1941 Osaka Mainchi WWII Map of Germany and Russia: Eastern Front, Operation Barbarossa

This is a very rare 1941 or Showa 16 map of Eastern Europe and Russia by the Osaka Mainchi Shimbun showing the advance of German forces into the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa. The map illustrates the battlefront just as the Germans had captured Minsk, were moving towards Moscow, and had encircled Kiev and Leningrad, in August or September 1941. The legend at bottom-left indicates symbols for crucial information such as national and provincial borders, capital cities, railways, ports, military bases, fortifications, important industrial centers, mines, and so on. The inset map at top-left shows distances (presumably by rail) between Berlin, Moscow, Baku, Khabarovsk, and Vladivostok, with Japan at far-right. As one of the major newspapers in Japan, the Osaka Mainchi Shimbun played a crucial role in informing the Japanese public about world affairs. Although Japan was part of the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany, the map does not evince any favor towards either side and appears to reproduce photographs from both the German and Soviet press (German on the left, Soviet on the right). Events on the Eastern Front and in the wider European war were followed closely in Japan, which was fighting its own war in China that, at this point, was transforming into a wider regional conflict. Although the wars in Europe and Asia were separate, they would be tied together following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into the war.

Japan, Germany, and the Soviet Union

The complex relationship between Japan, Germany, and the Soviet Union is an often-underappreciated aspect of the history of the Second World War. Japan and Germany both emerged as modern, industrial nation states around the same time in the late nineteenth century, and the Japanese Meiji Constitution was strongly influenced by the Prusso-German model of constitutional monarchy. This affinity was marred by the nations being on opposing sides in the First World War and Japan's seizure of German colonies and concessions in East Asia. However, with the rise of the Nazis and Japan's drift towards militarism in the 1930s, the two countries found common cause in anti-Communism, signing the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936 and the Tripartite Pact in 1940. Japan's relationship with Russia had been more combative dating back to the late nineteenth century, when Japan and the Tsarist Russian Empire tussled for influence in Korea and Manchuria.

Japan's Siberian intervention in the Russian Civil War made the new Soviet Union even more suspicious towards Japan, which only worsened with territorial disputes over Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and the establishment of puppet regimes in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and northern China during the 1930s. Tensions increased to the point that in 1938 and 1939 Japanese and Soviet troops clashed along the borders of Manchuria and Inner Mongolia with the Soviet Union and the Mongolian People's Republic. This struggle climaxed at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol (known in Japanese as the Nomonhan Incident) in the summer of 1939, when Soviet and Mongolian troops defeated Japanese and Manchurian troops and the two sides agreed to a ceasefire. Immediately afterwards, the Soviets signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and both Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, starting the war in Europe. Eventually, Japan and the Soviet Union signed a Neutrality Pact in April 1941 that stabilized the border situation until the very end of the war.

This had tremendous significance for the course of the war in both Europe and Asia. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, once Stalin was convinced that the ceasefire with Japan would hold, he sent large numbers of troops from Siberia and the Far East to relieve Moscow, then under threat from the Germans, in a stunning counter-attack in December 1941. For the Pacific War, the loss to the Soviets at Khalkhin Gol meant that Japan was forced to adopt a 'southern advance' strategy that brought them into direct conflict with the United States, rather than a 'northern advance' strategy that would have involved continued fighting with the Soviets.

Publication History and Census

This map was published by the Osaka Mainchi Shimbun (大阪毎日新聞), presumably in August or September 1941. This is the only the second surviving example we have encountered.