Review: Behind the Lines - The Untold Story of the Secret Mission to Seize Nazi Map Data

I'm calling this a review, but I just really wanted to share this story.

I've always been interested in history, especially so for anything related to surveying or engineering. And, since my time in West Germany while in the Army in the early 1980's I've been interested in the historical happenings in Germany during WWII. I was stationed on what was at that time, the East German border. We took turns at the guard posts during what was called the "Cold War" watching the East German soldiers, many times accompanied by Soviet soldiers. And, they were watching us. I joke about being a "Cold War Veteran," since there wasn't a lot of shooting at all.

Back to the article. Major Floyd Hough was the hero of this story. He was a Civil Engineer, graduating from Cornell, and led a unit of 19 "carefully selected individuals." Four were civilians, with very specialized skills they brought to bear on the mission, which was to recover any and all surveying or geodetic information. They are credited with finding a

"vast scientific treasure—likely the largest cache of geographic data the United States ever obtained from an enemy power in wartime."

The article author, Greg Miller, a science journalist and former neuroscientist, does a very good job of telling the story all the way through. The images used are also very nice. Again, I really love the old maps and documents, which so richly add to the history lesson.

Hough's work during the war and afterward resulted in the creation of the first European Datum, named ED50, in 1951. ED50 was part of the foundation of the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) as developed later, and still in use today. It should be noted that Hough used mostly former German geodosists, who he hired, after thorough investigation, and paid them the same salary they had under the Nazi regime.

(This part reminds me somewhat of what I read in the book GRANT, where Gen. Grant used liberated slaves in his military operations, long before they were "officially" allowed to do so. Very ingenious and effective.)

Later on the HOUGHTEAM data also was instrumental in giving the US an advantage during the Cold War. The Germans had highly detailed mapping of Soviet facilities and cities, so this data was now in the hands of the US Military. And, during the Cold War, the Soviets knew that Hough had found this material, which was confirmed when he was introduced to a number of leading Soviet geodesists at a conference in Toronto.

J. Keith Maxwell, is an Engineer and Land Surveyor in Alabama. He enjoys reading and learning, specifically about our history, both genealogical and technical.