The European Fronts

In October 2018, I began working as a map librarian at Branner Earth Sciences Library & Map Collections, and The European Fronts, fresh from the scan lab, was the first series of maps to cross my desk.

I was immediately smitten with their design aesthetic and visualization of military movement over time, and being new to map librarianship, they became a catalyst for me to learn methods for giving our paper map collections a second life in the digital age.

The video shared here is from the moment I first laid eyes on The European Fronts set: just a girl standing in front of maps wanting them to come to life. Our first project conducted with these maps made my wish come true and will be shared later in this story.

Along with sharing our first project, I will also use this StoryMap to share other methods we are employing and exploring as map librarians in order to enhance cartographic and geospatial engagement. It is our hope that new ideas and methods are inspired by our projects, those both big and small, so that we can collectively continue to learn from and enjoy these pieces of paper.

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the predecessor to what we now know as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and was the first coordinated effort for strategic intelligence implemented by the United States.

In 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt was introduced to William Joseph Donovan, also known as Wild Bill, a World War I veteran and lawyer by trade. President Roosevelt was immediately impressed with Donovan and confidentially had him meet with Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Great Britain that summer.

In 1941, President Roosevelt selected Donovan as his Coordinator of Information (COI), laying the groundwork for coordinated strategic intelligence during peacetime. These peacetime efforts soon shifted to wartime when the United States formally entered World War II in December 1941 following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The strategic intelligence efforts also became formalized, and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was established in 1942.

At its peak in 1944, the OSS employed nearly 13,000 men and women who operated in divisions such as: Research & Analysis (R&A), Special Operations (SO), Secret Intelligence (SI), Counterintelligence (X-2), and Research & Development (R&D).

With President Roosevelt's death in April 1945, the OSS not only lost its most important supporter but Donovan was also disliked by newly appointed President Harry Truman, and Congress was seeking to be rid of war agencies such as the OSS. Without a chance for survival, the OSS was formally and abruptly dissolved in October 1945. In a farewell speech to his troops, Donovan stated:

When the Coordinator of Information (COI) was established in 1941, it was mandated "to collect and analyze all information and data which may bear upon national security" and maps were considered essential to fulfill this mandate.

The Geography Division began under the COI and was led by Richard Hartshorne, a geographer and professor. Hartshorne and his division transferred along to the OSS when it was formalized in 1942.

Initially, the Map Division was a subdivision of the Geography Division but after a reorganization in 1943, it became a stand-alone entity with Arthur Robinson, a PhD student hired by Hartshorne, at the helm.

The Map Division consisted of four subdivisions: special photography, cartography, map information, and topographic models. Collectively, these subdivisions researched and analyzed millions of pieces of information that reached them in the forms of photos, newspaper clippings, reports from the field, maps, books, articles, and so on.

They would go on to carefully distill this massive amount of information to produce approximately 6,000 unique maps, some of which were contained within reports and others individual.

During the war, the OSS maps were classified material intended only for internal consumption. Most of the maps still in existence today are stamped with warnings such as CONFIDENTIAL or RESTRICTED.

The European Fronts map series depicts the allied forces military movements from week to week during the identified dates of July 1944 to May 1945. They were produced in two different scales:

• July 1944 to January 1945 | Scale 1:6,969,600
• February 1945 to May 1945 | Scale 1:3,801,600

This visualization was created using the maps from February 1945 to May 1945 | Scale 1:3,801,600 which depicts the final movements, especially those made by Polish and Soviet advances to overtake Berlin, that led to German forces surrendering in May 1945.

Georeference

As if these maps weren't endeared enough to me already, they became the source for which I learned how to georeference historic maps in ArcMap. Being a fairly modern series of maps, the process was cut and dry for the most part; one learning moment was recognizing that the maps were printed in layers and that it was best practice to pick one element for consistent control points. Initially, I georeferenced the first few using a combination of border and city markers which resulted in just enough offset between each map to be noticeable. This was corrected by picking one print layer, city markers, to georeference from.

Digitize Polygons

Our student (she's in high school!) GIS assistant, Jessie Kong, is the hero of this project. Doing what no one else wanted to do, she traced each individual movement in ArcMap to create several digitized polygons for each map. One learning moment for this portion was recognizing that the light red mass of reclaimed land gained from week-to-week needed to be a separate polygon from the current front (dark red) for each week.

Digitize Polygons to GIF

Our Geospatial Reference and Instruction Specialist, David Medeiros, then used ArcGIS Pro to animate each individual layer utilizing keyframes with the final product being a GIF. Even in all his infinite knowledge, this particular workflow was a learning experience, especially in creating the effect of each movement fading into the next from week-to-week.

David then repeated this workflow but removed the georeferenced map and replaced it with a terrain basemap:

Our favorite outcome for applying the terrain basemap was how the limits of the Southern movements became visually and geographically explained: the Alps!

First, say that 3 times.

IIIF is an international initiative to make image collections from around the world play nicely with each other in a dynamic viewer. Along with Stanford University, the participating institutions can be viewed    here .

The example shown here includes four images from The European Fronts brought into  Mirador , a dynamic IIIF-compatible viewer.

To recreate this example and then learn the ropes for creating your own dynamic viewing experience, follow along with this quick tutorial:

It is important to note that images from any participating institution can be brought into Mirador at once; for example, you have the ability to view images from collections at Stanford, Harvard, Library of Congress, and British Library in a single viewing session.

This is an ongoing project in which many goals are actively being worked on for completion, namely enhancing the viewer's capacity for cartographic and geospatial resources.

I will end with a hearty thank you to all those mentioned in this StoryMap and also those working behind the scenes to make projects like these possible, namely  Digital Library Systems and Services (DLSS)  and  Digital Production Group (DPG) !

In the name of curiosity and creativity, I thank you for viewing this StoryMap and hope it inspires more fun, dynamic ideas for furthering cartographic and geospatial engagement!