What is the name of the canal that connects the Baltic Sea to the North Sea? The answer is the Kiel Canal.
The Kiel Canal is a 98-kilometre freshwater shipping canal in northern Germany. It runs between Brunsbüttel on the North Sea and Kiel on the Baltic Sea, allowing vessels to move between the two seas without sailing around the Jutland Peninsula and Denmark.
Germany opened the canal in 1895 under the name Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal. It was later renamed the Kiel Canal in 1948. The waterway quickly became strategically important for German naval planning and for commercial shipping between the Baltic region, the North Sea, and the Atlantic.
The canal was widened between 1907 and 1914 to accommodate larger warships, including dreadnoughts. Today it remains one of the world’s busiest artificial waterways. It is often confused with the Suez or Panama canals, but those connect different bodies of water: the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, and the Atlantic with the Pacific, respectively.