Karl Haushofer, a Bavarian general and geographer, was one of the main theorists, together with Mahan and Mackinder, of geopolitics in the first half of the 20th century. His thought, profoundly influenced by that of Rudolf Kjellén and elaborated between the 1920s and 1940s, aimed to provide a "scientific" key to power relations between states, emphasising the role of space and geography in determining political power. In his central concept of Lebensraum ("living space"), taken up by another German geographer, Friedrich Ratzel, Haushofer argued that a powerful state is like a living organism: in order to survive and prosper, it needs to expand, absorbing territories and their resources according to demographic, economic and strategic needs. This vision justified, in geopolitical terms, the expansionist ambitions of post-Versailles Germany. Founder in 1924 of the well-known journal Zeitschrift für Geopolitik, Haushofer spread his ideas among academics, officials and politicians. He had a certain influence on the Nazi hierarch Rudolf Hess, his former pupil, and through him on Adolf Hitler, although the relationship between Haushoferian geopolitics and Nazi ideology is still the focus of academic debate today: Haushofer was never an active member of the party and later distanced himself from many of its more radical drifts, although the contribution - even unintentional - of his theories in the formation of Nazi foreign policy is undeniable. Haushofer's geopolitics was also recovered by the jurist Carl Schmitt through the idea of "large spaces" (Grossräume), according to which self-sufficient continental blocs were necessary. With this in mind, Schmitt looked with interest at the Eurasian alliance between Germany, Russia and Japan in an attempt to oppose Anglo-Saxon maritime power - a theory that would be taken up again in Nomos of the Earth. After the Second World War, however, Haushofer's thinking fell into disfavour due to his links with the Nazi regime.