MILITARY TOPOGRAPHIC MAPS OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC FROM THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY

In the period between 1918 and 1945 military surveys or revision of previous maps were undertaken in the newly established Czechoslovak state. From this period, four sets of military topographic maps can be distinguished. The first set is represented by revised maps of the Third Austrian Military Survey. The revision was conducted between 1921 and 1954 and the map sheets are at scale 1:25 000. The second set is the maps of provisional military survey from 1923 to 1933 at scales 1:10 000 and 1:20 000. They were drawn in the Benes's normal conformal conic projection and were completed only for a few percents of the state territory. The third set includes maps from 1934-1938, when a definite military survey was carried out. These 1:20 000 maps were completed using the Krovak's oblique conformal conic projection, covering again only a part of the state territory, in this case almost one tenth of it. Finally, the German maps called "Messtischblatter" (plane table sheets) were created during the German occupation of the Czech lands in the World War II at scale 1:25 000. They were created in the Gauss-Kruger transverse cylindrical projection and covered about 10% of the state territory, mainly in Moravia. All four map sets used the Bessel's ellipsoid.