Historical Primary Sources: Military History

A directory of digital projects related to the First World War.

Portal to the digital collections of libraries across Europe. Materials can be filtered by providing country, language, insitution, and item type, as well as many other facets.

This project, undertaken from 1908 to 1931 to photograph human cultures around the world, resulted in 183,000 meters of film and 72,000 color photographs from 50 countries. The collection is now housed at the the Musée Albert-Kahn, and most of the images are available online.

Includes a searchable index of captured peoples sent to detainment camps, postcards of the camps, reports on the camps drafted by the International Red Cross and other organizations, and other historical records.

Archive of primary documents from WWI assembled by volunteers of the World War I Military History List.

A 400-volume set of World War I era newspaper clippings was created under the direction of Otto Spengler, owner of the Argus Press Clipping Bureau. It includes newspapers across the US, several foreign language US newspapers, and some from other nations.

Downloadable excel spreadsheets include an extensive bibliography on the war in Africa. The page also includes links to other relevant sources.

An online archive of the Canadian war experience, from any war, home front and battlefront, as told through the letters and images of Canadians themselves.

The Web exhibition is based on the CBC's radio broadcast In Flanders Fields, a series of one-on-one interviews with veterans of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, which aired from November 11, 1964 to March 7, 1965.

A directory of German archival collections on the first world war.

More than 700,000 documents and photos from the German National Archvies

On online history that includes a bibliography and chronology. A few translated documents are included

The collection includes complete files of key anti-war publications. It also contains rare reports from the Conscientious Objector Information Bureau. The internal papers include minutes from the Union of Democratic Control and letters from the No-Conscription Fellowship

A collection of British armed forces records and government papers being digitized to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the war.

This collection contains an assortment of letters, news bulletins and journals from British soldiers and military men during the First World War.

Includes a searchable index of captured peoples sent to detainment camps, postcards of the camps, reports on the camps drafted by the International Red Cross and other organizations, and other historical records.

A digitized collection of 23 journals written by soldier-poet Siegfried Sassoon. The diaries cover the years 1915-1927 and 1931-32, in addition to a few poetry notebooks.

Includes over 500 historical sources from across Europe.

Provides users with access to unique sources covering the experiences of American soldiers during the mobilization period in 1916, in the trenches in 1918 and through the occupation of Germany in 1919.

Digitized lantern slides, courtesy of Al Stangenberger.

Includes the diaries, notebooks, and address books of Pershing (1860-1948), U.S. army officer and commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. A few of the notebooks relate to his service during the Spanish-American War and his experiences in the Philippines.

A statewide collaborative digitization project to document Missouri’s role in World War I. The project is a digital collection of historical documents, photographs, artifacts, oral histories and other primary source material from museums, archives, libraries, and private collections from across Missouri.

An ongoing effort to digitize collections in the museum. Includes primarily image-related materials.

This online collection is drawn from three primary sources: The War of the Nations: Portfolio in Rotogravure Etchings, a volume published by the New York Times shortly after the armistice that compiled selected images from their "Mid-Week Pictorial" supplements of 1914-19; Sunday rotogravure sections from the New York Times for 1914-19; and Sunday rotogravure sections from the New York Tribune for 1916-19.

Digitized collection includes published texts plus 600 pages of manuscript letters, diary entries, and images

Aapproximately 1,900 posters created between 1914 and 1920. Most relate directly to the war, but some German posters date from the post-war period and illustrate events such as the rise of Bolshevism and Communism, the 1919 General Assembly election and various plebiscites.

Includes the complete seventy-one-week run of the newspaper's World War I edition

A collection of websites presenting various projects and events commemorating the 100th anniversary of the United States involvement in the First World War.

Digitized collection of 100 volumes of books and magazines from the WW I era

Digitized collection of postcards from World War I.

In addition to extensive documentation on the AEF, there are collections on the American Commission to Negotiate Peac, Allied Powers Reparation Commission, and other documents related to U.S. diplomacy and intelligence work.