Early College: Primary Sources for WWI

The Nation's Forum recordings were made between 1918 and 1920 in an effort to preserve the voices of prominent Americans. The 1918 series was devoted mostly to World War I topics and was apparently distributed only to political organizations and other groups.

Discover World War One historical sources from both sides of the conflict, contributed by institutions from across Europe.

Chronicling America is a Website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC),

Europeana provides cultural heritage enthusiasts, professionals, teachers, and researchers with digital access to European cultural heritage material.

First World War Collections.

The IWM collection consists of approximately 800,000 items, including photographs, objects, film and audio. Our collections search allows you to explore this collection and to view digitized items online.

A comprehensive collection of primary source materials documenting Germany's political, social, and cultural history from 1500 to the present. It comprises original German texts, all of which are accompanied by new English translations, and a wide range of visual imagery.

Pamphlets from a variety of countries on the war.

As the largest repository of American World War I records, the National Archives invites you to browse the wealth of records and information documenting the U.S. experience in this conflict, including photographs, documents, audiovisual recordings, educational resources, articles, blog posts, lectures, and events.

With such a long history, please note that the material available here is only a fraction of our diverse holdings and is in an ongoing process with new digital records added monthly. To date, the focus of the project has been on the Museum and Memorial’s photograph collection and will continue with other image-related materials.

This collection makes available online approximately 1,900 posters created between 1914 and 1920. Most relate directly to the war, but some German posters date from the post-war period and illustrate events such as the rise of Bolshevism and Communism, the 1919 General Assembly election and various plebiscites. During World War I, the impact of the poster as a means of communication was greater than at any other time during history.

This online collection includes the complete seventy-one-week run of The Stars and Stripes World War I edition. The Stars and Stripes was published in France by the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) of the United States Army from February 8, 1918, to June 13, 1919.

This digital collection provides a sampling of UW-Madison's World War I Special Collection. Most of these materials were acquired by the University during or in the immediate aftermath of the war

The Veterans History Project database honors all those military veterans and civilians who have been interviewed for the Veterans History Project, or whose personal accounts have been donated to the project.

This vast online collection of World War I era newspaper clippings is from a single unique source: the 400-volume, 80,000-page set, World War History: Daily Records and Comments as Appeared in American and Foreign Newspapers, 1914-1926.

Heeding the call from artist Charles Dana Gibson to “Draw ‘til it hurts,” hundreds of leading American artists galvanized public interest in the Great War (1914–1918). Although the United States participated as a direct combatant in World War I from 1917 to 1918, the riveting posters, cartoons, fine art prints, and drawings on display chronicle this massive international conflict from its onset through its aftermath.

Beautiful but despondent, the poetry of World War One soldiers captures not only the last moments of someone’s life but an entire lost generation.

Library of Congress online WWI poster collection.

From 1914 through 1920 the Library of Congress acquired over 14,000 pieces of sheet music relating to what ultimately became known as the First World War, with the greatest number coming from the years of the United States' active involvement (1917-1918) and the immediate postwar period.