Northwestern European Military Situation Maps from World War II

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Image, HQ Twelfth Army Group situation map, June 8, 1944, Library of Congress.
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Created by the First United States Army Group and the Twelfth Army Group, this collection consists of 416 situation maps from World War II. The maps show the daily positions of Allied army units during the campaigns in Western Europe, from the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944, through Allied occupation in July 26, 1945. There are also more than 100 reports from the campaigns.

Maps offer insight into daily activities, but also a broad view of movement over time. In addition, they highlight the incomplete nature of information available to commanders in the field during war time. Visitors can search the collection or browse the maps and reports by title, creator, subject, place, or date. The site also includes an interactive essay on the Battle of the Bulge. Visitors can select the desired zoom level and window size for viewing maps.

A People at War

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Photo, Dwight D. Eisenhower Speaks to 101st Airborne, NARA
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Drawn primarily from documents at the National Archives' National Personnel Records Center, this exhibit explores "the contributions of the thousands of Americans, both military and civilian, who served their country during World War II." Arranged into seven sections--"Prelude to War"; "New Roles"; "Women Who Served"; "The War in the Pacific"; "The War in Europe" "Science Pitches In"; and "The War is Over"--the site presents approximately 60 photographs, editorials, letters, and governmental reports, such as General Benjamin O. Davis's 1943 report concerning racial discrimination in the military. A 3,000-word background essay narrates the materials. Though lacking in depth and limited in size, the exhibit offers a selection of valuable and interesting materials regarding the war effort.

Experiencing War: Stories from the Veterans History Project

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Logo, Veterans History Project
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This collection presents video and audio oral histories and additional material from American veterans of 20th-century wars. Materials include memoirs (some lengthy), letters, diaries, photo albums, scrapbooks, poetry, artwork, and official documents. The website currently provides digital materials from 4,351 veterans from World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan and the Iraq War, and other similar events. The 226 video interviews range from 25 minutes to two hours in length.

The material presented is part of a rapidly growing archive, the Veterans History Project, created by Congress in 2000 to collect stories from the 19 million living veterans. Other sections highlight World War I; World War II's forgotten theaters in China, Burma, and India; and 37 other unique war experiences.

Recipe for Victory: Food and Cooking in Wartime

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Poster, Know your onions. . . , 1941-1945, Office for Emergency Management, NARA
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Recipe for Victory: Food and Cooking in Wartime literally encapsulates the flavor of an era. Between 1917 and 1919, it became clear that feeding U.S. and European troops was crucial. This required a sacrifice on the part of individuals in the English and U.S. homefronts. As a result, the period birthed a great quantity of literature on nutrition, replacing scare ingredients with those readily accessible, garden growth, and international food-related statistics.

This website collects 45 textual sources published between 1917 and 1919. Simply choose "browse," and enjoy everything from Preserve Eggs for Winter Use or Best War Time Recipes to Why Not Buckwheat?.

Nineteenth-Century Texas Law Online: Gammel's The Laws of Texas

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"Address to the People of Texas," Gammel's "The Laws of Texas," Vol. 5, Pg. iii
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H. P. N. Gammel's 10-volume compilation The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897 is available in PDF format on this site, providing more than 16,500 pages of historical legal documents. Includes early colonization laws and constitutions, proceedings from constitutional conventions, and all laws and resolutions passed from every congressional and legislative session from statehood to 1897. Users may browse each volume or an analytical index of the whole work, or take advantage of a search engine that allows keyword searching. Includes six links to related sites.

Valuable for those conducting research into 19th-century Texas history or legal history.

Bill of Rights Institute

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Screenshot, Bill of Rights Institute home page
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This website offers opportunities for teachers and students to explore the Bill of Rights in a multitude of ways and includes information about educational opportunities for students and teachers in addition to their online content. (The institute puts on Constitutional seminars for teachers as well as a Constitution Academy and essay contest for students.)

On the website itself teachers will find information on Constitution Day, more than 90 lesson plans which incorporate the Bill of Rights, daily news headlines relating to the Bill of Rights, and one-to-three sentence summaries of more than 150 Supreme Court cases in 15 different thematic categories such as freedom of speech, federalism, and freedom of the press. The Supreme Court case feature is especially useful if you are looking for a brief description of the case and its central issues.

The site is very easy to navigate and the Institute has clearly made an effort to streamline the search for information. One particular example of this is the Americapedia. This resource allows teachers and students to find identifications and definitions for people and words commonly associated with the study of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. The Americapedia is organized into five categories—Civic Values, The Constitution, Documents, Landmark Supreme Court Cases, and People—with 15–60 definitions in each section.

Another area of this site clearly designed for ease of use is the primary documents section. In this section you will find 11 foundational primary source documents in addition to the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights, and other amendments. Such a short list of documents means finding relevant information quickly, but some may find this section quite limited if doing in-depth research.

Finally, for teachers and students looking for a little variety in their study of the Bill of Rights, this site offers some interactive games. While the “Life Without the Bill of Rights?” and “Constitution Duel Quiz” games could be good for lesson introduction or class discussion, the “Madison’s Notes are Missing” game offers an opportunity for more in-depth student inquiry and requires interaction beyond just the click of a mouse.

Teachinghistory.org Teacher Representative Seth Swihart wrote this Website Review. Learn more about our Teacher Representatives.

Digital Library of Georgia

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Postcard, 270 Peachtree Building, Historic Postcard Coll., Digital Library of Ga
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Bringing together a wealth of material from libraries, archives, and museums, this website examines the history and culture of the state of Georgia. Legal materials include more than 17,000 state government documents from 1994 to the present, updated daily, and a complete set of Acts and Resolutions from 1799 to 1995. "Southeastern Native American Documents" provides approximately 2,000 letters, legal documents, military orders, financial papers, and archaeological images from 1730–1842. Materials from the Civil War era include a soldier's diary and two collections of letters.

The site provides a collection of 80 full-text, word-searchable versions of books from the early 19th century to the 1920s and three historic newspapers. There are approximately 2,500 political cartoons from 1946-1982; Jimmy Carter's diaries; photographs of African Americans from Augusta during the late 19th century; and 1,500 architectural and landscape photographs from the 1940s to the 1980s.

Union Army Project

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Image for Union Army Project
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This site presents medical and mortality statistics and records related to 35,747 white males who served in the Union Army during the Civil War. All were eligible for Federal pensions later in life. These materials a part of a larger study attempting to create "lifecycle datasets" to explore the effects of lifestyle and biomedical interventions on the human life span.

The website presents three datasets based on different sources of information: Military, Pension, and Medical Records. These are compiled from wartime and pension application records; Surgeon's Certificates, with information from detailed physical examinations; and Census Records from 1850, 1860, 1900, and 1910. Individual soldiers were tracked through various data sources with unique Army identification numbers. The site includes a 2,000-word essay that discusses the scientific and historical background for the study and a 700-word summary of significant results.

Library of Virginia Digital Library Program

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Image for Library of Virginia Digital Library Program
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More than 1.2 million items on Virginia and life in the South are available on this website, including 40,000 photographs and maps, 350,000 court documents, and 800,000 manuscripts. Manuscripts include governors' letters, land office grants, Revolutionary War bounty land warrants, Confederate pensions, and disability applications. Several complete collections are available, as well as 25 exhibits on Virginia history.

Users can find photographs that document buildings and people; patents and grants submitted to the Virginia Land Office between 1623 and 1992; Northern Neck Grants and Survey forms filed between 1692 and 1892; military records, including Revolutionary War state pensions material and World War I History Commission Questionnaires; WPA Life Histories; and Virginia Religious Petitions from 1774 to 1802. Exhibits deal with topics including the legacy of the New Deal in Virginia; resistance to slavery; Virginia roots music (with seven audio selections); Thomas Jefferson; John Marshall; Virginia's coal towns; and political life in the state.

African Americans in the Spanish Civil War

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Photo, Paul Williams, Pilot, December 1937
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This site documents the remarkable story of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a volunteer brigade of Americans who traveled to Europe to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Out of the 2,800 volunteers, 90 (including two women) were African Americans.

"Introduction" features a 3,800-word essay in three parts on the Brigade and its commitment to fighting fascism. "Resources" includes six audio and video files, more than 130 pages of documents, and approximately 50 photographs. "Biography" contains an index listing each of the 90 African American soldiers, along with a 250-word biography for each and photographs of most.

The site makes available for the first time a complete (and downloadable) copy of Walter Garland's 60-page FBI file. Garland was a Communist Party activist and founder of the United Negro Allied Veterans Association (UNAVA). Maps, a glossary, timelines, and lesson plans are coming soon as the producers finish building the site. The audio and video interviews, as well as the supporting documents, are useful primary sources, and the site is a good place to begin research on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.