While Hitler was incarcerated at the Landsberg prison writing "Mein Kampf", he had routine visits from the respected First World War veteran, Major General Dr. Karl Haushofer, who was the chair of the military science and geography department at the University of Munich. These meetings consisted of lectures and academic briefings on geopolitics, most certainly covering the Nazi ideal of "Lebensraum" and which likely influenced the views Hitler laid out in "Mein Kampf". Perhaps confirming Hitler's assertions, Haushofer espoused the theory that Germany was defeated in the Great War by her lack of sufficient space and autarchy. More importantly, Haushofer believed that nations which rested their power upon command of the sea and maritime trade routes were doomed to fail, since any such control "would soon be broken", writing that human history stood "at the great turning-point in the favourable position of the island empires". Hitler believed that for Germany to expand its influence, it would have to rely on continental space and abundant arable soil which could only be found eastward. Influenced by the theories of Haushofer, Hitler believed it was Germany's right to seize the cultivatable land in Russia since the earth belonged to those people willing to till it "industriously" as opposed to the slothful, incompetent people unworthy to possess it. Describing the Russians in the harshest of terms while intimating that the German people were more deserving by virtue of their alleged superior intellect, Hitler stated: "It is criminal to ask an intelligent people to limit its children in order that a lazy and stupid people next door can literally abuse a gigantic surface of the earth". Presaging this Nazi goal, Hitler wrote in "Mein Kampf": "Without consideration of traditions and prejudices, Germany must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation". In this sense, social Darwinism and geography were merged in Hitler's mind.