MANIFEST DESTINY AS LEBENSRAUM PRESENTED BY EDWIN MASSEY, JR. The British “white man’s burden,” like Hitler’s “lebensraum” a hundred years later, was the same spirit as America’s “Manifest Destiny” of the 1840s and 1850s. The results of the Mexican War increased America by one third in land mass. Our people were a working brave people with a lust for land and commerce. In spite of this pattern of force, we paid Mexico $millions and paid in blood as well for Texas, California, and Arizona.