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How Atlantropa Aimed to Create a New Europe-Africa Supercontinent
A utopian project aimed at reshaping the planet
In 1923, the German architect Herman Sörgel looked at the world and saw a myriad of problems. Fresh off of the horrors of World War I, Sörgel feared for the future. He saw overpopulation, war, a lack of reliable power, and ethnic tensions as existential threats to humanity’s future. Sörgel’s native Germany was wrestling with a post-war depression and an unemployment rate hovering around 23%. The average German's income was half in 1923 as it had been in 1913. Europe needed jobs. It also needed something that would bind the continent together to prevent future wars from destroying the fate of Europe.
To tackle the world’s biggest problems, Sörgel believed humanity had to think bigger. He proposed a wild project that, in his mind, would solve all of the planet’s ills. The project was called Atlantropa, and it called for damming the Mediterranean Sea in a bid to reshape the region completely.
Sörgel proposed building a series of mega damns at the choke points of the Mediterranean. Dams would be built across the Strait of Gibraltar, the Bosporus, and the Dardanelles. The dams would serve two purposes. First, they would hold back the Black Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, which would cause sea levels in the…
