Understanding and Appreciating World War II Veterans
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Question
My 8th-grade students will interview a veteran and then do independent research on those battles and locations. Do you have suggestions of sites my students can hit that would have info about the various branches of military and info about battles, ships, planes, etc. where these vets served?
Answer
There are a number of wonderful sites for someone looking for background information about World War II, and the experiences of military men and women abroad and at home. Unfortunately, while there is considerable general information, the experiences of specific veterans can be widely varied—extending across the globe, and over land, sea, and air. Given the large number of units and the many changes in deployments over the course of the war, it can be difficult to find information about specific units on the web.
As a starting point, to transport your students back into the period you might start with some of the very broad overviews of the war by sites such as the History Channel. And (with proper warnings about the way they exaggerate and oversimplify) you might have them look at one of the War Department’s Why We Fight documentaries.
As they try to get a closer understanding of the specific experiences of particular service people and their units, your students can look at the materials prepared by the military services, which have substantial resources on the web (though they are a pretty clunky). For information on ground forces, they should check out the Army’s U.S. Center for Military History. Much of the material here consists of digitized version of print publication (hence the rather look), but it provides very comprehensive information about particular events.
The Naval History Center offers similar information for the U.S. Navy and Marine corps. Those are probably your best sources for information on the web at the unit level.
The National Archives also offers a treasure trove of information digitized from their collections, which includes everything from enlistment records of particular soldiers to photographs from the period. It can be hit-or-miss the closer you try to get to a specific person or unit, but it does provide some excellent examples of their specific experiences at the time.
Finally, the Library of Congress’s Veteran’s History Project provides a model of the kinds of information students might want to gather from each of the veterans they interview. Each interviewee in the database has a small fact sheet summarizing the key elements of their careers, and also offers digitized recordings of interviews with service men and women.
These are the best sources of information about World War II I have found on the web, though there are dozens of other sources available out there of widely varied quality. Most of the other sites are either extremely dated or are quite general summaries of broad themes and specific battles or events, but these sites should get your students started and on the right track.
World War I History Commission Questionnaires
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Beginning in 1919, the Virginia War History Commission compiled more than 14,900 surveys of World War I veterans in Virginia. Images of these four-page questionnaires—with additional material submitted by veterans or family members, including 1,046 photographs—have been digitized and made accessible on this site. The surveys provide basic demographic information on the soldiers and their families, as well as details of their war records, including descriptions of engagements, citations, injuries, and deaths.
In addition, the last page of the survey poses questions regarding the effect of the war and military service on states of mind and religious beliefs, as well as effects of disabilities on employment after the war. A valuable source for historians and students researching military history and the war experience.
U.S. Marine Corps
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The United States Marine Corps acts as the initial military respondent, via air or sea, to international disaster scenes and threats to U.S. interests.
Compared to the other four military branches, the Marine Corps history offerings are decidedly limited. However, a small selection of resources may be relevant for K-12 education.
A interactive timeline breaks the history of the Marines down into periods under different leaders, major innovations, and battles in which the corps has participated. The official site also offers back issues of Marines magazine, beginning with 2005.
If you are interested in the social history of the Marines, brief descriptions of their major symbols or their lore are the best resources available. Note that some features are covered in both sections.
A national museum of the Marine Corps also exists in Triangle, VA, if a field trip is in store. Tours are not offered, but the website does make gallery worksheets available.
U.S. Air Force
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The mission of the U.S. Air Force is to provide global air, space, and cyber intelligence, defense, and attack capabilities to the United States of America.
While all of the military branch sites seem to scatter the their historical information widely within their sites, this navigational difficulty is perhaps most pronounced on the Air Force sites. That said, the offerings could easily be applied in the classroom as early elementary activities through detail or visual aids for teaching military history in later high school.
Maybe you want to brush up on your own military history knowledge? If that's the case, your best bets are the short overview of Air force history; a collection of online history full-text books and pamphlets; or the suggested reading list, originally intended for airmen.
Short on time or looking for texts to share with your students? Try the speech transcripts from the past year, which may be useful for comparison to historical ideologies; online history essays and articles; or the brief overviews of popular topics, including aviation, WWI, WWII, Korean War, and Vietnamese Conflict history.
Other resources of note include lesson plans and teaching resource guides; a means of contacting historians, librarians, and volunteers who can answer specific questions; and a heritage page with focal sections on individual periods of time and a "this week in history" feature. Each time period link on the right side of the heritage page leads to relevant biographies, aircraft overviews, historical milestone lists, photographs, and artworks. Note that clicking on "more" for photos and artworks will take you to general image galleries, while the "more" function for people, technology, and milestones provides only information relevant to the selected range of time. The general image galleries, including history subsections, are divided into photograph and art options.
Finally, if you live near Dayton, OH, you could plan a trip to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. For those of you not in the area, the museum offers a virtual tour via podcast.
U.S. Navy
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The United States Navy, one of five national military branches, is responsible for the preparation and maintenance of maritime vessels and troops to be deployed in the defense of the United States and marine freedom.
Although an initial glance at the official Navy website does not suggest that the department offers educational materials, the site provides a wide variety of resources which could be put to good use in the history classroom. These include modern Navy photographs and both print and web advertisements for comparison to historical photographs, recruitment posters, and insignia within the Naval Heritage and History Command's Online Library. The library also presents Naval biographies and a selection of online reading, which includes Naval abbreviations and period regulations.
If you desire more information on 20th-century Naval life or action, a good starting point would be the archives of Naval Aviation News, with back issues from 1943 to present, or All Hands Magazine, with issues from 1922 to present day.
Other online resources include art exhibits, short essays related to Naval artifacts, and the Little Skippers page. The latter contains a lesson plan, latitude and longitude activity, and word search.
If you are looking for field trip opportunities, the Navy maintains the official National Museum of the United States Navy, which houses exhibits of U.S. Naval history, covering topics from polar exploration to military actions and navigation. The DC Naval Yard also holds the early history (1776-1919) and operational archives. Visitors unable to reach the Washington Naval Yard, may find the list of other official U.S. Naval museums useful.
Naval History and Heritage Command
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The Naval History and Heritage Command collects, preserves, and presents the history of the U.S. Navy in physical locations throughout the U.S. and online. Teachers will be most interested in "Resources & Research," a rich collection of primary and secondary sources related to naval history, including photographs, paintings, documents, oral histories, historical overviews, chronologies, and bibliographies. Teachers may want to start with "Photograpy," "Web Exhibits," or "Commemorations," some of the richer and more navigable sections. "Photography" features an online library of selected images on subjects including recruiting posters, albums and scrapbooks, women in the U.S. Navy, aircraft, naval insignia, individual ships, and more. "Web Exhibits" gathers together more than 20 curated collections of resources on topics from the Civil War to Japan/U.S. Navy relations; resources vary by exhibit but include documents, photographs, videos, related articles, oral histories, and links to off-site resources. "Commemorations" features collections of resources related to specific events, including the bicentennial of the War of 1812, the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the Battle of Midway, and the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Teachers may also find unique primary sources in "Art." The Naval Art Gallery offers more than 25 galleries including "Women in Uniform" and "The Invasion of Normandy." Additionally, the "Archives" section provides downloadable Commander Naval Forces Vietnam (COMNAVFORV) monthly summaries from 1966 to 1973 and links to other archives holding material on the U.S. Navy. "Navy Department Library" makes available naval documents from 1775 to the present day (note that the documents are presented chronologically by topic, with no distinction between primary and secondary sources). "Diversity" directs visitors to collections on women, African Americans, Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans in the U.S. Navy. "Videos" indexes more than 90 video clips, some primary sources and some secondary. "Ships Histories" provides brief histories of specific ships, indexed by name, and "Aviation" provides data on different types of aircraft and aircraft carriers. "Bios" features more than 100 essays with images on naval figures. Teachers will need patience to navigate the site and uncover the primary sources available.