A hitherto secret map showing the routes over London and the Thames estuary of German aircraft armed with bombs is among a unique collection of illustrations meticulously drawn by First World War cartographers.

Delicate lines, neatly transcribed numbers on grids, detailed lines of trenches looking like giant, slightly disturbed, spiders' webs, disguise the mud and horror of what was really going on on the ground.

Mapping the First World War reproduces photographs of exhausted troops in the trenches, of Zeppelins, of aeroplanes primarily used for reconnaissance but also for bombing, and the first tanks.

But the appeal of this richly illustrated work lies in the maps – barrage maps, diagrams of "battlefield geometry" for artillery, diagrams showing the elevation of craters made by exploding mines, and pioneering aerial photography.

One British map of the area around Passchendaele, near the town of Ypres, reveals the number of bodies collected after the war in each 500 square yard, a kind of body count by grid.

Illustrations include a map of Flanders with the allied and German front lines marked in coloured crayon under the title "The British Empire at Bay on the Western Front". It was compiled from confidential allied and German despatches.

The paths of 16 German aeroplanes, in four separate groups, are shown carefully marked on an overprinted Ordnance Survey map. The aircraft, flying mainly across east Kent on their way to London, took part in an air raid on 6 December 1916. Peter Chasseaud, the book's author, notes that the map was "not for public consumption".

One that very much was for public consumption was a map of "Zeppelin and Aeroplane Bombs on London", published by the Daily Mail on 31 January 1919, after the war was over.

The first Zeppelin raid took place on the evening of 19 January 1915 when two airships bombed Great Yarmouth and Kings Lynn in Norfolk, killing nine people.

There were a total of 52 Zeppelin raids on Britain during the war, killing more than 500 people.

Raids by Gotha IV bombers began on 25 May 1917. The first daylight raid on London, on 13 June 1917, killed 162 people, including 18 children in a primary school in Poplar.

On the night of 19 May 1918, 38 Gothas made the last and largest raid of the war on London, with the loss of six aircraft. Little serious damage was done.

The book contains reproductions of extraordinarily detailed allied and German maps of U boat attacks in the naval war in the North Sea, the Eastern Front, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caucasus.

There is a confidential map, "not to be reproduced" of the "Enemy Order of Battle" on the Western Front on 11.11.18, the moment of the Armistice. On the previous page, a caption to a barrage map of the area around Le Cateau in northern France, one of the last British actions during the war, in October 1918, notes: "One of the war's many ironies was that, for the British, the fighting finished where it had started..."

Chasseaud told me: "While technologically sophisticated and accurate large-scale maps were plotted from air photos for artillery and tactical use, crude propaganda maps were also published to manipulate public opinion."

Particularly fascinating, he said, were the ethnographic maps, which revealed the complex cultural, racial and religious texture of the Balkans and other areas, used by the intelligence department of Britain's War Office when advising the politicians during the 1919 Peace Conference.

"On a political and propaganda level, there are clear examples of attempts to arouse civilian and military hostility, even hatred, of the enemy."

The book offers a unique perspective as the remains of the victims of the war, Chasseaud points out, continue to appear as farmers plough the battlefields.

• Mapping the First World War by Dr Peter Chasseaud, Collins, in association with Imperial War Museum, RRP £30