WORLD WAR II

Electronic Archives

W elcome to the World War II Electronic Archives hosted by The George Washington University. This page serves as a demonstration of the various media available for archiving and distributing information about the Second World War. The page provides an interactive approach to learning by allowing users to control where they go within the Archives.

By simply clicking on highlighted text, users connect to linking sites relevant to the highlighted text chosen. To better understand the impact of the War, users will be able to access a number of sound and video clips. Listen to Hitler's 19XX speech delivered in CITY. Through text, users are able to construct the events that took place during the War but with the actual sound and video, they gain a greater sense of the emotions behind the events.
This understanding of the War is enhanced with photograhps of leaders such as Winston Churchill, General Dwight Eisenhower, Josef Stalin, Charles DeGaulle, and Adolph Hitler as well as photographs of significant scenes such as a Nazi Parade, the Normandy Invasion, and French Underground Fighters.
The use of video can also play a significant part in the Archives. For example, propaganda films which played an enormous role in enabling Hitler to grow in strength an power can be viewed. A clip from the famous Triumph of the Will, an important documentary study of the 1934 Nazi Party Convention in Nuremberg directed by Leni Riefenstahl, clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of film clips.
This site will also provide links to 50 individual state-run archives as well as other World War II related web sites around the world. As there will be an enormous amount of information in these archives, an efficient search tool will be necessary. To search the Archives, users will only need to type in the key words for a subject in the search box and click on the "Search" button. For example if users are interested in locating more information on Hitler, they should type the word "Hitler" in the space provided and then click on "Search." At this point they will be linked to another site with a list of references.
To search the Electronic Archives, please enter the search criteria:
Further development of the World War II Electronic Archives will permit access to veteran chat rooms where veterans share their views on-line, information on battle details, equipment displays (e.g. airplanes, uniforms, weaponry), grave site archives, women in flight, the homefront, medicine, politics, the economy, Holocaust Museum, Pearl Harbor, Manhattan Project, etc.

If you have any information that is not already archived here, please let us know.