I expected to spend a couple of minutes browsing this, yet 25 minutes later I'm not even halfway through.
The best (so far) are the ones above the strings "on June 2nd, 1940" and "effort by Russian War Relief". I can't imagine the amount of research and sheer work (especially pre-internet) to create these.
I was a kid who played SimCity 2000, RISK, and had tons of books about geography. Having physical pieces of paper that I'd spend minutes or hours analyzing was so satisfying. Scrolling around Google Earth or doing GIS-based analysis is also satisfying, but I really got a kick out of looking at this post (putting aside the seriousness of WW2).
I never had interest in history when I was young, but developed an appetite for it lately.
Learning how and why people reacted the way they did during times of growing political instability has helped me reconcile some of the trends I see in the world today (even if I don't like them), and lent insight toward forecasting how far the events of tomorrow might stray from my expected norms.
To that end I found the series Turning Point: The Bomb And The Cold War a pretty riveting documentary exploring the journey from WWII to the present (especially the last few episodes).
I recently finished a large World War II project that covered the full timeline of the war, and Google Maps was a valuable tool to follow what was happening in any given battle. The problem is Google Maps has more detail than you need, so trying to follow something like Operation Market Garden is much more difficult than just looking at this beautiful battle map: https://www.alamy.com/a-bridge-too-far-image68088140.html. "The West Point Atlas of War" is another great resource.
Maps cover the spatial side of war, but in addition it's difficult to follow the timeline. My project stitched popular World War II movies together into a chronological series, making it easier to see what was happening across the world at any given time. You can view the episodes and the full blog post here: https://open.substack.com/pub/ww2supercut/p/combining-143-wo.... And in addition "The Second World War" by Churchill's biographer Martin Gilbert, is a chronological, 750 page book that I couldn't put down.
> Maps cover the spatial side of war, but in addition it's difficult to follow the timeline.
I'd love for there to be an OpenStreetMap style history project with a slider to change the date, allowing users to fill in battle lines and unit positions throughout history. There must be enormous troves of information on units and battles in archives around the world that can be put online in the right form. One obvious problem would be overcoming conflicting accounts of unit positions, strengths and extents, but even basic information on positions of units over time would allow users to get an idea of what was happening in a theater by dragging the slider.
Not quite what you are looking but if you're interested in Operation Market Garden: for the Dutch maps there is https://www.topotijdreis.nl, which gives you historical maps with a year slider. This can at least help one visualize how cities, villages, and topography at through the years.
There's also tools that wrap a part of toporijdreis and add other georeferenced historical maps! I recently saw one of those at https://geodienst.xyz/pastforward. Wish more people georeferenced historical maps, but it is tough.
I made something like this and briefly had it online but I didn't think there would be enough demand to make the time and costs of running it worth it.
> I recently finished a large World War II project that covered the full timeline of the war
When I was in high school I really wanted to make a full blown website with a timeline of WW2, using something like timelineJS (or whatever was available back then), with Wikipedia articles for all events, chronologically and filterable/organised by theatre. Never got around to actually making it, because it would be a massive undertaking.
Related, if anyone is interested in a chronological telling of WW2 in video format, I can recommend the World War 2 channel, ran by real historians, with an episode a week (+ specials covering special events or topics or people): https://www.youtube.com/@WorldWarTwo
Don't forget some cities have changed a lot during the war. For example Rotterdam was almost completely levelled so what is there now is nothing in relation to how it was then.
Veeery interesting. After realizing that Tora, Tora, Tora! and Midway might make a good double-feature (I tried it, and, they do!) it occurred to me that it might be possible to assemble a film-based curriculum to teach a great deal of the history of roughly 1933-1948, covering the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of the war, in a way that's entertaining while being more informative than misleading. There are thousands of films covering the time period from dozens of countries, and lots of those stick reasonably close to historical events, so it might work out.
The hard part, I think, would be tracking down films that give a good sense of the causes and course of more-obscure things like Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. You'd need to find two or three good films on that. Spanish civil war? The invasion and occupation of Poland? The political maneuvering between the Nazis and Soviets before they went to war with one another? The Winter War? These have to be covered by a few films that could act to "teach" the events, but I don't know what those films are and bet most are non-English and not well-known in English, making them harder (for me) to track down.
This could work for World War II since there's so many movies, but even so a bunch of events aren't covered. I also created this spreadsheet of films with their time periods and events covered. It's not exhaustive by any means though, and new ones are coming out constantly.
The first English language film that comes to mind for the Spanish civil war is For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's been a while, but I don't think it has much discourse about the causes or the background for the war - but films often treat those subjects either as assumed background information the audience already has, or as something that is not needed to identify with the characters and enjoy the narrative.
So you could use it, but it would need to be accompanied by supplemental factual materials. But I think that is true of many, if not most, non-documentary popular war films.
Interestingly, a curated collection of films in my opinion is much better than relying on a few history books that, under the cover of being "academic," are considered "authoritative," but, in fact -- there are a lot of facets that aren't easily reconciled. While film simply embraces the ambiguity (meaning a collection of films all telling the story from slightly different viewpoints is a lot better than a single textbook that might be authoritative, but also suffers from the point of view of the writer.
Here is an interesting article on the debate over when WWII actually began (this illustrates my point as "The Invasion of Poland" is often used at the "starting point" of WWII, when that is probably out of academic convenience rather than being factually correct (it's hard to say precisely when WWII began.) https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-09-11/what-if-all-th...
Now I am wondering if there are any deep studies of "World War 2 movie scenes where they talk to a map" from movies. That scene from A Bridge Too Far is a great example of giving the audience some spatial understanding both quickly and using the scene for character building as well.
8 seconds of Star Wars (ANH) was used to establish the time and space background for the "battle of Yavin": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yWrXPck6SI#t=20s and the rest of that scene plays out in the real time (15min) given during those eight seconds.
In contrast, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEv999K5Lr0 , with a similar theme and screen time, is nowhere close to real time or distances. (although I guess Star Wars did have a strong advantage in being fictional)
Virtually the entire Battle of Yavin was directly copied from the old WWII movie “The Dambusters”. The dialog, the planning scenes, the special targeting device, the trench run, the sequence of battle, Lucas pretty much ganked it all.
Glad it's useful! There's a few WWI movies in the spreadsheet but I agree they're much more difficult to find. ChatGPT is actually really good for this though, you can say "Generate a table of 100 WWI movies from diverse points of view" and have a good place to start.
WWI may be less cinematographic, but I think it had a larger effect: fascism and communism were both attractive because immediately after the "Great War", the "war to end all wars", people were eager to latch onto alternatives to the systems and political cultures that had gotten them into it (initially they were suspicious of monarchies; later even of capitalist republics; both communists and fascists thought liberal democracies would soon disappear, the former due to incompatibility with the future as revealed by "science" and "philosophy", the latter due to incompatibility with the past as revealed by "tradition" and "action").
I currently think in terms of a "small XX", running 1914-1991.
Originally I'd wondered where to put the 1990s, but seeing as how the Yugoslav Wars (misinformation-stoked fratricidal wars causing massive refugee influx to neighbouring countries) fit the XXI pattern, I'm willing to start it in 1991. (when it ends will not be my concern)
Just when I was about to finish my profile destruction on reddit I find another reason to dig a little deeper into the stew. I wish I had found your stuff on /r/fanedits a long time ago. The work you've done is excellent and is right up my alley, putting things into historical context using reliable sources.
One thing I would like to mention concerns the last map at the end of your post where you show a map based on information from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The caption above the map says "Can't name a concentration camp or ghetto" and the lower states "Many Americans can't name a concentration camp or ghetto". I find it unusual that New York has such a high percentage of the population that is so clueless about history that is this recent. They are, according to your map, #2 behind Mississippi which I would've expected to be #1 or tied for it with some other southern state where white supremacists have long had a foothold or stranglehold on education.
I see that most of the poorly educated states are in the south with Illinois (neo-Nazi foothold in some places) and Oregon (originally intended to be a whites-only state) being exceptions.
And also, that map projection used makes it appear that a (large) hidden hand has torqued the eastern seaboard to the south from Maine to the (limp dick) state of Florida. You can see the distortion along the state lines east of the Mississippi River.
I have a 1944 World Almanac. It's incredibly detailed on World War Two - by my count, page 31 and 35-113 are mostly or totally devoted to it, in addition to the various bits on armies scattered throughout. Sometimes I look at it just to see what happened on that particular day (for instance: today, German forces landed in Leros, in the Aegean Sea, which was at the time held by the British, among many other events - and that just in 1943!) There are also some incredibly detailed war maps which I sometimes look at. At some point I should probably get around to uploading them, as they are absolutely amazing and I'd like to share it, but it's always near the bottom of my to-do list.
I have a copy of Churchill's memoirs of WWII and also read his memoirs of WWI. I always liked the maps in the books, as they somehow brought me a little closer to the time. They're another way of conveying information not only about what is being discussed, but also how the people going through it saw things and what they wrestled with conveying.
Maps made in the current day to accompany Churchill's text wouldn't have the same effect.
I think both of those are correct, although they appear to be the paperback, as the hardcover has the front illustration on the inside and is otherwise plain.
The electronic version does feel rather odd, though. It's much harder to open it to a random page and find something interesting (say, a list of refugee scholars who at the time had moved to the US, 561-63), which, for me at least, is the point. I could find the vast majority of the information, if not all of it, elsewhere with little effort, if I was so inclined. It's more in the discovery aspect of it (and the advertisements, which are often absolute gems, although less so than the 1909 edition, which included two awkwardly arranged vertical ads which had large text of 'Rupture' on the left and 'Your Lungs' on the right so it reads as 'Rupture Your Lungs', and also "Dr." Rupert Weils, who claimed to be able to cure cancer at home, using "radiatized fluid", which I think is radioactive water; by 1944 they were much less blatantly wrong or poorly arranged.)
I don't think we can really comprehend how big an operation that was. A movie like "Saving Private Ryan" was incredibly good (especially the scene on the beach front) but didn't come anywhere close to show anything resembling that picture.
Even more incredible, the USA landed on Saipan soon after the Allies landed in Normandy. The landing ships for operation FORAGER had to travel 1,000 miles across open ocean.
Recommended reading: The Fleet at Flood Tide by James Hornfischer, and Twilight of the Gods by Ian Toll.
I imagine many more are even less familiar with the massive operations from the Eastern Front, simultaneously more important and lesser known in the West (at least in pop culture; historians of course know them). E.g. Operation Bagration.
Overlord overshadows other operations because it was unique in its nature, scale and difficulties. Eastern Front also had its iconic moments like Battle of Stalingrad or Siege of Leningrad...
> Overlord overshadows other operations because it was unique in its nature, scale and difficulties
Without diminishing Overlord (a landing of this magnitude was unparalleled), I think Bagration is just as impressive, devastatingly effective at annihilating the German army (most of Army Group Center gone, poof), and must have been a logistical and secrecy nightmare to employ maskirovka at such a large scale. It was larger scale than Overlord, too.
Not many in pop culture know about the Siege of Leningrad.
Stalingrad is better known in pop culture, but regrettably most of it at the level of terribly bad and misleading movies such as "Enemy at the Gates".
> Eastern Front also had its iconic moments [...]
That's a bit of an understatement... The Eastern Front is where most of the fighting in WWII happened. It's where the European theater of war was truly won or lost.
>The Eastern Front is where most of the fighting in WWII happened. It's where the European theater of war was truly won or lost.
I remember being very surprised when I heard for the first time that something like 80% of all casualties taken by the Germans happened on the Eastern front. Or the total sizes of the armies (collectively on both sides) fighting one another and the large margin by which the Western front was dwarfed by. It stood completely at ends with everything I learned about WW2 growing up in the US, through school, pop culture, friends, family of friends. I suppose it's not too surprising though that any country emphasizes their own involvement over that of others- for example I doubt that the Soviets touched much on the extent of lend lease in their education or war movies.
Landings are generally considered to be very difficult and risky operations to execute, and Overlord is by far the largest scale landing in history. It was a one-off, all-in operation. It had to be close to perfect or it would fail badly. You can't just call off the landing in the middle of it or reduce its objectives if it doesn't go well.
Meanwhile, operation Bagration is just standard maneuver warfare, only particularly large and this time quite successful in achieving its objectives. Soviets had plenty of previous (some failed) attempts to improve their strategy and tactics. Maskirovka / deception campaign is standard for any such large operation. If things don't go as planned, you can scale down the objectives, or call it a diversion (Operation Mars). Operation Bagration might be more impactful on the course of the war, but in my mind it's not close to be as impressive as Overlord.
> That's a bit of an understatement... The Eastern Front is where most of the fighting in WWII happened. It's where the European theater of war was truly won or lost.
"Most iconic" is not the same thing as "most impactful". Maneuver warfare is just generally not as iconic as pitched, close quarters battles.
You don't need to convince me Overlord was very impressive, because I fully agree.
It seems we possibly agree Bagration was more impactful, but our disagreement is whether it was as impressive. I'll argue that it was: the scale was humongous, and in war, this means more chance of fuckups or logistical nightmares. Scale in troops & territory is a huge source of trouble (just ask Hitler...). Military deception was practiced by all sides, but the Soviets took maskirovka to an art form. Not only were there feinted strategic offensives (with the potential to become real as plan B), but huge troop formations moved one way during daytime and retraced their steps during the night. Radio discipline exercised atypically for the Red Army. The Germans later claimed not to be fully taken in, but really... that's what they would claim. Reality shows otherwise and their army was shattered.
As for whether it's as iconic... well, "iconic" is an ill-defined term anyway. "Most iconic" in the Western world is just because, like I argued, the Eastern Front is way less known and depicted in movies. It's almost the definition of "lesser known", of which there are many reasons (Cold War thinking being a big reason initially). Overlord is more iconic in the West because it has been brought to the forefront in multiple accounts, movies and games.
Imagine if there were American movies about Bagration like there are for Normandy, "Saving Conscript Petrov". There are a million interesting and amazing stories you could tell set during this massive operation, just like Private Ryan or Band of Brothers.
Stalingrad in contrast is indeed iconic -- possibly as iconic as Overlord, because everyone knows about Stalingrad too -- but regrettably not too many good movies have been made about it. I've mentioned "Enemy at the Gates" (sigh!) but there's also that terrible Russian movie called... "Stalingrad"? Yuck. About the only one that's decent is ironically the German "Stalingrad" movie, but that one mostly shows the German perspective.
>"Most iconic" in the Western world is just because, like I argued, the Eastern Front is way less known and depicted in movies. It's almost the definition of "lesser known", of which there are many reasons (Cold War thinking being a big reason initially). Overlord is more iconic in the West because it has been brought to the forefront in multiple accounts, movies and games.
I don't think it is just Eastern Front, the Chinese Theatre and War in Pacific get far less attention as well. I'm Australian and we learn a little bit about it in history class at school but there are no movies or books about relatively momentous things like Fall of Singapore etc.
Agreed, it's not just about the Eastern Front. The Chinese Theater is possibly just as interesting and full of stories worth telling.
I'm not sure the Pacific War gets that much less attention. There are plenty of American-made games set in it (Call of Duty, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2, etc) and shows, most noticeably "The Pacific", and movies (e.g. "Letters from Iwo Jima"). This is the theater where the only atomic bombs were ever used in anger, so there's also that making it famous.
> It seems we possibly agree Bagration was more impactful, but our disagreement is whether it was as impressive.
Well, what makes Bagration unique in the same sense as Overlord? The scale alone does not cut it, and it's not the largest land operation anyway.
> Military deception was practiced by all sides, but the Soviets took maskirovka to an art form. Not only were there feinted strategic offensives (with the potential to become real as plan B), but huge troop formations moved one way during daytime and retraced their steps during the night. Radio discipline exercised atypically for the Red Army.
So far I haven't seen what would set Soviet maskirovka apart from e.g. Allied effort. All methods you mention seem pretty standard.
> "Most iconic" in the Western world is just because, like I argued, the Eastern Front is way less known and depicted in movies.
Partially yes, but that's not what makes Bagration forgettable.
"Iconic" is about human stories. Photos from the landing craft moving onto the beach, soldiers getting mowed by the machine guns while running over completely exposed positions, German soldiers sitting in fortified, but ultimately outnumbered and hopeless positions. Those are very memorable. You can make stories about close quarters combat for months in a completely destroyed Stalingrad, fighting for every building, pretty much living next to the enemy etc. You could make stories about Bagration, but it would not appear unique to the reader, you can't really transmit the scale of manouver warfare into the human story.
> Well, what makes Bagration unique in the same sense as Overlord? The scale alone does not cut it, and it's not the largest land operation anyway.
Scale alone is very important, and Soviet operations were larger scale (meaning harder to coordinate) than Western Allied ones. Also, I explained maskirovka. It's just that you don't find it interesting enough, and I cannot argue against your preferences except to disagree.
Barbarossa to my knowledge was/is the largest land operation of all time (and nobody will disagree it's both iconic and massively important), and Bagration comes second. Let's not mince words here. And also, Barbarossa was impressive at first but ultimately a failure, in particular a logistical failure -- precisely where Bagration succeeded.
> Partially yes, but that's not what makes Bagration forgettable.
> "Iconic" is about human stories. Photos from the landing craft moving onto the beach, soldiers getting mowed by the machine guns while running over completely exposed positions, German soldiers sitting in fortified, but ultimately outnumbered and hopeless positions. Those are very memorable.
> [...]
> You could make stories about Bagration, but it would not appear unique to the reader, you can't really transmit the scale of manouver warfare into the human story.
There's plenty of similar human stories and memorable situations that could be told for Bagration, plenty of furious advances, encirclements and desperate last stands (e.g. the German "fortress cities"), plenty of individual soldier stories to be told with Bagration as the backdrop. There's even smaller scale preparatory actions, such as the partisan operations "Rail War" and "Concert".
It's just that, like I've already said, Western media is not interested in telling these stories, partly because they would overshadow American contributions to the European theater of war, and partly because audiences must not empathize with the Red Army too much. You could make a "Saving Conscript Petrov" movie as powerful as Saving Private Ryan, but who wants to make it?
Overlord was large scale too yet Spielberg found the way to make it smaller and about individual soldiers. You can make this with Bagration as well. You don't need to make a documentary about large scale maneuvers, you can make it about individual soldiers. The Soviets suffered massive losses during Bagration, so you are not even sure your heroes will survive! Spielberg could do it, if he was interested. So could Clint Eastwood. Imagine: comrade Petrov is taking part of partisan actions, but he's captured by Germans; he's carrying some papers/knowledge that would betray the larger Bagration operation... now Stavka must send a platoon to Rescue Conscript Petrov before it's too late. Intersperse with scenes of his mother and girlfriend back behind the frontlines, anxious about his fate. (Ok, ok, I'm no Spielberg).
> You can make stories about close quarters combat for months in a completely destroyed Stalingrad, fighting for every building, pretty much living next to the enemy etc.
And yet... so few good movies have been made, right? The most well-known, "Enemy at the Gates", is a complete distortion of the truth, and pretty bad movie-making as well. Where are all the good Stalingrad movies? The best one is still the German-made one.
I believe the real problem -- affecting even you, now -- is that the Soviets (and later Russians) were not perceived as the good guys after the outbreak of the Cold War, and to this day Russians are not the good guys, and so their big moments in WWII tend to be downplayed in Western pop culture. Movies like "Enemy at the Gates" spent as much time making sure the audience didn't empathize too much with the Soviets, as with presenting the Germans as the enemy.
Complicating things even more, there's the thing that the Germans -- the ultimate bad guys of WWII -- have been somewhat rehabilitated in pop culture, making German "things" somewhat cool. (Unless one is watching a movie specifically about genocide or the Holocaust).
> I don't think we can really comprehend how big an operation that was.
I think that very impressive photo doesn’t even show it.
FTA: “A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels”
⇒ I estimate that that photo only shows about 2% of the vessels involved.
Getting (also FTA) “Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June” onto a coast without using any ports and where you are getting shot at takes a lot of effort.
The photo also doesn't really do justice to how much stuff was going on at one time since it just makes it look like supplies are being delivered to a beach. You've got an an incredibly dense (in terms of participants per area or volume) naval battle, infantry engagements, air superiority operations, close air support and logistics operation all at the same time in roughly same place and even if you pick one aspect to focus on you'll find that the scale and tempo of operations in any one area exceeds what's "normal" even for a pitched battle.
Don't forget those thousands of ships and aircraft started across the channel the night before, only to be turned back by bad weather and having to reset and do it again the next night!
They're barrage balloons, unmanned airships intended to make low-level strafing runs hazardous and to break up the view of the ground for higher-level bombers. They were frequently used over London during the Blitz as well.
Something I've come to really appreciate about WWII, is how much effort was put into either creating or implementing concepts about organization and efficiency into action. WWII was likely the largest organizational endeavor in human history.
There's an almost paradoxical immensity to it, where humans, using paper, typewriters, physical mail, and early electric (not electronic) communication systems had to organize millions of humans into large coordinated efforts over about half the surface of a planet.
They did it without the aid of computers and the unlimited up-to-date firehoses of data that we have today. The paradox is that it's not entirely clear that our modern civilization, using these advantages, would be able to do what they did. Modern technologies seem to create an effect of overanalysis, where the WW2 generation often worked in deeply ambiguous grey areas.
Our tendency today is to want to produce as much up to date information as possible, even if its not necessary to the overall goal. We want to use a computer to scrub deeply through immense data to produce marginal gains. A Strategic General in WW2 might want to move 100,000 men and arms to a different location and issue the order where it would be relayed by post, telephone, or telegraph. To find out if that order was fulfilled might take weeks or months to even find out. Today we would want to track each soldier's boots to watch them march across a digital map in real-time.
Yet it worked. With major operations occurring down to the minute that involved multinational organizations moving millions of tons of human lives, arms, supply, and equipment, all also built to fulfill that order, on time and at high quality.
Hard to upvote this comment enough. D-Day alone was staggeringly immense, the largest naval, air and land operation in history, likely never to be matched. And the entire thing was basically planned and executed with pen and paper.
This is awesome. Cool to see the history told this way.
I would also encourage folks to seek out photos/footage of the concentration camps in Europe as well as the aftermath of the atomic bombings in Japan. When you see the unsanitized horror it really gives you pause that people did this to each other. And why war is worth trying to prevent.
For WW2 visualizations, The Fallen of World War II (http://www.fallen.io/ww2/) is a masterpiece—well-researched, clearly visualized, and paired with excellent narration. It balances nuance with the big picture, and even though it addresses tens of millions of deaths, it reminds us that these are people, not mere statistics.
Interesting article! The details on the maps are always interesting. The first map of 1939 shows the British blockade line of the North Sea that was so important during the First World War but would play a much lesser role in the Second, it probably would not even be present on most maps made after the war.
My son and I are fans of Stephen E. Ambrose's books "D-Day" and "Citizen Soldiers" (as audiobooks), but would really love a video companion to the books that charts the territories being discussed. It would be like a subtitles file, but with map images and timing.
I would love to endow Mr. Goldwag to undertake such an endeavor. His site demonstrates his love of maps as tools to help understand history. Fantastic!
I'm a map guy. I love maps and I regularly use online translations to help me understand what the map-maker or poster is trying to convey.
With your post and all the opportunities open to you I feel like you advertised a grilled sausage event but when I showed up I discovered you were vegan and only serving salad.
I should have added that I haven’t physically seen these maps which may never have been digitized in the first place… so grilled sausage enthusiasts beware.
The winds of war and war and remembrance books (or audio books) are a pretty good way to get a feel for ww2. They're historically accurate fiction and offer a lot of long-form detail and context (at least from the US/allies side of things)
The books are excellent, but the two miniseries made from the books are also worth watching. Wouk's strength is not only in portraying the sweep of events in both Europe and Asia before and during the war, but humanizing it with characters who, while they do seem to show up everywhere important, suffer real loss and hardship while doing so.
If you really want to have a solid overview understanding of World War 2, and you are just not the type to read two long books no matter how good they are, then here is probably your best option by far:
1. Pay for an Audible account. (Or figure out how to get free access to audio books from your local library.)
2. Listen to the books “Winds of War” and then “War and Remembrance” by Herman Wouk.
The drama and characterizations are just fine, and will pull you right in to caring for Pug Henry and wanting to know what happens to him and his family.
The battle scenes are true history and will blow you away, and teach you a lot. Midway, incredible.
The coverage of the Holocaust will break your heart, but make you think, “wow, everybody in the world should read this once”.
The character evolution of Werner Beck, in light of today’s world events, might terrify you. Whole nations don’t all of the sudden become evil. Evil powerful leaders push evil down into a country over time.
The more I philosophize on the subject. The reason Western boomers had it so very good is due to them being born mere moments after a cataclysmic, violent human struggle that killed nearly 80 million people ended.
In many ways it shaped the modern world. We are still riding the waves in the wake of all that happened in just a few short years in the early/mid 20th century.
The modern maps, while technically more "accurate" than hand-drawn diagrams, are almost shockingly light on information in comparison, and the accompanying text is a linear recounting of various advances and retreats with only passing explanation of the strategic importance of either.
I think there are two effects at play here: one is the decrease in expectation of the readership to have much comprehension or critical thinking facility, which is counterintuitive given supposed strides in education over the last eighty years. The second is the gutting of the news media as an industry where career professionals could get and keep lifetime experience in understanding important events and their place in history. While no doubt reporters today are doing their best, the news media is increasingly reliant on contract work and fresh grist for the mill, and it seems obvious that the writers at the NYT have just not been given the resources or motivation to become as familiar with the contours of the conflict as the writers of the past.
I disagree. I see about the same amount of information on the maps in the article in comparison to maps of the war in Ukraine. The maps in the article are certainly prettier, but not more informative.
I think your complaint about the "linear recounting" has more to do with the nature of the war in Ukraine compared to WW2. The battle in Ukraine is almost entirely on land, while in the WW2 maps the majority of the maps are focused on sea lines of communications and air bases. The front lines in Ukraine aren't static by any means, but compared to WW2 these lines are barely moving.
> the decrease in expectation of the readership to have much comprehension or critical thinking facility
> the gutting of the news media as an industry where career professionals could get and keep lifetime experience in understanding important events and their place in history
I think you have certain per-conceived notions and are trying to justify them in these maps, rather than the other way around. I've read old newspaper articles and really don't see any "decrease in expectation of the readership". As for the "gutting of the news media," I think there is some truth their, but I don't think you should denigrate the journalists of today. Recall that Ernie Pyle, perhaps the most famous war correspondents of WW2, before the war was a human interest writer.
Part of the issue is that World War II is a vastly more complex situation than the Russo-Ukrainian war; it's really not so much a war as it is an overlapping mess of several smaller wars, with a large amount of rapid geographical alterations in a short timeframe. To explain to people in September 1939 what's going on, you have to bring up the Saarland, Sudetenland, Danzig, the Polish Corridor, the dismemberment of Austria and Czechoslovakia... and that's before Germany actually invades Poland. For the Russo-Ukrainian war, you need to bring up... Crimea, the Donbass, and maaaaybe Transdnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia if you're trying to build a wider geopolitical picture. And most maps you see do highlight Crimea and the Donbass!
As the war progresses, World War II grows in massive scale, so that places like Tobruk became important locations for the strategic aspect of the war, and even a well-informed individual would have been hard-pressed to locate Tobruk before then. So you need to highlight this town in North Africa, and then explicate why a town in North Africa is important in the context of a literal world-wide war. By contrast, Ukraine is far smaller than the entire world, and even an important linchpin like Vuhledar has only the significance of, say, Bastogne in WW2.
Or maybe it's because they're busy fighting a war and trying not to die so that they haven't had the time to provide records for the historians and analysts to ruminate over.
> The modern maps, while technically more "accurate" than hand-drawn diagrams, are almost shockingly light on information in comparison, and the accompanying text is a linear recounting of various advances and retreats with only passing explanation of the strategic importance of either.
Feels like both are light on information. But what do you expect? It's war time propaganda. It isn't meant to educate or inform. The news during war is not the same as it is during peacetime. They serve different goals. Whether it's ukraine. Gaza. Or ww2.
> one is the decrease in expectation of the readership to have much comprehension or critical thinking facility, which is counterintuitive given supposed strides in education over the last eighty years.
Mass education was never meant to increase critical thinking. Mass education exists to brainwash and instill conformity. The modern education system was created by the prussians in the 1800s to "educate" the peoples of the various germanic states into one single nation. It's the same education system adopted by the US and much of the world.
> and it seems obvious that the writers at the NYT have just not been given the resources or motivation to become as familiar with the contours of the conflict as the writers of the past.
Because NYT reporters were so familiar with the contours of iraq and their wmd program? If someone gave the NYT a trillion dollars, what would change? Nothing. The reporting would be the same. Especially when it comes to wars.
When you read war propaganda from the past ( pick any war ) or in any country, it's remarkable how similar they all are.
> A century ago, most of the world was illiterate and innumerate.
Yeah. That's the point. Far easier to brainwash literate people. Far easier to get literate people to conform. Especially when you train them since they are young.
I expected to spend a couple of minutes browsing this, yet 25 minutes later I'm not even halfway through.
The best (so far) are the ones above the strings "on June 2nd, 1940" and "effort by Russian War Relief". I can't imagine the amount of research and sheer work (especially pre-internet) to create these.
I was a kid who played SimCity 2000, RISK, and had tons of books about geography. Having physical pieces of paper that I'd spend minutes or hours analyzing was so satisfying. Scrolling around Google Earth or doing GIS-based analysis is also satisfying, but I really got a kick out of looking at this post (putting aside the seriousness of WW2).
I never had interest in history when I was young, but developed an appetite for it lately.
Learning how and why people reacted the way they did during times of growing political instability has helped me reconcile some of the trends I see in the world today (even if I don't like them), and lent insight toward forecasting how far the events of tomorrow might stray from my expected norms.
To that end I found the series Turning Point: The Bomb And The Cold War a pretty riveting documentary exploring the journey from WWII to the present (especially the last few episodes).
I recently finished a large World War II project that covered the full timeline of the war, and Google Maps was a valuable tool to follow what was happening in any given battle. The problem is Google Maps has more detail than you need, so trying to follow something like Operation Market Garden is much more difficult than just looking at this beautiful battle map: https://www.alamy.com/a-bridge-too-far-image68088140.html. "The West Point Atlas of War" is another great resource.
Maps cover the spatial side of war, but in addition it's difficult to follow the timeline. My project stitched popular World War II movies together into a chronological series, making it easier to see what was happening across the world at any given time. You can view the episodes and the full blog post here: https://open.substack.com/pub/ww2supercut/p/combining-143-wo.... And in addition "The Second World War" by Churchill's biographer Martin Gilbert, is a chronological, 750 page book that I couldn't put down.
> Maps cover the spatial side of war, but in addition it's difficult to follow the timeline.
I'd love for there to be an OpenStreetMap style history project with a slider to change the date, allowing users to fill in battle lines and unit positions throughout history. There must be enormous troves of information on units and battles in archives around the world that can be put online in the right form. One obvious problem would be overcoming conflicting accounts of unit positions, strengths and extents, but even basic information on positions of units over time would allow users to get an idea of what was happening in a theater by dragging the slider.
Not quite what you are looking but if you're interested in Operation Market Garden: for the Dutch maps there is https://www.topotijdreis.nl, which gives you historical maps with a year slider. This can at least help one visualize how cities, villages, and topography at through the years.
There's also tools that wrap a part of toporijdreis and add other georeferenced historical maps! I recently saw one of those at https://geodienst.xyz/pastforward. Wish more people georeferenced historical maps, but it is tough.
I made something like this and briefly had it online but I didn't think there would be enough demand to make the time and costs of running it worth it.
In theory https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/ could do exactly this.
This should be a Hacker News frontpage posting all by itself. I'm deeply impressed.
Seconded. This is awesome
Thanks for the kind words!
> I recently finished a large World War II project that covered the full timeline of the war
When I was in high school I really wanted to make a full blown website with a timeline of WW2, using something like timelineJS (or whatever was available back then), with Wikipedia articles for all events, chronologically and filterable/organised by theatre. Never got around to actually making it, because it would be a massive undertaking.
Related, if anyone is interested in a chronological telling of WW2 in video format, I can recommend the World War 2 channel, ran by real historians, with an episode a week (+ specials covering special events or topics or people): https://www.youtube.com/@WorldWarTwo
Don't forget some cities have changed a lot during the war. For example Rotterdam was almost completely levelled so what is there now is nothing in relation to how it was then.
That's not the only thing that's different in the Netherlands: the Flevopolder was not drained yet.
> Google Maps has more detail than you need
I'd happily pay for a version of Google Maps where you can hide the streets and highlight the borders between countries, states, provinces and so on.
I think Google Earth has that option
You can do that with Apple Maps.
Veeery interesting. After realizing that Tora, Tora, Tora! and Midway might make a good double-feature (I tried it, and, they do!) it occurred to me that it might be possible to assemble a film-based curriculum to teach a great deal of the history of roughly 1933-1948, covering the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of the war, in a way that's entertaining while being more informative than misleading. There are thousands of films covering the time period from dozens of countries, and lots of those stick reasonably close to historical events, so it might work out.
The hard part, I think, would be tracking down films that give a good sense of the causes and course of more-obscure things like Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. You'd need to find two or three good films on that. Spanish civil war? The invasion and occupation of Poland? The political maneuvering between the Nazis and Soviets before they went to war with one another? The Winter War? These have to be covered by a few films that could act to "teach" the events, but I don't know what those films are and bet most are non-English and not well-known in English, making them harder (for me) to track down.
This could work for World War II since there's so many movies, but even so a bunch of events aren't covered. I also created this spreadsheet of films with their time periods and events covered. It's not exhaustive by any means though, and new ones are coming out constantly.
The first English language film that comes to mind for the Spanish civil war is For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's been a while, but I don't think it has much discourse about the causes or the background for the war - but films often treat those subjects either as assumed background information the audience already has, or as something that is not needed to identify with the characters and enjoy the narrative.
So you could use it, but it would need to be accompanied by supplemental factual materials. But I think that is true of many, if not most, non-documentary popular war films.
Interestingly, a curated collection of films in my opinion is much better than relying on a few history books that, under the cover of being "academic," are considered "authoritative," but, in fact -- there are a lot of facets that aren't easily reconciled. While film simply embraces the ambiguity (meaning a collection of films all telling the story from slightly different viewpoints is a lot better than a single textbook that might be authoritative, but also suffers from the point of view of the writer.
Here is an interesting article on the debate over when WWII actually began (this illustrates my point as "The Invasion of Poland" is often used at the "starting point" of WWII, when that is probably out of academic convenience rather than being factually correct (it's hard to say precisely when WWII began.) https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-09-11/what-if-all-th...
Now I am wondering if there are any deep studies of "World War 2 movie scenes where they talk to a map" from movies. That scene from A Bridge Too Far is a great example of giving the audience some spatial understanding both quickly and using the scene for character building as well.
8 seconds of Star Wars (ANH) was used to establish the time and space background for the "battle of Yavin": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yWrXPck6SI#t=20s and the rest of that scene plays out in the real time (15min) given during those eight seconds.
In contrast, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEv999K5Lr0 , with a similar theme and screen time, is nowhere close to real time or distances. (although I guess Star Wars did have a strong advantage in being fictional)
Virtually the entire Battle of Yavin was directly copied from the old WWII movie “The Dambusters”. The dialog, the planning scenes, the special targeting device, the trench run, the sequence of battle, Lucas pretty much ganked it all.
https://youtu.be/lNdb03Hw18M?si=LRuJEFmZEK5vGN_s
This is fantastic. I really admire your dedication to the project, and can’t wait to watch the episodes. Thank you for doing this!
Wow! I've been looking for a good comprehensive WW II movie list with decent historical accuracy! For me, This alone is amazing for you to share!
Would you happen to know of a similarly curated list of World War I movies?
I feel like the quantity and quality of World War I movies is much more sparse!
WW I doesn't have shocking villains like Hitler and the Nazis.
It doesn't have dramatic events like Pearl Harbor and and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nor does it have big 20th century figures and personalities like Stalin and Mussolini.
So, while World War II has an endless stream of historical movies, I find that World War I is really hard to find the same for.
Glad it's useful! There's a few WWI movies in the spreadsheet but I agree they're much more difficult to find. ChatGPT is actually really good for this though, you can say "Generate a table of 100 WWI movies from diverse points of view" and have a good place to start.
WWI may be less cinematographic, but I think it had a larger effect: fascism and communism were both attractive because immediately after the "Great War", the "war to end all wars", people were eager to latch onto alternatives to the systems and political cultures that had gotten them into it (initially they were suspicious of monarchies; later even of capitalist republics; both communists and fascists thought liberal democracies would soon disappear, the former due to incompatibility with the future as revealed by "science" and "philosophy", the latter due to incompatibility with the past as revealed by "tradition" and "action").
I currently think in terms of a "small XX", running 1914-1991.
Originally I'd wondered where to put the 1990s, but seeing as how the Yugoslav Wars (misinformation-stoked fratricidal wars causing massive refugee influx to neighbouring countries) fit the XXI pattern, I'm willing to start it in 1991. (when it ends will not be my concern)
Lagniappe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lamps_are_going_out
Great work,thanks for sharing!
Just when I was about to finish my profile destruction on reddit I find another reason to dig a little deeper into the stew. I wish I had found your stuff on /r/fanedits a long time ago. The work you've done is excellent and is right up my alley, putting things into historical context using reliable sources.
One thing I would like to mention concerns the last map at the end of your post where you show a map based on information from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The caption above the map says "Can't name a concentration camp or ghetto" and the lower states "Many Americans can't name a concentration camp or ghetto". I find it unusual that New York has such a high percentage of the population that is so clueless about history that is this recent. They are, according to your map, #2 behind Mississippi which I would've expected to be #1 or tied for it with some other southern state where white supremacists have long had a foothold or stranglehold on education.
I see that most of the poorly educated states are in the south with Illinois (neo-Nazi foothold in some places) and Oregon (originally intended to be a whites-only state) being exceptions.
And also, that map projection used makes it appear that a (large) hidden hand has torqued the eastern seaboard to the south from Maine to the (limp dick) state of Florida. You can see the distortion along the state lines east of the Mississippi River.
Anyway, great work! I enjoyed reading your post.
I have a 1944 World Almanac. It's incredibly detailed on World War Two - by my count, page 31 and 35-113 are mostly or totally devoted to it, in addition to the various bits on armies scattered throughout. Sometimes I look at it just to see what happened on that particular day (for instance: today, German forces landed in Leros, in the Aegean Sea, which was at the time held by the British, among many other events - and that just in 1943!) There are also some incredibly detailed war maps which I sometimes look at. At some point I should probably get around to uploading them, as they are absolutely amazing and I'd like to share it, but it's always near the bottom of my to-do list.
I have a copy of Churchill's memoirs of WWII and also read his memoirs of WWI. I always liked the maps in the books, as they somehow brought me a little closer to the time. They're another way of conveying information not only about what is being discussed, but also how the people going through it saw things and what they wrestled with conveying.
Maps made in the current day to accompany Churchill's text wouldn't have the same effect.
Do you mean this: https://archive.org/details/worldalmanacbook0000unse_z4q3?
(Unfortunately only borrowable)
Here is a full version: https://archive.org/details/world-almanac-and-book-of-facts_...
I think both of those are correct, although they appear to be the paperback, as the hardcover has the front illustration on the inside and is otherwise plain.
The electronic version does feel rather odd, though. It's much harder to open it to a random page and find something interesting (say, a list of refugee scholars who at the time had moved to the US, 561-63), which, for me at least, is the point. I could find the vast majority of the information, if not all of it, elsewhere with little effort, if I was so inclined. It's more in the discovery aspect of it (and the advertisements, which are often absolute gems, although less so than the 1909 edition, which included two awkwardly arranged vertical ads which had large text of 'Rupture' on the left and 'Your Lungs' on the right so it reads as 'Rupture Your Lungs', and also "Dr." Rupert Weils, who claimed to be able to cure cancer at home, using "radiatized fluid", which I think is radioactive water; by 1944 they were much less blatantly wrong or poorly arranged.)
> advertisements, which are often absolute gems,
Pages 42-60 of the 1944 900+ page tome are advertising (maybe more, I timed-out).
Writing for pay and body building spent well ...
Some still haven't seen this picture:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord#/media/File...
I don't think we can really comprehend how big an operation that was. A movie like "Saving Private Ryan" was incredibly good (especially the scene on the beach front) but didn't come anywhere close to show anything resembling that picture.
Even more incredible, the USA landed on Saipan soon after the Allies landed in Normandy. The landing ships for operation FORAGER had to travel 1,000 miles across open ocean.
Recommended reading: The Fleet at Flood Tide by James Hornfischer, and Twilight of the Gods by Ian Toll.
Found this image of the landing craft: https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2019/07/09/saipan-landing-i/#g...
That's a really good article, I hadn't seen those details before. Thank you!
Second part: https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2019/07/09/saipan-landing-ii/
Impressive photo.
I imagine many more are even less familiar with the massive operations from the Eastern Front, simultaneously more important and lesser known in the West (at least in pop culture; historians of course know them). E.g. Operation Bagration.
Overlord overshadows other operations because it was unique in its nature, scale and difficulties. Eastern Front also had its iconic moments like Battle of Stalingrad or Siege of Leningrad...
> Overlord overshadows other operations because it was unique in its nature, scale and difficulties
Without diminishing Overlord (a landing of this magnitude was unparalleled), I think Bagration is just as impressive, devastatingly effective at annihilating the German army (most of Army Group Center gone, poof), and must have been a logistical and secrecy nightmare to employ maskirovka at such a large scale. It was larger scale than Overlord, too.
Not many in pop culture know about the Siege of Leningrad.
Stalingrad is better known in pop culture, but regrettably most of it at the level of terribly bad and misleading movies such as "Enemy at the Gates".
> Eastern Front also had its iconic moments [...]
That's a bit of an understatement... The Eastern Front is where most of the fighting in WWII happened. It's where the European theater of war was truly won or lost.
>The Eastern Front is where most of the fighting in WWII happened. It's where the European theater of war was truly won or lost.
I remember being very surprised when I heard for the first time that something like 80% of all casualties taken by the Germans happened on the Eastern front. Or the total sizes of the armies (collectively on both sides) fighting one another and the large margin by which the Western front was dwarfed by. It stood completely at ends with everything I learned about WW2 growing up in the US, through school, pop culture, friends, family of friends. I suppose it's not too surprising though that any country emphasizes their own involvement over that of others- for example I doubt that the Soviets touched much on the extent of lend lease in their education or war movies.
> I think Bagration is just as impressive
Well, I disagree.
Landings are generally considered to be very difficult and risky operations to execute, and Overlord is by far the largest scale landing in history. It was a one-off, all-in operation. It had to be close to perfect or it would fail badly. You can't just call off the landing in the middle of it or reduce its objectives if it doesn't go well.
Meanwhile, operation Bagration is just standard maneuver warfare, only particularly large and this time quite successful in achieving its objectives. Soviets had plenty of previous (some failed) attempts to improve their strategy and tactics. Maskirovka / deception campaign is standard for any such large operation. If things don't go as planned, you can scale down the objectives, or call it a diversion (Operation Mars). Operation Bagration might be more impactful on the course of the war, but in my mind it's not close to be as impressive as Overlord.
> That's a bit of an understatement... The Eastern Front is where most of the fighting in WWII happened. It's where the European theater of war was truly won or lost.
"Most iconic" is not the same thing as "most impactful". Maneuver warfare is just generally not as iconic as pitched, close quarters battles.
You don't need to convince me Overlord was very impressive, because I fully agree.
It seems we possibly agree Bagration was more impactful, but our disagreement is whether it was as impressive. I'll argue that it was: the scale was humongous, and in war, this means more chance of fuckups or logistical nightmares. Scale in troops & territory is a huge source of trouble (just ask Hitler...). Military deception was practiced by all sides, but the Soviets took maskirovka to an art form. Not only were there feinted strategic offensives (with the potential to become real as plan B), but huge troop formations moved one way during daytime and retraced their steps during the night. Radio discipline exercised atypically for the Red Army. The Germans later claimed not to be fully taken in, but really... that's what they would claim. Reality shows otherwise and their army was shattered.
As for whether it's as iconic... well, "iconic" is an ill-defined term anyway. "Most iconic" in the Western world is just because, like I argued, the Eastern Front is way less known and depicted in movies. It's almost the definition of "lesser known", of which there are many reasons (Cold War thinking being a big reason initially). Overlord is more iconic in the West because it has been brought to the forefront in multiple accounts, movies and games.
Imagine if there were American movies about Bagration like there are for Normandy, "Saving Conscript Petrov". There are a million interesting and amazing stories you could tell set during this massive operation, just like Private Ryan or Band of Brothers.
Stalingrad in contrast is indeed iconic -- possibly as iconic as Overlord, because everyone knows about Stalingrad too -- but regrettably not too many good movies have been made about it. I've mentioned "Enemy at the Gates" (sigh!) but there's also that terrible Russian movie called... "Stalingrad"? Yuck. About the only one that's decent is ironically the German "Stalingrad" movie, but that one mostly shows the German perspective.
>"Most iconic" in the Western world is just because, like I argued, the Eastern Front is way less known and depicted in movies. It's almost the definition of "lesser known", of which there are many reasons (Cold War thinking being a big reason initially). Overlord is more iconic in the West because it has been brought to the forefront in multiple accounts, movies and games.
I don't think it is just Eastern Front, the Chinese Theatre and War in Pacific get far less attention as well. I'm Australian and we learn a little bit about it in history class at school but there are no movies or books about relatively momentous things like Fall of Singapore etc.
Agreed, it's not just about the Eastern Front. The Chinese Theater is possibly just as interesting and full of stories worth telling.
I'm not sure the Pacific War gets that much less attention. There are plenty of American-made games set in it (Call of Duty, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2, etc) and shows, most noticeably "The Pacific", and movies (e.g. "Letters from Iwo Jima"). This is the theater where the only atomic bombs were ever used in anger, so there's also that making it famous.
> It seems we possibly agree Bagration was more impactful, but our disagreement is whether it was as impressive.
Well, what makes Bagration unique in the same sense as Overlord? The scale alone does not cut it, and it's not the largest land operation anyway.
> Military deception was practiced by all sides, but the Soviets took maskirovka to an art form. Not only were there feinted strategic offensives (with the potential to become real as plan B), but huge troop formations moved one way during daytime and retraced their steps during the night. Radio discipline exercised atypically for the Red Army.
So far I haven't seen what would set Soviet maskirovka apart from e.g. Allied effort. All methods you mention seem pretty standard.
> "Most iconic" in the Western world is just because, like I argued, the Eastern Front is way less known and depicted in movies.
Partially yes, but that's not what makes Bagration forgettable.
"Iconic" is about human stories. Photos from the landing craft moving onto the beach, soldiers getting mowed by the machine guns while running over completely exposed positions, German soldiers sitting in fortified, but ultimately outnumbered and hopeless positions. Those are very memorable. You can make stories about close quarters combat for months in a completely destroyed Stalingrad, fighting for every building, pretty much living next to the enemy etc. You could make stories about Bagration, but it would not appear unique to the reader, you can't really transmit the scale of manouver warfare into the human story.
> Well, what makes Bagration unique in the same sense as Overlord? The scale alone does not cut it, and it's not the largest land operation anyway.
Scale alone is very important, and Soviet operations were larger scale (meaning harder to coordinate) than Western Allied ones. Also, I explained maskirovka. It's just that you don't find it interesting enough, and I cannot argue against your preferences except to disagree.
Barbarossa to my knowledge was/is the largest land operation of all time (and nobody will disagree it's both iconic and massively important), and Bagration comes second. Let's not mince words here. And also, Barbarossa was impressive at first but ultimately a failure, in particular a logistical failure -- precisely where Bagration succeeded.
> Partially yes, but that's not what makes Bagration forgettable.
> "Iconic" is about human stories. Photos from the landing craft moving onto the beach, soldiers getting mowed by the machine guns while running over completely exposed positions, German soldiers sitting in fortified, but ultimately outnumbered and hopeless positions. Those are very memorable.
> [...]
> You could make stories about Bagration, but it would not appear unique to the reader, you can't really transmit the scale of manouver warfare into the human story.
There's plenty of similar human stories and memorable situations that could be told for Bagration, plenty of furious advances, encirclements and desperate last stands (e.g. the German "fortress cities"), plenty of individual soldier stories to be told with Bagration as the backdrop. There's even smaller scale preparatory actions, such as the partisan operations "Rail War" and "Concert".
It's just that, like I've already said, Western media is not interested in telling these stories, partly because they would overshadow American contributions to the European theater of war, and partly because audiences must not empathize with the Red Army too much. You could make a "Saving Conscript Petrov" movie as powerful as Saving Private Ryan, but who wants to make it?
Overlord was large scale too yet Spielberg found the way to make it smaller and about individual soldiers. You can make this with Bagration as well. You don't need to make a documentary about large scale maneuvers, you can make it about individual soldiers. The Soviets suffered massive losses during Bagration, so you are not even sure your heroes will survive! Spielberg could do it, if he was interested. So could Clint Eastwood. Imagine: comrade Petrov is taking part of partisan actions, but he's captured by Germans; he's carrying some papers/knowledge that would betray the larger Bagration operation... now Stavka must send a platoon to Rescue Conscript Petrov before it's too late. Intersperse with scenes of his mother and girlfriend back behind the frontlines, anxious about his fate. (Ok, ok, I'm no Spielberg).
> You can make stories about close quarters combat for months in a completely destroyed Stalingrad, fighting for every building, pretty much living next to the enemy etc.
And yet... so few good movies have been made, right? The most well-known, "Enemy at the Gates", is a complete distortion of the truth, and pretty bad movie-making as well. Where are all the good Stalingrad movies? The best one is still the German-made one.
I believe the real problem -- affecting even you, now -- is that the Soviets (and later Russians) were not perceived as the good guys after the outbreak of the Cold War, and to this day Russians are not the good guys, and so their big moments in WWII tend to be downplayed in Western pop culture. Movies like "Enemy at the Gates" spent as much time making sure the audience didn't empathize too much with the Soviets, as with presenting the Germans as the enemy.
Complicating things even more, there's the thing that the Germans -- the ultimate bad guys of WWII -- have been somewhat rehabilitated in pop culture, making German "things" somewhat cool. (Unless one is watching a movie specifically about genocide or the Holocaust).
https://www.amazon.com/900-Days-Siege-Leningrad/dp/030681298...
The 900 Days is an eye-opening and compelling book about the siege of Leningrad. Highly recommended.
One of the big churches in St. Petersburg features huge columns - in some the pockmarks from strafing have been preserved.
And the pictures at the Hermitage are labelled "Great Patriotic War 1941-45"
> I don't think we can really comprehend how big an operation that was.
I think that very impressive photo doesn’t even show it.
FTA: “A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels”
⇒ I estimate that that photo only shows about 2% of the vessels involved.
Getting (also FTA) “Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June” onto a coast without using any ports and where you are getting shot at takes a lot of effort.
The photo also doesn't really do justice to how much stuff was going on at one time since it just makes it look like supplies are being delivered to a beach. You've got an an incredibly dense (in terms of participants per area or volume) naval battle, infantry engagements, air superiority operations, close air support and logistics operation all at the same time in roughly same place and even if you pick one aspect to focus on you'll find that the scale and tempo of operations in any one area exceeds what's "normal" even for a pitched battle.
Don't forget those thousands of ships and aircraft started across the channel the night before, only to be turned back by bad weather and having to reset and do it again the next night!
Are those floating things airships? What were they used for?
They're barrage balloons, unmanned airships intended to make low-level strafing runs hazardous and to break up the view of the ground for higher-level bombers. They were frequently used over London during the Blitz as well.
Something I've come to really appreciate about WWII, is how much effort was put into either creating or implementing concepts about organization and efficiency into action. WWII was likely the largest organizational endeavor in human history.
There's an almost paradoxical immensity to it, where humans, using paper, typewriters, physical mail, and early electric (not electronic) communication systems had to organize millions of humans into large coordinated efforts over about half the surface of a planet.
They did it without the aid of computers and the unlimited up-to-date firehoses of data that we have today. The paradox is that it's not entirely clear that our modern civilization, using these advantages, would be able to do what they did. Modern technologies seem to create an effect of overanalysis, where the WW2 generation often worked in deeply ambiguous grey areas.
Our tendency today is to want to produce as much up to date information as possible, even if its not necessary to the overall goal. We want to use a computer to scrub deeply through immense data to produce marginal gains. A Strategic General in WW2 might want to move 100,000 men and arms to a different location and issue the order where it would be relayed by post, telephone, or telegraph. To find out if that order was fulfilled might take weeks or months to even find out. Today we would want to track each soldier's boots to watch them march across a digital map in real-time.
Yet it worked. With major operations occurring down to the minute that involved multinational organizations moving millions of tons of human lives, arms, supply, and equipment, all also built to fulfill that order, on time and at high quality.
They didn't have computers, but they did have card machines.
https://www.ww2online.org/image/large-replica-punch-cards-bu...
https://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/405.html
https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10264546...
dieselpunk ftw
Hard to upvote this comment enough. D-Day alone was staggeringly immense, the largest naval, air and land operation in history, likely never to be matched. And the entire thing was basically planned and executed with pen and paper.
Excellent historical resource. Also the ''Atlas Of World War II'' is quite good:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_World_War_II
and there is this hard cover ''Atlas of World War II'':
https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-World-War-II-Cartography/dp/142...
I would add to this:
"A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps"
See: A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps
This is awesome. Cool to see the history told this way.
I would also encourage folks to seek out photos/footage of the concentration camps in Europe as well as the aftermath of the atomic bombings in Japan. When you see the unsanitized horror it really gives you pause that people did this to each other. And why war is worth trying to prevent.
For WW2 visualizations, The Fallen of World War II (http://www.fallen.io/ww2/) is a masterpiece—well-researched, clearly visualized, and paired with excellent narration. It balances nuance with the big picture, and even though it addresses tens of millions of deaths, it reminds us that these are people, not mere statistics.
Interesting article! The details on the maps are always interesting. The first map of 1939 shows the British blockade line of the North Sea that was so important during the First World War but would play a much lesser role in the Second, it probably would not even be present on most maps made after the war.
My son and I are fans of Stephen E. Ambrose's books "D-Day" and "Citizen Soldiers" (as audiobooks), but would really love a video companion to the books that charts the territories being discussed. It would be like a subtitles file, but with map images and timing.
I would love to endow Mr. Goldwag to undertake such an endeavor. His site demonstrates his love of maps as tools to help understand history. Fantastic!
I’ve heard there were also great maps published in non-english newspapers during this time period.
I'm a map guy. I love maps and I regularly use online translations to help me understand what the map-maker or poster is trying to convey.
With your post and all the opportunities open to you I feel like you advertised a grilled sausage event but when I showed up I discovered you were vegan and only serving salad.
Where's the links?
I should have added that I haven’t physically seen these maps which may never have been digitized in the first place… so grilled sausage enthusiasts beware.
I only eat plants but you woke my interest. Translator machine helped me to google “ Karte aus dem ersten Weltkrieg” and found this funny German map from 1014: https://www.vintage-maps.com/de/antike-landkarten/europa/eur...
The winds of war and war and remembrance books (or audio books) are a pretty good way to get a feel for ww2. They're historically accurate fiction and offer a lot of long-form detail and context (at least from the US/allies side of things)
The books are excellent, but the two miniseries made from the books are also worth watching. Wouk's strength is not only in portraying the sweep of events in both Europe and Asia before and during the war, but humanizing it with characters who, while they do seem to show up everywhere important, suffer real loss and hardship while doing so.
If you really want to have a solid overview understanding of World War 2, and you are just not the type to read two long books no matter how good they are, then here is probably your best option by far:
1. Pay for an Audible account. (Or figure out how to get free access to audio books from your local library.)
2. Listen to the books “Winds of War” and then “War and Remembrance” by Herman Wouk.
The drama and characterizations are just fine, and will pull you right in to caring for Pug Henry and wanting to know what happens to him and his family.
The battle scenes are true history and will blow you away, and teach you a lot. Midway, incredible.
The coverage of the Holocaust will break your heart, but make you think, “wow, everybody in the world should read this once”.
The character evolution of Werner Beck, in light of today’s world events, might terrify you. Whole nations don’t all of the sudden become evil. Evil powerful leaders push evil down into a country over time.
Looking at the first map, the line between Paris and Berlin goes straight through Ardennes where Army Group A broke the French line in May 1940.
Those are some impressive maps, with tons of foreshadowing, barely 9 days into the conflict.
There was a 1937 one worrying about the partition of the US: https://imgur.com/O4tp7JB
The more I philosophize on the subject. The reason Western boomers had it so very good is due to them being born mere moments after a cataclysmic, violent human struggle that killed nearly 80 million people ended.
In many ways it shaped the modern world. We are still riding the waves in the wake of all that happened in just a few short years in the early/mid 20th century.
I see Palestine in one of those maps (never israel). It was always Palestine
Well, Israel didn't exist until after the war, so no one would have shown it in maps of WW2.
Also worth thinking about the plans that were in place by the Nazis but never fully implemented due to the defeat by the Allies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
It's wild to compare these maps with what is being published today in the New York Times about the war in Ukraine: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/world/europe/ukrain...
The modern maps, while technically more "accurate" than hand-drawn diagrams, are almost shockingly light on information in comparison, and the accompanying text is a linear recounting of various advances and retreats with only passing explanation of the strategic importance of either.
I think there are two effects at play here: one is the decrease in expectation of the readership to have much comprehension or critical thinking facility, which is counterintuitive given supposed strides in education over the last eighty years. The second is the gutting of the news media as an industry where career professionals could get and keep lifetime experience in understanding important events and their place in history. While no doubt reporters today are doing their best, the news media is increasingly reliant on contract work and fresh grist for the mill, and it seems obvious that the writers at the NYT have just not been given the resources or motivation to become as familiar with the contours of the conflict as the writers of the past.
I disagree. I see about the same amount of information on the maps in the article in comparison to maps of the war in Ukraine. The maps in the article are certainly prettier, but not more informative.
I think your complaint about the "linear recounting" has more to do with the nature of the war in Ukraine compared to WW2. The battle in Ukraine is almost entirely on land, while in the WW2 maps the majority of the maps are focused on sea lines of communications and air bases. The front lines in Ukraine aren't static by any means, but compared to WW2 these lines are barely moving.
> the decrease in expectation of the readership to have much comprehension or critical thinking facility
> the gutting of the news media as an industry where career professionals could get and keep lifetime experience in understanding important events and their place in history
I think you have certain per-conceived notions and are trying to justify them in these maps, rather than the other way around. I've read old newspaper articles and really don't see any "decrease in expectation of the readership". As for the "gutting of the news media," I think there is some truth their, but I don't think you should denigrate the journalists of today. Recall that Ernie Pyle, perhaps the most famous war correspondents of WW2, before the war was a human interest writer.
I don't agree.
Part of the issue is that World War II is a vastly more complex situation than the Russo-Ukrainian war; it's really not so much a war as it is an overlapping mess of several smaller wars, with a large amount of rapid geographical alterations in a short timeframe. To explain to people in September 1939 what's going on, you have to bring up the Saarland, Sudetenland, Danzig, the Polish Corridor, the dismemberment of Austria and Czechoslovakia... and that's before Germany actually invades Poland. For the Russo-Ukrainian war, you need to bring up... Crimea, the Donbass, and maaaaybe Transdnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia if you're trying to build a wider geopolitical picture. And most maps you see do highlight Crimea and the Donbass!
As the war progresses, World War II grows in massive scale, so that places like Tobruk became important locations for the strategic aspect of the war, and even a well-informed individual would have been hard-pressed to locate Tobruk before then. So you need to highlight this town in North Africa, and then explicate why a town in North Africa is important in the context of a literal world-wide war. By contrast, Ukraine is far smaller than the entire world, and even an important linchpin like Vuhledar has only the significance of, say, Bastogne in WW2.
Or maybe it's because they're busy fighting a war and trying not to die so that they haven't had the time to provide records for the historians and analysts to ruminate over.
> The modern maps, while technically more "accurate" than hand-drawn diagrams, are almost shockingly light on information in comparison, and the accompanying text is a linear recounting of various advances and retreats with only passing explanation of the strategic importance of either.
Feels like both are light on information. But what do you expect? It's war time propaganda. It isn't meant to educate or inform. The news during war is not the same as it is during peacetime. They serve different goals. Whether it's ukraine. Gaza. Or ww2.
> one is the decrease in expectation of the readership to have much comprehension or critical thinking facility, which is counterintuitive given supposed strides in education over the last eighty years.
Mass education was never meant to increase critical thinking. Mass education exists to brainwash and instill conformity. The modern education system was created by the prussians in the 1800s to "educate" the peoples of the various germanic states into one single nation. It's the same education system adopted by the US and much of the world.
> and it seems obvious that the writers at the NYT have just not been given the resources or motivation to become as familiar with the contours of the conflict as the writers of the past.
Because NYT reporters were so familiar with the contours of iraq and their wmd program? If someone gave the NYT a trillion dollars, what would change? Nothing. The reporting would be the same. Especially when it comes to wars.
When you read war propaganda from the past ( pick any war ) or in any country, it's remarkable how similar they all are.
> That is a grotesque distortion.
It's the truth. Go look it up.
> A century ago, most of the world was illiterate and innumerate.
Yeah. That's the point. Far easier to brainwash literate people. Far easier to get literate people to conform. Especially when you train them since they are young.
I'm not sure it is easier. There's always finger puppets or pantomime.