A bulls-eye on Berlin

This Newsmap was published on October 25, 1943, days before the first major allied air strike on Berlin. The globe is centered on the bullseye of the European Front campaign against Nazi Germany, with concentric circles radiating out from the city that create a target effect.

On the bottom of this poster is a lesson in projection and distance measuring: azimuthal projections, like this one, create concentric circles of equal distance around their center point. The text that accompanies the detachable scale along the bottom edge reads: “…the detachable scale distances can be measured along any line running thru Berlin. It should be noted that an inch at the center represents less mileage than an inch closer to the edges. The detachable scale has been designed to compensate for this and should be used only with the center on Berlin.”

While the Newsmap publications were propaganda for the U.S. war effort, they also provided educational insight for viewers and would have been displayed in post offices, schools, and other public spaces. They taught Americans how to see both global threats as well as the expeditions of the U.S. military in terms of cartography and global geopolitics.