The Road to War, 1931–1941 · THE MAP IN SEP 1939

Map of Europe and Africa in September 1939

The Pact, and Poland partitioned · road to WW2

Europe and Africa in September 1939: The Pact, and Poland partitioned. Since March–April 1939, 9 territories changed status on this map: including Poland, The Soviet Union, Soviet Ukraine and 6 more.

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Map of Europe and Africa in September 1939 (road to WW2): The Pact, and Poland partitioned. Colours show Colonial empires & possessions, Aggressor clients & partners, The aggressors (Japan, Germany, Italy). — SEP 1939 · 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 — Danzig and German annexation in September 1939 · 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 — Danzig and German annexation in September 1939. Historical chronology consulted; no source prose or artwork republished
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

Danzig is assigned to German control in September 1939. Its geometry comes from the annual source’s free-city outline.

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: 1936–1939 · reconstruction: 1936–1940 · reconstruction: 1936–1941 · reconstruction: 1936–1942 · reconstruction: 1936–1944 · reconstruction: 1938-10 · reconstruction: 1939 · reconstruction: 1939-03 · reconstruction: 1939-09-28 · reconstruction: 1939.7 · reconstruction: 1939–1939 · vector: 1895–1941 · vector: 1912–1955 · vector: 1918–1941 · vector: 1920–1939 · vector: 1924–1940 · vector: 1936–1939 · vector: 1936–1941 · vector: 1936–1945 · vector: 1936–1986 · vector: 1938–1939 · vector: 1938–1972 · vector: 1939–1939 · vector: 1939–1944 · vector: 1939–2023 · vector: September 1939

Layer records and reconstruction methods

What changes on the map

Poland	Neutral & unaligned → Occupied — held by force
The Soviet Union	Neutral & unaligned → Aggressor clients & partners
Soviet Ukraine	Neutral & unaligned → Aggressor clients & partners
Soviet Byelorussia	Neutral & unaligned → Aggressor clients & partners
Georgia	Neutral & unaligned → Aggressor clients & partners
Armenia	Neutral & unaligned → Aggressor clients & partners
Azerbaijan	Neutral & unaligned → Aggressor clients & partners
Soviet Kazakhstan	Neutral & unaligned → Aggressor clients & partners
Soviet Turkmenistan	Neutral & unaligned → Aggressor clients & partners

On the ground

The German zone of Poland after its partition in September 1939.
The Soviet zone of partitioned Poland in September 1939 marked the execution of the secret protocol.

The chapters of this moment

CH 8 — Outbreak of WW2 in Europe

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