Find Books & Ebooks
Using Subject Headings to Find Primary Sources
Subject headings are standardized phrases (or, "controlled vocabularies" in more technical terms) that are assigned to every book, e-book, and journal article in a library's collection. Although they may seem a little intimidating at first, using subject headings when you search for the best source materials on a given topic can end up saving you a lot of time! Try clicking on the subject headings listed below to get a sense of how they work. When you feel ready, consider using them yourself in future research by copying and pasting them into the library's catalog!
Additionally, if you find a great book or e-book in the library's catalog, click on the "Description" tab in the book's record and scroll to the list of "Subjects." Try clicking on the most relevant subject heading you see to find other great books!
World War I
- Air War CollegeMilitary casualties, operations from the Civil War to present, veteran oral history projects, history resources by service branch.
- Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
Contains 35 digital collections focused on a wide variety of topics and regions, including the Civil War, Westward Expansion, the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Search all collections, browse by collection or search within individual collections.
- Combined Arms Research LibraryAuthoritative sites on military and defense-related topics.
- First World War.comMultimedia history of WWI, including battlefield sites, maps, vintage audio and video, and narrative accounts.
- Internet Modern History SourcebookWar poetry, book chapters, magazine articles, etc.
- PBS: The Great WarUseful links under "People of the Great War".
- Prelinger Archives60,000+ films in the advertising, educational, industrial, historical, and amateur genres.
- Veterans History ProjectCollection of Veterans stories.
- Web Sources for Military History (Jensen) - World War IChronological collection of links in military history by Richard Jensen, University of Chicago professor. Covers military history from ancient times to the modern-day war in Iraq.
Maps & Atlases
- Military Battles and CampaignsLibrary of Congress
- Historical MapsUniversity of Texas at Austin
World War II
- Air War CollegeMilitary casualties, operations from the Civil War to present, veteran oral history projects, history resources by service branch.
- American History ProjectsChronological collection of links in military history by Richard Jensen, University of Chicago professor. Covers military history from ancient times to the modern-day war in Iraq.
- Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Contains 35 digital collections focused on a wide variety of topics and regions, including the Civil War, Westward Expansion, the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Search all collections, browse by collection or search within individual collections.
- Avalon Project: WWIIDocuments relating to law, history, and diplomacy.
- Combined Arms Research LibraryAuthoritative sites on military and defense-related topics.
- Euro DocsTranslations, transcriptions, digitized versions of documents from all European countries. Focuses on all eras of history, including WWI and WWII. Search by country.
- Internet Modern History Sourcebook: War, Conflict, and ProgressWar poetry, book chapters, magazine articles, etc.
- Multimedia and Modern History: World War II (Fordham)Images, movies, maps, music from the Reformation, French Revolution, American Revolution, 19th Century Nationalism and Imperialism, Socialism as a Culture, WWI, WWII, Urban Migration and Music, Postwar Protest Songs, Modern Europe: Unity and Division.
- Prelinger Archives60,000+ films in the advertising, educational, industrial, historical, and amateur genres.
- Veterans History ProjectCollection of veterans stories.
- WWII Military ResourcesNational Archives and Records Administration suggested links. Nearly 40 links provided.
- WWII U.S. National ArchivesDigitized original documents from many regions affected by the war. Includes maps, criminal war reports, refugee records, captured Nazi recordings, photos, draft records.
Published Collections of Primary Sources
The Advance from Mons, 1914: The Experiences of a German Infantry Officer by
Here is an outstanding personal memoir penned by a German infantry officer recalling his experiences during the initial days and weeks of the war in the West, July-September 1914. Walter Bloem was a Captain in the German 12th Grenadier Regiment (Royal Prussian Grenadier Regiment Prinz Carl von Preußen, 2nd Brandenburg, Nr 12 - to give his unit its full title). His narrative gives a superb insight into the outbreak of war and his regiment's mobilisation, followed by the advance through Belgium and France, including the author's participation at the battles of Mons, Le Cateau, the Marne and the Aisne. His account of what it was like to face Britain's 'Old Contemptibles' at Mons is particularly valuable. Before the war, the author was a novelist, and The Advance from Mons clearly shows this - it is written with a great eye for detail, careful yet vivid descriptions abound and importantly, from a historical perspective, the book was penned whilst Herr Bloem convalesced from a wound he received at the battle of the Aisne. Such was the quality of his writing, that J.E. Edmonds, the British official historian of the Great War commented: "Some of the scenes ... are so truly and vividly depicted that I gave translations of them in the Official History, feeling that they could not be bettered."
A German Deserter's War Experience: Fighting for the Kaiser in the First World War by
In 1913 Julius Koettgen, a pacifist and a socialist, was drafted into the ranks of sapper battalion No. 30. He dutifully fought in the ranks of the Kaiser's armies during 1914 and 1915 and saw action in France and Belgium where he describes the terrible events which were to become known as 'the rape of Belgium' and also details the extent of the fighting including being forced to form part of a firing squad, crossing the Meuse under heavy fire, using corpses as road building materials annihilating a cavalry charge hand to hand bayonet fighting, and the awful events of the disastrous German retreat from the Marne. rnrnWith the onset of trench warfare Koettgen also experienced the horrors of trench warfare and the famous Christmas truce of 1914. In 1915 he decided that enough was enough and escaped military life by deserting the colours and slipping through the lines to neutral Holland. His was memoirs were published by a gleeful allied press under the title 'A German Deserter's War Experience'.rnrnThis English translation, edited and introduced Emmy AwardTM winning historian Bob Carruthers provides a rare primary source insight into the German side during the crucial opening battles of the war and is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the Great War from the German perspective.
German Generals of World War II: As I Saw Them by Call Number: 940.540943 M525g 1977
German Students' War Letters by
Originally appearing at the same time as the pacifist novel All Quiet on the Western Front, this powerful collection provides a glimpse into the hearts and minds of an enemy that had been thoroughly demonized by the Allied press. Composed by German students who had left their university studies in order to participate in World War I, these letters reveal the struggles and hardships that all soldiers face. The stark brutality and surrealism of war are revealed as young men from Germany describe their bitter combat and occasional camaraderie with soldiers from many nations, including France, Great Britain, and Russia. Like its companion volume, War Letters of Fallen Englishmen, these letters were carefully selected for their depth of perception, the intensity of their descriptions, and their messages to future generations. "Should these letters help towards the establishment of justice and better understanding between nations," the editor reflects in his introduction, "their deaths will not have been in vain." This edition contains a new foreword by the distinguished World War I historian Jay Winter.
A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917-1922 by
"One would be hard pressed to decide whether the book is more notable for what it says or for how it says it . . . Viktor Shklovsky's A Sentimental Journey is highly recommended." Library Journal
Call Number: 947.0841 S558s 2004
Vetluga Memoir: A Turkish Prisoner of War in Russia, 1916-1918 by
Mehmet Arif was an officer in a Turkish unit captured early on in World War I by Russian forces. His memoirs describe the hardships of the war in a remote Russian town, the life of the ordinary people in the last years of Czarist Russia and the chaos caused by the Bolshevik Revolution.
The War of Our Childhood: Memories of World War II by
One survivor tells of the fire bombing of Dresden. Another recounts the pervasive fear of marauding Russian and Czech bandits raping and killing. Children recall fathers who were only photographs and mothers who were saviors and heroes. These are typical in the stories collected in "The War of Our Childhood: Memories of World War II." For this book Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, a childhood refugee himself after the fall of Nazi Germany, interviewed twenty-seven men and women who as children--by chance and sheer resilience--survived Allied bombs, invading armies, hunger, and chaos. Our eyes carried no hate, only recognition of what was, Samuel writes of his childhood. Peace was an abstraction. The world we Kinder knew nearly always had the word war appended to it. Samuel''s heartfelt narratives from these innocent survivors are invariably riveting and often terrifying. Each engrossing story has perilous and tragic moments--school children in Leuna who are sent home during an air raid but are strafed as moving targets; fathers who exist only as distant figures, returning to their families long after the war--or not at all; mothers who are raped and tortured; families who are forced into a seemingly endless relocation that replicates the terrors of war itself. In capturing such experiences from nearly every region of Germany and involving people of every socio-economic class, this is a collection of unique memories, but each account contributes to a cumulative understanding of the war that is more personal than strategic surveys and histories. For Samuel and the survivors he interviewed, agony and fright were part of everyday life, just as were play, wondrous experience, and above all perseverance. My focus, Samuel writes, is on the astounding ability of a generation of German children to emerge from debilitating circumstances as sane and productive human beings. Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, a retired colonel in the U. S. Air Force, is the author of "German Boy: A Refugee''s Story" and "I Always Wanted to Fly: America''s Cold War Airmen," both published by University Press of Mississippi. He lives in Fairfax, Va.
The Young Russian Corporal; the Story of the Youngest Veteran of the War by
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
Call Number: 940.3 I24y 1919
