Back in time
World War II in Europe
The war in Europe as a moving map: who stood with whom and who held what, month by month from early 1938 to May 1945, with each battle appearing where and when it was fought.
Open the live mapWhat you see
- Each month’s borders as they stood at its end, with every country marked: Axis and aligned, occupied by the Axis, Allies, at war in neither bloc, neutral, or not at war.
- “Play 1938–1945” switches on the battles, brings the camera to Europe and plays the war at a month a second.
- Click a battle for what happened, with its Wikipedia article.
Where the data comes from
- World War II layerBorders from annexations, month by month; occupation is shown as a status, not a border.
- Event recordsCorrelates of War, UCDP, the Global Terrorism Database, NOAA hazards, SIPRI’s nuclear tests, UNESCO and Wikidata, among others.
Historical records are imported once and change rarely; they are updated when their sources publish new editions.
Good to know
- Europe only: the war in Asia and the Pacific has no month-by-month layer yet.
- One border layer shows at a time, so the world borders are off while this one is on.
- The live layers pause while History is open.
Goes well with
The world in 1914The world in 1914 on an interactive map: the empires and borders on the eve of the First World War, then the war’s battles as they happened.
The world through historyAn interactive historical atlas: the world’s borders year by year from 3400 BCE, with wars, battles and other events from 7500 BCE, on a 3D globe.
Countries through timeCountries coloured by life expectancy, GDP per person, population and about 45 other measures, year by year, with projections to 2100 where they exist.