Картографические аспекты германо-советских договоров 1939 года

ENThe aim of the present paper is to review the cartographic materials related to the German-Soviet pacts in 1939. The publishing project was funded in 2015 by a grant (No. LIT-9-16) from the Research Council of Lithuania. The coordinator of the project - Dr. ArūnasVyšniauskas, chief researcher at the Department of the History of Modern Times, Faculty of History, Vilnius University (until the end of 2015). In January 2016, a book in Lithuanian "The Maturity and Fragility of Lithuania's Statehood (1918-1940)" was published. As a supplement to this book, the reader will find an important cartographic historical document - a facsimile of the German map that graphically shows the partition of the occupied Poland on 28 September 1939. This map bears the signatures of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany, Joachim von Ribbentrop, authorized by Adolf Hitler to sign on behalf of Germany, and Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, who signed on behalf of the USSR. In the northeast segment of this map atop are marked Dünaburg (Daugavpils) and other places in Latgale (Līksna, Višķi, Krāslava, Izvalta, Asūne, Puština, Indra, etc.). The original map is kept in Berlin, Germany, in the Political Archives of the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt-Politisches Archiv). We are grateful to this institution for their permission to publish it. The old maps and cartographic schemes can inspire new interpretations of German-Soviet agreements in 1939 and support the deeper understanding of strategic thinking in Moscow and Berlin during the WWII.