Part 1

To be very upfront about it, I will not be able to tell you if this map is a fake or not with a definite certainty. But I'll be able to explain with this map, how historians evaluate evidence and sources. This differs a bit for historians who do antiquity and even medieval stuff but the basic principle applies all the same.

So, how can we evaluate this map and if it is a genuine document or not and what it tells about history. While historians usually approach sources with a specific question and method in mind, the basic idea behind source-criticism will still apply and works in a couple of steps. These steps focus foremost on coherence and consistency. Is a document internally coherent and consistent, is it coherent and consistent with its immediate context and is it coherent and consistent with a broader context.

What I mean by that can be illustrated by this map rather easily because the first step is to look at internal coherence. What I mean by that is looking at characteristics that are in the document and checking them. Taking this map the first thing we notice is that it says "Air Traffic Net of the United States of South America Mainlines" and next to it is indeed a map of South America. Would it show a map of Africa instead, it would be justified to say that it is not internally coherent and consistent as a document. This might sound super obvious and like it would be done immediately anyway but it is important to actively think about these steps and be aware of them.

What else we can check in order to assess internal consistency is the text of a source itself as well as how it is set up. In this case, things such as "are all the German words written correctly?", which appears to be the case for what little there is. I can't read the handwritten additions but looked them up and apparently they are notations about fuel supply for Lufthansa, which as a general idea would be consistent with the document, given the main subject of the map is air traffic.

Another thing to check for is if the document is consistent with what we know about other documents from the same context. This can encompass such obvious things like "Is it written on the right paper? Is it written by typewriter or computer? Do the general charactersitics line up with what we know about other similar documents?" In case of this map, it does actually appear similar (font, style, design) to other maps the Germans have produced in WWII but the paper and typeface or ink we simply can't check because we don't have the original.

This internal check also gives us some helpful hints for the check of the immediate context, which usually means in an archival situation that we check, what other documents surround this document, where it was found and what sort of sources surround it. E.g. in this case, the map says on top that it is "Skizze 3", sketch 3, making it a good assumption that there are at least two other sketches that belong in the same sequences as sources.

One of the major difficulties of this map is that we – as is sometimes the case with documents obtained by spies and agents – lack the original immediate source context for this document. This means such things as the other two sketches and going by experience, such a map would usually be in the same file with a.) correspondence concerning why it was made, for whom and by whom and b.) other supplemental materials such as the other two sketches and probably the data that was used to compile the map.

Take e.g. another Nazi document, the so-called Korherr Report, a report compiled by statistician Richard Korherr that details what has happened in terms of the "final solution" of the Jewish question up to March 1943. Checking the Bundesarchiv file NS19/1570 where the Korherr Report is located not only gives us the Report itself but also a slew of correspondence such as Himmler ordering Korherr to compile the Report, Korherr corresponding with various Nazi agencies to get the numbers to use for his report, Himmler providing feedback to Korherr; Himmler providing the report to SS-leaders and telling them not to publish it; Korherr writing to Brandt that he has compiled a shorter version of his report; and the shorter version of the report itself. Similarly, the report is on numerous occasions referenced by those who had access to it in completely different contexts and files.

This, if you will, chain of evidence or chain of transmission of the source established that a.) this was a real document compiled by Korherr, b.) that it had the purpose indicated within the document and c.) that it was known and read in accordance with that purpose by other agencies and persons working on the same subject.

As I said, we do lack this immediate context for this map, so checking out the Wilson Quarterly Article, I was able to reconstruct the context as told by Bratzel and Rout: So the map that today can be found in the FDR Library in Hyde Park, NY found its way in this archive via William Donovan of the OSS who in turn received it from British intelligence sometime before October 27, 1941 when Roosevelt presented the map to the public as proof that the Nazis had plans for South America. The map appears first mentioned in a March 1941 report by Lt.Col.M.A. Devine, the US military attaché in Argentina when he remarks upon a map hanging in a German diplomats office.

According to a book written by H. Montgomery Hyde, a high ranking British intelligence agent in the Western Hemisphere, in 1963 the map originated from William Stephenson, codename Intrepid, the chief of the British intelligence service in the Western Hemisphere, British Security Co-ordination (BSC) who received the map from a British team of agents in Argentina who napped it after a German embassy courier had a car accident and they were able to obtain his pouch from either the remains or the Argentinian authorities. A 1975 book about Stephenson titled A Man Called Intrepid also ran with the story and added the detail that the unlucky couriers name was Gottfried Sandstede.

And here Bratzel and Rout deliver an important piece of evidence for their conclusion that the map is fake based upon a real map the British found but touched up for the Americans. According to their article, Sandstede, the head of the NSDAP Auslandsorganization in Argentina (the Nazi party dependency in Argentina) did not die or even have a car accident in Argentina but returned to Germany in September 1941 to be promoted and in 9144 died in a SS Combat Unit fighting the Soviets – this information Bratzel and Rout attribute to the German Foreign Office and US intelligence.

This however is cast in doubt by a book written in 2004 by Sergio Correia da Costa, a Brazilian diplomat and historian, entitled Crônica de Uma Guerra Secreta. In this book da Costa claims that it was Sandstede who copied the map in order for it to be lifted by the BSC and that he was later killed by the Gestapo for his action rather than killed fighting the Soviets. So, in da Costa's interpretation, Sandstede's actions were either stupidity or deliberate but it was him who copied the map and it was lifted rather than obtained because he had a car accident.

Neither da Costa, Bratzel and Rout, nor the two books on Intrepid footnote where these facts come from (which goes to show the importance of footnotes – they enable us to check what people write and make it easier for us to assess this information), so it is pretty hard to go and further check what exactly the deal is with Sandstede. While Bratzel and Rout write in their article that upon his return he was promoted to consul of legation first class, this article in Time magazine claims that rather Sandstede was brought back to Berlin in September 1941 because the Argentinians had thrown him out for secretly working for a shipping company next to his normal job at the embassy. Time also calls him the press attaché rather than the NSDAP AO chief.

Yet another source, Uki Goñi's book Odessa: Die wahre Geschichte: Fluchthilfe für NS-Kriegsverbrecher (Odessa: The true history: Help to escape for Nazi War Criminals) claims that Sandstede was indeed an agent of the German Abwehr, the military intelligence service, who had been forced out of Argentina for spying.

So, who Sandstede was remains a bit of a mystery altogether but writing about Intrepid in the book Espionage: Past, Present, Future? Wesley K. Wark argues against the conclusions by Bratzel and Rout: The conclusion the draw – the map being a doctored propaganda version of an actual German map – by them is based upon the version by H. Montgomery Hyde. Wark notes:

Unfortunately, the historians' case that the map had been tempered with rests solely on upon Hyde's testimony. Further, their work on Sandstede does not invalidate the courier thesis. In fact, instead of completely undermining the case for Sandstede being the ill-fated courier, they provide additional evidence that he had left South America for Germany in September 1941, exactly around the time when the courier would have been intercepted if the story is to be believed. They also supply evidence through a report by the US military attache in Argentina [mentioned above from March 1941] that Sandstede had a map of the new boundaries of South America hanging in his office, which showed the territorial gains that friends of Germany such as Argentina could expect.