MAPS OF HISTORY · COLD WAR · MAPS BY YEAR · May 1945The Cold War, 1945–1991 · THE MAP IN MAY 1945
Map of Europe in May 1945
Where the armies stopped · Cold War
Europe in May 1945: Where the armies stopped. The map shows who held what: NATO & core Western allies, Soviet-aligned states, USSR & Warsaw Pact.
MAY 1945 · THE COLD WAR, 1945–1991 These maps are reconstructed from published sources · The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949 · North Atlantic Treaty: Algerian departments cease to apply from 3 July 1962 · 1945 agreement on occupation zones in Austria · Berlin’s four-power status and its termination · The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall · Cliopatria v0.2.1 historical polities · Decolonization of Asia and Africa, 1945–1960 · NATO membership chronology · Natural Earth v5.1.2 country geography · Natural Earth administrative references · Natural Earth river centerlines · The collapse of the Soviet Union · City of Vienna: July 1945 occupation agreement · South Yemen: independence and alignment chronology · South Yemen: Soviet relationship, 1971 intelligence estimate
Source details US government historical publication. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced NATO, treaty footnote 2. Historical treaty facts cited; no artwork or prose reproduced US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States. US government public-domain document US government historical publication. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced US government historical publication. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced Cliopatria contributors / Seshat Global History Databank. CC BY 4.0 · Selected dated records; documented component selection, unions and shared-edge extraction. US Department of State, Office of the Historian. US government publication NATO. Historical facts cited; no artwork or prose reproduced Natural Earth contributors. Public domain · Full source components and holes retained; documented historical unions and repairs. Natural Earth contributors. Public domain Natural Earth contributors. Public domain US Department of State, Office of the Historian. US government publication City of Vienna historical record. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced US Department of State. US government historical publication US Department of State, FRUS 1969–1976, volume XXIV, document 182. US government historical publication This political-alignment geography uses national and administrative extents; it does not map every military front. Modern-reference perimeters are explicitly recorded where no more suitable reviewed historical geometry was adopted. All source parts and holes are retained.
The Soviet, Yugoslav, Czechoslovak, Sudanese and other historical unions remove later internal borders. Occupation and armistice lines retain their separate meanings.
German occupation zones use the 1949/1950 successor extents as a nearby-date reference. Austrian occupation uses the July 1945 agreement; the initial May deployment differed.
South Yemen uses the 1969 source as a geographic proxy for earlier Aden/protectorates. The boundaries and status of individual protectorates are not resolved at this scale.
Morocco uses the nearest independent 1956 outer perimeter. The separate French/Spanish protectorate boundary lies outside this political-alignment layer, and Cape Juby remains in the Spanish source footprint until 1958.
Dated assignments correct omissions across the legacy views: independent Algeria is non-aligned after July 1962; Greece and Turkey join NATO in 1952, and Spain in 1982. South Yemen is separate from North Yemen, with British administration before late 1967 and the Soviet-aligned Marxist government after 1969.
proxy: 1945–1990, later municipal exterior reference · proxy: Natural Earth v5.1.2 contemporary reference · reconstruction: 1945–1947, near-date 1949 exterior reference · reconstruction: 1945–1991 · reconstruction: 1945–1991 geographic union · reconstruction: 1949–1952 · reconstruction: 1950–1957 · reconstruction: July 1945–October 1955 · reconstruction: Postwar Yugoslav reference · vector: 1945–1957 · vector: 1956–1957
Layer records and reconstruction methods
On the ground Eastern Germany was under Soviet occupation; from 1949 it became the German Democratic Republic The eastern zone, including Vienna’s Soviet sector, remained under Soviet occupation until the 1955 State Treaty Related maps
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