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In the years after World War I, one German architect and engineer proposed an extraordinary solution to Europe’s economic and political problems: partially drain the Mediterranean, generate massive amounts of hydroelectric power, and create vast new areas of farmland connecting Europe and Africa.
Herman Sörgel unveiled the concept in 1929 in a book titled The Panropa Project, Lowering the Mediterranean, Irrigating the Sahara. Three years later, he renamed the proposal Atlantropa. He spent the rest of his life promoting the idea through books, articles and lectures, building a following around what he believed could become a peaceful new European order.
At the center of Atlantropa was an enormous engineering project. Sörgel envisioned a giant dam across the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco, cutting the Mediterranean off from the Atlantic. Another dam would close the Dardanelles, while a third would stretch between Sicily and Tunisia, dividing the Mediterranean into sections with different water levels.
With the Atlantic inflow blocked, Sörgel believed the Mediterranean would gradually fall. The retreating water would expose enormous areas of land along the coastline that could potentially be used for agriculture and settlement.
The proposed dams would also generate vast quantities of hydroelectricity. Sörgel imagined the project providing Europe with abundant cheap energy while creating enough construction work to employ millions of people for decades.
For Sörgel, however, Atlantropa was about more than engineering. Europe was struggling with unemployment, poverty and political tensions following World War I. As a committed pacifist, he believed that such an enormous project would force European nations to cooperate and become economically interdependent, reducing the likelihood of another war.
The proposal attracted considerable public attention in Germany, and Sörgel established the Atlantropa Institute to promote it. He even approached the Nazi government after Adolf Hitler came to power, but the regime had little interest in his vision. Instead, it pursued territorial expansion through military conquest.
After World War II, the Allies briefly considered aspects of the proposal before abandoning it as impractical. Europe’s immediate priority was reconstruction, while advances in nuclear energy also weakened the case for relying on gigantic hydroelectric projects.
Sörgel continued promoting Atlantropa until his death in 1952. The institute survived until 1960, but the project itself never moved beyond the planning stage. Its legacy ultimately shifted from engineering proposal to science fiction, leaving behind one of the most ambitious unrealized attempts to physically reshape the geography of Europe and Africa.
