Ben Wilson

So he loved this idea of a frontier.

And he thought that Germany needed a frontier.

He thought that Germany really needed to expand if they weren't just going to be the plaything of more powerful actors on the global stage.

So you've already got Britain, who's got an empire.

You've got America, who is growing and developing an empire and who everyone can see is going to be the next global superpower.

They just have this incredible industrial base, all this land, this huge population.

They've got all these advantages.

So America is coming.

And then you've got Russia.

And Russia is just massive.

Also a huge population, tons of natural resources.

And so Germany, by comparison, is a much, much, much smaller country.

So he says, look, we're going to get left in the dust unless we can grow and expand.

There are two ways to do that.

One, expand.

Are overseas colonies, but he says that that strategy is no good.

It worked for the British, but he said, and this is very prescient, he says it's about to fail for the British because America has already separated from the British Empire and all these overseas nations are probably going to do the same thing.

You know, Australia, Canada.

they're not really going to stay attached to Great Britain for too much longer, which is true.

So he says, we need one huge German nation with a frontier where we can expand.