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The University Libraries was a key partner in the project through its publishing and data expertise. view glossaries of World War II slang and jargon as well as other helpful guides to the army’s survey program and datasets.
read 15 topical background essays by leading historians of World War II and. #World war ii online subscription download#
download lesson plans that help students explore the collection and learn about the war from the soldiers’ perspective. search the entire collection and filter the results by date, theater of war, and characteristics of surveyed soldiers, such as race, rank, and combat experience.
read and download 65,093 pages of transcribed soldiers’ handwritten remarks. filter soldiers’ survey responses by rank, education, and other demographic variables. browse 86 unique studies administered stateside and around the world. In total, the website offers users the following options: Users can view and download survey data and original analyses, and access learning resources and topics essays written by leading historians. The website features 65,000 pages of open-ended, unfiltered survey responses by an estimated 500,000 services members. Historians, journalists, students, educators, and the general public can all benefit from exploring the array of records. With a user-friendly interface, provides easy access to documents once challenging to access or navigate. “We found it especially fitting to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor,” he said, “because the WWII research branch administered its first large-scale survey to soldiers the day after the attack.” Gitre said the project team found meaning in opening the website for public access on Pearl Harbor Day. 7, offering the general public a remarkably honest glimpse into the minds of military service members amid humanity’s deadliest war. The American Soldier in World War II website officially launches on Dec. Now, the project is poised to reach an even wider audience. Transcribers from several countries contributed to the project.Īccording to Gitre, their mission was “to quite literally write these tens of thousands of personal expressions of soldiers into the historical record.” In 2018, Gitre and colleagues launched The American Soldier in World War II project, an international initiative that uses crowdsourcing and natural-language-processing techniques to transcribe, mine, and increase access to the archives. He moved forward to expand access to the records with the help of Virginia Tech students the Crowd Intelligence Lab led by Kurt Luther, a Virginia Tech associate professor of computer science and history and grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Virginia Tech.
Quickly, Gitre realized the surveys deserved more sunlight.Īn assistant professor in the Virginia Tech Department of History, Gitre began combing through the unclassified microfilm reels. When Gitre first located the records, the National Archives and Records Administration held the sole copies. The uncensored documents detail soldiers’ opinions on a range of topics, such as warfare, race and ethnicity, health care, and their own military service. Historian Edward Gitre believes every aspect of World War II matters.Įleven years ago, he discovered a trove of firsthand reflections written by American soldiers through surveys conducted by the United States Army. nd the most authoritative magazine on the war features a striking design that highlights rare, archival photographs and detailed battle maps to convey the drama and excitement of the most famous battles and campaigns.The good, the bad, the ugly, and the heroic. ach issue provides a lively mix of stories about soldiers, leaders, tactics, weapons, and little-known incidents of the war, including riveting firsthand battle accounts and reviews of books, movies, and video games. Orld ar magazine covers every aspect of history's greatest modern conflict with vivid, revealing, and evocative writing from top historians and journalists. And the most authoritative magazine on the war features a striking design that highlights rare, archival photographs and detailed battle maps to convey the drama and excitement of the most famous battles and campaigns. Each issue provides a lively mix of stories about soldiers, leaders, tactics, weapons, and little-known incidents of the war, including riveting firsthand battle accounts and reviews of books, movies, and video games. World War II magazine covers every aspect of history's greatest modern conflict with vivid, revealing, and evocative writing from top historians and journalists.