Department of History

Databases for War Studies

USMA Library subscribes to over 100 history-related databases 

The following suggestions are intended to help you get started.

Databases - Primary Sources

• American Civil War: Letters and Diaries - Browse a collection of over 2,009 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of diaries, letters and memoirs.

• Conditions and Politics in Occupied Western Europe, 1940-1945  - Full-text documents received in the British Foreign Office from all European states under Nazi occupation during World War II. 

• Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports - Discover translated transcripts of foreign radio and television broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements. The reports are from 1974-1996 and contain political, military, economic, environmental, and sociological news and information.

•  Issues & Controversies in History - Users will find background, outcome, and contemporary points of view for every major debate and conflict in history. Topics are presented in a pro/con format that clearly explains both sides of the historical dispute, each article is supported by a timeline and a wealth of primary sources.

• Secret Files from World Wars to Cold War - Explore British government secret intelligence and foreign policy files from 1873 to 1953, with the majority of files dating from the 1930s and 1940s. Content includes resources from the following 20th century conflicts: the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the early years of the Cold War and the Korean War.

• Women, War and Society, 1914-1918 - The First World War had a revolutionary and permanent impact on the personal, social and professional lives of all women. Their essential contribution to the war in Europe is fully documented in this definitive collection of primary source materials brought together in the Imperial War Museum, London. Browse unique documents such as charity and international relief reports, pamphlets, photographs, press cuttings, magazines, posters, correspondence, minutes, records, diaries, memoranda, statistics, circulars, regulations and invitations.

Databases - Secondary Sources 

• Jane's - Source for information on defense, geopolitics, weapons systems, and security. Login with your westpoint.edu email address.
• Military and Intelligence Database - Browse articles on governmental policies, socioeconomics effects of war, and more.
• World at War - Discover overviews of over 50 individual wars, rebellions, and revolutions throughout history. Find resources on conflicts as early as Ancient Greece to the current conflicts of today. This resource includes causes, opponents, consequences, articles, media and visuals, documents, facts and figures, and timelines.
• Proquest History Vault: International Relations and Military Conflicts Collection  - Browse digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, diaries, and many more primary source materials taken from the University Publications of America (UPA) Collections. Resources within this database provide a detailed view of U.S. foreign relations during the period from the years immediately before the outbreak of World War I through to the end of the Vietnam War. In addition, this resource also includes British Foreign Office Records on World War I and the creation of Israel from 1940-1948.
• Global terrorism database - Open-source database including information on terrorist events around the world from 1970 through 2020. 
• EBSCOhost Provides access to a wide range of databases, many with full text. Chose to search one database or search all.
• JSTOR - Provides access to scholarly journals and books in a wide range of disciplines 
• Oxford Bibliographies Online: Military History - Peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on military history. Bibliographies are browseable by subject area and keyword searchable. Contains a "My OBO" function that allows users to create personalized bibliographies of individual citations from different bibliographies.
• War & Terrorism Collection - Browse articles on war and its causes, current events, terrorism, and more.