So, I got this idea a while back, wanted to really get my head around what Europe looked like in 1940. You know, right in the thick of it. Not just a quick glance, but to properly understand the lay of the land back then.
Getting Started - The Hunt for a Decent Map
First off, finding a good, clear map of 1940 Europe isn't as straightforward as you might think. Sure, you can find tons of maps about 1940, modern ones showing the situation. But I wanted something that felt a bit more... authentic, or at least a really solid representation. I spent a good bit of time just digging around, looking at old atlases online, university archives, that sort of thing. It's not like popping down to the local library and pulling one off the shelf these days, especially for something so specific and from such a chaotic period.
You see a lot of variations too. Borders were, let's say, pretty darn fluid around then. One source might show one thing, another something slightly different, especially in Eastern Europe. It was a real mess, to be honest. Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states... a lot of shifting and outright disappearing acts on the map.
Trying to Piece it Together
My goal wasn't to become a historian or anything. I just wanted to get a personal feel for it. So, I started sketching. I'd pull up a few different sources, compare them, and try to draw out what seemed to be the consensus for, say, mid-1940. It was slow going. You'd think a line on a map is just a line, but when you realize what those lines meant – occupation, annexation, entire countries vanishing – it gives you pause.
I wasn't using any fancy software, just pencil and paper mostly. Trying to get the shapes right, the new 'temporary' borders. Germany had obviously expanded massively. The Soviet Union had pushed west. France was… well, complicated. It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces kept changing shape.
What really struck me was how different it looked from the Europe I grew up knowing. Countries I took for granted were either gone or sliced up. It’s one thing to read about it, another to actually trace those lines yourself.
Why This Stuck With Me
Now, why did I go to all this bother? It’s a bit personal, I guess. My grandad, he fought in the war. Never talked about it much, like a lot of them. But he had this old tin box, full of bits and pieces, a few letters, some photos. Nothing dramatic, just everyday soldier stuff. But the place names mentioned in those letters, some of them just didn't quite line up with modern maps. Or they'd mention crossing a border that, on today's map, doesn't exist or is in a completely different place.
When I started looking at this 1940 map, really studying it, some of those old, vague references started to make a bit more sense. It wasn’t about pinpointing his exact location on a specific day, but more about understanding the world he was moving through. The sheer instability of it all. What it must have felt like to be in a place where the very name of the country you were in could change overnight.
It’s like, you hear these big historical narratives, but looking at the map from that specific year, it grounds it. It makes it more real. You see the pincers, the occupied zones, the neutral countries trying to stay out of it. It’s not just abstract history anymore; it’s geography. And that geography dictated so much of what happened to individual people, like my grandad.
I guess I’m a bit like that with things. I need to see it, to almost touch it, to understand it. Just reading a list of events isn’t enough. That’s why I often end up doing these little deep dives. Like that time I tried to figure out how old plumbing systems worked in Victorian houses because I was fixing a leaky tap in my own place and got curious. Went down a whole rabbit hole, ended up understanding more about social history than actual plumbing, I reckon.
What I Ended Up With
So, after all that looking and sketching, I wouldn’t say I produced a masterpiece map. It’s rough, it’s my own interpretation based on what I could find. But I have a much, much clearer picture in my head of Europe in 1940. And more importantly, a better appreciation for how quickly things can change, and how lines on a map are so much more than just lines. They're stories, they're histories, they're people's lives. It was a worthwhile exercise, for sure. Makes you look at a modern map a bit differently too.
