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World War I Online Resources

American Memory: American Leaders Speak, Recordings from World War I and the 1920 Election
  • The Nation's Forum Collection consists of fifty-nine sound recordings of speeches by American leaders from 1918-1920. The speeches focus on issues and events surrounding the First World War and the subsequent presidential election of 1920. Speakers include: Warren G. Harding, James Cox, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel Gompers, Henry Cabot Lodge, and John J. Pershing. Speeches range from one to five minutes. 
American Memory: Newspaper Pictorials: World War I Rotogravures
  • The images in this collection track American sentiment about the war in Europe, week by week, before and after the United States became involved. Events of the war are detailed alongside society news and advertisements touting products of the day, creating a pictorial record of both the war effort and life at home. The collection includes an illustrated history of World War I selected from newspaper rotogravure sections that graphically documents the people, places, and events important to the war.
American Memory: Stars and Stripes
  • http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sgphtml/sashtml/sashome.html

  • From February 8, 1918, to June 13, 1919, by order of General John J. Pershing, the United States Army published a newspaper for its forces in France, The Stars and Stripes. This online collection, presented by the Serial and Government Publications Division of the Library of Congress, includes the complete seventy-one-week run of the newspaper's World War I edition. 
American Memory: Search World War I
  • http://memory.loc.gov

  • Many of the American Memory categories contain at least some information on World War I. American Women: posters, speeches and suffrage resources.For easy access to World War I sources in American Memory, select a topic, such as: American Women, African-American Experience, History of the American West, Advertising and Woman Suffrage.

An Archival Look at World War I
  • http://archives.queensu.ca/exhibits/archival-resources-teachers/archival-look-world-war-i

  • Queen's University Archives presents this archival reference service - Archival Resources for Teachers. The resource is designed to complement the core curriculum for secondary education, providing teachers with original source materials to support themes in twentieth century history and geography, as well as suggestions for the integration of these original documents into lesson plans.

BBC History: World War One
  • This extensive site contains not only the general history and time lines, but an excellent multimedia zone with movies, photos, diaries and animated maps outlining important battles and plans.

Digital History: Learn about World War I
Documents of World War I
  • https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/ww1.htm

  • This site contains a vast network of primary sources from a number of participating agencies. Broken down into times periods ranging from pre-1914 (as early as 1856) to 1919 this is a great site for finding such works as the Austrian-Hungarian Ultimatum to Serbia and the German Declaration of War against Russia.

Doughboy Center: The Story of the American Expeditionary Forces
  • http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/dbc2.htm

  • This site, sponsored by the Library of Congress, contains extensive information on the AEF to include biographies, letters, diaries, weapons and traditions.

The National WWI Museum and Memorial

EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents from West Europe
  • http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/eurodocs/

  • This site lists all the major countries in Western Europe. It includes selected primary documents by time period from different online sources. Some of the documents are not translated into English. .

Literature of World War I
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature_of_World_War_I

  • From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. World War I has inspired great novels, drama and poetry. During the war itself, it has been estimated that thousands of poems were written every day by combatants and their relatives. After the war, many participants published their memoirs and diaries. During the war many of the combatants published trench magazines, most of them for an audience in a particular division or unit. The most famous of these (and the only one still commercially available after the war) was the Wipers Times. A common subject for fiction in the 1920s and 1930s was the effect of the war, including shell-shock and the huge social changes caused by the war. From the latter half of the 20th century onwards, the First World War continued to be a popular subject for fiction, mainly novels.

Soldiers’ Songs
  • http://www.soldierssongs.com/

  • Beginning as an album of songs from 8 wars, Soldiers' Songs is now also available as a classroom presentation of the music histories of WWI, WWII & Vietnam. Drawing on his combat experience, army songs and military history, Michael McCann tells powerful stories about these wars and those who fought them.

The World War I Document Archive
  • http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/

  • This archive of primary documents from World War I has been assembled by volunteers of the World War I Military History List. The archive is international in focus and intends to present in one location primary documents concerning the Great War.

World War 1 Naval Combat
  • http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/

  • This site is mainly about the history of surface warship warfare between the Imperial German Navy and the British Royal Navy (RN) during World War 1 and includes information on the Battle of Jutland, Battle of Dogger Bank, Battle of Heligoland Bight, Battle of Coronel and the Battle of the Falklands, the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow, losses of battleships, battle cruisers, cruisers and destroyers and the war exploits of the cruisers Emden, Karlsruhe and Königsberg. This site also contains copies of the original navy dispatches to the British Royal Navy.

Sandusky County Scrapbook
  • http://www.sandusky-county-scrapbook.net/

  • This site is the collaborative project of the Hayes Presidential Library & Museums and Sandusky County’s public libraries. Much of the research involving the Memorial Parkway topic was done by students in Mike Gilbert’s history class.

Veterans’ History Project (Library of Congress)
  • http://www.loc.gov/folklife/vets/

  • This site is devoted to preserving and collecting the oral, visual, and documentary materials of United States servicemen. Currently, the focus is on WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, and the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. The site provides instructions for volunteers (veterans’ organizations, high school students, historical societies, etc.) who have agreed to assist with the preservation, recording, and collecting of soldiers’ wartime experiences.