Library of Congress' WWII Military Situation Maps

The Library of Congress has announced a new American Memory Collection release. "World War II Military Situation Maps, 1944-1945" is available at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/maps/wwii/.

The collection contains 416 printed maps and covers June 6, 1944 to July 26, 1945. The maps show daily details on military campaigns in western Europe. They can be browsed by date or place (Ardennes, Europe, France (Normandy), or Germany). There are other ways to browse, but they're not particularly useful. You can browse by title but most of the titles are the date and a notation of who made the map, and there are only a few subjects to browse through as well.

I looked at the Normandy maps. (They're 80 of them and they're all titled "France--Normandy. [1944]") Each map page has notes including scale, call number, and item title. There's a thumbnail of the map. Clicking on it takes you to a page that allows you to zoom in and out of a slightly larger sized map. Click on the radio button to choose whether you want to zoom in or out, and then click on the part of the map you want zoomed. (For some reason I always find this confusing.)

The announcement also noted that some of the maps are accompanied by a G-3 report -- the later maps from March 3 to July 26, 1945. I didn't see any of those. I did see the "interactive essay" which is a Flash presentation using a series of annotated maps to walk through the Battle of the Bulge.

Posted to History-Wars and Conflicts | TrackBack