[ww2supercut]

I recently finished a large World War II project that covered the full timeline of the war, and Google Maps was a valuable tool to follow what was happening in any given battle. The problem is Google Maps has more detail than you need, so trying to follow something like Operation Market Garden is much more difficult than just looking at this beautiful battle map: https://www.alamy.com/a-bridge-too-far-image68088140.html. "The West Point Atlas of War" is another great resource.

Maps cover the spatial side of war, but in addition it's difficult to follow the timeline. My project stitched popular World War II movies together into a chronological series, making it easier to see what was happening across the world at any given time. You can view the episodes and the full blog post here: https://open.substack.com/pub/ww2supercut/p/combining-143-wo.... And in addition "The Second World War" by Churchill's biographer Martin Gilbert, is a chronological, 750 page book that I couldn't put down.

[ssl232]

> Maps cover the spatial side of war, but in addition it's difficult to follow the timeline.

I'd love for there to be an OpenStreetMap style history project with a slider to change the date, allowing users to fill in battle lines and unit positions throughout history. There must be enormous troves of information on units and battles in archives around the world that can be put online in the right form. One obvious problem would be overcoming conflicting accounts of unit positions, strengths and extents, but even basic information on positions of units over time would allow users to get an idea of what was happening in a theater by dragging the slider.

[SimplyUnknown]

Not quite what you are looking but if you're interested in Operation Market Garden: for the Dutch maps there is https://www.topotijdreis.nl, which gives you historical maps with a year slider. This can at least help one visualize how cities, villages, and topography at through the years.

[admaiora]

There's also tools that wrap a part of toporijdreis and add other georeferenced historical maps! I recently saw one of those at https://geodienst.xyz/pastforward. Wish more people georeferenced historical maps, but it is tough.

[jeffreyrogers]

I made something like this and briefly had it online but I didn't think there would be enough demand to make the time and costs of running it worth it.

[habi]

In theory https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/ could do exactly this.

[ICameToComment]

This should be a Hacker News frontpage posting all by itself. I'm deeply impressed.

[FredPret]

Seconded. This is awesome

[ww2supercut]

Thanks for the kind words!

[sofixa]

> I recently finished a large World War II project that covered the full timeline of the war

When I was in high school I really wanted to make a full blown website with a timeline of WW2, using something like timelineJS (or whatever was available back then), with Wikipedia articles for all events, chronologically and filterable/organised by theatre. Never got around to actually making it, because it would be a massive undertaking.

Related, if anyone is interested in a chronological telling of WW2 in video format, I can recommend the World War 2 channel, ran by real historians, with an episode a week (+ specials covering special events or topics or people): https://www.youtube.com/@WorldWarTwo

[wkat4242]

Don't forget some cities have changed a lot during the war. For example Rotterdam was almost completely levelled so what is there now is nothing in relation to how it was then.

[wbl]

That's not the only thing that's different in the Netherlands: the Flevopolder was not drained yet.

[pif]

> Google Maps has more detail than you need

I'd happily pay for a version of Google Maps where you can hide the streets and highlight the borders between countries, states, provinces and so on.

[FredPret]

I think Google Earth has that option

[briandear]

You can do that with Apple Maps.

[vundercind]

Veeery interesting. After realizing that Tora, Tora, Tora! and Midway might make a good double-feature (I tried it, and, they do!) it occurred to me that it might be possible to assemble a film-based curriculum to teach a great deal of the history of roughly 1933-1948, covering the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of the war, in a way that's entertaining while being more informative than misleading. There are thousands of films covering the time period from dozens of countries, and lots of those stick reasonably close to historical events, so it might work out.

The hard part, I think, would be tracking down films that give a good sense of the causes and course of more-obscure things like Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. You'd need to find two or three good films on that. Spanish civil war? The invasion and occupation of Poland? The political maneuvering between the Nazis and Soviets before they went to war with one another? The Winter War? These have to be covered by a few films that could act to "teach" the events, but I don't know what those films are and bet most are non-English and not well-known in English, making them harder (for me) to track down.

[ww2supercut]

This could work for World War II since there's so many movies, but even so a bunch of events aren't covered. I also created this spreadsheet of films with their time periods and events covered. It's not exhaustive by any means though, and new ones are coming out constantly.

[mordechai9000]

The first English language film that comes to mind for the Spanish civil war is For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's been a while, but I don't think it has much discourse about the causes or the background for the war - but films often treat those subjects either as assumed background information the audience already has, or as something that is not needed to identify with the characters and enjoy the narrative.

So you could use it, but it would need to be accompanied by supplemental factual materials. But I think that is true of many, if not most, non-documentary popular war films.

[briandear]

Interestingly, a curated collection of films in my opinion is much better than relying on a few history books that, under the cover of being "academic," are considered "authoritative," but, in fact -- there are a lot of facets that aren't easily reconciled. While film simply embraces the ambiguity (meaning a collection of films all telling the story from slightly different viewpoints is a lot better than a single textbook that might be authoritative, but also suffers from the point of view of the writer.

Here is an interesting article on the debate over when WWII actually began (this illustrates my point as "The Invasion of Poland" is often used at the "starting point" of WWII, when that is probably out of academic convenience rather than being factually correct (it's hard to say precisely when WWII began.) https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-09-11/what-if-all-th...

[WesleyLivesay]

Now I am wondering if there are any deep studies of "World War 2 movie scenes where they talk to a map" from movies. That scene from A Bridge Too Far is a great example of giving the audience some spatial understanding both quickly and using the scene for character building as well.

[082349872349872]

8 seconds of Star Wars (ANH) was used to establish the time and space background for the "battle of Yavin": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yWrXPck6SI#t=20s and the rest of that scene plays out in the real time (15min) given during those eight seconds.

In contrast, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEv999K5Lr0 , with a similar theme and screen time, is nowhere close to real time or distances. (although I guess Star Wars did have a strong advantage in being fictional)

[buildsjets]

Virtually the entire Battle of Yavin was directly copied from the old WWII movie “The Dambusters”. The dialog, the planning scenes, the special targeting device, the trench run, the sequence of battle, Lucas pretty much ganked it all.

https://youtu.be/lNdb03Hw18M?si=LRuJEFmZEK5vGN_s

[LakesAndTrees]

This is fantastic. I really admire your dedication to the project, and can’t wait to watch the episodes. Thank you for doing this!

[ijidak]

Wow! I've been looking for a good comprehensive WW II movie list with decent historical accuracy! For me, This alone is amazing for you to share!

Would you happen to know of a similarly curated list of World War I movies?

I feel like the quantity and quality of World War I movies is much more sparse!

WW I doesn't have shocking villains like Hitler and the Nazis.

It doesn't have dramatic events like Pearl Harbor and and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Nor does it have big 20th century figures and personalities like Stalin and Mussolini.

So, while World War II has an endless stream of historical movies, I find that World War I is really hard to find the same for.

[ww2supercut]

Glad it's useful! There's a few WWI movies in the spreadsheet but I agree they're much more difficult to find. ChatGPT is actually really good for this though, you can say "Generate a table of 100 WWI movies from diverse points of view" and have a good place to start.

[aebtebeten]

WWI may be less cinematographic, but I think it had a larger effect: fascism and communism were both attractive because immediately after the "Great War", the "war to end all wars", people were eager to latch onto alternatives to the systems and political cultures that had gotten them into it (initially they were suspicious of monarchies; later even of capitalist republics; both communists and fascists thought liberal democracies would soon disappear, the former due to incompatibility with the future as revealed by "science" and "philosophy", the latter due to incompatibility with the past as revealed by "tradition" and "action").

I currently think in terms of a "small XX", running 1914-1991.

Originally I'd wondered where to put the 1990s, but seeing as how the Yugoslav Wars (misinformation-stoked fratricidal wars causing massive refugee influx to neighbouring countries) fit the XXI pattern, I'm willing to start it in 1991. (when it ends will not be my concern)

Lagniappe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lamps_are_going_out

[grapescheesee]

Great work,thanks for sharing!

[doodlebugging]

Just when I was about to finish my profile destruction on reddit I find another reason to dig a little deeper into the stew. I wish I had found your stuff on /r/fanedits a long time ago. The work you've done is excellent and is right up my alley, putting things into historical context using reliable sources.

One thing I would like to mention concerns the last map at the end of your post where you show a map based on information from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The caption above the map says "Can't name a concentration camp or ghetto" and the lower states "Many Americans can't name a concentration camp or ghetto". I find it unusual that New York has such a high percentage of the population that is so clueless about history that is this recent. They are, according to your map, #2 behind Mississippi which I would've expected to be #1 or tied for it with some other southern state where white supremacists have long had a foothold or stranglehold on education.

I see that most of the poorly educated states are in the south with Illinois (neo-Nazi foothold in some places) and Oregon (originally intended to be a whites-only state) being exceptions.

And also, that map projection used makes it appear that a (large) hidden hand has torqued the eastern seaboard to the south from Maine to the (limp dick) state of Florida. You can see the distortion along the state lines east of the Mississippi River.

Anyway, great work! I enjoyed reading your post.