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Atlantropa, also referred to as Panropa, was a gigantic engineering and colonization idea devised by the German architect Herman Sörgel in the 1920s and promoted by him until his death in 1952. Its central feature was a hydroelectric dam to be built across the Strait of Gibraltar, which would have provided enormous amounts of hydroelectricity〔"Atlantropa: A plan to dam the Mediterranean Sea." 16 March 2005. (Archive. ) Xefer. Retrieved on 4 August 2007.〕 and would have led to the lowering of the surface of the Mediterranean Sea by up to , opening up large new lands for settlement, for example in the now almost totally drained Adriatic Sea. The project proposed four additional major dams as well: * Across the Dardanelles to hold back the Black Sea * Between Sicily and Tunisia to provide a roadway and further lower the inner Mediterranean * On the Congo River below its Kwa River tributary to refill the Mega-Chad basin around Lake Chad providing fresh water to irrigate the Sahara and creating a shipping lane to the interior of Africa * Suez Canal extension and locks to maintain Red Sea connection Sörgel saw his scheme, projected to take over a century, as a peaceful European-wide alternative to the Lebensraum concepts which later became one of the 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, 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; *Eurocentric attitudes to Africa (which was to become united with Europe into "Atlantropa" respectively Eurafrika), and *Neo-colonial geopolitics which saw the world being divided into three blocs, America, Asia and Atlantropa.〔Politische Geographien Europas: Annäherungen an ein umstrittenes Konstrukt, Anke Strüver, LIT Verlag Münster, 2005, p.43〕 Active support was 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, a pan-Mediterranean geological event that took place 5 to 6 million years ago.〔Gautier, F., Clauzon, G., Suc, J.P., Cravatte, J., Violanti, D., 1994. Age and duration of the Messinian salinity crisis. C.R. Acad. Sci., Paris (IIA) 318, 1103–1109.〕 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 majority opinion among geoscientists that the Mediterranean underwent a significant drawdown during that period. The Utopian goal was to solve all the major problems of European civilization by the creation of a new continent, "Atlantropa", consisting of Europe and Africa 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 and an emerging Oriental "Pan-Asia", Europe must become self-sufficient, and this meant possessing territories in all climate zones. Asia would forever remain a mystery to Europeans, and the British would not be able to maintain their global empire in the long run – hence a common European effort to colonize Africa was necessary.〔Sörgel, Herman. ''Atlantropa''. Fretz & Wasmuth, Zürich 1932, p. 75 ff.〕 The lowering of the Mediterranean would enable the production of immense amounts of electric power, guaranteeing the growth of industry. Unlike fossil fuels, this power source would not be subject to depletion. 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, 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.〔Sörgel, Herman. ''Atlantropa''. Fretz & Wasmuth, Zürich 1932, pp. 66 - 67.〕 The Middle East under the control of a consolidated Atlantropa would be an additional energy source and a bulwark against the Yellow Peril.〔Sörgel, Herman. ''Atlantropa''. Fretz & Wasmuth, Zürich 1932, p. 80.〕 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, projections of the growth of agricultural production, sketches for a pan-Atlantropan power grid, and even provision for the protection of Venice as a cultural landmark.〔"Atlantropa." (Issue 10 Spring 2003. ) Cabinet Magazine. Retrieved on 4 August 2007.〕 Concerns about climate change, earthquakes, attacks and the fate of African culture were often ignored as being unimportant. Sörgel's 1938 book ''Die Drei Grossen A'' has a quote from Hitler on the flyleaf, demonstrating that the concept was not inconsistent with Nazi ideology. After the Second World War, interest was piqued again as the Western Allies sought to create closer bonds with Africa and combat communism, but the invention of nuclear power, the cost of rebuilding, and the end of colonialism left Atlantropa technologically unnecessary and politically unfeasible, although the Atlantropa Institute remained in existence until 1960.〔 It is now known that the result of such a plan would mostly be to create salt flats, unsuitable for growing crops. Most proposals to dam the Strait of Gibraltar since that time have focused on the hydroelectric potential of such a project, and do not envisage any substantial lowering of the Mediterranean sea level. A new idea involving a tensioned fabric dam stretched between Europe and North Africa in the Gibraltar Strait could cope with any future global sea-level rise outside of the Mediterranean Sea Basin. And, the MOSE project to protect Venice, Italy would thereby be made obsolete and unnecessary.〔Cathcart, R.B. Medicative Macro-Imagineering: Earth + Mars Megaprojects (March 2014), Chapter 8 pages 391-468.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Atlantropa」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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