Atlantropa

The Atlantropa proposal, throughout its several decades, was characterised by four constants:[8] 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, including the lack of any co-operation of Mediterranean countries in the planning, and the impacts that it would have on coastal communities that would be stranded inland when the sea receded.

Sörgel was convinced that to remain competitive with the Americas and an emerging Oriental "Pan-Asia", Europe needed to become self-sufficient, which in his opinion meant possessing territories in all climate zones.

The massive public works, envisioned to go on for more than a century, were to relieve unemployment, and the acquisition of new land to ease the pressure of overpopulation, which Sörgel thought were the fundamental causes of political unrest in Europe.

[16] A version of the Atlantropa project was put forward by a character in Philip K. Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle and in the Amazon Studios series of the same name, Martin Heusmann, who proposed to drain the entire Mediterranean with a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar.