Why did a German engineer want to drain the Mediterranean Sea in the early 1900s?

Damming the Mediterranean Sea is perhaps one of the most ambitious mega projects the world has ever conceived, and had it been completed, its impacts would have been felt globally.

The Mediterranean Sea , a vast and historically significant body of water, forms a natural boundary between 3 continents, Europe to the North , Africa to the South , and Asia to the east.

Also feeding into the sea is the Nile River , which is what today 's podcast is all about.

Herman Sorgel proposed the construction of giant hydroelectric dams across the Strait of Gibraltar , the Dardanelles , and between Sicily and Tunisia .

The most ambitious part of this plan involved lowering the Mediterranean Sea by up to 200 meters .

The project was intended to rejuvenate a beleaguered Europe through the generation of enormous amounts of hydroelectric power, which Storgel thought would be sufficient to make Europe entirely energy independent.

The Atlantropa project was incredible in its scale, and while its original intentions were based on ensuring peace throughout Europe , had it actually been built, Europe and Africa would have been irreversibly changed.

The project's proposed dams at the Strait of Gibraltar , the Dardanelles , and between Sicily and Tunisia would have lowered the sea level of the Mediterranean Sea by up to 200 meters .

This reduction in water would have exposed new land for agriculture and Urban Development but it would have come at catastrophic ecological cost.