Research Guides: Modern Germany: Primary Sources

Bound Primary Source Collections

Library catalogers use the subheading "Sources" at the end of a string of subheadings to indicate anthologies of primary sources. However, cataloging is not a perfect science, so not every collection of primary sources has this subheading. For example, a search for the keyword phrase "documentary sourcebook" in the WashU Libraries' catalog produces seven titles, only three of which have "sources" as a subheading. In other words, performing a subject search will not produce a complete list of all primary source collections. Sometimes the source one wants to find is not in an anthology but cited in a bibliography of another work. You might want to try an advanced search with a combination of subject headings and keywords like “sources,” "sourcebook," "primary sources," "primary documents," etc.

Examples

Document collections in print

A very selected list of document collections in English held by Olin Library.

Digital collections with a focus or theme

Post-War Europe: Refugees, Exile and Resettlement, 1945-1950
Conditions & Politics in Occupied Western Europe, 1940-1945
First World War
Primary source material from personal narratives, printed books, military files, propaganda pamphlets, and visual documents; complemented by secondary material, including scholarly essays, case studies and interactive maps.
Gerritsen Collection - Women's History Online, 1543-1945
A collection of publications related to women's history.
Testaments to the Holocaust

Newspapers and periodicals

Many other newspapers are available on interlibrary loan from the Center for Research Libraries. We are a member institution with borrowing privileges. You may search the CRL newspaper catalog below.

CRL catalog -- newspaper search
Times Digital Archive (1785-1985)
The Times from London.
New York Times, Historical (1851-2012)
AP images
Contains many news images from around the world.

Web sites

Nazi Invasion of Poland in 1939: Images and Documents from the Harrison Forman Collection
Collection of over 90 photographs taken by foreign correspondent Harrison Forman in Poland during 1939. The collection also includes Forman's article "Filming the Blitzkrieg" and a selection of related newspaper clippings.
Nuremberg Trials Project (Harvard University)
“The first stage of the project presents documents from . . . the Medical Case (U.S.A. v. Karl Brandt et al., also known as the Doctors' Trial). It was held in 1946-1947 and involved 23 defendants accused of organizing and participating in war crimes and crimes against humanity in the form of harmful or fatal medical experiments and other medical procedures inflicted on both civilians and prisoners of war.”
German World War II Captured Maps Collection
University of California - Berkeley Earth Sciences & Map Library's digitized collection of maps captured from the German military during World War II
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"From October 1944 to September 1945 U.S. military intelligence acquired large quantities of German maps in Europe and subsequently shipped them to an Omaha processing center run by the U.S. Army Map Service (AMS). These maps proved invaluable to U.S. military planners during the early Cold War years. By the 1950s, however, the AMS began to deposit these German maps in research libraries across the United States. The German World War II maps form important legacy collections in many U.S. map libraries yet remain largely hidden, under-cataloged and under-studied.
These German maps are important historical source materials. World War II in many ways radically altered the European landscape: towns and villages were eradicated, place names were changed, and political boundaries were redrawn. These maps will allow geographers, social historians and genealogists to trace families and communities. For researchers studying the history of science and technology the maps provide a rich trove for evaluating the German surveying and mapping effort of the first half of the 20th century. The maps also document the many crimes of the Nazi dictatorship. They served as planning tools for the war of aggression unleashed by the Nazi regime, allowing it to maintain control over vast territories and extract resources. Some maps functioned as resource inventories which allowed Nazi leaders to exploit occupied regions. Census maps were used to uproot people from their homes and to plan the murder of countless others, foremost in the Holocaust. These maps are invaluable sources for historians seeking to understand the Nazi regime and its horrific crimes." Susan Powell, GIS & Map Librarian
UC Berkeley, email to Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. MAPS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU, 9/20