The Neo-Weltpolitik Vision of Empire Versus the Lebensraum Vision

In early 1937 Schacht penned an article for the prestigious Foreign Affairs in which he outlined Germany’s colonial demands.... It remains one of the best examples of the neo-Weltpolitik vision of empire.... This vision, involving a Germany that would leverage its economic might rather than seek formal territorial expansion, was losing influence within the higher echelons of Nazi leadership; ever since Hitler’s memorandum the previous September, supporters of Lebensraum had had the upper hand.

--Pierpaolo Barbieri, Hitler's Shadow Empire: Nazi Economics and the Spanish Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 173.