history
Engineer, Herman Sörgel, at work on his plan
the road to Atlantropa
by Dave Wood
You have to hand it to Herman Sörgel. Whether he was a genius or someone who really shouldn’t be out of the house on the night of a full moon, he thought big. When he fancied a change of scenery he didn’t just look out of another window, or take a drive into the country. His preferred option was to alter the face of the planet.
Sörgel was born in Regensburg, Bavaria, on 2nd April 1885, at a spot where the rivers Danube and Regen meet. Perhaps it was as he stood gazing at the rushing waters that the young Herman’s thoughts first turned to great feats of hydroelectric construction. The kindest thing that could be said of Herman Sörgel’s world view was that it was Eurocentric. More bluntly, he was a wild-eyed racist who considered everything and everyone non-European to be not merely inferior, but of absolutely no consequence. He feared the potential of Asia, but thought Africa and Africans so unimportant that the land and its people could be used and/or abused by Europe as it chose. When he proposed his increasingly bizarre theories and plans that involved the absorption and manipulation of Africa on a massive scale, the existence of people in that continent was hardly acknowledged. He believed that Europe needed the land for its own purposes, and saw no reason why it should not have it. Anything or anyone that stood in the way could be swept aside as carelessly as a flower arranger might brush dust
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from a table before setting a magnificent floral display at its centre. Sörgel envisioned a future world divided into three enormous superstates — American, Asian and European. He was determined that the European zone would be the dominant one, and laid plans to make it so by creating a “Greater Europe” that he first dubbed “Panropa”, and later “Atlantropa”. His master plan involved the building of two
The kindest thing that could be said of Herman Sörgel’s world view was that it was Eurocentric. More bluntly, he was a wild-eyed racist
enormous dams. One would be span the Congo river, creating a gigantic lake almost as large as the Caspian Sea that would submerge a vast chunk of the continent. It would also drown several million people and animals, but so long as all Europeans were given the chance to leave first, that was all right. In any case, the resulting fertilisation of the Sahara would bring huge benefits to Atlantropa, and therefore required no further justification. His second dam would span the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Morocco. This would result in the partial evaporation of the Mediterranean, lowering its depth by more than 300 feet and giving Atlantropa approximately 90,000 square miles of new land to colonise. Here, Herman the idealist was at work. He believed that Europeans were constantly fighting each other because they didn’t have enough space to feel comfortable in. They were like caged animals pacing up and down, just waiting for the zookeeper to leave the cage unlocked so that they could burst out and eat somebody. The Gibraltar dam, besides giving Europe/Atlantropa the extra breathing space it needed, would also provide it with unlimited hydroelectric power via a vast power-grid stretching from Portugal to Libya. The nations of Europe would become so inter-dependent that the necessity, and even the desire to go to war again would disappear. Paradise regained. A bridge connecting Tunisia and Sicily would neatly dissect the Mediterranean into two roughly equal parts and would provide opportunities for a useful road and rail link. The new Congo Basin inland sea would, in his view, turn a previously pointless continent, so far as Europe was concerned, into something that was of real practical use. Environmental, humanitarian and ethical objections he tossed aside with bemused disdain, declaring baldly that “the fight for survival is a fight for territory”. That’s all right, then. He foresaw another bonus. The damming of the Med would force warmer water into the English Channel, and thereby heat up Western Europe beautifully. Champagne and swimming costumes all round! The Mediterranean would no longer be a sea, it would be a massive power plant. There would be huge constructions built close to Gibraltar, and Galipoli, and the Suez Canal, and the immense power they generated would provide limitless energy for Atlantropa, the Arabian peninsula, and whatever was left of Africa, which would also become an extension of Atlantropa. It was in 1927 or thereabouts that Herman Sörgel came up with his master plan. He was in luck. Had he been an obscure bespectacled anorak scribbling his thoughts in a twopenny notebook and submitting them to some obscure scientific journal with a circulation of fifteen, it is likely that his crackpot schemes would have remained unknown beyond a small circle of equally eccentric friends and fellow fantasists. But he had had the sense to marry well. His wife, Irene, was a successful art dealer with a considerable fortune. Either because she considered Herman a genius whose views should be heard, or out of a Teutonic dedication to wifely duty, or just to stop the idiot babbling on and on and on, she financed the dissemination of his extraordinary visions. He founded the Atlantropa Institute, published books and pamphlets by the dozen, and with the benefit of his wife’s money,
GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2009
6/12/08 17:05:07