Lebensraum

Literally "living room", in practice, Lebensraum refers to Adolf Hitler's demands for more land and resources for Germans. His major assumption held with the tradition Drang nach Osten, or expansion into Slavic lands to the east of Germany. In Mein Kampf, he wrote "territorial policy cannot be fulfilled in the Cameroons but today almost exclusively in Europe....this soil exists for the people which possesses the force to take it. [if they object]...the law of self-preservation goes into effect, and what is refused to amicable methods, it is up to the fist to take."

His thinking was influenced, although not a quote, of Karl Haushofer's theories of geopolitics, which treated states as biological organisms, which would expand or contract based on resources, and compete with other nation-organisms for resources.