Military Geographical Institute

Its first task was to form a coherent and updated system from the maps of Polish territory originally drawn by the partitioning powers (German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires).

From 1927 onwards, WIG began to draw a uniform triangulation network and to print its own, original 1: 100,000 map, known as “type two”.

These maps were two-coloured (black topographic elements, brown contour lines), some sheets contained two more colours added by overprinting.

However, to help keep their wartime deployment locations secret most combat units were not issued the needed topographic maps in peacetime.

After World War II broke out the Institute was evacuated, first to Lemberg (Lwów, Lviv) and via Romania to France, where it was re-activated.

Although no written sources have been identified, several sheets of those maps are known which indicate a coverage of southern strip of Poland, up to the line of Katowice (and perhaps further north).

A few officers who returned to Warsaw by 1940, either voluntarily or under threat went back to work for the German-run Institute which became the biggest hub of German war-time map production in Nazi Germany (Kriegskarten und Vermessungsamt II).

There are reports of some collaboration while, at the same time, a resistance cell was active in the institution, smuggling out maps to pass them on to the underground movement (the Armia Krajowa or "Home Army").

At the turn of 1943, probably due to the German counter-intelligence efforts, most of the members of the resistance inside the institution were arrested and executed.