Description

This is a stellar rendering of the strategically important Russian city of Kursk (located 450 kms southeast of Moscow) as it appeared in 1919, based upon surveys made during the Russian Civil War by the General Staff of the Рабоче-Крестьянской Красной Армии (РККА) (the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army), better known simply as the Red Army.

However, the present example of the map is a reprint, by the indigo photographic process, issued on portable press by one of the Nazi German Army’s Vermessungs- und Karten-Abteilung (Motorisiert), roughly translating as a ‘Motorized Surveying and Map Detachments’, made during the German invasion of the Soviet Union. While the map features no German imprint, it was found with a cache of definitive WWII Nazi maps, including other indigo photoprints.

The mere mention of ‘Kursk’ recalls one of the greatest military events of World War II. While the Nazis occupied the city, from November 4, 1941 to February 8, 1943, during their invasion, they were forced to relinquish the city when their forces were pushed back west due the Germans’ crushing loss at the Battle of Stalingrad (August 23, 1942 – February 2, 1943).

By the summer of 1943, the Wehrmacht regrouped and took the offensive, beginning the Battle of Kursk (July 5 – August 23, 1943). In what was called Operation Citadel, the German attempted to form a pincer movement to encircle Kursk, capturing its large Red Army contingent. The battle that ensued was horrendous, involving between 780,000 to 940,000 German troops and an astounding 1.9 to 2.5 million Soviet soldiers at any one time. It was the largest tank battle in history, including over 11,000 tanks, not to mention the participation of over 5,000 aircraft.

The Soviets eventually managed to counter the German onslaught, launching their Kursk Strategic Offensive Operation. This overpowered the Nazis, allowing the Red Army to gain territory along a 2,000 km wide front after the battle. Critically, the showdown represented the last time that the Germans ever took the offensive along the Eastern Front. From that point onwards, the Wehrmacht was always on the run, until the final fall of the Third Reich in the spring of 1945.

It is not clear if the German Army issued the present version of the map in the autumn of 1941, as the Wehrmacht first prepared to take Kursk, or sometime around the Battle of Kursk, in the summer of 1943, or at some point between then. However, they certainly would have valued this high-quality Russian map, that while dated, still shows Kursk’s major topographic and infrastructure features with great accuracy.

Although surprisingly not well researched, the German Army’s Vermessungs- und Karten-Abteilung (Motorisiert), being their ‘Motorized Surveying and Map Detachments’, were responsible for especially impressive feats. They were completely integrated units of surveyors, draftsman, photographers and printers, who traveled with all their equipment to the front lines in every theatre in which the Wehrmacht fought (on many occasions they traveled aboard special trains). The Detachments were usually assigned to and followed the progress of specific army corps and their workshops could be instantly set up close to battle fronts, where new maps could be made, or existing maps reprinted, or updated, predicated upon fresh aerial reconnaissance and field intelligence. In many cases, new maps could be generated within hours of source maps arriving at their workshops, called ‘Armee-Kartenstelle’.

During the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Nazis benefitted greatly for the fact that the exiting Soviet maps of the country were of exceedingly high quality. Every inch of European Russia was mapped in large scale to precise standards of accuracy, and full sets of these maps had been acquired by the Wehrmacht long before the war. However, while the Soviets maps correctly located all major topographic features, civilian infrastructure and the outlines of cities, etc., they intentionally omitted sensitive military information (which the Soviet high command usually added in manuscript to their own secret sets of maps).

Not surprisingly, we have not been able to locate another example of this Nazi reprinting of the Red Army map of Kursk. Only a handful of examples would have been made for immediate use in the field, and the survival rate of such maps is incredibly low.

References: N / A – Seemingly unrecorded