Nazi Government Dams the Mediterranean

yellowdingo

Banned
Back before WW2 the German Economy was smashed and they were looking to rebuild into an Economic Superpower. Unfortunately a little known Private from the German army (by the name of Adolf Hitler) was sent to investigate a new Political Party on the rise. Instead he fell into its ranks and rose quickly to a position of Power.

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=965#more-965

A little known engineer began extoling the virtus of Damming the Mediterranean Sea. It would of course require the unification of Europe into some form of Commonwealth making Africa a resource state to the New Europe.
 
:eek:

Sweet Jesus! That's insane. Im all for 1930s super projects but that would basically ruin millions of lives, Mediterranean maritime industries would just die, world trade would be radically altered, and then the macro colonising/terraforming/ethnic cleasning of Northern Africa! Oy vey!
 

Germaniac

Donor
Most major cities of the mediteranian ruined, Worst idea ever. Would destroy southern european industry
 
To call Atlantropa ridiculous is a very, very mild understatement. Would such a project produce an epically large amount of electrical power? Yes. Would building it be possible at the time? Not a chance in hell. You'd have to rebuild virtually the entire basin of the Mediterranean, which is enough of a big challenge in itself, and that's after damming it in three places.

Then you have shipping lanes. Many of the world's critical sea lanes run through the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean. You'd have to three new Suez-size canals to keep traffic working, and a rise drop of 200 metres requires big canals to keep traffic moving.
 
OK, there are numerous reasons that this is impossible due to military, economic and political reasons.

Military: For the Nazi Government to do this they would have had to win World War Two in some way shape or form.

Political: Disregarding the war, even if they won, the mere suggestion that this has gotten past the same stage of preparation as NASA's next manned mission to Pluto is going to make all his allies (and neutrals) in the Med basin quite angry. Italy, Bulgaria, Turkey, Spain will be likely to tell him where to stick it, primarily because of the next reason:

Economic: Congradulations, by constructing this dam you have ruined the entire shipping industry in the Mediterranian. This means that The economies of all the above mentioned nations will crash. Also, if it is built, as sea level falls due to the Med. losing more water through evaporation then it gains through rivers, you get issues like "who does this new land belong to" and "The Suez canal is now useless" which brings me to another point: It takes a hell of a lot more time and money to sail a ship from Hamburg to Tokyo when you have to go around the whole of Africa then it does if you can cut through the Straits of Gibralter and the Suez Canal.

There are other reasons, but those should be a good start
 
I really like this idea for it's grandeur, but yeah, there's very little reason to do it since the benefits would be so relatively small compared to the losses. The full Atlantropa dream of making Africa more habitable by creating new seas is interesting as well.

As for shipping though, it wouldn't be cut off. They had plans for a Panamanian style lock system that would allow water to be restricted (not entirely cut off so the Med. doesn't dissipate completely) while still allowing ships to travel through.

Also, I suppose you could say that since the Med. would be slowly lowered that the cities on the coast would naturally expand and follow the shore, spreading the cost of building new infrastructure over many decades.
 
I agree with my fellow posters. If this project were actually carried out successfully, it would be unrivaled in human history until the terraforming of Mars. However, geo-engineering on such a spectacular scale would have all kinds of unexpected side effects that would have to be studied VERY carefully before construction could commence, and that is assuming that a project of this magnatude is even feasible at all.
 
actually for the amount of trouble they were having resupplying North Africa, I think the germans were damning the Mediterranean for most of the war.
 
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