Relationship with German Lebensraum ideology[edit]
German geographer Friedrich Ratzel visited North America beginning in 1873[84] and saw the effects of American manifest destiny.[85] Ratzel sympathized with the results of "manifest destiny", but he never used the term. Instead he relied on the Frontier Thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner.[86] Ratzel promoted overseas colonies for Germany in Asia and Africa, but not an expansion into Slavic lands.[87] Later German publicists misinterpreted Ratzel to argue for the right of the German race to expand within Europe; that notion was later incorporated into Nazi ideology, as Lebensraum.[85] Harriet Wanklyn (1961) argues that Ratzel's theory was designed to advance science, and that politicians distorted it for political goals