Road to WW2 · TURNING POINT · 1940

Bombing of Rotterdam (1940)

On the Road to WW2 map as “The bombing of Rotterdam”

14 May 1940 — Surrender talks are already under way when bombers level Rotterdam’s old city center. The Netherlands capitulates that evening. Across Europe, “Rotterdam” becomes shorthand for what awaits other cities.

When: 14 May 1940
Type: Turning point
Chapter: Phoney War and the fall of France (chapter 9 of Road to WW2)
Atlas: The Road to War, 1931–1941

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Map showing Bombing of Rotterdam (1940), turning point in The Road to War, 1931–1941 — TURNING POINT · THE ROAD TO WAR, 1931–1941

These maps are reconstructed from published sources · Cliopatria v0.2.1 — dated political boundaries · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — German territorial expansion · IGM Fiume, 1:25,000, sheet53B II SE — boundary established in1924 · Natural Earth — physical reference geography · Yugoslavia (1929–1939) location map — international frontier and Adriatic coast · Treaty of Rome (1924), division of Fiume and west-bank boundary · Murli / rowanwindwhistler — Slovakia border changes, 1938–1945 · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — The Holocaust in Slovakia · Slovak Nation’s Memory Institute — The First Vienna Award

Source details

Cliopatria contributors / Seshat Global History Databank. CC BY4.0 · Dated polity and constituent territory selections; campaign-dependent occupation overlays reconstructed separately.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Historical dates consulted; no prose or image copied
Istituto Geografico Militare, Fiume (printed1946; 1927 survey with1931–1940 updates), reproduced by Istituto regionale per la storia della Resistenza e dell’Età contemporanea nel Friuli Venezia Giulia. Independent reconstruction from graticule coordinates and boundary observations; archive page reserves artwork rights.. Geographical-fact reconstruction; original archive artwork not distributed
Natural Earth. Public domain
NordNordWest/Wikipedia. Converted from the published SVG to WGS84; eastern Italian regional territory extracted. Source cites Velhagen & Klasings Großer Volksatlas (1938).. CC BY-SA 3.0 Germany
1924 agreement interpreted alongside the regional history institute and City of Rijeka’s explanation of the Donja/Gornja Drenova division.. Historical geographic facts; citation only
Murli; SVG adaptation by rowanwindwhistler (2021). CC BY-SA 2.5; derived geographic paths under the same license · Georeferenced actual published vector regions using eight printed city positions; no map artwork or labels in the atlas.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — The Holocaust in Slovakia. Historical chronology consulted; no source prose or artwork republished
Slovak Nation’s Memory Institute — The First Vienna Award. Historical territorial chronology consulted; no source artwork or prose republished

The published Free French polity is assigned to the Allied side. Its separate territory does not inherit the occupied status of metropolitan France.

Slovak territory is reconstructed from the published 1938–1945 border-change map, distinguishing the client state from Hungarian and German annexations. Small northern frontier changes and survey-level detail lie outside this regional source. After August 1944, German military occupation supersedes the client-state fill.

The eastern Italian frontier uses the published 1930s regional map and a 1924 Fiume boundary reconstruction. Source conquests after April 1941 remain separately dated.

reconstruction: 1922–1952 · reconstruction: 1936–1940 · reconstruction: 1936–1941 · reconstruction: 1936–1942 · reconstruction: 1938-10 · reconstruction: 1939 · reconstruction: 1939-03 · reconstruction: 1939-09-28 · reconstruction: 1940 · reconstruction: 1940-06 · reconstruction: 1940.48 · reconstruction: 1940–1940 · reconstruction: 1940–1941 · reconstruction: 1940–1942 · vector: 1895–1941 · vector: 1912–1955 · vector: 1918–1941 · vector: 1924–1940 · vector: 1936–1941 · vector: 1936–1944 · vector: 1936–1945 · vector: 1936–1986 · vector: 1938–1972 · vector: 1939–1944 · vector: 1939–2023 · vector: 1940–1940 · vector: 1940–1941 · vector: 1940–1942 · vector: 1940–1943

Layer records and reconstruction methods

In the same chapter

✕ Winter War ✕ Dunkirk ● Compiègne ● Mers-el-Kébir ✕ Battle of Britain

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Bombing of Rotterdam (1940)

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