World War II Maps Then and Now: Prewar Atlases, Postwar Histories and Where to Find Them

A 1943 map of the world at war

The Maps of World War II · Chapter 9 of 9 · Before, after and now

Older & newer maps

The war began on maps drawn for an older world and ended by redrawing the world’s map. Afterward, historians drew it all over again. This chapter follows the maps before, after and since, and tells you where to find originals today.

The maps the war inherited

Armies go to war with the maps they have. In 1939 many of those maps were already old: sheets surveyed before the First World War, trench maps of 1918 reissued for the same ground in 1940, and colonial surveys of Africa and Asia drawn for administration, not battle. The political maps of the day showed a world of empires; the 1940 map of the British Empire in this gallery shows an empire that covered roughly a quarter of the earth’s land. Within six years much of that map was gone.

The maps the war made

The war itself transformed mapmaking. Aerial photography and photogrammetry became the standard way to map unknown ground; millions of square miles were photographed from the air for the first time; and the armies left behind map stocks, survey records and trained cartographers that shaped the postwar world. The occupation zones of Germany and Austria in 1945, the division of Korea and the new borders of Eastern Europe were all drawn on maps before they were drawn on the ground.

The maps that explained it

After 1945, official historians in Washington, London, Ottawa, Canberra and elsewhere spent decades writing the war’s history, and the maps they commissioned are still the clearest guide to it. The U.S. Army’s United States Army in World War II series, the “Green Books,” and the atlases of the Department of History at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point drew every major campaign with consistent symbols and colors. Because they are U.S. government works they are in the public domain, which is why you will meet them throughout this collection and across the internet.

Where to find WWII maps today

• Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division: the Twelfth Army Group situation maps, German and Japanese captured maps, and thousands more, many downloadable at full resolution.
• U.S. National Archives catalog: operational maps, overlays and photographs in the records of the Army, Navy and Air Forces.
• Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas: hundreds of Army Map Service series online.
• National Library of Scotland: British War Office GSGS sheets and other military maps.
• U.S. Military Academy, Department of History: campaign atlases of the Second World War.
• Imperial War Museums: escape maps, trench and operational maps and the Churchill War Rooms.
• Deutsche Fotothek: German Messtischblätter and historical maps.
• Wikimedia Commons: the source of most images in this collection, with license details for each file.

Older and newer maps

Prewar atlases, wartime world maps, postwar historical maps and modern reconstructions. Filter by type and year. 119 maps in 3 groups: Before the war, During the war, After the war.

Before the war 13 maps

During the war (1 of 3) 32 maps

During the war (2 of 3) 32 maps

During the war (3 of 3) 31 maps

After the war 11 maps