German Maps

[Granite]

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but i found the topic interesting. German settlers had established many colonies and villages in the Ukraine during czarist times, lutheran,catholic and mennonites , self governing and maintaining language and culture including german maps, up to the revolution. In 1918 german and polish armys fought in this area, and white russian forces fought here until 1921 and many germans fought for the white army. Stalin dint slam the door on people wanting to leave this area or russia itself until 1929. Basic army intel gathering techniques, using civilian and military maps captured or from german military archives would have given very accurate information of the terrain and distances involved and would not have been hard to find. Hope this ads a small bit of historical context to the map discussion.

[nigelfe]

Since my last post I've read Max Mangilli-Climpson's 'Larkhill's Wartime Locators - Royal Artillery Survey in the Second World War'. This isn't about map making because that was an RE matter. However, RA did help with topo survey in some places at some times. One of those was in Syria/Iraq/Persia. This survey which lasted many months, involved full air photography of the whole region. What the army surveyors were doing was putting in ground survey control points so that the aerial survey could be properly and accurately aligned with the ground and the map grid created. One of the things they did on the ground to make it easier was to layout patterns of stones around the survey control points so that the air photo readers could correctly identify them.

All this confirms my view that Germans conducting aerial survey of the USSR and producing accurate maps is highly unlikely (putting it mildly). They have to have acquired maps from some source, either the civil war period or capture early in Barbarossa or have had a good source well placed in whichever Main Directorate of the USSR General Staff deals maps, and in a position to purloin a heck of a lot of large sheets of paper. Work it out for yourself, area of USSR at 1:50000 is several hundred square metres of paper. Then there's the workload, before DDay US and UK each had some 5000 men working on preparing updated maps, using the older maps that they had and updating them from air reccce. Even then once troops, particularly artillery, got on the ground they found that the accuracy left something to be desired!

[phylo_roadking]

I recently read Peter Fleming's old Operation Sealion - and IIRC this subject of mapmaking and topographical intelligence is covered....in that the Sealion planners ' access to maps for the South of England was equally very poor, and wasn't supplemented very well at all by photo recce.

[von Salza]

Hi blurrededge,

As this thread has been ressurrected I thought I'd post a bit about the map numbering system you alluded to in the opening post. I can confirm your map numbering theory was along the right lines. Here is a bit of an explanation that might help. If your map was a Soviet one captured/acquired by the Germans then it will probably follow the following numbering system.

The Soviet topographic 1:1,000,000 sheets follow the International Map of the World (IMW) numbering system. Sheets are designated by a Roman letter and Arabic number. In the Northern Hemisphere the numbering system begins at the Equator and the 180" meridian with sheet number A-1. Sheet numbers progress northward and eastward in letters and numbers respectively. The individual sheets cover 4" of latitude and 6" of longitude. Example: Sheet M-36 is located between 48" and 52" north latitude and 30" to 36" east longitude. Your sheet is M-37, this refers to the 1:1,000,000 scale.

If your map of Kursk is a 1:100,000 map then it doesn't have 1-20 sheets but there should be 1-144. Each 1:1,000,000 sheet area is divided into 144 1:100,000 sheets, each covering 20‘ of latitude and 30’ of longitude. Each sheet is identified by the number of the 1:1,000,000 sheet within which it falls, followed by an Arabic number. Example: M-37-18.

Each 1:100,000 sheet area is sub-divided into four 1:50,000 sheets, each covering 10' of latitude and 15' of longitude. Each sheet is identified by the sheet number of the 1:100,000 sheet within which it falls, followed by a letter representing the NW, NE, SW, and SE quarters respectively. For example the Soviet map numbered M-37-18-A would be for the 1:50,000 sheet in the NW quadrant of the 18th 1:100,000 map sheet of the M-37 1:1,000,000 map sheet.

And so the system goes on down through the 1:25,000 scale where four more maps make up the 1:50,000 sheet with each covering 5' of latitude and 7'30" of longitude. Again denoted by quadrants, NW, NE, SW, and SE.

Similarly the 1:10,000 map sheet, the largest scale that I am aware of produced by the Soviets, is again divided into four quadrants each covering 2'30" of latitude and 3'45" of longitude. They again cover NW, NE, SW and SE quadrants but are denoted by Arabic numbers 1-4 for each of the quadrants. A 1:10,000 map might therefore be numbered M-37-18-A-A-1 which is the NW quadrant of the 1:10,000 map sheet of the NW quadrant of the 1:25,000 map sheet of the NW quadrant of the 1:50,000 map sheet that belongs to the 18th (of 144) 1:100,000 map sheet of the M-37 1:1,000,000 map sheet.

Sounds quite complicated but seeing the maps at each of these levels makes it easier.

Hope this helps.

Regards

David

[nigelfe]

I recently read Peter Fleming's old Operation Sealion - and IIRC this subject of mapmaking and topographical intelligence is covered....in that the Sealion planners ' access to maps for the South of England was equally very poor, and wasn't supplemented very well at all by photo recce.

That's actually very interesting since Ordnance Survey maps were available for sale from bookshops, etc. This suggests that pre-1939 Germany had given absolutely no thought to invading UK.

[phylo_roadking]

This suggests that pre-1939 Germany had given absolutely no thought to invading UK.

You just need to look at the "Baedecker Guide" legend....or the REALLY poor quality of the maps available for Fall Grun in Ireland It would honestly look as if Germany paid more attention to targets than the landscape around them when it came to the UK. I can't remember the name offhand, but until he was eventually apprehended there was the case of the Abwehr spy who made several cycling tours of Eleven Group before the war ...sketching aerodromes LMAO Yet the events of 1940 showed that their knowledge of the actual counties Eleven group defended/covered was minimal. Fleming recalls the anecdote of a low-level agent who reports how close he is to the sea at "Tonbridge", literally a stone's throw....and Sealion planners can't find it on ANY map - let alone how FAR Tonbridge in Kent really is from the South Coast! It was later determined it was the "Tonbridge Arms" a pub in a coastal village!

[nigelfe]

Details of airfields were omitted from OS maps until quite recently. But you'd have thought that in the 1930s any fractionally competant intelligence organisation would have acquired total OS map cover of UK in all available scales.

[phylo_roadking]

Ditto with the production of maps in the USSR during the Cold War and before - and not just airfields - major towns, road jmunctions, lakes, rivers....a HUGE amount of detail was intentionally left off or displaced some distance - especially after Hiroshima....!

Yes, Ordnance Survey maps of certain scales were always available "over the counter" - but historically down at militarily-useful scales they had to be ordered Even as late as the early 1970s this was the case, with HMSO controlling the flow very closely, and IIRC there were was a pipeline into Special Branch if certain areas were ordered by individuals rather than businesses, and more than X-number of maps at a time, giving more than Y-coverage in square miles!

And of course - who would be buying them "over the shelf" in 1938 and 1939 but "embassy cultural/commercial attaches"...and their "shadow" ...

[nigelfe]

All the normal scales, 1:25000, 1:50000 (and its predecessor 1 in-1 mile), have been readily available over the counter back to the 1950s which is as long as I can remember them on sale.

[phylo_roadking]

Yes, the "HMSO" chain of outlets across the country assisted in that, but this sales chain wasn't in place before that, I don't know if it would have been possible to buy "over the counter" anywhere outside the capital in the 1930s-40s Certainly a German air attache could walk into the HMSO in London in the 1950's, pay his 15/= and pick up a copy of the Air Lists giving the posting and rank of EVERY officer in the RAF! (The Paladins, John James)...but maps of the areodromes themselves - no. Maps were always more "secure"...just - it wasn't visible...my father had to purchase a COMPLETE set of half-inch and quarter-inch maps for Northern Ireland in 1970 for his thesis, and paid by cheque. Both his bank and the Principal's office at the teacher training college he worked was contacted by the RUC to confirm his identity!

[nigelfe]

I can well believe that if someone with a foreign accent fronts up for a complete set then its just possible that the manager would be called. But a 'hiker' buying the local maps? (Although wearing ledenhosen might have raised eyebrows). N Ireland always a bit different.

[phylo_roadking]

But a 'hiker' buying the local maps?

...would have sirens going! Remember - Britain hadn't been officially hit by the wanderbug yet...not until the public access fights and Mass Trespass movement of the late 1940s that opened up huge tracts of the countryside and set legal precedents about opening up old "customary routes" again. Hiking in the UK before 1947-48 meant highways and byways only - or an @rse full of legally-empowered buckshot at the very least - if not up before the beak...who would usually turn out to be the local landowner who's fields you'd wandered across! There were no "public bridleways" or right-of-access footpaths, nothing to actually MARK on a map of the period. Scout camps etc. had to be on fixed sites - many of which were later taken over by the YHA with it's first generation of old Nissen huts and wheel-less railway carriages. "The Continent" did things VERY differently to the English in those day.

[phylo_roadking]

Am actually reading John Ray's The Battle Of Britain at the minute, and have just come across...

A cooling of Anglo-German relations began in 1938 with the Anschluss with Austria. German leaders disliked the outcry in the British press regarding it as interference in a domestic matter. In February (1938) Goering ordered some Luftwaffe staff to investigate the possibility of making attacks on London and Southern England, especially on ports and factories, a study which was led by General Felmy, commnader of Loftflotte II. Nonetheless, the first and smaller crisis of 1938 passed without direct confrontation between Britain and Germany, and both air forces continued to expand as rapidly as their governments would allow.
At the next crisis, in August 1938, the unwelcome prospect of war with Britain rose again. On 23 August Felmy was ordered to gather further information on possible targets in the United Kingdom, including armament factories and docks in London. The Channel ports and airfields in eastern England were also selected, the latter showing the current Luftwaffe planning that raids would be made by unescorted bombers flying across the North Sea from aerodromes in Western Germany.

So ANY gathering of targeting data only really began in the middle of 1938, giving them only a year to obtain what they needed...

[Landserstudent]

Good forum going on maps here-

Many German vets of Russian front have commented on wild inconsistencies of maps. More than one patrol disappeared in all sectors of Russia. Forward Observers often had to draw their own maps, particularly for artillery triangulation. I know one vet who was flown into the Kessel at Kholm to triangulate for artillery!

Better maps like German Ordnance maps were available for the military as the front shrank. I own a 1939 1:300 000 of Innsbruck/Brenner--no Austro-Hungarian border of course. I continue to research the map--it is folded to fit in the breast pocket of a Waffenrock/combat tunic, and has German old style handwriting on it.

Other maps available as far as Russia: There are copies of maps of the old German settlements in the Crimea and Ukraine that are German-drawn, compartmentalized like Brit Ord or USGS maps, and are fairly accurate however simple when compared to modern maps. See Germans-From-Russia groups for the maps. I have several.