2025-26
JOHN NEAR GRANT Recipient
From Manifest Destiny to Lebensraum: The Transnational Origins of Nazi Expansionism
Farhan Ansari
From Manifest Destiny to Lebensraum: The Transnational Origins of Nazi Expansionism
Farhan Ansari
2026 Near Scholar
Mentors: Mr. James Tate and Ms. Meredith Cranston
April 13, 2026
Introduction
Throughout the early and mid-nineteenth century, the United States justified its continental expansion under the banner of Manifest Destiny, the belief that the nation’s civilizational superiority granted it the right and the duty to conquer the North American continent. Rooted in Enlightenment notions of progress and inflected with Protestant millennialism, this ideology cast American expansion as part of a providential design, as many adherents believed that the Republic had been chosen to usher in a new era of liberty and Christian civilization, hastening the fulfillment of a divinely ordained historical destiny. The frontier, as both symbol and process, became the crucible of American identity: an area where violence, settlement, and racial domination were reimagined as civilization’s advance and the unfolding of a chosen people’s fate.
In recent years, scholars have evaluated the links between this expansionist project and a seemingly similar vision articulated in twentieth-century Germany. Scholars such as Carroll P. Kakel have noted that Hitler, on several occasions, stated his admiration for the United States as a racial state and regarded its conquest of the American West as a model for Germany's own expansion eastward.1 In Mein Kampf, Hitler praised Americans for being "racially pure and unmixed" and "ris[ing] to be master of the continent."2 He further commented on the "duty" to "Germanize [Russia] … and look upon the natives as Red-skins."3 The United States provided not only a precedent but a justification: a living proof that modern empire could be achieved through colonialism, displacement, and racial hierarchy under the guise of civilization.
1 Carroll P. Kakel, The American West and the Nazi East: A Comparative and Interpretive Perspective (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 1.
2Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (1943; repr., Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 286.
3Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944, 3rd ed., trans. Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens (Enigma Books, 2000), 69, digital file.
However, historian Jens-Uwe Guettel, in his 2012 monograph German Expansionism, Imperial Liberalism, and the United States, 1776–1945, explicitly rejects any such continuity. He argues that Nazi imperialism was wholly distinct from American expansionism because it was fundamentally opposed to American "'liberalist' and democratic structures."4 He further maintains that Hitler's understanding of Lebensraum marked a decisive break from the pre-1914 geopolitics of Friedrich Ratzel and other German imperial liberals, whose thought he characterizes as less racialized and nationalistic.5 By drawing such distinctions, Guettel seeks to insulate the liberal-imperial tradition that shaped much of the Atlantic world from the Nazi project, portraying Hitler's imperialism as an ideological anomaly rather than an extension of European expansionist logic.
In the twentieth century, Adolf Hitler articulated this vision formally in his doctrine of Lebensraum, or "living space," which held that the survival and prosperity of the German nation depended on the acquisition of vast new territories to the east. Rooted in a belief that land was foundational to racial vitality, the doctrine cast territorial expansion as a necessity: without sufficient space to grow, settle, and cultivate, the Aryan race would stagnate and ultimately perish.
This paper attempts to determine the extent to which the Nazi doctrine of Lebensraum was shaped by the American ideology of Manifest Destiny, and through what intellectual channels that influence occurred. More specifically, it investigates whether Hitler’s expansionist vision drew directly or indirectly on American continental conquest, and how similarities and divergences between the two movements illuminate the transnational circulation of racialized
4 Jens-Uwe Guettel, German Expansionism, Imperial Liberalism, and the United States, 1776-1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 209.
5 Guettel, German Expansionism, 192.
nationalist thought. This paper proceeds in three stages. First, it traces the ideological parallels between Manifest Destiny and Lebensraum, focusing on their shared reliance on racial hierarchy, emphasis on agriculture and population growth, and the portrayal of territorial conquest as integral to the national mission. Second, it examines the intellectual transmission of these ideas through the geopolitical theories of Friedrich Ratzel and Karl Haushofer, whose ideas profoundly shaped the conceptual vocabulary that Hitler would later adopt. Finally, it considers the critical differences and points of divergence between the two expansionist movements, particularly in their distinct political contexts, goals, and achievements.
Taken together, these sections argue that the Nazi conception of Lebensraum did not emerge in isolation or as a purely German innovation. Rather, it developed within a transnational intellectual framework in which American westward expansion functioned as both precedent and proof of concept. Through Ratzel’s and Haushofer’s theories about territorial expansion, taking the early United States as inspiration, Hitler encountered an interpretive model that he adapted and put into effect. Lebensraum, therefore, represented not a spontaneous invention, but a deliberate reworking of the American ideology of Manifest Destiny that transformed the United States’ conquest of Indigenous lands into a template for Germany’s own eastward imperial ambitions.
Section I
Early America and Nazi Germany, lacking a strong drive for overseas expansion, instead sought to build contiguous continental empires based on land. These empires aimed to secure new territory for agrarian settlement, supply food for expanding populations, and ensure the long term stability of the nation state. As their architects imagined them, both projects also required
internal consolidation along with the external conquest of indigenous populations. In each case, expansionist ideology drew on the belief that the nation required additional ‘living space’ in clearly defined geographic regions.6
As Kakel argues, the two national projects bore striking ideological parallels. Early American political leaders openly pursued the acquisition of living space in the American West for white agricultural settlement and the clearing of that space through the displacement of Native Americans. Adolf Hitler and other Nazis declared a similar objective of acquiring Lebensraum in Eastern Europe for Aryan agricultural settlement while removing Jews and Slavs from those territories.7 In both cases, these ideological discourses reflected strongly held political and intellectual preoccupations with territorial expansion, racial hierarchy, and agrarian idealism.
Manifest Destiny
Throughout the nation's colonial and early national periods, many leading American politicians eagerly promoted visions of a land-based, continent-wide American empire. The ideology that came to justify American continental expansion became known as Manifest Destiny. The phrase, first coined by journalist (and political propagandist for the Democratic party) John O’Sullivan in 1845, signified the mission of the United States, “to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our [American] yearly multiplying millions.”8 Despite O’Sullivan’s contribution of this slogan to the American national consciousness, the idea that continental expansion had been providentially sanctioned was popular and well understood long before he created the phrase. Even as early as 1616, an early
6 Kakel, The American, 13.
7 Kakel, The American, 15.
8 John O'Sullivan, "Annexation," United States Magazine and Democratic Review 17, no. 1 (1845): 6.
British agent had described the colonists as “a peculiar people marked and chose by the finger of God to possess” the lands of North America.9
For the purposes of this paper, I define Manifest Destiny as the belief that America represented a uniquely chosen nation, divinely ordained to expand across North America while spreading American values: republican government, individual liberty, and Protestantism. From this perspective, territorial expansion served both as a national right and as a historical mission.
The ideological roots of Manifest Destiny can be traced to early Puritan religious thought in colonial New England. Puritan settlers believed that their migration to North America formed part of a divine plan, interpreting their community as a kind of ‘New Israel,’ a chosen people entering a promised land where they would build a godly society.10 Over time, this religious foundation merged with the political ideals that emerged during and after the American Revolution. Over time, these religious images entered the broader political culture of the United States. Even leaders who did not share the Puritans’ strict theology continued to draw on their symbolism. In his second inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson invoked this same imagery when he asked for “the favor of that Being … who led our forefathers, as Israel of old, from their native land, and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life.”11 The language echoed the Puritan comparison between the American settlers and biblical Israelites fleeing an ‘old world’ and entering the ‘promised land’.
These religious themes gradually merged with the republican ideals that arose from the American Revolution. American leaders began to interpret national expansion as a way to spread republican institutions and preserve the independence of a nation of farmers. Jefferson described
9 Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right (Hill and Wang, 1995), xii.
10 Stephanson, Manifest Destiny, 5.
11 Stephanson, Manifest Destiny, 4.
this vision as an expanding ‘empire of liberty,’ a republic that would extend self government across the continent.12 Together, Puritan providential thought and republican political ideals created an ideological framework that shaped the development of Manifest Destiny.
The notion of Manifest Destiny was, in part, an expression of a genuine ideal in the hearts of many Americans, but it also provided both a retrospective and prospective justification for taking land from indigenous peoples.13 The distinction between ‘uncivilized’ natives and ‘civilized’ settlers became a key component of the early American Republic’s understanding of Manifest Destiny: if the transcontinental territory was divinely ordained to be settled by Protestant Europeans, the ‘savage’ natives would have to disappear. For instance, when smallpox had decimated nearby Indian populations in the 1630s, John Winthrop declared “God hath consumed the natives with a miraculous plagey.”14
Chief among proponents of territorial expansion was Thomas Jefferson, Early America’s premier political philosopher. Jefferson’s vision was founded on his firm belief in the virtue of the independent, individual farmer and the need for an agrarian-based society that would continuously expand, leading to a land-based continental empire. In particular, he singled out the (white) yeomen, the agrarian nobleman, as the appropriate social foundation for the United States, writing in his Notes on the State of Virginia that “those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God”15. To Jefferson, the yeoman farmer was a heroic, romantic figure who would lead the nation forward. In a 1785 letter to John Jay, Jefferson wrote about the importance of “lands enough to employ an infinite number of people in their cultivation.” He continued,
12 Stephanson, Manifest Destiny, 15.
13 David M. Pletcher, "Manifest Destiny: An Ideal or a Justification?," Global Policy Forum, last modified 1998, https://archive.globalpolicy.org/us-westward-expansion/25950.html.
14 Stephanson, Manifest Destiny, 11.
15 Thomas Jefferson, The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (Modern Library, 2004), 259.
“[c]ultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous.”16 As political doctrine, Jefferson stressed the necessity of creating vacant lands for his agricultural settler society, referencing the young American Republic in his first Inauguration Address as “a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation.”17 Jefferson saw land as a regenerative force that would ensure the continued independence and virtue of the American people, necessitating a growing land-based empire. In his vision of a nation extending from ocean to ocean, he saw a land of heightened economic opportunity, ripe for Americans to ‘pursue happiness’.
Lebensraum
The concept of Lebensraum emerged from intellectual currents in late nineteenth and early twentieth century German thought that connected geography, nationalism, and newly emerging biological ideas. The earliest figure associated with the concept was the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel.18 Ratzel defined Lebensraum as the amount of geographic space necessary to sustain a species at its existing population level and way of life. The boundaries of a species’ Lebensraum depended on its metabolic needs and the conditions of its environment, and these boundaries could expand as the species itself grew.19 In this formulation, Darwinian principles acquired a spatial and environmental dimension. Successful adaptation to the surrounding environment promoted evolutionary success and produced a natural tendency toward territorial expansion.20
16 Jefferson, The Life, 351.
17 Jefferson, The Life, 299.
18 Woodruff D. Smith, "Friedrich Ratzel and the Origins of Lebensraum," German Studies Review 3, no. 1 (1980): 52, https://doi.org/10.2307/1429483.
19 Smith, "Friedrich Ratzel," 53.
20 Smith, "Friedrich Ratzel," 53.
Ratzel applied this framework to human societies as well. The history of any species, including humanity, could be understood as a record of changing patterns of adaptation to its Lebensraum. For humans, the primary mechanism of adaptation was culture, which Ratzel defined broadly to include technology, intellectual characteristics, and social organization. From this perspective, political institutions also reflected environmental adaptation.21 The structure of a state or culture therefore developed in response to its relationship with Lebensraum and the competition associated with securing it. To support these conclusions, Ratzel pointed to what he considered comparable patterns of adaptation and expansion among many other species in the natural world.22
Around the turn of the twentieth century, Friedrich Ratzel became increasingly involved in a transatlantic intellectual exchange with the American historian Frederick Jackson Turner concerning the relationship between geography and political development. Ratzel spoke favorably about Turner’s recently developed ‘frontier thesis’, which argued that the continual westward expansion of Anglo Saxon settlers across North America and the settlement of the western frontier played a decisive role in shaping American society and institutions.2324 Ratzel recognized in this argument a parallel to his own developing theory of Lebensraum. Both thinkers emphasized the relationship between geographic space and the vitality of a people, and both treated territorial expansion as a central mechanism through which societies developed, strengthened, and secured their future. Turner’s account of the American frontier provided a
21 Smith, "Friedrich Ratzel," 53.
22 Ratzel, Friedrich. "Lebensraum: a biogeographical study." Translated by Tul'si Bhamry. Journal of Historical Geography, Volume 61, 2018: 65-68, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2018.03.001.
23 Jens-Uwe Guettel, "From the Frontier to German South-West Africa: German Colonialism, Indians, and American Westward Expansion," Modern Intellectual History 7, no. 3 (2010): 535, https://doi.org/10.1017/s1479244310000223.
24 Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1950), 24.
historical example that appeared to support Ratzel’s broader theoretical claim that access to expanding territory played a crucial role in national development. Their dialogue therefore revealed a remarkably similar intellectual framework that linked geographic space, population growth, and political vitality. This convergence helped establish a conceptual bridge between American interpretations of frontier expansion and the geopolitical ideas about territorial growth that later circulated in German discussions of Lebensraum.
By the eve of the First World War, the concept of Lebensraum had become a central principle among German nationalist and expansionist movements. Chief among the groups leading these movements was the Pan-German League, which advocated an aggressive form of nationalism rooted in racial ideology and territorial expansion. The league emphasized the importance of a strong German frontier peasantry that would serve both as the backbone of the nation and as the foundation for expansion into new territories.25 Supporters of this program also promoted the idea of German racial supremacy and sought to mobilize ethnic Germans throughout Europe in pursuit of national expansion.26 Their vision involved removing populations they regarded as hostile or inferior, particularly Jews and Poles, from eastern territories while encouraging German settlers to colonize these regions.27 In this way, the concept of Lebensraum became closely tied to plans for demographic transformation, agrarian settlement, and the extension of German power eastward across the European continent.
By the 1920s, Adolf Hitler had come to lead the small but growing National Socialist German Workers’ Party in Weimar Germany as one of the most effective political ideologues in the nation. The views expressed in his Mein Kampf (My Struggle) formed the ideological basis
25 Kakel, The American, 20.
26 Kakel, The American, 20.
27 Shelley Baranowski, Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 45-56.
for National Socialist racial doctrine and expansionist foreign policy. Central to Hitler’s vision was the pursuit of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe. He argued that German foreign policy should aim at the “strengthening of our continental power by gaining new soil in Europe,” presenting territorial expansion as essential for national survival and revival.28 Hitler framed this project in language of providential destiny, calling for a “sacrifice of blood … to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth.”29
Within this framework, the acquisition of new territory held both practical and ideological significance. Hitler claimed that Germany required additional agricultural land to sustain its growing population, describing the purpose of eastern expansion as “acquiring the necessary soil for our German people.”30 At the same time, this policy aimed to restore what Nazis imagined as Germany’s lost historical strength. The Nazis saw themselves as a twentieth century incarnation of the Teutonic Order who would reconquer “the soil which our ancestors acquired by the sword and settled with German peasants.”31
In addition to advancing an expansionist program centered on the acquisition of agricultural land for the growth of the German population, Adolf Hitler also pointed directly to the United States as an example of successful continental expansion. In Mein Kampf, Hitler expressed admiration for what he believed to be the racial cohesion and territorial success of the United States. He praised Americans as a people who had remained “racially pure and unmixed” and who had consequently “rose to be master of the continent.”32 In his interpretation, the strength of the United States stemmed from its control over a vast and unified land base within
28 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 612.
29 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 652.
30 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 140.
31 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 666.
32 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 286.
North America. Hitler argued that this continental foundation produced what he described as the “immense inner strength of the state.”33 By pointing to the territorial scale, agricultural capacity, and racial purity of the United States, he suggested that national power depended on the possession of extensive land resources that could sustain a race’s population growth and economic development. Hitler viewed the United States as a historical demonstration of how continental expansion and settler colonization could create a powerful nation state, and he presented German expansion into Eastern Europe as a comparable project aimed at securing the land and resources necessary for Germany’s future strength.
Section II
Recent scholarship has questioned the extent to which Nazi expansionist ideology drew from earlier geographic theories or foreign historical examples. In particular, historian Jens-Uwe Guettel argues that the concept of Lebensraum developed by Friedrich Ratzel differed fundamentally from the version later embraced by Adolf Hitler. According to Guettel, Ratzel’s understanding of Lebensraum remained rooted in a nineteenth century liberal framework (shaped by ideals of progress and free trade in which colonial expansion into non-European territories was justified as a vehicle for spreading Western civilization) that focused primarily on colonial expansion in Africa, whereas Hitler’s program aimed to establish an Aryan empire within Europe.34 In this interpretation, Hitler adopted the language of Lebensraum while reshaping the concept into something fundamentally different from Ratzel’s original formulation.35 From this perspective, attempts to trace Nazi territorial ambitions to earlier intellectual influences,
33 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 286.
34 Guettel, German Expansionism, 192.
35 Guettel, German Expansionism, 211.
including American expansionist ideas, overstates the continuity between Ratzel’s work and National Socialist ideology. This section challenges that interpretation by arguing instead that the divide between Ratzel’s theory and Hitler’s political program has been overstated. Ratzel’s formulation of Lebensraum drew inspiration from American ideas about frontier expansion, and the geopolitician Karl Haushofer later transmitted and adapted these ideas, shaping Hitler’s expansionist vision.
Friedrich Ratzel
The ideas developed by Ratzel emerged in close engagement with the historical experience of the United States. In the late nineteenth century, Ratzel paid considerable attention to American continental expansion and treated it as a powerful illustration of how geography shaped the development of nations. Beyond his praise of Turner’s frontier thesis, Ratzel repeatedly pointed to the United States as evidence that large territorial space could strengthen political institutions. Writing in 1893, he argued that “in the United States … the greatness of space has counteracted decay,” explaining that the enormous scale of the country had helped maintain the “wonderful stability of the American constitution,” which for a century had experienced fewer changes than those of many European states.36 In his view, the continual availability of new land helped channel social pressures outward, allowing American society to avoid the stagnation that he believed threatened more densely populated European countries. Ratzel also drew explicit comparisons between German ambitions and the earlier expansion of the United States. At an 1884 meeting of the National Liberal Party, he remarked that “if we had had to decide 200 years ago, we would also have preferred to carve a New Germany out of North America.”
37 Although he acknowledged that Germany no longer possessed that opportunity, he
36 Guettel, "From the Frontier," 536.
37 Guettel, "From the Frontier," 524.
added that “it would be foolish to turn down black bread just because we did not reach the white bread in time,” suggesting that Germany should pursue expansion in Africa (using the racial euphemism of poor-quality “black” bread) rather than abandon the goal altogether.
38
Ratzel’s admiration for the geographic and agricultural potential of North America appeared in other writings as well. On his tour through the major metropolitan areas of the United States, he described the continent as a place where social and political development could unfold more freely than in the crowded societies of Europe. “North America,” he wrote, “has also run ahead of the Old World,” since in Europe “every seed of civilization must with great difficulty work itself out of the thick sterile underbrush which has been allowed to keep growing for centuries.”
39 In contrast, he argued that civilization in the United States grew in “fresh, unspoiled virgin soil as luxuriantly as corn or wheat in the black soil of the prairies.”40 The emphasis on fertile land and open space reflected Ratzel’s broader belief that the geographic environment strongly influenced the vitality of a society.
These reflections indicate that Ratzel viewed American expansion as a model that demonstrated the political and demographic advantages of territorial growth. His admiration for the geographic scale and developmental trajectory of the United States suggests that his formulation of Lebensraum emerged partly through engagement with ideas closely associated with Manifest Destiny and the settlement of the American frontier.
Karl Haushofer
The transmission of geopolitical ideas from Ratzel to Hitler occurred largely through the influence of Karl Haushofer, a figure absent from the account offered by Jens-Uwe Guettel. A
38 Guettel, "From the Frontier," 524-5.
39 Friedrich Ratzel, Sketches of Urban and Cultural Life in North America, trans. Stewart A. Stehlin (Rutgers University Press, 1988), 3-4.
40 Ratzel, Sketches of Urban, 4.
former Bavarian army officer who later became an academic, Haushofer played a major role in developing and popularizing the field of geopolitics in Germany during the early twentieth century. Drawing extensively on Ratzel’s work, he incorporated the concept of Lebensraum into the center of his geopolitical framework.41 Haushofer also introduced an additional emphasis within this tradition by stressing the fluid and dynamic character of political borders. In his view, borders represented only “temporary halts … for virile nations on the march,” reflecting the idea that expanding states would continually press beyond existing territorial limits.42
Haushofer’s influence on Nazi ideology developed through his close relationship with Rudolf Hess, one of his students at the University of Munich who would later become Hitler’s Deputy Führer.43 After the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler and Hess were imprisoned together in Landsberg Fortress in 1923. Over a period of four months, Haushofer regularly visited the prison and held intense mentorship sessions, often for hours at a time, with the two men.44 These meetings introduced Hitler to a range of geopolitical and historical works, including Ratzel’s Political Geography, which he studied “with the sacred fire of passion.”45 By the time Hitler articulated his worldview in Mein Kampf in 1924, both the terminology and the concept of Lebensraum had entered the developing canon of National Socialism. The text repeatedly emphasized the necessity of territorial expansion, referring to “the acquisition of new soil” as “necessary” for the “preservation of the German nation,” asserting that “the size of the area inhabited by a people constitutes in itself an essential factor for determining its outward
41 Holger H. Herwig, "The Daemon of Geopolitics: Karl Haushofer, Rudolf Hess, and Adolf Hitler," n.d., digital file.
42 Herwig, "The Daemon."
43 Holger H. Herwig, "Geopolitik: Haushofer, Hitler and Lebensraum," Journal of Strategic Studies 22, nos. 2-3 (1999): 224, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402399908437762.
44 Herwig, "Geopolitik: Haushofer," 225.
45 Herwig, "The Daemon."
security,” and calling for the effort to “lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil.”46
Ratzel’s influence on Hitler calls into question the sharp separation that Guettel draws between earlier geographic theory and the Nazi expansionist worldview. Even if we ignore Hitler’s references to the American historical experience, the intellectual lineage of the concept of Lebensraum demonstrates that ideas about territorial expansion developed within a specific context. Ratzel’s thinking about space and national development emerged partly through engagement with American continental expansion and ideas closely associated with Manifest Destiny. His admiration for the geographic scale of the United States and his reflections on the political stability produced by frontier expansion reveal that American history served as an important reference point in his work.
At the same time, the transmission of these ideas through Haushofer and his close relationship with Rudolf Hess created a pathway through which Ratzel’s concepts entered the ideological environment that shaped Hitler’s thinking. Haushofer adopted Ratzel’s emphasis on territorial space and expansion, integrated it into a broader doctrine of geopolitics, and introduced these ideas to Hitler during the formative period in which he was developing the doctrine later articulated in Mein Kampf. Through this chain of intellectual influence, Ratzel’s ideas about space and expansion helped shape the language and conceptual framework that underpinned Nazi territorial ambitions.
The result is an indirect but meaningful connection between American expansionism and Nazi geopolitical thought. If Ratzel’s conception of Lebensraum was partly inspired by the example of American continental expansion, and if that conception in turn influenced Hitler
46 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 136, 142, 646.
through Haushofer, then American ideas about territorial growth formed part of the broader intellectual genealogy of Nazi expansionism. This continuity does not suggest a complete equivalence between American expansionist thought and Nazi ideology. Important differences existed in their ideological foundations and goals. The following section therefore turns to these distinctions, examining how Nazi interpretations of expansion diverged from earlier American conceptions of territorial growth.
Section III
Despite the many parallels scholars have drawn between American westward expansion and the Nazi pursuit of Lebensraum, the ideological foundations of the two projects diverged in important ways. Expansion in the early United States developed within a political culture deeply shaped by liberal philosophy, particularly the ideas of John Locke. Locke argued that individuals possess natural rights to “life, liberty, and estate” and that legitimate governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed.47 He also emphasized the moral importance of labor and land improvement, writing that when a person “mixes his labour with” the land, he makes it his property.48 These arguments resonated strongly with early American political thought and helped provide a philosophical justification for territorial expansion across the North American continent. As discussed in Section I, alongside liberal political philosophy, religion also played an important role in shaping the ideology of American expansion. Many nineteenth century Americans understood territorial growth through a providential lens, believing that the United States had been chosen to spread Christianity, republican institutions, and ‘civilization’ across the continent. This sense of divine mission became closely associated with the ideology of
47 John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1689; repr., Thomas Tegg, 1823), 141.
48 Locke, Two Treatises, 116.
Manifest Destiny, which portrayed westward expansion as both a political and spiritual project. Expansion could therefore be framed simultaneously as the spread of free institutions and as the fulfillment of a providential purpose. These assumptions shaped the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny and informed the belief that the United States was spreading a system of free institutions across the continent. The expansionist ideology associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime rested on a very different intellectual and political foundation. Nazi territorial ambitions were far more explicitly racial in both motivation and intent, envisioning the removal and destruction of entire populations in order to create a racially homogeneous empire, thus rejecting the liberal political principles that had shaped American political thought. Examining these differences reveals that while the two movements shared certain themes of territorial growth and national destiny, they reflected sharply different conceptions of race, empire, and political order.
Race and Religion
A central difference between American expansion and the Nazi pursuit of Lebensraum lies in the nature of their racial ideologies and the intellectual frameworks that supported them. In the early United States, the conceptual system that later hardened into modern biological race theory had not yet developed in the same systematic form that characterized twentieth century Europe. Although colonists and early Americans clearly held hierarchical views about different peoples, Indigenous populations were frequently understood through a distinction between ‘civilization’ and ‘savagery.’49 This outlook was closely connected to the religious dimensions of American expansionist thought. Because Manifest Destiny was framed in explicitly providential terms, with many Americans believing that the United States had been chosen to spread Protestantism and “civilization” across the continent, Indigenous peoples were also seen as
49 Robert V. Hine et al., The American West: a New Interpretive History, 2nd ed. (Yale University Press, 2017), 180-181.
potential converts who could adopt Christian beliefs and integrate into American society.
50
Because religion and culture are changeable traits, Native peoples were often seen as capable, at least in theory, of becoming “civilized” through the adoption of Christianity, agriculture, and European social practices. Jefferson, for instance, wrote that Native peoples could “incorporate with us as citizens of the United States” if they abandoned hunting and embraced settled farming.51 Manifest Destiny, therefore, placed Native Americans outside the boundaries of American society while still allowing for the possibility that they might eventually be incorporated into it through processes of cultural transformation. At the same time, this theoretical openness to assimilation did not prevent the emergence of deeply violent and often genocidal attitudes toward Indigenous peoples. In practice, many American officials and settlers came to view Native communities as obstacles that had to be eliminated in order to secure territorial control. Statements from military leaders reveal how widespread these attitudes could become during periods of conflict. For example, General William Tecumseh Sherman wrote during the Indian Wars that “the more I see of these Indians the more convinced am I that they have all to be killed, or be maintained as a species of paupers.”
52 Such remarks illustrate how expansion frequently produced extreme violence and large scale destruction of Indigenous societies, even within an ideological framework that theoretically allowed for assimilation.
Nazi Germany’s pursuit of Lebensraum developed from a fundamentally different premise. Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, the worldview of Nazism drew heavily on pseudoscientific racial theories that claimed to identify immutable biological hierarchies among human
50 Oludamini Ogunnaike, "From Heathen to Sub-Human: A Genealogy of the Influence of the Decline of Religion on the Rise of Modern Racism," Open Theology 2, no. 1 (2016): 797, https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2016-0059.
51 Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, February 27, 1803, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-39-02-0500.
52 William Tecumseh Sherman to John Sherman, September 23, 1868, https://aigenom.org/document/generalwilliam-tecumseh-shermans-letter-to-john-sherman-sept-23-1868.
populations.53 This hierarchy stood at the center of the ideology of Nazism and shaped the regime’s plans for eastern Europe. In Mein Kampf, Hitler argued that in an “age of racial poisoning,” Germany must someday become “lord of the earth” by “dedicating itself to the care of its best racial elements.”54 Rather than viewing existing populations as peoples who might eventually be incorporated into the German state, Nazi planners regarded them as racial threats whose removal was necessary to secure the future of the German Volk. These assumptions informed plans such as Generalplan Ost, which envisioned the deportation, enslavement, and extermination of millions of inhabitants of eastern Europe.55 The result was an expansionist project that aimed at radical demographic transformation through systematic violence and genocide.
Political Ideals
A second major difference lies in the political ideals that each expansionist project claimed to serve. In the early American case, westward growth was tied to a broadly liberal language of rights, consent, and self-government. The Declaration of Independence made this connection explicit when it declared that “all men are created equal” and that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”56 Jefferson carried the same logic into his comments on continental expansion, writing that the United States might build “such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation,” adding that he believed “no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self government.”57
53 Kakel, The American, 56.
54 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 686.
55 Baranowski, Nazi Empire, 113.
56 Jefferson, The Life, 24.
57 Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, April 27, 1809, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-0102-0140.
American westward expansion was, to a large extent, intertwined with the propagation of liberal ideals.
Nazi expansion, by contrast, grew out of a deep hostility to liberalism itself. In Mein Kampf, Hitler described parliamentary politics as part of a broader decay, calling democracy a “forerunner of Marxism” and dismissing its public forms as a “monstrosity” that revealed the weakness of the modern state.58 He also framed his objection in explicitly racial terms, arguing that the fate of the German race depended on preserving national strength against alien influence.59 In a very different ideological world from the Jeffersonian claim that legitimate government rests on popular consent and individual rights, Nazi thought proclaimed political liberalism among the foremost enemies of the empire, not its promise.
Taken together, these differences highlight the distinct ideological foundations of American westward expansion and the Nazi pursuit of Lebensraum. Early American expansion developed within a framework shaped by liberal political thought and religious belief. The ideology of Manifest Destiny drew on ideas about natural rights, property, and self government from John Locke, while many Americans also interpreted territorial growth as the fulfillment of a providential mission to spread Christianity and ‘civilization.’ Within this worldview, Indigenous peoples were often understood through cultural and religious distinctions that in theory allowed for assimilation, even though the process of expansion repeatedly produced dispossession, warfare, and devastating population loss. The expansionist project associated with Adolf Hitler and Nazism rested on a different intellectual foundation. Nazi thought drew heavily on pseudo-scientific racial theories that treated race as a fixed biological hierarchy and rejected the liberal political ideals that had influenced American political culture. As a result, the
58 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 78.
59 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 135.
conquest of territory in eastern Europe was closely tied to the goal of constructing a racially ordered empire through the expulsion, enslavement, and destruction of entire populations. Recognizing these differences clarifies that while comparisons between the two expansionist movements can illuminate certain structural parallels, their underlying visions of race, empire, and political order emerged from sharply different ideological traditions.
Conclusion
The comparison between Manifest Destiny and the Nazi doctrine of Lebensraum reveals a complex mixture of continuity and divergence. To some degree, the two projects shared striking structural similarities. Both imagined the nation as a people whose vitality depended on access to land, both placed agrarian settlement at the center of their vision for national development, and both justified territorial expansion through narratives of destiny, civilizational progress, and racial hierarchy. In each case, expansion was framed as a historical necessity, a process through which a unique people would secure its future by conquering and settling new lands.
At the same time, tracing the intellectual genealogy of these ideas demonstrates that Nazi expansionism did not arise in isolation. The concept of Lebensraum developed within a broader transnational conversation about geography, population growth, and national power. Friedrich Ratzel’s engagement with the American frontier experience and his admiration for the territorial scale of the United States suggest that American expansion served as an important empirical example in the formation of his geographic theories. Through the later work of Karl Haushofer and his influence on Adolf Hitler, these ideas entered the ideological environment that shaped the development of National Socialist geopolitics. In this sense, American westward expansion
functioned as both precedent and inspiration within the intellectual lineage that culminated in the Nazi pursuit of Lebensraum.
Yet there are very significant differences between the two. Manifest Destiny developed within a political culture shaped by liberal philosophy and religious providentialism, which at least theoretically allowed for the assimilation of Indigenous peoples and framed expansion as the spread of republican institutions (in practice, though it frequently produced dispossession, warfare, and the near destruction of many Native societies). The Nazi program, by contrast, emerged from a worldview grounded in biological racism and hostility to liberal democracy. Rather than imagining expansion as the spread of political liberty or religious civilization, National Socialism envisioned the construction of a racially ordered empire achieved through systematic conquest, enslavement, and genocide.
Recognizing both the continuities and the differences between these two expansionist traditions allows for a more nuanced understanding of the historical relationship between them. The ideology of Lebensraum cannot be reduced simply to an imitation of Manifest Destiny, nor can it be understood as a wholly unique or isolated development. Instead, it emerged from a wider intellectual context in which ideas about space, race, and national destiny circulated across national boundaries. By situating Nazi expansionism within this broader transnational framework, it becomes possible to see how the conquest of the American West helped shape the conceptual vocabulary through which later imperial projects imagined their own territorial ambitions.
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