For the Map part of the EoE Project Need Daily Front Lines for Norwegian and Western Campaigns; report on Weiss translation status

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

Just as a follow on to this email, we have located, acquired, digitized and are in the process of creating the maps for the EoE Project showing the front lines on a daily basis for the Polish, Norwegian and Western/French Campaigns of 1939-40. This is just one component of what these maps will contain, which we eventually hope will contain all Allied and Axis airfields used during the campaigns, the dates that air units used these airfields and moved into and out of them, and eventually mission plots of all significant combat missions flown during the 1939-40 time period.

As I suspected there was a series of comprehensive maps created for apparently the entire war on this subject, published beginning back at the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s (and probably continuing). This is part of a series entitled: "Der Zweite Weltkrieg im Kartenbild," and were created from the resources available at the Bundesarchiv. We were only interested in the maps for the 1939-40 period, but I know that the series continued on for additional campaigns further into the war. If anyone is researching the air war and needs this kind of info, I can't recommend this series strongly enough. The volumes of campaign maps we obtained are:

Band 1 "Der Polenfeldzug," Band 2 "Wesserübung," and Band 3 "Der Westfeldzug (10. Mai bis 25. June 1940).

I believe that these are the definitive references on this subject, at least on the German side of the ground war, going down from Army level through Corps, Divisions and even Regiment and Battalion level (at least for the Scandinavian Campaign). These maps do not specifically show the locations of air units nor depict air operational activities. However, if you need to know where the Allied and German lines were at the end of any given day of these campaigns, these are the resources. They were compiled by Klaus-Jürgen Thies, and are printed on large format pages in color, which is especially helpful when the Armies of multiple countries are represented, as during the Western Campaign. The publisher is Biblio Verlag: Osnabrück.

SInce I located this reference source through my posts about this on the LEMB/TOCH Boards, I wanted to acknowledge the people who helped us quickly solve this research problem. My thanks to you all!! Your help with all of my posts on these boards has been greatly appreciated.


Regards,

Larry Hickey
EoE Project Coordinator