Historical Primary Sources: Military History

Digitized archives documenting the political life in Occupied Western Europe available to the British Government during World War II. From the original intelligence reports received by the British Foreign Office.

The records of the IGCR, which was organized in 1938 to facilitate Jewish emigration from Germany, but which largely failed. [1938-1947]

This collection contains two newsletters published by the Internationale Transportarbeiter-Föderation/International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), a pan-European trade union, between 1933 and 1945. Published in several languages, Germany Under the Swastika (Hakenkreuz über Deutschland) and Fascism (Faschismus) were originally intended to document the deeds and misdeeds of the Nazi regime in Germany. However, their scope expanded during the Second World War to include reports about occupied Europe. The Spanish Civil War also features heavily, with contributors warning that a victory for Franco would embolden other dictators.

Documents efforts to track and recover art and cultural assets looted by the Nazis during World War II. Includes records from Allied forces, restitution organizations, and individual claimants. Topics include the identification of stolen items, restitution policies, and the broader impact of cultural losses.

This publication collection consists of over 1,000 air dropped and shelled leaflets and periodicals created and disseminated during the Second World War.

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.

This collection of more than 140,000 clippings, arranged by subject and date, includes news stories and editorials from newspapers, mostly Canadian, documenting every aspect of the war.

The Needham Research Institute (UK) has collected about 1,000 photos that were taken by Joseph Needham during this trip to China from 1942-1946, when he was preparing his project on the history of Chinese science and technology.

Ephemera from the French Resistance.

This fully digitized series consists of copies of captured German documents. Included are 900 pages of selected World War II-era German military records that were captured by the U.S. Army forces.

Maps acquired by the U.S. Army Map Service during and after World War II.

German air force target dossiers that were part of the German records seized by the Allies after World War II. Each dossier consists of a map, overprinted aerial photograph, and a site description. The documents are in German.

A database of the last letters members of the Italian Resistance who were sentenced to death or deported.

Digitized version of an underground newspaper during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

Thousands of war images from the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation

Web projects at this web site include information on Japanese camps in the Dutch East Indies, resistance pamphlets, posters, etc. Mostly in Dutch.

Collection of more than 1,000 Russian photographs from WWII

This collection presents the complete files of the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) kept at the U.K. National Archives as FO 898 from its instigation to closure in 1946, along with the secret minutes of the special 1944 War Cabinet Committee "Breaking the German Will to Resist."

Presents approximately twelve hours of opinions recorded in the days and months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, from more than two hundred individuals in cities and towns across the United States.

During World War II, the US Army administered more than 200 surveys to over half a million American troops to discover what they thought and how they felt about the conflict and their military service. This site makes the collection accessible to the public for the first time.

Digital archive of the work Theodor Geisel did as a political cartoonist for the liberal New York City newspaper PM from 1941 to 1943,

Digitized collection of more than 1,500 photos depicting the homefront in Hawaii during WWII

Scans of over 300 printed U.S. government pamphlets, reports, and propaganda materials. Covers women's issues, home-front race relations, conservation and rationing, soldiers' guides to other countries, and more.

This NARA series primarily consists of transcripts of recorded interviews, lectures and speeches of U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and some Army Air Force personnel, mostly officers, who participated in significant actions of the Second World War. A small number of British, Australian and New Zealander officers and a few civilians are also included.

This collection contains manuscript materials compiled by the Office of War Information. For the World War II Rumor Project, field representatives collected information from community-based correspondents and sent duplicate or triplicate copies of reports of the correspondents to Dr. Eugene Horowitz at the Bureau of Public Inquiries of the OWI. The reports listed rumors and anecdotes that were compiled and arranged in alphabetical order by states and by subjects.

Provides records related to U.S. military planning and operations during World War II. Documents also address war crimes investigations, refugee policies, and intelligence on Axis powers.