History

A list of digitized primary sources from the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library.

The UK National Archives has a collection of transcribed and digitized letters from WWI soldiers.

A list of World War I digital collections from the Library of Congress

IWM is a global authority on conflict and its impact on people’s lives. We collect objects and stories that give an insight into people’s experiences of war, preserve them for future generations, and bring them to today’s audiences in the most powerful way possible.

Our family of five museums uncover the causes, course and consequences of war, from the First World War through to present-day conflict.

Primary sources from Canadian World War I perspectives.

The diaries of U.S. army officer George S. Patton (1885-1945) are part of a larger collection of Patton papers available for research use onsite in the Manuscript Reading Room of the Library of Congress. The entire collection spans the years 1807-1979, with the bulk of the papers concentrated from 1904 to 1945. The collection documents Patton's military career, including his attendance at the United States Military Academy at West Point, 1904-1909; his service on the Mexican border as a member of John J. Pershing's Mexican Punitive Expedition, 1916-1917; his service as an aide-de-camp to Pershing and later as a tank commander in World War I, 1917-1919; and his military career from 1938 to 1945. The majority of the papers chronicle Patton's World War II service and his success as one of America's most skillful combat commanders of armored troops.

The Dutch East Indies were cut off from the mother country after the Netherlands had been invaded in May 1940 and subsequently occupied by the Germans. In 1942, the Japanese invaded and occupied the colony of the Dutch East Indies. Europeans were interred and disappeared into hundreds of camps, entirely cut off from the outside world. The men were separated from the women and children; there were prisoners of war camps and civilian camps. All in all, some 140,000 civilians and servicemen were interned, most of them for at least three years.These collections include the work of well-known artists, but many amateurs registered their impressions of daily life in drawings as well.

The Historic Government Publications from World War II contains 343 Informational pamphlets, government reports, instructions, regulations, declarations, speeches, and propaganda materials distributed by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) during the Second World War. The documents are held by SMU Libraries' Government Information Resources department.

The documents, which reflect the thinking of the time, range widely in topics. You can view information on many categories, such as women's issues, children's issues, pocket guides to other countries, and more. You can view series, like the Victory Bulletin and 10 issues of the State Summary of War Casualties.

The Japanese American Veterans Collection documents the rich heritage of Hawaiʻi‘s Japanese American veterans and their families. AJA veterans served with distinction during World War II as members of the 100th Infantry Battalion, Hawaiʻi Territorial Guard, Varsity Victory Volunteers (VVV), 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT), 1399th Engineers, and the Military Intelligence Service (MIS).

This is the historically unique collection of Finnish wartime photographs. The digital archive contains around 160,000 photographs from the Second World War from a time period of six years, from autumn 1939 to the summer of 1945. The pictures portray life on the home front, damage done by bombings, the war industry, the evacuation of Finnish Karelia as well as events and operations at the front.

This archive of filmed oral histories was created by filmmakers Anne de Mare, Kirsten Kelly and Elizabeth Hemmerdinger under the guidance of the irreplaceable Dr. Michael Nash. The 48 women represented here provide a complex portrait of Rosie the Riveter, taking the viewer beyond the iconic "We Can Do It" poster girl and deep into the experiences real Rosies from diverse backgrounds, challenging the popular perception of women in American History. The filmmakers were inspired by the extraordinary women of The Real Rosie The Riveter Project to develop this material into an animated documentary project using new media technologies called The Girl With The Rivet Gun.

The World War II Films digital collection consists of short films and news clips, primarily in black and white, documenting Allied operations and activities during WWII. In addition to footage of campaigns in Europe and in the Pacific, the films document activities on the homefront, including the efforts of African American colleges and farmers, the relocation and internment of Japanese civilians, and the victory garden program sponsored by the U.S. Office of Civilian Defense. Digitized by Ball State University Libraries.

This University of Wisconsin Milwaukee digital collection presents 90 images documenting the beginning of World War II in Poland, taken by the American photojournalist, Harrison Forman in late August and early September of 1939. The collection is supplemented by Forman's article "Filming the Blitzkrieg" and a selection of newspaper clippings from his 1938-1939 scrapbook
Browse all

The diaries of Ernest F. Easterbrook describe his service in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater, a little-known part of the campaign in Burma. Easterbrook was assigned to be General Joseph W. Stilwell’s executive assistant in Burma in 1944. Later that year he commanded the 475th Infantry Regiment, at that time the only US ground combat unit in the CBI theater. He led the regiment behind Japanese lines to cut the Burma Road in an effort to support Chinese troops from Burma linking up with the Chinese Y-Force, which was pushing the Japanese out of southwestern China. This led to the reopening of a land supply route, the soon-to-be-named Stilwell Road from India to China.

“Part of the Stilwell Papers, the war and other diaries of Joseph W. Stilwell . . . deepen our understanding of his life and times. The blunt, forceful, and irreverent ‘Vinegar Joe’ comes through on virtually every page. Illuminating Stilwell's personality, achievements, and foibles, his cryptic daily notes also increase our appreciation of this complex general's place in history. Their faithful transcription and publication on the Internet open up for a new generation of researchers one of the major sources for The Stilwell Papers (1948) and Barbara Tuchman's Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 (1970).”

View more than 300 World War II-era posters issued by various U.S. government agencies. They represent the government's effort, through art, illustration and photographs, to unite the American people in a time of adversity.

This website has been developed and maintained by Project InPosterum [Latin – for the future], http://www.projectinposterum.org, a nonprofit, public benefit corporation established in 2004 in California. The website contains photographs, timelines, and a collection of eyewitness accounts of events taking place during the Warsaw Uprising. It includes formal testimonies given to the commission investigating German/Nazi war crimes as well as personal memoirs and accounts of insurgents, civilians, and war correspondents.

Collection provided by: Illinois State Library.This collection contains United States and Illinois government documents on subjects relating to World War II, including: rationing and conservation, women's work, civil defense, the Japanese interment, the development of the United Nations, and more.

A collection of Ernest Taylor Pyle's wartime columns in both written and spoken versions.

Today, more than 50 years since their founding, the Yad Vashem Archives house the largest collection of Holocaust documents in the world: over 138,000,000 pages of documentation. The collections include over 100,000 survivor testimonies; over 400,000 photographs and approximately 2.6 million names registered on Pages of Testimony which are preserved in the Hall of Names.

Digitized German propoganda from the World War II and Cold War eras, including speeches, posters, caricatures, and photographs. Maintained by Dr. Randall Bytwerk of Calvin College.

Oral histories with female workers from World War II. Search the Berkley Oral History collections with or without keywords, using the Rosie the Riveter limiter.

Collection of World War II posters compiled by the the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES). Accessible, and ever-present, the poster was an ideal agent for making war aims the personal mission of every citizen. Government agencies, businesses, and private organizations issued an array of poster images linking the military front with the home front--calling upon every American to boost production at work and at home.

Photographs from the library of congress documenting the history of women at work during World War II. The selected images were issued by the U.S. government or by commercial sources during World War II, often to encourage women to join the work force or to highlight other aspects of the war effort.

Complete digitized newsmaps collection provided by the University of North Texas libraries. During most of the war, Newsmaps typically featured maps of the world and of local areas seeing fighting, brief summaries of military action during the week, and photographs of troops and materiel.