souvenir des errements passés, bien présent mais discuté, coexiste et rentre ainsi en tension avec la volonté de penser d’une part les mutations spatiales des sociétés européennes en reconstruction, d’autre part des relations internationales notamment marquées par la Guerre froide et les débuts de la construction européenne.
Abstract. The study of the receptions, uses and transformations of the figure of Friedrich Ratzel in the French geography of the inter-war period considers here the double heritage of Ratzel and Vidal de la Blache, the consequences of the Great War on international relations and the emergence of new schools of thought, in particular of Geopolitik. Between admiration, criticism and attempts to go beyond his ideas, even to use them
against his German heirs, some geographers persist in thinking with (sometimes against) him, throughout the crises and world wars that give him a persistent image of relevance. On the one hand a precursor and eminent scholar, on the other hand a «bad teacher» of geopolitics for the Wilhelmian and then Nazi regime making him responsible for its excesses and territorial ambitions, his theories were then used to understand the troubled evolution of the world until 1945.
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