Atlantropa

Atlantropa, also referred to as Panropa,^[1] was a gigantic engineering and colonisation idea that German architect Herman Sörgel devised in the 1920s, and promoted until his death in 1952.^[2]^[3] The proposal included several hydroelectric dams at key points on the Mediterranean Sea, such as the Strait of Gibraltar and the Bosporus, to cause a sea level drop and reclaim land.

Design

An artist's conception of what Atlantropa might have looked like as seen from space

The central feature of the Atlantropa proposal was to build a hydroelectric dam across the Strait of Gibraltar, which would have generated enormous amounts of hydroelectricity^[4] and would have led to the lowering of the surface of the Mediterranean Sea by as much as 200 metres (660 ft), opening up large new areas of land for settlement, such as in the Adriatic Sea. Four other major dams were also proposed:^[5]^[6]^[7]

Across the Dardanelles to hold back the Black Sea
Between Sicily and Tunisia to provide a roadway and to lower the inner Mediterranean further
On the Congo River below its Kasai River tributary, to refill the Chad basin around Lake Chad, provide fresh water to irrigate the Sahara, and create a shipping lane to the interior of Africa
Extending the Suez Canal and locks to maintain connection with the Red Sea

Sörgel saw his scheme, which was projected to take more than a century, as a peaceful pan-European alternative to the Lebensraum concepts that later became one of the stated reasons for Nazi Germany's conquest of new territories. He envisioned Atlantropa as a way of providing land, food, employment, electric power, and, most of all, a new vision for Europe and neighbouring Africa.

The Atlantropa proposal, throughout its several decades, was characterised by four constants:^[8]

Pacifism, in its promises of using technology peacefully
Pan-European sentiment, seeing the project as a way to unite a war-torn Europe
Eurocentric attitudes to Africa, which was to become united with Europe into "Atlantropa" or Eurafrica
Neocolonial geopolitics, which saw the world divided into three blocs: America, Asia and Atlantropa.^[9]

Active support was limited to architects and planners from Germany and a number of other primarily Northern European countries. Critics derided it for various faults, including the lack of any co-operation of Mediterranean countries in the planning, and the impacts that it would have on coastal communities that would be stranded inland when the sea receded. The proposal reached great popularity in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and again briefly in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but after Sörgel's death it disappeared from general discourse.^[10]

History

Sörgel's utopian goal was to solve all the major problems of European civilization by the creation of a new continent, "Atlantropa", consisting of Europe and Africa, to be inhabited by Europeans. Sörgel was convinced that to remain competitive with the Americas and an emerging Oriental "Pan-Asia", Europe needed to become self-sufficient, which in his opinion meant possessing territories in all climate zones. In Sörgel's opinion, Asia would forever remain a mystery to Europeans, and the British would not be able to maintain their global empire in the long run, and so he advocated a common European effort to colonize Africa.^[11]

The lowering of the Mediterranean would have enabled the production of immense amounts of electric power, guaranteeing the growth of industry. Unlike fossil fuels, the power source would not be subject to depletion. Vast tracts of land would have been freed for agriculture, including the Sahara, which was to be irrigated with the help of three sea-sized manmade lakes in Africa.

The massive public works, envisioned to go on for more than a century, were to relieve unemployment, and the acquisition of new land to ease the pressure of overpopulation, which Sörgel thought were the fundamental causes of political unrest in Europe. He also believed his proposal's effect on the climate could only be beneficial,^[12] and that the climate could be changed for the better as far away as the British Isles, as a more effective Gulf Stream would create warmer winters.^[13] The Middle East, under the control of a consolidated Atlantropa, was to be an additional energy source and a bulwark against the Yellow Peril.^[14]

The publicity material produced for Atlantropa by Sörgel and his supporters contain plans, maps and scale models of several dams and new ports on the Mediterranean, views of a Gibraltar dam crowned by a 400-metre (1,300 ft) tower designed by Peter Behrens, projections for growth of agricultural production, sketches for a pan-Atlantropan power grid, and even provision for the protection of Venice as a cultural landmark.^[15] Concerns about climate change or earthquakes, when mentioned, were framed as positives rather than negatives.^[13] Sörgel's 1938 book Die Drei Grossen A has a quote from Hitler on the flyleaf to demonstrate that the concept was consistent with Nazi ideology.

After World War II, interest was piqued again as the Western Allies sought to create closer bonds with their colonies in Africa in an attempt to combat growing Marxist influence in that region, but the invention of nuclear power, the cost of rebuilding, and the end of colonialism left the Atlantropa proposal technologically unnecessary and politically unfeasible, although the Atlantropa Institute remained in existence until 1960.^[15]

Most proposals to dam the Strait of Gibraltar since that time have focused on the hydroelectric potential of such a project and do not envisage any substantial lowering of the Mediterranean sea level. An idea involving a tensioned fabric dam stretched between Europe and North Africa in the Gibraltar Strait has been envisioned to cope with any future global sea level rise outside the Mediterranean Sea Basin.^[16]

In popular culture

A version of the Atlantropa project was put forward by a character in Philip K. Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle and Amazon Studios series of the same name, former Reichsminister Martin Heusmann, who proposed to drain the entire Mediterranean with a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar.^[17]

References

^ Hanns Günther (Walter de Haas) (1931). In hundert Jahren. Kosmos.
^ "German Genius". The Advocate. Vol. LXII, no. 3956. Victoria, Australia. 13 June 1929. p. 36. Retrieved 20 August 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
^ "The Munich architect, Hermann Soergel, has published his gigantic project "Atlantropa"". The Week (Brisbane). Vol. CXII, no. 3, 001. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. 28 June 1933. p. 20. Retrieved 9 February 2018 – via National Library of Australia. ...The Munich architect, Hermann Soergel, has published his gigantic project "Atlantropa," a . scheme which he has been supervising for six years, which by lowering the level of the Mediterranean, he contends, will water the Sahara desert, win new land and connect Europe and Africa. This is one of the drawings belonging to his exhibition....
^ "Atlantropa: A plan to dam the Mediterranean Sea". Xefer. 16 March 2005. Archived from the original on 2017-07-07. Retrieved 4 August 2007.
^ Ley, Willy (1959). Engineers' Dreams: Great projects that could come true. Viking Press.
^ lord_k. "The Atlantropa Project". Dieselpunks.org. Retrieved 2013-08-13.
^ Bellows, Jason (2008-09-25). "Mediterranean be Dammed". Retrieved 2013-08-13.
^ Voigt, Wolfgang (1998). Atlantropa – Weltenbauen am Mittelmeer (in German). p. 100. ISBN 978-3-86735-025-9.
^ Strüver, Anke (2005). Politische Geographien Europas: Annäherungen an ein umstrittenes Konstrukt (in German). LIT Verlag Münster. p. 43.
^ Voigt, Wolfgang (1998). Atlantropa – Weltenbauen am Mittelmeer (in German). p. 122. ISBN 978-3-86735-025-9.
^ Sörgel 1932a, p. 75 ff
^ Sörgel 1932a, p. 66–67
^ ^a ^b Brock, Paul (1963-08-06). "German engineers dream of building a new continent". Detroit Free Press – via Newspapers.com. One of the most significant advantages would be a change of climate [to that] of Northern Europe – and especially the British Isles – because the warm Gulf Stream would be rendered much more effective.
^ Sörgel 1932a, p. 80
^ ^a ^b "Atlantropa". Cabinet Magazine (10). edit suisse group. Spring 2003. Retrieved 4 August 2007.
^ Cathcart, R.B. (March 2014). "Chapter 8". Medicative Macro-Imagineering: Earth + Mars Megaprojects. pp. 391–468.
^ Lambrechts, Toon (13 September 2016). "The Bonkers Real-Life Plan to Drain the Mediterranean and Merge Africa and Europe". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 15 April 2021.