Deployment of Military Government Detachments Carpet Plan

American planning for the occupation of Germany.

With the beachhead in France ever expanding in the months following D-Day, it became apparent to military commanders on both sides that Allied victory was inevitable. The Carpet Plan was originally devised in September of 1944 as the process by which American military governance would be brought to its sector of occupied Germany. Beginning at the eastern border, the ‘carpet’ of control would unroll across the country with a series of quick successive victories or the collapse of German forces altogether.

This rare map presents the late stages of the Carpet Plan in the proposed American zone of control. It was issued in May of 1945 by the 1713th Engineer Map Depot. A confusing mishmash of districts, capitals, and headquarters is noted according to the legend in the lower right. According to Earl Ziemke,

“Devised for TALISMAN, the Carpet Plan was adapted to ECLIPSE and retained during the advance into Germany in 1945, somewhat less satisfactorily at each successive stage. The carpet was primarily a method of quickly providing area military government, but after September the movement into Germany was anything but fast. Consequently, the armies found themselves having to set up and maintain military government centers for detachments they would probably not soon be able to deliver and could not use for anything else. In the fall an irksome and seemingly endless round of detachment transfers began as operational plans and tactical boundaries changed.”

The map is scarce and unlisted in OCLC, the Library of Congress, or other online repositories.

Source.