It’s amazing what ideas were once taken seriously that are now laughed at. Here’s one: a plan from the 1920s to dam the Mediterranean. I’ll explain.
Herman Sorgel was an architect from Germany, helping to fulfill the CIA profile of a supervillain. His father was involved in the construction of hydroelectric dams in Bavaria, and so we can see where his fascination came from.
Anyways, in the 1920s, presumably after a wild Oktoberfest, Sorgel had an idea. Why not build a giant dam at the strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco and another one at the Sea of Marmara connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean thereby lowering the sea from evaporation? He had a long list of benefits:
It would open up a tremendous amount of land (over 250,000 square miles, more than all of France) for agriculture and development
It would generate 110,000 MW of electricity (that’s equal to about 10% of current US electricity generation, and probably would’ve been more than all of what Europe would’ve needed at the time) and it would be done without any burning of coal (yes, they did care about that sort of thing back then)
It would create a massive amount of employment
And, more idealistically, he hoped that the cooperation between the nations of Europe needed for the project would bring peace. The horrors of World War I were still fresh in the minds of Europeans.
There was also a healthy amount of racism. Sorgel was worried about the rise of “Pan Asia” and the Americas would reduce the power of Europe. So he felt that Africa (which was still mostly colonized at the time) needed to be absorbed into Europe for the latter to stay strong. And he thought that the project, by literally bridging the continents together, would do that. He therefore named the project “Altantropa”.
At the time, the environmental aspects were not worrying to most people. What was disturbing was the prospect of losing important waterfront property. Port cities like Marseille and Genoa would’ve been left high and dry. Most horrifying, the canals of Venice would’ve become alleyways of dirt and rock. To solve that problem, he suggested building a huge levy around Venice to keep the water in (this solution is shown above).
Of course, 90 years later, we can see, oh, one or two other problems. The land exposed would’ve been salty and unsuitable for any agriculture. The Mediterranean, with no outlets, would’ve become ever saltier, killing all sea life and devastating the fishing industry. By removing all that water, the sea levels elsewhere would rise. And without the weight of the water, it would’ve increased seismic activities. Just imagine the catastrophe that would ensue if the Gibraltar dam was destroyed by an earthquake.
Sorgel soon had more hurdles thrown in the way of selling his project. His idea of expanding land South peacefully went against the Nazis’ idea of lebensraum. He was therefore forced to keep quiet through the 30s and 40s.
In this time, he decided to expand his ideas. He proposed building another dam in the Congo River Valley in Africa which would then create a massive lake behind it. Then a canal would be dug over a mountain range to the north to allow water to flow into Lake Chad, recreating the ancient Chad Sea. And then eventually that would start flowing north into the Mediterranean and create a second Nile. This would enable inland water transportation for exploiting Africa’s mineral resources. You can really see the hubris of this. While Europeans would get more land, Africans would get less. Plus we would’ve lost most of Central Africa’s rainforests and all the associated wildlife.
After the war ended, the Allied occupation forces showed some interest in Atlantropa, but with nuclear power on the horizon, as well as the cost of reconstruction, it never went anywhere. But Sorgel persisted in his advocacy. On Christmas 1952, while bicycling to a lecture at the University of Munich, Sorgel was hit by a car and killed, he was 67. And Atlantropa died with him.
So that was Atlantropa, the product of one man’s idealism and megalomania. It was a proposal that captured the imagination of the public and was taken very seriously, whereas now anyone who wants to dam the Mediterranean is probably spouting the idea from a street corner while wearing a sandwich board. It gives us a look into the ideals and dreams of the interwar era, and we can be thankful that it didn’t become today’s nightmare.