1939 French Newspaper Map of the World at the Beginning of World War II

This is a 1939 Le Petit Parisien world map illustrating the state of hostilities before the Spring 1940 offensive in World War II. The map depicts the world from Central Asia and Burma/Myanmar across the Pacific Ocean to the Americas, then across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, Africa, and Central Asia and India and from the Arctic Ocean to Australia and Cape Horn. As this is before the 1940 German offensive in Western Europe, France had not yet suffered its humiliating defeat. European geography does reflect the German and Soviet gains of 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and divided Poland in half between themselves. The borders of Nazi Germany also reflect the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria in March 1938, and the occupation of Czechoslovakia, which took place in two steps. First, under the terms of the Munich Agreement, Nazi Germany occupied the Sudetenland (the northern and western border regions of Czechoslovakia), supposedly as a means of protecting ethnic Germans who lived there. Then in March 1939, the German army invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia and proclaimed it a Protectorate of the German Reich.

Meanwhile, in Asia, war had been raging on and off since 1931, with the Second Sino-Japanese War between the Japanese and the Chinese 'officially' beginning in 1937. The Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (Mandchoukouo), established in 1931 following the Mukden Incident, is the only immediately obvious clue to the fighting in Asia. The Japanese Mandates in the Mariana, Caroline, and Marshall Islands are labeled, but no hint of the critical role they will play in the Pacific War is noted.

It is also important to note the, unremarkable, though important, presence of colonial labels throughout the map. For example, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are referred to simply as Indochine (Indochina), then a French colony, while India is the Indian Empire, the jewel of the British Empire. The political geography of Africa looks nothing like it does today, with French North Africa, French West Africa, French Equatorial Africa, Belgian Congo, and Italian East Africa among the many political entities that have ceased to exist since the creation of this map. Even the United States is included, with the Philippines labeled as an American possession, along with Guam, Wake Island, and the Hawaiian Islands, which were still a territory in 1939.

Along the bottom border, eight inset maps depict eight of the most important naval bases in the world. These include British Singapore, the Hawaiian Islands, where the U.S. Battle Fleet would be relocated in the summer of 1940, with the reconstituted Pacific Fleet based there throughout the Pacific War. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Panama Canal, both important American naval are illustrated, along with the West Indies, Gibraltar, Malta, and the Suez Canal.

Overall, this map provides a snapshot of the world as it stood in the fall of 1939 and the first few months of 1940. A world in chaos, marred by brutal warfare on three continents, with an uncertain future. Although undated, through the geography we are able to date this map to late 1939 or early 1940. It was printed by the French newspaper Le Petit Parisien.