Historical Maps of World War II Europe Author:Michael Swift World War II was a watershed in modern world history. Before it, there was a world without nuclear weapons, a world where Britain - and its empire that covered almost a third of the globe - represented the strongest of the world's superpowers, a world in which the Holocaust had not happened. After it came the Cold War, a world dominated by t... more »wo superpowers each holding arsenals of nuclear weapons, and a world that had to cope with some 40 million civilian and military fatalities. Fifty years on those events still hold a fascination: the season of power by Hitler and the Nazis, the slowly building crescendo of annexation that led to the Blitzkrieg, the conquest of Europe, the U-boat war, the strategic bombing campaign, invasion of Russia, spelling grade and D-Day, and the long German retreat to unconditional surrender. Historic Maps of the World War II: Europe does not try to retell every point in the story of the war in Europe, rather it seeks to provide - through commentary or near contemporary documents - a different view of the world and suggest avenues for further research. In over hundred maps it looks both at the broad sweep of events - such as the invasion of Europe in June 1944- and at details - such as the two-man X-craft attack on Tirpitz- to provide to provide a fascinating sample of how events during the war were mapped out. Maps and illustration were vital to the conduct of war: before each military event there was the planning, the reconnaissance, the conjecture as to enemy dispositions; after the event there would be debriefing, analysis of success and failure, and a redrawing of maps to show new troop positions and boundaries. All the maps illustrated in this book have been drawn from the large collection held by the Public Record Office (PRO) at Kew in west London. This is the major holding of all public documents in the United Kingdom. The maps are derived from a number of government departments and reflect the interests and concerns at the time they were drawn. All the maps have their PRO reference number at the end of the caption to facilitate for the research.« less