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Description

Fascinating German World War II propaganda atlas, illustrating the progress of the World War II from 1939 to 1941.

Published in Munich in January 1942, the map provides a striking graphical depiction of the war, with detailed and graphically rich images of the German advances throughout Europe and North Africa, with text depictions of each significant advance.

Depictions show attacks by land, air and sea, along with blockades, with some graphics utilizing the style of famed data visualization mapmaker Charles Joseph Minard.  

Map titles includes:

  • The 18-day campaign against Poland
  • England's deception on Arabia last world war. The partition plan for Palestine
  • The Middle East as a British deployment area
  • England's raid across five continents
  • The reach of the German counter-blockade
  • The Mediterranean 1940-1941
  • The threat from the East averted
  • Moscow's grip on the West. September 1939 to June 1940
  • The Continental Empire of the Soviets
  • The Leap to the Island of Crete, May 20 to June 1, 1941
  • The Battle for North Africa, September 1940 to Autumn 1941
  • The Lightning Victory in the Balkans
  • The Battle of France
  • What did Churchill want in the Balkans? Dream and reality
  • France's grab for the Rhine
  • Norway, the boldest landing in the history of war 

Other maps show the British Empire from 1650 to 1940, the advances by Japan in Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Alaska and noteworthy, with the text describing the Pacific Theater as follows:

Japan between USA. and Soviet Union

The route from Alaska via the Aleutian Islands and Kamchatka to Tokyo is 4000 km shorter than the route from San Francisco via Hawaii," this statistic says everything that the US strategists have discovered while studying a map of the Pacific since the Soviet Union has become ready for an alliance with them.

In the spring of 1941, the southern route from Hawaii to Singapore past Australia still played the main role in the strategic planning because it lay outside the direct control of the Japanese air and naval forces. Since the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, however, Washington's interest in the East Siberian ports is no less than in the ports of the South China Sea. In October 1941 the news even leaked into the North American press that Roosevelt had agreed with Stalin about the cession of bases on Kamchatka and near Vladivostok in return for American arms supplies.  However, Japanese government spokesman Tojo dismissed these rumors, cautioning that they contradict the spirit of the negotiations underway between Tokyo and Washington.

The importance of the Aleutian Islands for the transport of American aircraft to Vladivostok was also discussed among the American public, because the distance from the last American island of Attu to Kamchatka was only 925 km and to the northernmost tip of Japanese territory was only 1,300 km. The suggestion that the two Anglo-Saxon powers should assume a territorial guarantee of the Soviet eastern border so that Stalin could throw the largest part of his Far Eastern army into Europe was also aimed in the same direction and was paid attention in Tokyo even before the outbreak of the war in East Asia.

It cannot be denied that nature has paved the way for a political rapprochement between the American continent and the Asian continent in the north. According to ethnologists, the Native Americans immigrated from Asia via the Bering Strait and Alaska. Alaska itself was a Russian colonial territory until 1867, when it became the property of the USA for $7.2 million. above. Why shouldn't historical development run the other way around? But Japan would never stand idly by and watch this circumvention of its otherwise favorable defensive position against America.

The eager talk of expanding the Northern Way in the US press probably served, among other things, to put pressure on Japan so that it did not concentrate its forces exclusively on the south. However, this attempt to divert Japanese forces to the northern route was a complete failure. The conquest of the Philippines, Malaya and Insulindes initiated this war in East Asia. It turned out that the much-promised possibilities of an American enveloping operation across the Aleutian Islands remained purely theoretical throughout this entire phase of Japanese advance in the south. Since the Soviet Union did not give up its neutrality in East Asia in the months in which Japan conquered Insulinde, the Philippines and Malaya, there was practically no possibility for the American air forces to approach the Japanese sphere of influence from the north. The map shows that there is still a threat against Japan in the north, against which the Far Eastern island empire must always be armed.

Several maps illustrate the Arabian Peninsula, including:

  • The Greater Arabian Empire promised to Sherif Hussein by England in 1915
  • The fragmentation of Arabia after 1919 by Anglo-French imperialism (top right the Sykes-Picot agreement)

In Palestine, the anti-British and anti-Semetic propaganda theme runs quite deep: 

The Partition Plan for Palestine

The well-known British principle of divide and rule found its ultimate expression in the plan to divide Palestine into three parts, which Lord Peel, chairman of a commission of inquiry, presented to the House of Commons in June 1937. From April 1936 onwards, the Arabs of Palestine had demonstrated through a general strike and a fanatical uprising that they would no longer tolerate any further immigration of Jews into their country, through which they would gradually be pushed out of Palestine. Lord Peel then suggested that this small Läuddien, which is no larger than the German state of Württemberg, be divided into an Arab, a British and a Jewish one. to divide the district.

The Jewish state that was projected at the time is shown in green on our map, the British mandate in yellow and the remaining Arab part in brown. As you can see, three completely unviable structures were to be created here, through which Arabs and Jews could continue to be played off against each other. Lord Peel's plan was ultimately shelved by the House of Commons, but even in the spring of 1939 the British were unable to present a plan other than new partition drafts at a Palestine conference held in London, which were rejected by the Arabs became.

This partition plan by Lord Peel has gone down in history as a document of England's unwillingness to seriously resolve nationality and race issues. If it had been carried out, 300,000 Arabs would have had to live in the planned Jewish state, since this area was still largely populated by Arabs.

On June 22, 1940, before the armistice with France was concluded, the British government concluded a new treaty with the Zionist Organization, which once again brutally ignored the guaranteed Arab rights in Palestine. While in 1917 the Jews were only guaranteed a "national home" in Palestine, in 1940 England promised the Zionists all of Palestine with the exception of the barren southern desert country as well as significant parts of Syria, over which England had no power of disposal. The government acted with its usual generosity Churchill has an area that does not belong to England and in which it does not even exercise power.

The fact that the Jews were also awarded Italian territory in Abyssinia because of this opportunity is only mentioned in passing. The project of partitioning Palestine is one of those typical attempts to split up large areas into tiny fragments. It is based on ideas that later appeared in England's war plans against Germany, which do not promote the cultivation but rather the destruction of nationalities. They are thoughts of a bygone world that will never be realized again.

Wolfgang Höpker Biography

Born in 1909, Höpker hailed from a family in Königsberg, East Prussia. His father was an assessor and later served as a district administrator, as well as a reserve officer during the First World War.

After completing his high school education in 1928, Höpker pursued higher studies in economics, sociology, and geopolitics at a humanistic high school in Erfurt. He received his doctorate in economics (Dr. rer. pol.) from the University of Jena in 1934.

Höpker's career in journalism began as a political editor at Munich Neuesten Nachrichten. He was a soldier in the Second World War, during which time he was associated with the publication of an atlas of the progress of the war. Politically, Höpker was associated with the German People's Party (DVP).

Post-World War II, in 1946, he became an editor for the Union press service in Hamburg. Höpker's role in the media industry expanded in 1948 when he co-founded the evangelical-conservative weekly newspaper Christ und Welt in Stuttgart. He served at "Welt", overseeing the politics department from 1954 to 1958, and later worked as a correspondent in Bonn from 1958 and as a foreign policy commentator for the Rheinischer Merkur starting in 1980. He authored several books, particularly focusing on political geography.

Höpker was married in 1935. His son, Thomas Höpker, born in 1936, became a renowned photographer and documentary filmmaker. 

Fritz Meurer Biography

Meurer's early education spanned from 1902 to 1912 in elementary and humanistic high schools. In 1912, he completed a one-year course and worked in a machine factory and a power station until the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.

During World War I, Meurer served as a volunteer and was appointed a lieutenant in the reserve on September 23, 1915. Post-war, he studied electrical engineering at the technical center in Mittweida for five semesters, completing his engineering exam in 1921.

From 1921 to 1925, Meurer was employed as an engineer at the Baden State Electricity Supply in Karlsruhe. In 1925, he joined the Reichswehr as a civilian employee in Stuttgart, working in the state security department. He became a member of the NSDAP in 1932.

In the Nazi era until 1944, Meurer joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) in the fall of 1933. He was head of training at SA Obergruppe 5 in Frankfurt am Main until May 1935 and attained the rank of Sturmbannführer. In May 1935, Meurer reentered the military as a captain and served as an adjutant at the Stuttgart 1 military district command until the end of 1938, being promoted to major in 1938. He was then transferred to the Karlstadt Military Replacement Inspectorate in 1939.

During World War II, Meurer served in various capacities, including at a transit camp on the Eastern Front, and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1941 and to colonel in 1944.

As Chief of Staff to the Chief of Prisoners of War from 1944 to 1945, Meurer worked under Gottlob Berger. He was involved in the organization of the prisoner of war system and the murder of French prisoner of war General Mesny in January 1945.

After World War II, Meurer was a witness at the Nuremberg Trials. He was sentenced to death in absentia in Paris in 1953 for his involvement in General Mesny's murder. German authorities arrested him in 1959, but he was released in 1960. The investigation against him was dropped in 1976 due to his inability to stand trial.