  For much of the First World War, Rosenzweig served in an anti-aircraft unit stationed on the Balkan front. Rosenzweig wrote a number of pseudonymous essays while serving at the front—signed “Adam Bund” or “Macedonicus”—exploring the political ramifications of the war. Some of these essays show Rosenzweig’s interest in the possibility that Germany might develop through the war into the centerpiece of a “middle-European” empire. Rosenzweig’s most original political composition of the war years was a sweeping account of political geography entitled, “Globus: Studies towards the World-Historical Doctrine of Space.” “Globus” was Rosenzweig’s attempt to take seriously the designation of the war in which he was participating as a World War. In it, Rosenzweig presents the history of the shifting geographic landscape of political power in the world, from the Roman Empire to the present, as the gradual realization of the unity of the globe. The current war, Rosenzweig suggests, pits three world empires against one another to decide which will guide the globe towards its ultimate unification. Rosenzweig makes it clear, in “Globus,” that he understands the events of the war as rooted in the absolute trajectory of world history that began in the world’s creation and will lead to its redemption.