World War II background information
Teaching resources
- Guided primary source analyses
- Lessons & activities
- Presentations
- Primary source sets with teacher guides
PSN curated collections of LOC.gov resources
- Air Raid on Pearl Harbor
- D-Day
- Defeat on Okinawa
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- Harry S. Truman
- Lend-Lease Act
- The Marshall Plan
- Office of War Information (OWI)
- V-E Day & V-J Day
Library collections
- After the Day of Infamy: “Man-on-the-Street” Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor
- George S. Patton Papers: Diaries 1910 to 1945
- Military Situation Maps
- “Suffering under a Great Injustice”: Ansel Adams’s Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar
- Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal Nuremberg, Germany 14 November 1945 – 1 October 1946 official record of the trial of the major civilian and military leaders of Nazi Germany who were accused of war crimes
Oral histories
- The Aleutian Islands: WWII’s Unknown Campaign
- Buffalo Soldiers: The 92nd in Italy
- China-Burma-India: WWII’s Forgotten Theater
- D Day 60th Anniversary
- D Day 65th Anniversary
- D Day 70th Anniversary
- End of World War II
- Guadalcanal 75 Years Later
- Jewish Veterans of World War II
- National World War II Reunion: May 27-30, 2004, Man-on-the-Mall Interviews
- Pearl Harbor: 70th Anniversary
- War’s End: VE- and VJ-Days
- The War (Companion to the Ken Burns Series)
- The WASP: First in Flight
- Women Journalists, Photographers, and Broadcasters During WWII
Online exhibitions
- Arthur Szyk: Artist for Freedom
- Churchill and the Great Republic
- For European Recovery: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marshall Plan
- From the Home Front and the Front Lines
- Herblock’s History: Sending Forth Another Dove
- John Bull & Uncle Sam: From Enemy to Ally
- Segregation Abroad and at Home
- Women Come to the Front: Journalists, Photographers, and Broadcasters During WWII
- World War II: American Treasures of the Library of Congress
Library webcast video recordings
- Books as Weapons in the Era of World War II
- Ibsen and Hitler: The Playwright, the Plagiarist and the Plot for the Third Reich
- Pearl Harbor Oral Histories Webcast
- Rosie the Riveter: Real Women Workers in World War II
- Unsung Heroes: Heroism of Asian Pacific Americans During World War II, Part 1
- Unsung Heroes: Heroism of Asian Pacific Americans During World War II, Part 2
- War’s End: Eyewitness to History, Part 1
- War’s End: Eyewitness to History, Part 2
- World War II: 365 Days
- War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars
Library blog posts & Articles
- Copland as Good Neighbor: Cultural Diplomacy in Latin America During World War II In the Muse October 2, 2014
- Day of Remembrance: Photographs of Japanese American Internment During World War II Picture This February 19, 2015
- The End of Two Wars Folklife Today May 5, 2015
- Inquiring Minds: World War II, Through Patton’s Lens Library of Congress blog December 12, 2014
- The National World War II Memorial at Ten Years Old Teaching with the Library of Congress
- Rare Survivor of Pacific War Library of Congress blog May 30, 2016
- Stalingrad: Understanding the Global Impact of the Eastern Front in WWII Teaching with the Library of Congress March 14, 2018
- Two Veterans, Two Wars, Two Remarkable Women Folklife Today March 23, 2015
- Uncle Sam Needs You! Inside Adams November 10, 2015
- Voices of a Generation: the National World War II Reunion and the Man-on-the-Mall Recordings Folklife Today May 16, 2014
- Voices of War: World War II Commemorative Edition Library of Congress Magazine Volume 9, No. 3 July/August 2020
- War in Paradise: Navy Veterans of the Pacific Theater, Part I Folklife Today July 17, 2015
- War in Paradise: Navy Veterans of the Pacific Theater, Part II Folklife Today July 21, 2015
- World War II ‘Scientific Manpower’ Inside Adams November 10, 2010
- WWII: Detail from War Supply Contracts Inside Adams March 5, 2013
External sources
- National World War II Museum
- Rutgers Oral History Archives of World War II
- World War II: Documents Avalon Project, Yale
- World War II Poster Collection Northwestern University