Atlantropa Triumphant

Atlantropa was an idea devised by German architect and engineer Herman Sörgel as a way to bring Europe out of the great depression. The plan consisted of two phases, phase one was to build hydroelectric dams across the strait of Gibraltar, the strait of Sicily and the Bosporus strait in order to lower the Mediterranean, giving Europe limitless employment, food and energy. Phase two was to dam the Congo river to refill the Chad basin and irrigate the Sahara desert, easing overpopulation and providing an alternative to the nazi's lebensraum.

Sörgel envisioned the project lasting for over a century and wanted it to promote pacifism, pan-European cooperation and a renewed colonialism in Africa to create a sort of "Greater Europe". In our timeline the project went nowhere for numerous reasons but what if it did?

In this timeline the Nazi government sees the potential in Atlantropa and endorse it wholeheartedly, they manage to convince the governments of Spain, France, Italy, Britain, Yugoslavia and Greece to join the project, as construction on the Gibraltar dam commences more and more European countries join and contribute funds and engineers to the project.

However as the project progressed trouble was brewing. Stalin and the Soviets began to look west with a mixture of paranoia, jealously and fear, if the fascist and imperial nations of Europe had an endless supply of food, electricity and natural resources from Africa what could stop them in case of a war? He decided to act first, in 1950 the USSR invaded Turkey, Poland and the Baltic states. Caught unawares the European powers had to work quickly to halt the soviet hoard.

The Poles once again fought tooth and nail against the soviet army but were pushed back hard losing Warsaw, things looked grim but the German army arrived to reinforce and the Russians were stopped in their tracks. After months of fighting Poland was was liberated, by now the Soviets had lost their momentum and the tide began to turn, in the North the Scandinavians pushed the reds out of Finland while in the South a combined Franco-British-Italian landing in Crimea brought back painful memories for the Russians. Soon Ukraine was captured and in late 1951 Leningrad was taken.

For nearly three and a half years the coalition slogged through Russia fighting battle after bloody battle against a seemingly endless foe but in late 1953 Moscow had been taken. This proved too much for the Soviet people, with morale at rock bottom revolts sprung up across the union and military units deserted or surrendered to the coalition forces. Stalin and his inner circle were captured, tried and imprisoned in one of his own gulags. The treaty of Tsaritsyn broke the USSR into a number of new states and brought the war to a close.

The bonds forged in the war brought the confederacy closer than ever before, Germans and Poles, Greeks and Bulgarians, Serbs and Croats, Romanians and Hungarians had all put aside their differences and fought together. In the following years a single currency was introduced as well as a free trade agreement and freedom of movement.

Britain and France eventually integrated their overseas colonies and dominions into the confederacy, creating the Unified Colonisation Bureau in order to organise the colonisation of the dark continent.

At the turn of the century Atlantropa has become the world's foremost power.