German Military Mapping of Moscow and Environs from Operation Barbarossa.
Exacting color-printed map of Moscow and its surrounding region, published for the German General Staff either just prior to, or during, Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union.
The map includes both Russian toponyms and German transliterations, no doubt vital for non-Russian-speaking German troops trying to find their way around featureless Soviet farmland.
As with most of the military surveys from the 20th century, this map lists its sources in the lower-left corner. Interestingly, the primary sources date from 1919 to 1931, with final updates from the Soviet Atlas Mira II, 1939 edition. The 1920s and '30s saw massive changes to Moscow as Stalin and the Soviet Union began several major urban planning, industrialization, and agrarian projects. It seems doubtful that the Atlas Mira was sufficiently accurate to update sources that were a decade or more out-of-date.
The Battle of Moscow was a military campaign that consisted of two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km (370 mi) sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, the capital and largest city of the Soviet Union. Moscow was one of the primary military and political objectives for Axis forces in their invasion of the Soviet Union.