Skip to Main Content
QUL logo

HIST 231: World War II

Primary Sources on the Web

Collections of Note

 
 
 
 
 
World War Poster Collection (UNT Digtial Library)
 
World War II Posters
Available from the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog of the Library of Congress. Search for "World War II posters."
 
 

General Collections

Spartacus Educational
Is an online encyclopedia with essays, etc on a variety of historical subjects (including British history and the history of the United States as well as other subjects including World War I, World War II, Russian Revolution, slavery, women's suffrage, Nazi and more.

Images for European History

British Library
Online gallery of virtual books and online exhibitions with objects from the British Library Collections.

Europeana
Is a single access point to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised throughout Europe.

Gallica Bibiotheque Nationale de France
Documents and images from the Bibliothèque Nationale.

Russian Posters Collection (Duke Univ.)
Russian political posters from 1920's forward.

World Images
A database of over 50,000 images including many areas of imagery (art, architecture, science, etc.).

What are Primary Sources?

Primary sources are original sources, in which its witnesses or first recorders describe a time, person or event.

Some types of primary sources include:

  • diaries and journals
  • speeches, interviews, letters
  • memoirs and autobiographies
  • government documents
  • published materials,  e.g. magazine and newspapers articles written at the particular time

For more information, check the following guide: Primary Sources

Featured Web Site

The Internet History Sourcebooks Project of Fordham University is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts. Includes:

Internet Modern History Sourcebook
Includes listings for the Reformation, Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution,  French Revolution, Napoleon, Industrial Revolution, 19th century ideologies. World War I, Russian Revolution, and World War II and more.

More Sources

History : Military : Primary Sources : WWII

University of Washington Universities Libraries have provided links to various open access websites, along with licensed links that you wil not be able to access. However under the section, Selected Newspapers from the Period, there are several of the newspapers to which we subscribe, e.g. Globe and Mail. Go to the Databases link and type in title of newspaper to see if we do have access.

World War II (BGSU Universities Libraries)