AHC/WI/TL: Atlantropa gets built post Great War
Atlantropia:
That's an artists impression above. The Med, look a bit strange to you? Sardinia a bit big?... OH HOLY BJESUS where's the Adriatic gone? What the!? The Alien Space Bats must have landed!! Quick Hans, we need to leave for the Indies!
During the 1920s Herman Sörgel came up with the idea of damming the Mediterranean Sea at the Straits of Gibraltar with a massive hydroelectric dam designed to produce electrical energy for all of Europe.
This would have worked by lowering the sea level within the Mediterranean by about 200m, and consequently freed up vast tracts of land around the Adriatic, Aegean and North African coasts. In doing so it was hoped that the pressures for 'living space' resources and expansionism could be resolved by using this extra land.
Historically the Atlantropa movement, over the decades before Sorgels death, had four key points:
1. Pacifism, using technology in a peaceful way after the Great War;
2. Pan-European Settlement, seeing the project as a way to unite a war-torn Europe by giving people new lands.
3. European Centric attitudes to North Africa, North Africa was to become settled by white Europeans from France, Spain, Italy etc.
4. Three Economic Blocs, America, Asia and Atlantropa
It was expected that this plan might take a century to fully realise, since coastal communities would have to diversify or move with the slowly receding seas and it would take time for the land to recover from the seas recession. But other than these political issues nothing in the plan really would take ultra modern equipment or technology.
This meant that these huge public works would immediately give massive employment opportunities to returning soldiers from the fronts and a way to regenerate the civilian economies of the nations involved in the war.
The huge HEP Dam, would provide 'limitless' free energy to Europe, allowing the industrialised cities of Europe to rid themselves of coal and oil fired power stations reducing smog and improving clean air for urban populations, as well as stimulate European business in general to go to 'cheap electric'.
Farming could be exported to the North African coasts which would be able to sustain the large industrial scale farming techniques that had been brought about some 20 years earlier but had yet to be fully implemented across Europe, and the favourable climate on a more northerly North African coast would improve crop yields from less severe winters. Then by having the farms export to new North African harbours the produce could be shipped east, or west, or North to Britain Scandinavia at a fraction of the cost of rail travel.
By expanding towards the middle east as well, Turkey and the Newly formed 'Arabia' would become a European link to Asia, and help create a bulwark against the 'Yellow Peril' in Asia, and be a counter force for the Great Powers against Russian imperialism (although it was at the time in the middle of the Russian Civil war that preceded the Soviet Union).
This thread asks the question, what if following the Great War, these ideas are taken with serious credence to implement.
With Italy in particular during the early 1920s championing the idea and concept under Benito Mussolini who sees the scheme with great promise by giving Italy new land in the Adriatic, limiting Austria-Hungarys access to the Med, and with a HEP dam of its own between Sicily and Tunis and a large claim on the new North African coast, the ability to truly be the 'Spiritual Successor' of Rome, and forming the Mare Nostrum. The Bosnians, Croats, Albanians see potential in the scheme that would allow them to make nations out of themselves along the new coast line and be able to recognise their own Slavic nationhood, since they are determined to get their own independence following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary following the Great War.
The French position is less positive, since for them they have a nation to rebuild, and many young men were lost during the war, so they are less happy about investment in the scheme, or the need to move their Mediterranean cities, and are more determined to put up resistance against Atlantropia.
Britain too is not the most supportive, since Gibraltar has long been their control over the entrance to the Mediterranean and the Dams construction works will no doubt fall in part to Britain if not to build, to police and manage, if they want to keep their strategic hold here. Similarly the Suez canal will need to be extended at great cost, and Italy may have a monopoly on the locks at Sicily if built.
However from the British point of view, if they control the dam at Gibraltar, they control the energy of Europe and have a far more 'physical control' over who uses the naval passage.
Turkey, which has recently become its own independent state following the Turkish War of Independence is in much the same position as Britain. A canal and dam built through the Bosphorus will give them a major HEP plant between the Black Sea and Aegean, which given the fall of their old Empire will help restore some sense of national pride.
The Arabias in general fairly neutral to any of these plans since they for the most part won't be affected, and are in the process of being 'colonialised' by Britain and France.
Germany is in the position of being crippled by the Treaty of Versailles and while it is perceived that the soldiers have returned home victorious the German economic position is destroyed with it recently defaulting on the Papiermark. They perceive the plan as somewhat 'how does this affect us?' point of view, but it doesn't escape German industrialists and politicians that paying the war reparations in terms of industrial production to the project might not be such a bad way of becoming the creditors to the French uninterest in investment.
Spain arguably the greatest stakeholder in the entire scheme apart from Italy due to its position at the gates of the Med. Recently due to internal unrest Gen. Miguel Primo de Rivera has come to power in Spain taking over from the old regime in a bloodless coup and has already began a massive program of public works across Spain, which will lead to it having three times its 1920 economic potential within the decade.
Further works in the contract to build the dam, and later the energy rights would make Spain a key player in Europe giving the plan backing.
The biggest question mark hanging over the project is the truely fantastic scale of the project, which makes it satire in the British gentlemen’s clubs when they see cartoons of Mussolini and Rivera holding back the sea, while a British Tommie looks on from a seat on the Rock of Gibraltar.
The first point we need is a point of divergence that gets people talking seriously...
Atlantropia:
That's an artists impression above. The Med, look a bit strange to you? Sardinia a bit big?... OH HOLY BJESUS where's the Adriatic gone? What the!? The Alien Space Bats must have landed!! Quick Hans, we need to leave for the Indies!
During the 1920s Herman Sörgel came up with the idea of damming the Mediterranean Sea at the Straits of Gibraltar with a massive hydroelectric dam designed to produce electrical energy for all of Europe.
This would have worked by lowering the sea level within the Mediterranean by about 200m, and consequently freed up vast tracts of land around the Adriatic, Aegean and North African coasts. In doing so it was hoped that the pressures for 'living space' resources and expansionism could be resolved by using this extra land.
Historically the Atlantropa movement, over the decades before Sorgels death, had four key points:
1. Pacifism, using technology in a peaceful way after the Great War;
2. Pan-European Settlement, seeing the project as a way to unite a war-torn Europe by giving people new lands.
3. European Centric attitudes to North Africa, North Africa was to become settled by white Europeans from France, Spain, Italy etc.
4. Three Economic Blocs, America, Asia and Atlantropa
It was expected that this plan might take a century to fully realise, since coastal communities would have to diversify or move with the slowly receding seas and it would take time for the land to recover from the seas recession. But other than these political issues nothing in the plan really would take ultra modern equipment or technology.
This meant that these huge public works would immediately give massive employment opportunities to returning soldiers from the fronts and a way to regenerate the civilian economies of the nations involved in the war.
The huge HEP Dam, would provide 'limitless' free energy to Europe, allowing the industrialised cities of Europe to rid themselves of coal and oil fired power stations reducing smog and improving clean air for urban populations, as well as stimulate European business in general to go to 'cheap electric'.
Farming could be exported to the North African coasts which would be able to sustain the large industrial scale farming techniques that had been brought about some 20 years earlier but had yet to be fully implemented across Europe, and the favourable climate on a more northerly North African coast would improve crop yields from less severe winters. Then by having the farms export to new North African harbours the produce could be shipped east, or west, or North to Britain Scandinavia at a fraction of the cost of rail travel.
By expanding towards the middle east as well, Turkey and the Newly formed 'Arabia' would become a European link to Asia, and help create a bulwark against the 'Yellow Peril' in Asia, and be a counter force for the Great Powers against Russian imperialism (although it was at the time in the middle of the Russian Civil war that preceded the Soviet Union).
This thread asks the question, what if following the Great War, these ideas are taken with serious credence to implement.
With Italy in particular during the early 1920s championing the idea and concept under Benito Mussolini who sees the scheme with great promise by giving Italy new land in the Adriatic, limiting Austria-Hungarys access to the Med, and with a HEP dam of its own between Sicily and Tunis and a large claim on the new North African coast, the ability to truly be the 'Spiritual Successor' of Rome, and forming the Mare Nostrum. The Bosnians, Croats, Albanians see potential in the scheme that would allow them to make nations out of themselves along the new coast line and be able to recognise their own Slavic nationhood, since they are determined to get their own independence following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary following the Great War.
The French position is less positive, since for them they have a nation to rebuild, and many young men were lost during the war, so they are less happy about investment in the scheme, or the need to move their Mediterranean cities, and are more determined to put up resistance against Atlantropia.
Britain too is not the most supportive, since Gibraltar has long been their control over the entrance to the Mediterranean and the Dams construction works will no doubt fall in part to Britain if not to build, to police and manage, if they want to keep their strategic hold here. Similarly the Suez canal will need to be extended at great cost, and Italy may have a monopoly on the locks at Sicily if built.
However from the British point of view, if they control the dam at Gibraltar, they control the energy of Europe and have a far more 'physical control' over who uses the naval passage.
Turkey, which has recently become its own independent state following the Turkish War of Independence is in much the same position as Britain. A canal and dam built through the Bosphorus will give them a major HEP plant between the Black Sea and Aegean, which given the fall of their old Empire will help restore some sense of national pride.
The Arabias in general fairly neutral to any of these plans since they for the most part won't be affected, and are in the process of being 'colonialised' by Britain and France.
Germany is in the position of being crippled by the Treaty of Versailles and while it is perceived that the soldiers have returned home victorious the German economic position is destroyed with it recently defaulting on the Papiermark. They perceive the plan as somewhat 'how does this affect us?' point of view, but it doesn't escape German industrialists and politicians that paying the war reparations in terms of industrial production to the project might not be such a bad way of becoming the creditors to the French uninterest in investment.
Spain arguably the greatest stakeholder in the entire scheme apart from Italy due to its position at the gates of the Med. Recently due to internal unrest Gen. Miguel Primo de Rivera has come to power in Spain taking over from the old regime in a bloodless coup and has already began a massive program of public works across Spain, which will lead to it having three times its 1920 economic potential within the decade.
Further works in the contract to build the dam, and later the energy rights would make Spain a key player in Europe giving the plan backing.
The biggest question mark hanging over the project is the truely fantastic scale of the project, which makes it satire in the British gentlemen’s clubs when they see cartoons of Mussolini and Rivera holding back the sea, while a British Tommie looks on from a seat on the Rock of Gibraltar.
The first point we need is a point of divergence that gets people talking seriously...