sheer speed of the German industrialization process combined with the German geography contributed to the traumatic horrors of the world wars. Germans lacked an overseas empire to absorb their surplus populations. Even at its pre–World War I peak, Germany just wasn’t that big—a bit smaller than Montana plus Idaho—and half the territory is too rugged to be easily developed. Once industrial techs enabled the German population to expand, Germans quickly discovered they had nowhere to expand into, part and parcel of why Hitler was so obsessed with munching on the horizon.
