"From October 1944 to September 1945 U.S. military intelligence acquired large quantities of German maps in Europe and subsequently shipped them to an Omaha processing center run by the U.S. Army Map Service (AMS). These maps proved invaluable to U.S. military planners during the early Cold War years. By the 1950s, however, the AMS began to deposit these German maps in research libraries across the United States. The German World War II maps form important legacy collections in many U.S. map libraries yet remain largely hidden, under-cataloged and under-studied.
These German maps are important historical source materials. World War II in many ways radically altered the European landscape: towns and villages were eradicated, place names were changed, and political boundaries were redrawn. These maps will allow geographers, social historians and genealogists to trace families and communities. For researchers studying the history of science and technology the maps provide a rich trove for evaluating the German surveying and mapping effort of the first half of the 20th century. The maps also document the many crimes of the Nazi dictatorship. They served as planning tools for the war of aggression unleashed by the Nazi regime, allowing it to maintain control over vast territories and extract resources. Some maps functioned as resource inventories which allowed Nazi leaders to exploit occupied regions. Census maps were used to uproot people from their homes and to plan the murder of countless others, foremost in the Holocaust. These maps are invaluable sources for historians seeking to understand the Nazi regime and its horrific crimes." Susan Powell, GIS & Map Librarian
UC Berkeley, email to Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. MAPS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU, 9/20