Ad*Access
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu:80/adaccess/
“The Ad*Access Project, funded by the Duke Endowment "Library 2000" Fund, presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.”
Advertisements and marketing schemes for commercial products offer a fascinating and entertaining glimpse into the history of our culture. Hosted by Duke University’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, this archive features magazine advertisements from the early to mid 20th century. It is divided thematically and also can be searched via an internal search engine. The WWII Era propaganda adds for War Bonds, rationing, and other social programs to support the war are particularly interesting and potentially usable in the classroom. Other ads for beauty and cosmetic products may not be as useful in the classroom, but amusing nonetheless. The simple organization of the archive and search engine should facilitate easy access and research. These ads could be effectively incorporated into a wide range of lessons dealing with the early 20th century and World Wars. (BR)

Heart Mountain Digital Preservation Project
http://chem.nwc.cc.wy.us/HMDP/homepage.htm
“The Heart Mountain Digital Preservation Project features documents and photographs from the Heart Mountain Relocation Center Collection at the John Taggart Hinckley Library …”
Originating from a grant written to the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund, the Heart Mountain Digital Preservation Project was started. The primary function of this site is to provide visitors with information pertaining to Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians “so that the events surrounding the exclusion, forced removal and internment of civilians and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry will be remembered.” There are many photos of internment camps, along with photos of the people and activities consequently associated with such camps. Also provided on this site are text versions of Executive Orders 9102, and 9066 pertaining specifically to the internment of civilians.

Herblock’s History: Political Cartoons from the Crash to the Millennium
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/
“From the stock market crash in 1929 through the new millennium beginning in the year 2000, editorial cartoonist Herb Block has chronicled the nation’s political history, caricaturing twelve American presidents from Herbert Hoover to Bill Clinton.”
An excellent way to help students understand differing viewpoints on complex political issues and historical events is to use political cartoons. They help illustrate (literally) ideas that can otherwise be confusing and fail to interest students. Through poignant humor and wit, political cartoons can help provoke discussion and debate among students and add a valuable learning opportunity to the classroom. Over the past 70 years, cartoonist Herb Block has been at the forefront of this field. He has been awarded four Pulitzer prizes, and now has an entire exhibit dedicated to his cartoons in the Library of Congress. This website features many of these cartoons. They are organized both chronologically and thematically. A wide range of topics is treated and this collection could supplement most major topics in 20th century American history. BR

Hiroshima Archive
http://www.lclark.edu/~history/HIROSHIMA/
Brought to you by Lewis and Clark College, Hiroshima Archive brings together a fair amount of information pertaining to the end of WWII. On this site there are maps, B-29 bomber statistics, and a scientific section providing diagrams of the Atomic bomb. While there is textual information, the strength of this site lies in its photographs. The photo gallery features Japanese photographer Hiromi Tsuchida and his vast amount of photos taken of post-atomic bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These pictures truly capture the devastation that war can cause, and would be a great asset to any WWII lesson plan.

A History Teacher’s Bag of Tricks
http://marchand.ucdavis.edu/index.shtml
“This website brings you a collection of assignments Marchand used in his university classroom. These "Documentary Source Problems" encouraged students to become historians and use their own analytical skills to determine what happened in history. The assignments provide students with a collection of primary sources from which they can deduce the events of the past.”
Roland Marchand was a teacher at the University of California-Davis. This website includes lesson plans of Marchand’s as well as numerous other resources. The lesson plans skillfully incorporate primary documents into the classroom. The lesson plans deal with a good variety of topics and are provided for university, high school and middle school levels. The Slide Archive provides thousands and thousands of categorized images that would greatly enhance any lesson. The images cover the full range of U.S. History, culture and life. This site offers high quality information that is well organized and ready for classroom use. (BR)

Japanese Historical Maps from the East Asian Library at UC Berkeley
http://www.davidrumsey.com/japan/view.html
Brought to you by the East Asian Library at the University of California at Berkeley, the Japanese Historical Maps from the East Asian Library at UC Berkeley website offers many high quality maps of Japan. With both historical and current maps of Japan this site might possibly be beneficial when studying World War II, more specifically the Pacific Campaign against the Japanese. While the images themselves are of very good quality, the site itself seems to load and display somewhat slowly. Even with the less than perfect speed of document retrieval, this site is worth looking at for quality maps.

Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in WW II Arkansas
http://www.lifeinterrupted.org
“This site, developed by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Public History program and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, offers a nicely composed historical overview to the human experience within the two relocation camps in Arkansas during World War II.”
Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in WW II Arkansas deals with Executive Order 9066, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed on February 19, 1942, consequently giving the Secretary of War the authority to designate "military areas from which to exclude certain people." The result of this order was over 120,000 Japanese-Americans relocated to camps all over the United States. This site, offered in Flash or HTML has a very easy-to-follow design with many interesting features. With the history and photographs presented here, this site is definitely worth viewing.

"Suffering Under Great Injustice":
Ansel Adams' Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aamhtml
“America's best-known photographer documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese Americans interned there during World War II …”
"Suffering Under Great Injustice": This collection of photographs by Ansel Adams provides the viewer with an extensive view of the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California, and the Japanese Americans interned there during World War II. One can find photographs of camp aerial views, laboratories, daily life, agricultural scenes, and sports and leisure activities. With 242 original negatives and 209 photographic prints, it is very easy to find suitable photos for any presentation on this subject.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust
http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/
“An overview of the people and events of the Holocaust through photographs, documents, art, music, movies, and literature…”
A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust offers the visitor excellent material this tragedy in our recent history. With content presented in various areas such as “Timeline”, “The People” (with general categories like liberators, victims, perpetrators, bystanders, etc.), and “The Arts” (art done by victims, in the ghettos), one will be able to convey the tragedies that occurred. The greatest aspect to this site lies in its VR feature that offers the viewer a chance to view virtual reality content like “Amersterdam”, “Bernburg”, “Breendonk”, “Bullenhuser Damm”, Ebensee”, “Majdanek”, “Miami Beach”, “Mittelbau-Dora”, “Terezín”, and “Wernigerode.”

The United States and World Wars I and II
http://www.worldwar1.com
“You are at the "Trenches" Home Page. These pages contain information on the people, places, and events that comprised one of the worst calamities of modern history. Entire kingdoms were to vanish in the clash. The map makers of the world would be busy indeed!”
Dedicated to the battles, technology, and landscape of World War I, this website offers its readers a reservoir of images. Diverse photographs portray the grim realities of life on the battlefield. These images have good resolution, but they are relatively small. The webmaster also posts a wide variety of maps on World War 1—Trenches on the Web. Viewers accessing the maps may chose from detailed maps of cities and battlefields with color coded trench lines, or regionally maps of the different theatres of operation. The site also offers primary documents and historical text. Unfortunately, the text does not include references.

World War II Timeline
http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/start.html
Don’t be deceived by the title; this website is much more than a simple timeline. The timeline it does present is a valuable resource but more significant are the host of other sources included in and with the timeline. The timeline itself can be searched chronologically or by topic and there are occasionally essays mixed in with the timeline. There are four other major resources on this website. The map section includes a large collection of maps and there are additional geographic diagrams and photographs in the picture section. The documents part includes military records, accounts of battles and other primary resources. The last section is the bibliography that gives an extensive list of useful books on World War II. One last feature that makes the entire website more valuable is that sources are provided for all of the primary documents, maps and images. Together, the factors make this an excellent website for casual browsing, general information or primary document research.