The Maps of World War II: 1,200+ Interactive WWII Maps

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World War II · A special collection

The Maps of World War II

Situation maps from the headquarters that fought the war, secret maps, escape maps, propaganda maps and the official histories, from every side and every theater, with tools that teach you to read them.

Watch the war day by day Search 1,200+ maps Nine chapters

Background: HQ Twelfth Army Group situation map, noon, 16 December 1944, the first day of the Battle of the Bulge. Library of Congress; public domain. Move your pointer to read the grid.

Every decision of the Second World War was made over a map. Generals planned on them, staffs redrew them every morning, pilots flew by them, prisoners escaped with them, and families at home followed the war on them in the newspaper. This collection gathers more than 1,200 of those maps from public archives, from the Library of Congress and the U.S. National Archives to the Imperial War Museums and German state libraries, along with the stories of the people who made and used them.

Start with the daily situation maps of Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group below, which let you watch the last eleven months of the war in Europe move day by day. Use the map finder to search the whole collection by theater, year or keyword. Then work through the nine chapters, from learning to read a grid reference to the maps that explained the war afterward.

1,250+maps, sheets and charts in one place, every one free to view and zoom

335daily situation maps of the war in Europe, August 1944 to July 1945

40sheets of a German General Staff atlas of the 1941 invasion of the USSR

9chapters, from reading a grid reference to the maps that explained the war

Nine chapters

1 / 9

How to read a WWII map

Grid references, scales, contour lines, unit symbols and the colors that told friend from foe. Practice on interactive trainers.

2 / 9

Situation maps & map rooms

Churchill’s Map Room, Roosevelt’s, Hitler’s map table, and 335 daily Twelfth Army Group maps you can play like a film.

3 / 9

Europe, Africa & the Mediterranean

From the invasion of Poland to the fall of Berlin: campaign maps of the Western Front, the Eastern Front, North Africa and Italy.

4 / 9

The Pacific & Asia

Island invasion maps, ship track charts, China and Burma: an ocean war drawn on charts that were often a century old.

5 / 9

Axis maps

German General Staff atlases, Messtischblätter, Italian survey sheets, Japanese gaihōzu and the propaganda maps of the dictatorships.

6 / 9

Allied mapmakers

The Army Map Service, Britain’s War Office and Ordnance Survey, the OSS map division and the Navy’s NavWarMaps.

7 / 9

Secret, escape, air & invasion maps

Silk escape maps hidden in board games, BIGOT invasion plans, target charts, and the invasion of Formosa that never happened.

8 / 9

Map art, Newsmaps & propaganda

Newsmap posters from every barracks wall, pictorial maps, persuasion maps and the cartography of the home front.

9 / 9

Older & newer maps

The maps the war inherited, the maps that explained it afterward, and where to find original WWII maps online today.

The war, day by day

These are the daily situation maps of General Omar Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group, kept at his headquarters from the liberation of Paris to the occupation of Germany and now preserved by the Library of Congress. Press play to watch eleven months pass in a minute, jump to a key date, zoom in to read the divisions along the front, or compare two days side by side. It opens on 16 December 1944, the morning the Battle of the Bulge began. The story of these maps is told in Chapter 2.

Loading 335 daily situation maps…

Find any map

Choose a theater on the world map, slide through the years, or search by place or subject. Every result opens in its chapter, full screen and ready to zoom.

Map finder: search every map in the collection by theater, year or keyword.

Highlights from the collection

A sampler of 36 maps from across the nine chapters. Tap any map to open it full screen, zoom in, and cite or share it.

Cartwheel Area Map (1943) — **Cartwheel Area Map**F. Temple · 1943 · PacificUnited States Army in World War II, The War in the Pacific. CARTWHEEL: The Reduction of Rabaul. Public domain. Source

Plano-de-la-Ciudad-de-Ceuta-1943 (1943) — **Plano-de-la-Ciudad-de-Ceuta-1943**U.S. Army Map Service · 1943 · Mediterranean & North AfricaPublic domain. Source

Txu-pclmaps-oclc-6583553-island-of-madeira (1943) — **Txu-pclmaps-oclc-6583553-island-of-madeira**U.S. Army Map Service · 1943 · World & home frontsUniversity of Texas. Public domain. Source

Ten-question quiz on reading WWII maps.

Questions and answers

Where can I see original World War II maps?

The Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the U.S. National Archives, the University of Texas Perry-Castañeda Library, the National Library of Scotland and the Imperial War Museums all hold large collections, and many maps are online. Chapter 9 of this collection lists them with links.

Are these WWII maps free to use?

Every map in this collection is either in the public domain, mostly as a U.S. government work or expired copyright, or openly licensed under Creative Commons. Each image credits its source and license; check the credit before reusing an image.

What is a situation map?

A map showing the positions of friendly and enemy forces at a stated date and time, usually updated daily. Headquarters kept them on overlays drawn in grease pencil over printed base maps.

What scale maps did soldiers use in WWII?

Small units used 1:25,000 and 1:50,000 sheets; corps and armies 1:100,000 and 1:250,000; strategic planners 1:1,000,000 and smaller.

Why do German maps use red for their own troops?

Soviet practice, and much German practice, showed one’s own forces in red and the enemy in blue, the reverse of the American and British convention.

What were silk escape maps?

Maps printed on silk or rayon for Allied airmen and prisoners of war by Britain’s MI9 and the American MIS-X. They folded small, made no noise and survived water; some were smuggled into prison camps inside board games.

How did the Allies map enemy territory?

From prewar and captured maps, aerial photography, reconnaissance by submarines and swimmers, interviews with former residents, and public appeals for holiday photographs of foreign coasts.

What is the Twelfth Army Group map series?

A run of daily situation maps kept by General Omar Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group headquarters from August 1944 to July 1945, now in the Library of Congress. All 335 surviving sheets can be played in sequence on this page.

More from LKN Law’s World War II collections: the World War II hub, The Art of World War II, Special Units, D-Day and Normandy, Midway and Kursk.

Sources and image credits

Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Imperial War Museums.
U.S. Army Center of Military History and U.S. Military Academy Department of History.
Deutsche Fotothek; National Library of Scotland; Wikimedia Commons, items credited individually.

Images are public domain (mostly U.S. federal government works and expired copyrights) or openly licensed under Creative Commons, drawn from Wikimedia Commons and the archives credited on each map. Each image links to its source file and license. Images are served through the WordPress.com image CDN for fast loading on phones. Axis maps are reproduced as historical records.