Atlantropa
Encyclopedia
Atlantropa, also referred to as Panropa, was a gigantic engineering
Macro-engineering
In engineering, macro-engineering is the implementation of extremely large-scale design projects...

 and colonization project devised by the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 Herman Sörgel
Herman Sörgel
Herman Sörgel was a German architect. He was the originator of the idea of Atlantropa—a utopian continent created by damming the Strait of Gibraltar...

 in the 1920s and promulgated by him until his death in 1952. Its central feature was a hydroelectric dam
Hydroelectricity
Hydroelectricity is the term referring to electricity generated by hydropower; the production of electrical power through the use of the gravitational force of falling or flowing water. It is the most widely used form of renewable energy...

 to be built across the Strait of Gibraltar
Strait of Gibraltar
The Strait of Gibraltar is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Spain in Europe from Morocco in Africa. The name comes from Gibraltar, which in turn originates from the Arabic Jebel Tariq , albeit the Arab name for the Strait is Bab el-Zakat or...

, which would have provided enormous amounts of hydroelectricity and would have led to the lowering of the surface of the Mediterranean Sea
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

 by up to 200 metres, opening up large new lands for settlement, for example in a now almost totally drained Adriatic Sea
Adriatic Sea
The Adriatic Sea is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan peninsula, and the system of the Apennine Mountains from that of the Dinaric Alps and adjacent ranges...

.

Sörgel saw his scheme, projected to take over a century, as a peaceful European-wide alternative to the Lebensraum
Lebensraum
was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany...

 concepts which later became one of stated reasons for Nazi conquest of new territories. Atlantropa would provide land and food, employment, electric power, and most of all, a new vision for Europe and neighbouring Africa.

The Atlantropa movement, through its several decades, was characterised by four constants:
  • Pacifism
    Pacifism
    Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...

    , in its promises of using technology in a peaceful way;
  • Pan-European sentiment, seeing the project as a way to unite a war-torn Europe;
  • White-centric superiority (and even racist) attitudes to Africa (which was to become united with Europe into "Atlantropa"), and
  • Neo-colonial geopolitics
    Geopolitics
    Geopolitics, from Greek Γη and Πολιτική in broad terms, is a theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale....

     which saw the world being divided into three blocs, America, Asia and Atlantropa.


While it was generally considered technically feasible in its time, and became well known even in mainstream society, active support was generally limited to architects and planners from Germany and a number of other primarily northern European countries. Critics derided it for various faults, ranging from lack of any actual cooperation of Mediterranean countries in the planning to the impacts it would have had on the historic coastal communities left stranded inland when the sea receded. The project reached great popularity in the late 1920s/early 1930s, and for a short period again, in the late 1940s/early 1950s, but soon disappeared from general discourse again after Sörgel's death.

The project

The plan was inspired by the coeval understanding of the Messinian Salinity Crisis
Messinian salinity crisis
The Messinian Salinity Crisis, also referred to as the Messinian Event, and in its latest stage as the Lago Mare event, was a geological event during which the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of partly or nearly complete desiccation throughout the latter part of the Messinian age of the Miocene...

, a pan-Mediterranean geological event that took place 5 to 6 million years ago. The contemporary geologists proposed that the large salt deposits surrounding the Mediterranean coast were the result of its partial isolation by a shrinking of the seaways connecting to the Atlantic. Today it is a majoritary opinion among geoscientists that the Mediterranean underwent a significant drawdown during that period.

The Utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...

n goal was to solve all the major problems of European civilization by the creation of a new continent, "Atlantropa", consisting of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

 and to be inhabited by Europeans (who were supposed to flourish under the effects of the climate changes, as opposed to Africa's native populations). Sörgel was convinced that to remain competitive with the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

 and an emerging Oriental "Pan-Asia", Europe must become self-sufficient, and this meant possessing territories in all climate zones – hence colonizing Africa was necessary. The lowering of the Mediterranean would enable the production of immense amounts of electric power, guaranteeing the growth of industry. Vast tracts of land would be freed for agriculture – including the Sahara desert, which was to be irrigated with the help of three sea-sized man-made lakes throughout Africa. The massive public works, envisioned to go on for more than a century, would relieve unemployment and the acquisition of new land would ease the pressure of overpopulation
Overpopulation
Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth...

, which Sörgel thought were the fundamental causes of political unrest in Europe. Sörgel also believed the project's effect on the climate could only be beneficial. The Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

 under the control of a consolidated Atlantropa would be an additional energy source and a bulwark against the Yellow peril
Yellow Peril
Yellow Peril was a colour metaphor for race that originated in the late nineteenth century with immigration of Chinese laborers to various Western countries, notably the United States, and later associated with the Japanese during the mid 20th century, due to Japanese military expansion.The term...

.

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 the Gibraltar dam crowned by a 400-metre tower designed by Peter Behrens
Peter Behrens
Peter Behrens was a German architect and designer. He was important for the modernist movement, as several of the movements leading names worked for him when they were young.-Biography:Behrens attended the Christianeum Hamburg from September 1877 until Easter 1882...

, projections of the growth of agricultural production, sketches for a pan-Atlantropan power grid, and even provision for the protection of Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 as a cultural landmark. Concerns about climate change, earthquakes, attacks and the fate of African culture were often ignored as being unimportant.

The project never gained substantial support because of its fantastic scale and Eurocentric expansionism. Under the Nazi regime
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

, the plan was ignored and ridiculed as it was against the idea of an eastwards expanding
Drang nach Osten
Drang nach Osten was a term coined in the 19th century to designate German expansion into Slavic lands. The term became a motto of the German nationalist movement in the late nineteenth century...

 German Empire. The Italians never supported the idea, as their cities were so dependent on the coastlines. After the Second World War, interest was piqued again as the Western Allies
Western Allies
The Western Allies were a political and geographic grouping among the Allied Powers of the Second World War. It generally includes the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth, the United States, France and various other European and Latin American countries, but excludes China, the Soviet Union,...

 sought to create closer bonds with Africa and combat communism, but the invention of nuclear power
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...

, the cost of rebuilding, and the end of colonialism
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...

 left Atlantropa technologically unnecessary and politically unfeasible, although the Atlantropa Institute remained in existence until 1960.

In fiction

In Gene Roddenberry
Gene Roddenberry
Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry was an American television screenwriter, producer and futurist, best known for creating the American science fiction series Star Trek. Born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, California where his father worked as a police officer...

's novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a 1979 American science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures. It is the first film based on the Star Trek television series. The film is set in the twenty-third century, when a mysterious and immensely powerful alien cloud called V'Ger approaches the Earth,...

, the Strait of Gibraltar has been dammed. Roddenberry may have borrowed the idea from Sörgel via the popular works of Willy Ley
Willy Ley
Willy Ley was a German-American science writer and space advocate who helped popularize rocketry and spaceflight in both Germany and the United States. The crater Ley on the far side of the Moon is named in his honor.-Life:...

, whose book Engineers' Dreams describes both Atlantropa and Sörgel's other grand design, the forming of an inland sea in central Africa.

The idea has a central role in the 1950 novel by Soviet science fiction writer Grigorii Grebnev
Grigorii Grebnev
Grigorii Nikitich Gribonosov was a Soviet journalist and science fiction and adventure writer, who wrote under the name Grigorii Grebnev...

 The Flying Station, popular in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 in the early 1950s and translated to Hebrew. It depicts a future where Socialist Revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...

 is triumphant worldwide and leads humanity to undreamed happiness and prosperity, but must still fight off neo-Nazi remnants who skulk near the North Pole
North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is, subject to the caveats explained below, defined as the point in the northern hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface...

 and plot to sabotage the Revolution's most prestigious project – the erecting of a huge dam at Gibraltar. The book took up the technical details of Sörgel's idea while diametrically reversing its underlying geopolitical implications.

In Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...

's classic 1962 alternate history novel The Man in the High Castle
The Man in the High Castle
The Man in the High Castle is a science fiction alternate history novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It won a Hugo Award in 1963 and has since been translated into many languages....

, mention is made in passing of Nazi Germany draining the Mediterranean as one of several gargantuan projects.

The Mediterranean sea is also mentioned as drained in Sir Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama
Rendezvous with Rama
Rendezvous with Rama is a novel by Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1972. Set in the 22nd century, the story involves a cylindrical alien starship that enters Earth's solar system...

, in the context of the spectacular archaeological discoveries it enabled.

David Mason
David Mason
David Mason was an English orchestral, solo and session trumpet player. He played the flugelhorn for the premiere of Ralph Vaughan Williams's ninth symphony and the piccolo trumpet solo on The Beatles' song "Penny Lane"....

's The Shores of Tomorrow (1971), with the theme of conflict between numerous timelines of alternate history that found means of invading each other, includes a technologically-advanced world where a project similar to Sörgel's had been realised thousands of years ago, with the former Mediterranean sea bed transformed into fertile agricultural land. During a cataclysmic power struggle the dam at the Gibraltar-analogue is blown up and the valleys flooded by the Atlantic waters, with immense loss of life.

Discussion of the project rates a chapter in John Knittel's 1939 novel Power for Sale.

There is a passing reference to a huge hydroelectric dam spanning the Strait of Gibraltar in the alternate history
Alternate history (fiction)
Alternate history or alternative history is a genre of fiction consisting of stories that are set in worlds in which history has diverged from the actual history of the world. It can be variously seen as a sub-genre of literary fiction, science fiction, and historical fiction; different alternate...

 novel Under the Yoke
Under the Yoke (novel)
Under the Yoke is the second of four books of S. M. Stirling's alternate history series, The Domination.-Plot summary:Tanya von Shrakenberg established a plantation in formerly-French Touraine Province. Her slaves include Marya Sokolowska and Chantal Lefarge, formerly a Polish nun and a French...

by S. M. Stirling
S. M. Stirling
Stephen Michael Stirling is a French-born Canadian-American science fiction and fantasy author. Stirling is probably best known for his Draka series of alternate history novels and the more recent time travel/alternate history Nantucket series and Emberverse series.-Personal:Stirling was born on...

. Although the word "Atlantropa" is never used and there is no mention of lowered sea levels in the Mediterranean, Stirling's novels of the Draka
Draka
Draka may be:*Draka, Bulgaria, village in Sredets, Burgas Province*Draka Holding N.V., Dutch cable manufacturer*Fictional empire in The Domination series...

 are something of an inversion of Sörgel's vision, in that it is Africa that subsumes Europe to create the new composite continental entity, with the guiding light coming from Pretoria
Pretoria
Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...

 rather than Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

.

In the Dan Simmons
Dan Simmons
Dan Simmons is an American author most widely known for his Hugo Award-winning science fiction series, known as the Hyperion Cantos, and for his Locus-winning Ilium/Olympos cycle....

 novels Ilium
Ilium (novel)
Ilium is a science fiction novel by Dan Simmons, the first part of the Ilium/Olympos cycle, concerning the re-creation of the events in the Iliad on an alternate earth and Mars. These events are set in motion by beings who have taken on the roles of the Greek gods...

and Olympos
Olympos (novel)
Olympos, Dan Simmons' novel published in 2005, is the sequel to Ilium and final part of Ilium/Olympos duology. Like its predecessor it is a work of science fiction, and contains many literary references: it blends together Homer's epics the Iliad and the Odyssey, Shakespeare's The Tempest, and has...

the Mediterranean has been dammed and drained.

In the PC game Railroad Tycoon II: The Next Millennium, a dam is built across the Strait of Gibraltar in one of the missions.

In the Harry Turtledove
Harry Turtledove
Harry Norman Turtledove is an American novelist, who has produced works in several genres including alternate history, historical fiction, fantasy and science fiction.- Life :...

 novella "Down in the Bottomlands
Down in the Bottomlands
Down in the Bottomlands is a novella written by Harry Turtledove. It takes place in an alternative history in which the Atlantic Ocean did not reflood the Mediterranean Sea 5.5 million years ago in the Miocene Epoch, as it did in our history...

", the area of the Mediterranean Sea is a desert through natural causes - the Strait of Gibraltar had naturally closed thousands of years earlier. The story has the protagonist try to stop a terrorist plot to open up the natural dam to the Atlantic Ocean with a nuclear weapon.

See also

  • Aral Sea
    Aral Sea
    The Aral Sea was a lake that lay between Kazakhstan in the north and Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan, in the south...

  • Strait of Gibraltar crossing
    Strait of Gibraltar crossing
    A Strait of Gibraltar crossing is a hypothetical bridge or tunnel spanning the Strait of Gibraltar that would connect Europe to Africa.The Spanish and Moroccan governments appointed a a to investigate the feasibility of linking the two continents...

  • Megaproject
    Megaproject
    A megaproject is an extremely large-scale investment project. Megaprojects are typically defined as costing more than US$1 billion and attracting a lot of public attention because of substantial impacts on communities, environment, and budgets. Megaprojects can also be defined as "initiatives that...

  • The Messinian Salinity Crisis
    Messinian salinity crisis
    The Messinian Salinity Crisis, also referred to as the Messinian Event, and in its latest stage as the Lago Mare event, was a geological event during which the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of partly or nearly complete desiccation throughout the latter part of the Messinian age of the Miocene...

     is a geological event during which the Mediterranean Sea went into a cycle of partly or nearly complete desiccation throughout the latter part of the Messinian
    Messinian
    The Messinian is in the geologic timescale the last age or uppermost stage of the Miocene. It spans the time between 7.246 ± 0.005 Ma and 5.332 ± 0.005 Ma...

     age of the Miocene
    Miocene
    The Miocene is a geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about . The Miocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell. Its name comes from the Greek words and and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern sea invertebrates than the Pliocene. The Miocene follows the Oligocene...

     epoch, from 5.96 to 5.33 Ma (million years ago).
  • Three Gorges Dam
    Three Gorges Dam
    The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric dam that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, located in the Yiling District of Yichang, in Hubei province, China...

  • Trans Global Highway
    Trans Global Highway
    The Trans-Global Highway is a proposed highway system that would link all continents of Earth except Australia and Antarctica. The highway would network new and existing bridges and tunnels, improving not only ground transportation but also potentially offering a conduit for utility pipelines. It...


External links

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