Source Collection: World War II
Introduction to this collection
This collection explores how World War II affected the populations in the Allied and Axis power countries. We will glimpse some of the destruction and terror of war through photographs and firsthand testimony, as well as through the cultural aspects of war, like propaganda, artwork, cartoons, and political essays.
Guiding question to think about as you read the documents: What were the changes and continuities in how governments waged war over the period from 1914 to 1945?
WHP Primary Source Punctuation Key
When you read through these primary source collections, you might notice some unusual punctuation like this: . . . and [ ] and ( ). Use the table below to help you understand what this punctuation means.
| Punctuation | What it means |
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ELLIPSES words … words |
Something has been removed from the quoted sentences by an editor. |
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BRACKETS [word] or word[s] |
Something has been added or changed by an editor. These edits are to clarify or help readers. |
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PARENTHESES (words) |
The original author of the primary source wanted to clarify, add more detail, or make an additional comment in parentheses. |
Contents
Source 1 – Wartime propaganda from Axis countries, 1937–1944 (0:45)
Source 2 – Wartime propaganda and recruitment posters from Allied countries, 1940–1943 (4:25)
Source 3 – The Doctrine of Fascism, 1932 (9:00)
Source 4 – Guernica, 1937 (13:20)
Source 5 – Photographs during and after air raids, 1940–1945 (14:45)
Source 6 – Yoshito Matsushige’s Account of the Hiroshima Bombing, 1945 (17:15)
Source 7 – Any Bonds Today?, 1942 (21:20)
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Timestamps are in the source title. To locate a specific source in the audio file:
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This document is also available as an audio file. Click Listen to audio button to access a reading of the article.
Source 1 – Wartime propaganda from Axis countries, 1937–1944 (0:45)
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Title Various wartime propaganda 1937–1944 (Axis Countries) |
Date and location 1937–1944, Various nations |
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Source type Primary source – posters |
Author Various |
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Description Individual descriptions can be found next to each of the six posters that make up this source. Note that these are all from “Axis power” countries, such as Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Japan. Please note that only the images—not the descriptions, apart from the translations of text on the posters—are primary sources. |
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Key vocabulary compulsory propaganda |
Bolshevism samurai |
Guiding question
What were the changes and continuities in how governments waged war over the period from 1914 to 1945?
Excerpt
Source 2 – Wartime propaganda and recruitment posters from Allied countries, 1940–1943 (4:25)
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Title Various wartime propaganda 1940–1943 (Allied countries) |
Date and location 1940–1943, Various nations |
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Source type Primary source – posters |
Author Various |
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Description These propaganda posters from the Allied countries were designed to promote support for the Allied powers and opposition to the Axis powers during the Second World War. Notice the style of art and messaging in these government-produced images. Individual descriptions are provided with each image. Please note that only the images—not the descriptions, apart from the translations of text on the posters—are primary sources. |
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Key vocabulary salvage |
foreground |
Guiding question
What were the changes and continuities in how governments waged war over the period from 1914 to 1945?
Excerpt
Source 3 – The Doctrine of Fascism, 1932 (9:00)
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Title The Doctrine of Fascism |
Date and location 1932, Italy |
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Source type Primary source – essay |
Author Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (1883–1945) Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944) |
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Description In 1932 the Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini and the Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile published an entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the definition of fascism. The excerpt below, likely authored primarily by Gentile, outlines the political philosophy of fascism. |
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Key vocabulary perpetual repudiates doctrine pacifism renunciation ideologies |
extrinsic suffrage manifestation vitality decadence severity |
Guiding question
What were the changes and continuities in how governments waged war over the period from 1914 to 1945?
Excerpt
Above all, Fascism … believes neither in the possibility nor in the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism—born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energies and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. …
… Fascism [is] the precise negation of … Marxian Socialism: … according to which the history of human civilizations can be explained only as the struggle of interest between the different social groups and as arising out of change in the means and instruments of production. … Fascism believes, now and always, in holiness and in heroism, that is in acts in which no economic motive—remote or immediate—plays a part. … there is also denied the … “class struggle” which is the natural product of this economic conception of history, and above all it is denied that the class struggle can be the primary agent of social changes. …
After Socialism, Fascism attacks the whole complex [system] of democratic ideologies and rejects them … Fascism denies that the majority, through the mere fact of being a majority, can rule human societies; it denies that this majority can govern by means of a periodical consultation; it affirms the … inequality of men, who cannot be levelled by such a mechanical and extrinsic fact as universal suffrage. …
If it is admitted that the nineteenth century has been the century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy, it does not follow that the twentieth century must also be the century of Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy. Political doctrines pass; peoples remain. It is to be expected that this century may be that of authority … a Fascist century. …
The keystone of Fascist doctrine is the conception of the State, … For Fascism the State is as an absolute before which individuals and groups are relative. …
… For Fascism the tendency to Empire, that is to say, to the expansion of nations, is a manifestation of vitality; its opposite, staying at home, is a sign of decadence … Fascism is the doctrine that is most fitted to represent the aims, the states of mind, of a people, like the Italian people, rising again after many centuries of abandonment or slavery to foreigners. But Empire calls for discipline, co-ordination of forces, duty and sacrifice; this explains many aspects of the practical working of the regime and the direction of many of the forces of the State and the necessary severity shown to those who would wish to oppose this … If every age has its own doctrine, it is apparent … that the doctrine of the present age is Fascism.
Citation
Mussolini, Benito. “The Doctrine of Fascism.” In The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe, edited by Michael Oakeshott, 164-179. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1945.
Source 4 – Guernica, 1937 (13:20)
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Title Guernica |
Date and location Spain, 1937 |
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Source type Primary source – painting |
Author Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881–1973) |
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Description By 1937, Picasso had already been a renown modern artist for several decades. In that year, he expressed his anger and opposition in his painting called Guernica, which millions of visitors at the Paris World’s Fair observed. The panting is eleven feet tall and twenty-five feet wide and embraces the viewer. In 1936, a civil war began in Spain, with the democratic Republican government on one side and General Francisco Franco’s forces on the other. Picasso’s painting responded to the events of April 27, 1937, when Hitler’s German air force bombed the village of Guernica in northern Spain in support of Franco’s effort to overthrow the Republican government. |
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Guiding question
What were the changes and continuities in how governments waged war over the period from 1914 to 1945?
Excerpt
Citation
“Guernica, perhaps the most famous painting by Pablo Picasso, being hung in the Municipal Museum in Amsterdam for an exhibition, 12th July 1956.” (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/guernica-perhaps-the-most-famous-painting-by-pablo-picasso-news-photo/52061140?adppopup=true
Source 5 – Photographs during and after air raids, 1940–1945 (14:45)
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Title Multiple titles |
Date and location 1940–1945, London, Coventry, Milan, Tokyo, and Dresden |
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Source type Primary source – photographs |
Author unknown/multiple authors |
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Description During the Second World War, air raids were a common offensive tactic. Below are photographs taken during and after the air raids at multiple locations, depicting the damage and terror they caused. |
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Guiding question
What were the changes and continuities in how governments waged war over the period from 1914 to 1945?
Excerpt
Citation
Citations included alongside individual photos.
Source 6 – Yoshito Matsushige’s Account of the Hiroshima Bombing, 1945 (17:15)
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Title Yoshito Matsushige’s Account of the Hiroshima Bombing |
Date and location 1945, Japan |
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Source type Primary source – oral history |
Author Yoshito Matsushige (1913–2005) |
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Description Matsushige was a Japanese photojournalist who survived the atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima of 1945. He took photographs on the day of the attack, of which only a handful were developed and survive. He describes scenes he couldn’t bear to photograph in his account, which is excerpted below. |
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Key vocabulary debris mobilized |
duly hypocenter |
Guiding question
What were the changes and continuities in how governments waged war over the period from 1914 to 1945?
Excerpt
I had finished breakfast and was getting ready to go to the newspaper when it happened. There was a flash from the indoor wires as if lightning had struck. I didn’t hear any sound, how shall I say, the world around me turned bright white. And I was momentarily blinded … Immediately after that, the blast came. I was bare from the waist up, and the blast was so intense, it felt like hundreds of needles were stabbing me all at once. The blast grew large holes in the walls of the first and second floor. … Near the Miyuki Bridge, there was a police box. Most of the victims who had gathered there were junior high school girls from the Hiroshima Girls Business School and the Hiroshima Junior High School No.1. They had been mobilized to evacuate buildings and were outside when the bomb fell. Having been directly exposed to the heat rays, they were covered with blisters, the size of balls, on their backs, their faces, their shoulders and their arms. The blisters were starting to burst open and their skin hung down like rugs. Some of the children even have burns on the soles of their feet. They’d lost their shoes and run barefoot through the burning fire.
When I saw this, I thought I would take a picture and I picked up my camera. But I couldn’t push the shutter because the sight was so pathetic. Even though I too was a victim of the same bomb, I only had minor injuries from glass fragments, whereas these people were dying. It was such a cruel sight that I couldn’t bring myself to press the shutter. Perhaps I hesitated there for about 20 minutes, but I finally summoned up the courage to take one picture. …
Then, I saw a burnt streetcar which had just turned the corner at Kamiya-cho. There were passengers still in the car. I put my foot onto the steps of the car and I looked inside. There were perhaps 15 or 16 people in front of the car. They laid dead one on top of another. Kamiya-cho was very close to the hypocenter, about 200 meters away. The passengers had stripped them of all their clothes. … I stepped down to take a picture and I put my hand on my camera. But I felt so sorry for these dead and naked people whose photo would be left to posterity that I couldn’t take the shot. …
… I don’t pride myself on it, but it’s a small consolation that I was able to take at least five pictures. During the war, air-raids took place practically every night. And after the war began, there were many food shortages. Those of us who experienced all these hardships, we hope that such suffering will never be experienced again by our children and our grandchildren. Not only our children and grandchildren, but all future generations should not have to go through this tragedy. That is why I want young people to listen to our testimonies and to choose the right path, the path which leads to peace.
Citation
Matsushige, Yoshito. “Account of the Hiroshima Bombing.” Atomic Heritage Foundation and the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. https://www.atomicheritage.org/key-documents/yoshito-matsushiges-account-hiroshima-bombing
Notes or additional materials
Students can view Matsushige’s photos here https://atomicphotographers.com/photographers/yoshito-matsushige/
Source 7 – Any Bonds Today?, 1942 (21:20)
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Title Any Bonds Today? |
Date and location 1942, United States |
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Source type Primary source – animated song |
Author Irving Berlin (1888–1989) |
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Description Irving Berlin was a famous American songwriter. He wrote a wide variety of popular songs for radio and for musical theater, and many were patriotic. When the treasury secretary requested a song to inspire people to buy war bonds, Berlin came up with “Any Bonds Today?”. It was produced as a three-minute animated film, staring the beloved American cartoon character, Bugs Bunny, along with his frequent co-stars Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig. The proceeds went to the United States Treasury Department. This song was part of the National Defense Savings Bond Campaign, but it came in the form of this short animated musical film. It was very popular. |
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Guiding question
What were the changes and continuities in how governments waged war over the period from 1914 to 1945?
Excerpt
Bugs Bunny: The tall man with the high hat and the whiskers on his chin1
will soon be knocking at your door, and you ought to be in!
The tall man with the high hat will be coming down your way.
Get your savings out when you hear him shout, “Any bonds today?”
Come on and get ’em folks, come on, step right up and get ’em.
Any bonds today?
Bonds of freedom, that’s what I’m selling
Any bonds today?
Scrape up the most you can!
Here comes the freedom man,
asking you to buy a share of freedom today
Naw, many stamps today!
Give, kiddies!
We’ll be blessed, we all invest in the U.S.A.!
Sammy, my uncle Sammy!
Elmer Fudd: Here comes the freedom man!
Porky Pig: Can’t make tomorrow’s plan!
Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig: Not unless you buy a share of freedom today
Any stamps? Any bonds today?
Citation
Berlin, Irving, songwriter. Any Bonds Today?. Leon Schlesinger Studies and the US Department of Treasury, 1942. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcR8-sal73g
Notes or additional materials
Students can watch this cartoon on YouTube along with other World War II propaganda cartoons, but please note that the cartoon features offensive racial imagery, likely mimicking the entertainer Al Jolson’s frequent use of black stereotypes in his songs.
1 Refers to Uncle Sam
Eman M. Elshaikh
Eman M. Elshaikh is a writer, researcher, and teacher who has taught K-12 and undergraduates in the United States and in the Middle East and written for many different audiences. She teaches writing at the University of Chicago, where she also completed her master’s in social sciences and is currently pursuing her PhD. She was previously a World History Fellow at Khan Academy, where she worked closely with the College Board to develop curriculum for AP World History.
Image credits
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0 except for the following:
Cover: A Flying-bomb Over Tower Bridge, Tower Bridge standing centre of composition with the red streak of a flying bomb travelling across the sky above it, tracked by searchlights, circa 1944. © Frederick T W Cook/ Imperial War Museums via Getty Images.