The European Plain and Major Rivers

The North European Plain is the largest continuous lowland in Europe, stretching more than 3,000 kilometers from the Atlantic coast of southwestern France, through the Low Countries, northern Germany, Poland, and the Baltic states, into the vast expanse of European Russia and Belarus. Formed largely from sediments deposited during repeated Pleistocene glaciations and further built up by wind-blown loess soils, some of the most fertile in the world, the plain has almost no natural barriers to movement, a fact that has shaped European history as much as its geography: it served as an invasion corridor in both directions during the World Wars of the twentieth century and has long supported some of the continent's densest agricultural populations. Its gentle relief, rarely rising above 200 meters, made it the natural corridor for the canals, railways, and highways that later stitched together the German, Polish, and Russian heartlands.