Scholarship on the Cold War has been written primarily by Westerners with little access to sources in Soviet archives. This extensive collection seeks to remedy this gap in Cold War historiography by presenting sources from the former Communist bloc. Thousands of documents in the diplomatic history of the Cold War are currently available, stretching in time from the 1945–46 Soviet occupation of northern Iran through the late 1990s.

The annotated sources are divided into 50 collections and by geographic region. Collections cover a wide range of topics, including specific events (1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina, 1956 Hungarian Revolution, 1980–81 Polish Crisis) and broader topics stretching over longer periods of time (Economic Cold War, Nuclear Non-Proliferation, The Cold War in Africa). Collections vary widely in size, between three and several hundred documents, and include primarily official documents and communication—meeting minutes, memoranda, transcribed conversations between leaders, reports, and several personal letters and diary entries.

Provides more than 20 declassified Department of Defense documents from 1965-1995 on the history of a variety of "human intelligence" operations performed in recent times by Army, Navy, and Air Force units. The documents contain organizational histories of these units and operations, and offer information on espionage activities relating to events in Latin America, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Cuba, Panama, China, and Bosnia. Includes a 500-word introduction and four-title bibliography. The site offers a revealing glimpse into U.S. military espionage activities and will be of interest to students of political history, public policy, and international affairs.

Published annually by the State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States is the official record of major declassified U.S. foreign policy decisions and diplomatic activity, with material culled from Presidential libraries--including transcripts of tape recordings--and executive departments and agencies. Digitized material does not reflect the full range of published volumes. For the Truman Administration, the site provides "1945-50, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment." Three volumes are available for the Eisenhower years, on American republics, Guatemala, and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Cyprus. The Kennedy Administration is represented by 25 volumes that cover, among other areas, Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin crisis, and exchanges with Premier Khrushchev. A complete set of 34 volumes is available on the Johnson Administration, and 19 volumes currently are furnished from the Nixon Administration. Fifty-four volumes will eventually be available on the Nixon and Ford administrations. Useful volume summaries provide historical context. FRUS volumes for 1900-1918 (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/) are described in a separate entry.

Published annually by the State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) is the official record of major declassified U.S. foreign policy decisions and diplomatic activity. Material, including transcripts of tape recordings, comes from Presidential libraries and executive departments and agencies. Digitized material does not reflect the full range of the published volumes. Documents included have been selected for their ability to illuminate "policy formulation and major aspects and repercussions of its execution."

The first website covers the years from 1861 to 1960. Each volume of more than 500 pages contains an annual message from the President, a list of papers with subjects of correspondence, circulars on subjects such as sanitation and conservation, and chapters dedicated to individual nations. Decisions involve a wide range of topics, including international arbitration and the protection of migratory birds. Visitors may search volumes individually or the whole set by keyword, subject, and date.

The second website offers materials from 1945–1972. Materials come from the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. Additional volumes will be added on the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Provides links to approximately 390 documents, most of which are related to the nation's political, diplomatic, military, and legal history. Arranged chronologically, the site begins with excerpts of Christopher Columbus' journal of 1492 and ends, at present, with President George W. Bush's May 1, 2003 address announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq [update: documents reach from around 800 to 2007]. Includes speeches, statutes, treaties, court decisions, memoirs, diaries, letters, published books, and even a few songs. The site, created by Lynn Nelson, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Kansas, is valuable especially for high school and college students who need easy access to many of the canonical documents in American history.

Focusing on Operation Desert Storm, these materials emphasize the perspectives of those directly involved. There are 19 oral history interviews (up to 20 pages each) with eight "decision makers," seven commanders, two Iraqi officials, and two news analysts.

"War Stories" presents the personal reminiscences of five pilots, available in text and audio. "Weapons and Technology" details 10 ground, aircraft, and space weapons systems and munitions. A seven-minute video excerpt from the "Frontline" program is available as well as four 15-minute episodes of a BBC radio program in text and audio. The site includes a chronology, 10 maps, a bibliography, facts and statistics, and brief essays on press coverage and Iraqi war deaths. Links are available to five sites produced to accompany more recent "Frontline" reports on Iraq.

Texts of about 300 international multilateral treaties, agreements, and conventions are available on this website, from the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) to the International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides (November 2002). Originally designed to provide environmental agreements, this website now offers additional agreements, including drafts of many documents.

Materials are arranged in 10 categories: atmosphere and space; flora and fauna, biodiversity; cultural protection; diplomatic relations; general; human rights; marine and coastal; other environmental; trade and commercial relations; and rules of warfare and arms control. Most of the texts date from the post-World War II period to the present. Listings are also arranged in chronological order and users may search by keyword. There are links to approximately 120 additional sources on treaties and conventions.

This archive collects U.S. official documents concerning the national stance toward terrorism. Documents are sorted into several "volumes," which cover topics such as policy, the last war in Afghanistan, Nixon and the end of biowarfare programs, the reign of King Zahir (1970-1973), the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax controversy, the U.S. Special Force's search for bin Laden, U.S.-Taliban policy, and the air-ground transcripts of the planes lost during the 9/11 crisis.

Expect to find reports, memorandum, instructions, statements, transcripts, minutes, and more. The site and its content can be fairly dense, so it may be best to use the site to find one or two documents which are suitable for your classroom rather than having students explore it on their own.