The largest and deadliest conflict in history.
13 topics · 13 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
The White Rose Leaflets
Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl & Christoph Probst · 1942
Six anonymous leaflets distributed by a Munich student group argue that silent obedience in the face of mass murder makes ordinary citizens…
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
The Battle of Britain: An Air Ministry Record of the Great Days from 8th August – 31st October 1940
British Air Ministry · 1941
The wartime official account argues Fighter Command's narrow numerical margin over the Luftwaffe, not superior aircraft, was what denied Germany the…
+6 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Atomic Energy for Military Purposes
Henry DeWolf Smyth · 1945
The official U.S. government account of the Manhattan Project, released immediately after Hiroshima to explain to the public and to scientists…
+4 more at this level
12 of 13 works
Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl & Christoph Probst
Six anonymous leaflets distributed by a Munich student group argue that silent obedience in the face of mass murder makes ordinary citizens complicit, and call on Germans to passively resist the regime.
link checked 17 Sept 2026British Air Ministry
The wartime official account argues Fighter Command's narrow numerical margin over the Luftwaffe, not superior aircraft, was what denied Germany the air superiority an invasion of Britain required.
United States Strategic Bombing Survey
The US government's own postwar audit concludes strategic bombing alone did not break German war production until very late in the war, and that its economic effects were slower and smaller than airmen had promised.
link checked 17 Sept 2026United States War Production Board
The War Production Board's own final accounting argues that converting existing civilian industry, rather than building new state-run plants, was what let the US out-produce every other combatant.
link checked 17 Sept 2026United States Department of State
Publishes the secret protocols of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, showing Germany and the USSR agreed to divide Eastern Europe before either invaded Poland.
link checked 17 Sept 2026John Miller Jr.
The US Army's official history argues Guadalcanal was an improvised gamble fought with inadequate forces that nonetheless marked the point at which Japan's Pacific expansion was permanently halted.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Gordon A. Harrison
The official US Army history of the Normandy invasion argues that Allied deception and air supremacy over the beachhead mattered as much as the landings themselves in securing the lodgement.
link checked 17 Sept 2026George F. Howe
The official US Army history of Operation Torch argues the Allies' first major joint offensive succeeded chiefly because Vichy French resistance was weak, not because the inexperienced Allied planning was sound.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Henry DeWolf Smyth
The official U.S. government account of the Manhattan Project, released immediately after Hiroshima to explain to the public and to scientists elsewhere how much of the physics behind the bomb the government had decided it was safe to disclose.
link checked 17 Sept 2026International Military Tribunal
The Nuremberg record, in which the prosecution built its case almost entirely from the defendants' own documents, establishing that individuals could be tried for acts of state.
link checked 17 Sept 2026International Military Tribunal
The official transcripts and judgments of the twelve U.S.-run trials that followed the main Nuremberg trial, establishing in law that following superior orders is no defence against a charge of war crimes or crimes against humanity.
link failing as of 17 Sept 2026United States Department of the Army
Written after the war with the cooperation of the German generals who planned Barbarossa, this US Army study argues the invasion assumed Soviet collapse within weeks and never had a plan for the war it actually had to fight.
link checked 17 Sept 2026