world war ii topics research papers

World War II Research Essay Topics

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Students are often required to write a paper on a topic as broad as World War II , but you should know that the instructor will expect you to narrow your focus to a specific thesis. This is especially true if you are in high school or college. Narrow your focus by making a list of words, much like the list of words and phrases that are presented in bold type below. Then begin to explore related questions and come up with your own cool WWII topics. The answer to questions like these can become a good starting point for a thesis statement .

Culture and People

When the U.S. entered into war, everyday life across the country changed drastically. From civil rights, racism, and resistance movements to basic human needs like food, clothing, and medicine, the aspects of how life was impacted are immense.

• African-Americans and civil rights. What impact did the war years have on the rights of African-Americans? What were they allowed or not allowed to do?
• Animals. How were horses, dogs, birds, or other animals used? Did they play a special role?
• Art. What art movements were inspired by wartime events? Is there one specific work of art that tells a story about the war?
• Clothing. How was fashion impacted? How did clothing save lives or hinder movement? What materials were used or not used?
• Domestic violence. Was there an increase or decrease in cases?
• Families. Did new family customs develop? What was the impact on children of soldiers?
• Fashion. Did fashion change significantly for civilians? What changes had to be made during wartime?
• Food preservation. What new preservation and packaging methods were used during and after the war? How were these helpful?
• Food rationing. How did rationing impact families? Were rations the same for different groups of people? Were soldiers affected by rations?
• Love letters. What do letters tell us about relationships, families, and friendships? What about gender roles?
• New words. What new vocabulary words emerged during and after WWII?
• Nutrition. Were there battles that were lost or won because of the foods available? How did nutrition change at home during the war because of the availability of certain products?
• Penicillin and other medicine. How was penicillin used? What medical developments occurred during and after the war?
• Resistance movements. How did families deal with living in an occupied territory?
• Sacrifices. How did family life change for the worse?
• Women's work at home. How did women's work change at home during the war? What about after the war ended?

Economy and Workforce

For a nation that was still recovering from the Great Depression, World War II had a major impact on the economy and workforce. When the war began, the fate of the workforce changed overnight, American factories were repurposed to produce goods to support the war effort and women took jobs that were traditionally held by men, who were now off to war.

• Advertising. How did food packaging change during the war? How did advertisements change in general? What were advertisements for?
• Occupations. What new jobs were created? Who filled these new roles? Who filled the roles that were previously held by many of the men who went off to war?
• Propaganda. How did society respond to the war? Do you know why?
• Toys. How did the war impact the toys that were manufactured?
• New products. What products were invented and became a part of popular culture? Were these products present only during war times, or did they exist after?

Military, Government, and War

Americans were mostly against entering the war up until the bombing of Pearl Harbor, after which support for the war grew, as did armed forces. Before the war, the US didn't have the large military forces it soon became known for, with the war resulting in over 16 million Americans in service.   The role the military played in the war, and the impacts of the war itself, were vast.

• America's entry into the war. How is the timing significant? What factors are not so well known?
• Churchill, Winston. What role did this leader play that interests you most? How did his background prepare him for his role?
• Clandestine operations. Governments went to great lengths to hide the true date, time, and place of their actions.
• Destruction. Many historic cities and sites were destroyed in the U.K.—Liverpool, Manchester, London, and Coventry—and in other nations.
• Hawaii. How did events impact families or society in general?
• The Holocaust. Do you have access to any personal stories?
• Italy. What special circumstances were in effect?
• " Kilroy was here ." Why was this phrase important to soldiers? 
• Nationalist Socialist movement in America. What impact has this movement had on society and the government since WWII?
• Political impact. How was your local town impacted politically and socially?
• POW camps after the war. Where were they and what happened to them after the war? Here's a starting point: Some were turned into race tracks after the war!
• Prisoners of war. How many POWs were there? How many made it home safely? What were some long-lasting effects?
• Spies. Who were the spies? Were they men or women? What side were they on? What happened to spies that were caught?
• Submarines. Were there enemy submarines on a coast near you? What role did submarines play in the war?
• Surviving an attack. How were military units attacked? How did it feel to jump from a plane that was disabled?
• Troop logistics. How were troop movements kept secret? What were some challenges of troop logistics?
• Views on freedom. How was freedom curtailed or expanded?
• Views on government's role. Where was the government's role expanded? What about governments elsewhere?
• War crime trials. How were trials conducted? What were the political challenges or consequences? Who was or wasn't tried?
• Weather. Were there battles that were lost or won because of the weather conditions? Were there places where people suffered more because of the weather?
• Women in warfare. What roles did women play during the war? What surprises you about women's work in World War II?

Technology and Transportation

With the war came advancements in technology and transportation, impacting communications capabilities, the spread of news, and even entertainment.

• Bridges and roads. What transportation-related developments came from wartime or postwar policies?
• Communication. How did radio or other types of communication impact key events?
• Motorcycles. What needs led to the development of folding motorcycles? Why was there widespread use of military motorcycles by the government?
• Technology. What technology came from the war and how was it used after the war?
• TV technology. When did televisions start to appear in homes and what is significant about the timing? What TV shows were inspired by the war and how realistic were they? How long did World War II affect TV programming?
• Jet engine technology. What advances can be traced to WWII needs?
• Radar. What role did radar play, if any?
• Rockets. How important was rocket technology?
• Shipbuilding achievements. The achievements were quite remarkable during the war. Why and how did they happen?

"America's Wars Fact Sheet." U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, May 2017.

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205 World War 2 Essay Topics & Examples

Looking for good World War 2 topics to explore? Look no further! In this list, we’ve collected the best topics of WW2 for middle school, high school, and college students. No matter what aspect you’re interested in, you will definitely find here something for yourself.

In addition to WWII topics, we’ve also included some helpful tips and essay examples. Check them out below!

🤫 Secrets of Powerful Essay on World War 2

• 🏆 Best WW2 Topic Ideas & Essay Examples

👍 Good Essay Topics on World War 2

• 🥇 Most Interesting WW2 Topics to Write about

🔎 Simple & Easy World War 2 Essay Topics

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From diplomacy and espionage to battlefield events and the fate of nations, World War 2 essay topics are broad in range and require their writer to have an in-depth knowledge of various details.

Thus, writing a World War 2 essay may seem daunting due to the weight of the necessary historical analysis. However, writing an excellent paper is as easy as keeping in mind a few minor but cornerstone circumstances.

WWII Topics: Important Events

Everyone knows about the Atlantic and D-Day, but World War 2 essay prompts go further than the standardized level of knowledge. Paying due attention to the topic of the Eastern Soviet front, the French Vichy government, and the Blitz over Britain should be essential centerpieces of your essay.

All Ally members, just like all Axis partners, had their crucial moments and roles to play, and focusing on standalone countries does a disservice to a war that involved more than 30 countries.

Even if your central theme centers on a single country, you can gauge the independence of their politics and tactics per its allies. Remember that all events are interconnected and each action creates a reaction!

Creating a timeline, or finding one, will help you understand the continuity of the war’s narrative.

You should frame for yourself the time between events, the countries affected by them, and their outcome. Doing so, regardless of the problem you are tackling, will make your paper flow smoothly from one subject to another, touching upon interconnected ideas.

Topics of WW2: Prominent Personalities

When writing about World War 2, most essayists focus only on Adolf Hitler’s adverse role and outright criminal actions. However, you can and should go beyond even Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill.

Focus on the country that you are tackling; find what connections it had, and what tactics it pursued, and note its leader.

For example, if you are writing about the Eastern front, then mentioning the characters of Zhukov for war-related events, Molotov for diplomacy, and Kalinin for internal affairs will illustrate that you have a comprehensive knowledge of various interconnected topics.

Do your research keeping in mind the essentiality of the personal factor, even in worldwide affairs.

WW2 Topics: The Positive and Negative Consequences

Even today, there are demographic implications and political repercussions of the war. Thus, World War 2 essay questions should demonstrate all consequences of such an event, if possible with vivid examples.

Use quotations, studies, and book and journal titles to support the information you are presenting.

From the accounts of the event’s contemporaries to photo materials and recordings, there are millions of sources on the circumstances of World War 2, many of which are readily available online.

Let your bibliography be representative of your academism and include relevant, credible, and varied sources in it.

Paper Structure

Creating an outline for your paper in the pre-writing stages will help you overview the planned working process and see its weak aspects. Doing so includes seeing what themes are underdeveloped and which you have overpowered with information, as well as correcting this issue promptly.

Furthermore, doing so gives you an understanding of excellent World War 2 essay titles, which are pivotal in getting your readers interested in your work.

If you feel like your paper is lacking something, structurally or informatively, then you can read sample essays on similar issues and judge for yourself what you can apperceive from them.

Does your paper still feel daunting? Let IvyPanda give you some inspiration! Get motivated, writing, and graded “excellent”!

🏆 Best World War 2 Topic Ideas & Essay Examples

• The World War 2 Positive and Negative Repercussions The Effects Of The 2nd World War: The fall of world major powers: The war did not just end, but it had some positive and negative effect to the countries both involved and those that […]
• Could the US Prevent the Start of World War II? Some believe that the United States of America could prevent the outbreak of the war. Therefore, it is possible to assume that the USA could not have prevented the start of the Second World War […]
• World War II Propaganda Posters in America The imagery of the boot stepping on the American church is not just a threat to the religious ideals of the country but a threat to freedom itself as the church often doubled as the […]
• World War 2 Consequences The major causes of this Great War were the unresolved issues that resulted from the World War 1. Another thing that led to the World War 2 was the failure of the League of Nations.
• Miscommunication Problems: the US and Japan in World War II At the beginning of 1945, the leaders of such countries as the United States, the United Kingdom, and China offered the document that outlined the conditions of the Japanese surrender under which Hirohito could stay […]
• Propaganda During World War II The Second World War was a complicated time for both the general public and the authorities since while the former worried for their safety, family, and homeland, the latter needed to maintain the national spirit […]
• Causes of World War II Therefore the desire by the Germans under Hitler to conquer other countries and the desire by the Japanese to expand their territory was the key cause of the war in Europe and subsequently the World […]
• Effects of the Pact of Steel Agreement on World War II He was a strong believer in the strength of the people as the backbone of the country and not the strength of the individual.
• World War II Innovations Named as the Manhattan Project during World War II, the nuclear program of the Allies led to catastrophic consequences for the Axis forces, particularly in the context of the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which […]
• Shintoism and World War II in Japan The impact of religions on the world throughout history is undeniable, it can be seen how different religions include in their teachings all of the life aspects and affect them in a way or another.
• World War II, Causes and Outcomes: Lesson Plan It includes the key concepts, objectives, materials, and the description of the activities that teachers can use to introduce new material to the students in the 11th and 12th grades.
• How Cars Changed the United States After World War II The national rail network allowed the farmers to become part of the national economic recovery that started at the beginning of the Second World War and continued throughout 1960.
• World War 2 Leaders Comparison: Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler World War 2 remains one of the most significant and historically important events in the entire world because the United States of America, Japan, and the majority of European countries were involved in it.
• Nationalism in World War II Another critical “nation-statehood making” is the break of the Soviet Union and the end of cold war between Soviet Union republic and the United States.
• World War II Propaganda and Its Effects The purpose of this paper is to examine the confrontation between the German and the Soviet propaganda machines during the period of the Second Patriotic War, outline the goals and purposes of each, and identify […]
• Causes of WWI and WWII: Comparing and Contrasting In the following paper, Kenneth Waltz’s levels of analysis will be used for the comparison and contrast of causes of WWI and WWII. The second similarity refers to the distribution of power and the division […]
• Doing Academic World War II Research Researchers can use the information on the authors at Britannica to determine the reliability of the information provided on the website.
• The Neutrality of Vatican City During World War II Despite the moves made by the Pope Pius XII for the Vatican City to remain neutral in the World War II, the actions he made were seen as a great violation of stance.
• The World War II Propaganda Techniques All the parties to the war, including Germany, the Soviet Union, and Britain, invested many resources in propaganda, but the present essay will focus on the United States’ effort. Furthermore, propaganda messages were created to […]
• The Impacts of the Second World War on Asia The period after the Second World War saw the emergence and expansion of the world economies. Countries such as Japan and China started rebuilding their economies so as to compete with the rest of the […]
• The Role Played by Texans in World War II Involvement in the war was expected because the US was against Japan’s entry into Middle East, and colonization of Africa and certain regions of Europe by Germany and Italy. The US was greatly perturbed after […]
• The World War II: Impact and Consequences The Allies and the Axis were reluctant to follow any line that risked running into the antagonism of the other for fear of alienating their ally and therefore endangering one of the precepts of their […]
• Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Role in World War II That is why historians and the public pay much attention to the discussion of the role in this war of those personalities who persistently led the Western anti-Hitler coalition to the victory over Nazi Germany […]
• The Causes and Consequences of World War Two Some studies reported that the war caused around 62 to 80 million deaths, and this made it the deadliest fighting in the global history in terms of reported number of deaths compared with the world […]
• American Women in World War II: Oral Interview In fact, the participation of women in the event was prepared during the First World War. Interviewee: Yes, I will give you any information that you may want because I was part of the historical […]
• World War II in “Slaughterhouse-Five“ Novel by Kurt Vonnegut To make a detailed description of the expressed opinion and to prove it, we should consider the characteristic features of the heroes and the general perception of novels which are directed at the description of […]
• Women in World War II The involvement of women in the war was quite significant to the women as they were able to have a strong arguing point after the war and this made it possible for the women to […]
• Dwight D. Eisenhower: World War II Hero and U.S. President In addition to his leading role as a peace and desegregation crusader, prior to his election as the 34th American president and even after his rise to the top seat, Eisenhower was a well known […]
• War Crimes During the World War II It is clear that the holocaust was a war crime by the fact that, these were innocent civilians who were targeted specifically because of the hatred that Hitler had for them.
• WWII History: How Hitler Died From the onset of the war, Hitler proved to be a trustworthy leader. In the US, tests done on a part of the skull purported to be Hitler’s have given unconvincing results.
• V-2 Rocket and Its Impact on World War II and Today US Army The V-2 rocket was influential not only in the Second World War but also shaped the concept of the future of the US Army and is the prototype for many modern weapons.
• US Holocaust Policy During World War II However, the anti-Nazi campaign was not successful, and the main reason for this was the harsh foreign policy of the USA.
• Canada’s Role and Experiences in World War II The book emphasized the painful experiences the victims of the soldiers went through and the traumatizing memories they had. In the accompaniment of readers, the authors describe strategic bombing as a series of military activities, […]
• The Bonds or Bondage World War II Poster Analysis The current paper explores an example of a poster created in the early years of the war. During WWII, tax increases did not cover the military spending enough, and Henry Morgenthau, Jr, Secretary of the […]
• Important Questions on America Since World War II A significant part of Truman’s failures happened due to the inconsistency of his actions and his unwillingness to commit to social change.
• The US Foreign Policy in the Post-World War II Era In other words, rather than concentrating on maintaining peace in the region, the government deployed military troops to alleviate the domination of any power hostile to the US and its citizens.
• German Strategy During the Beginning of WWII The German’s use of the Nine Variables – Elements of Strategy aided them with great success at the beginning of the war from 1939 – 1941, and the failure to accurately access the Nine Constants […]
• The Office of Strategic Services Operational Groups in World War II The study of the importance of O.S. To investigate the impact of O.S.
• World War II and the US Decision to Stay Out The United States was not involved in the war until 1941 since it had a Neutrality Act which established limits to the sale of weapons to fighting parties.
• The Result Japan’s Fall in World War II The Allies needed to stop the advance of the Imperial Japanese army along the Solomon Islands and prevent the occupation of New Guinea.
• The Role of Propaganda During World War II The poster encourages men to enroll in the army to protect the peaceful lives of women and children. By manipulating emotions and feelings, propaganda influenced people to enroll in the army or work harder.
• Researching of Turning Points in WWII The most discussed battles that possibly created or marked the momentum of the remaining part of the war are the battle of Midway, where the United States were able to gain advance, and the battles […]
• The Effectiveness of WWII Bombing Campaigns The German trial with two-engine fighters was a failure; the American one, on the other hand, was notably effective in the Pacific because of the broader range.
• Wartime Conferences of World War II The wartime conferences of World War II were genuinely significant in deciding the strategy undertaken by the Allies but also helped shape the world order during and in the aftermath of the world.
• D-Day: The Role in World War II By the end of 1944, Paris was released after the Allies approached the Seine River. D-Day became a significant event that influenced the pace of World War II.
• Promoting Production During World War II As the fighting continued, there arose the need to produce equipment to sustain the war: this came to be called wartime production.
• The World War II Discussion: The Convoy Tactics The last year of the war accounted for 60% of the total volume of military supplies that passed along the path of the polar convoys.
• World War Two and Its Ramifications The United States imposed economic sanctions on Japan in order to deter Japanese aggression and force the evacuation of Japanese soldiers from Manchuria and China.
• South Africa During World War II Years Clark’s topic is the impact of World War II on the independence of South Africa. The main point of the author is that South Africa’s history during and immediately after World War II is underresearched.
• Contribution to World War II of Chinese and Native Americans Despite the dire conditions many of them lived in and white Americans’ discrimination against them, they used the war as the opportunity to prove themselves as loyal patriots.
• The Role of the United States in World War II The policy worked under the terms that the United States could sell arms provided that the buyer could pay in cash and seek their means of transportation.
• The Use of Radio in German Propaganda During the World War II One of the techniques used by the Nazis to persuade German people and shape their worldview was the use of such media as radio.
• Arguments Against the Use of Nuclear Weapons in World War II The firebombing campaign was against the use of atomic weapons in the form of nuclear bombs as it was aimed at urban centers and completely discriminatory.
• The European Theatre of Operations in WWII The Eastern front fought against the Western front, demonstrating various air and land campaigns. Battle of the Bulge.
• The Significance of the Iron Curtain at World War II and the Cold War Churchill encouraged the US and the UK to unite and ensure that they ended the actions that the Soviet Union was exercising.
• Soviet and American Perspectives on World War II Through Movies The theme is the same to show the rise and fall of the German Nazi empire. The first remarkable feature of the movie is the humor with which Mikhail Romm, the director of the movie, […]
• Pre-World War II South Africa: Centuries-Old Exploitation Afrikaners: from agriculture to “white-collar” work 1970s: 90 per cent of state top executive and managerial positions are taken by Afrikaners.
• Wikipedia: Posts About World War II There have been arguments voiced against the reliability of internet sources such as Wikipedia as a source of scholarly information. Wikipedia commands a huge following on the internet as a source of information.
• Winston Churchill, a Leader During the World War II He faced this disorder before the development of effective medication, and hence had to live with untreated Bipolar Mood Disorder throughout his life.
• Battle of Kursk: Germany’s Lost Victory in World War II Although the fighting efficiency of the Nazi troops decreased due to a decrease in the number of available equipment and the transfer of auxiliary units to the front, it was still a formidable force.
• The Decolonization in Asia and Africa in the Post-WW2 Period According to Tignor et al, WW2 resulted in the following – the war itself left the unresolved issues of WW1 and heightened them, such as plans of Germany and Japan to expand their political impact […]
• Kurt Vonnegut. Wailing Shall Be in All Streets and Slaughterhouse-Five. Reflections on World War II The two literature pieces under consideration in the following paper can be acclaimed as a strong attack to the motives of those participating in the World War II along with the use of powerful irony.
• Comparing World War II to September 11th Both attacks were condemned on a global scale, and a huge fraction of the rest of the world rallied behind the US. Over 16 million soldiers were deployed to settle the score with the Japanese, […]
• Americanization in Germany Post WWII Most of these changes have indeed played a major role in improving the status of Germany only that the Germans now have little to be proud of in terms of heritage as most of it […]
• World War Two Marked the End of Modern Age All major countries in the whole world were eventually involved in the war that remarkably led to the transfer of the title of the ‘world’s superpower’ from Western Europe to USSR.
• Women in Canada During World War II The analysis of the role of Canadian women in the most devastating war of the century presents special interest for us due to nontrivial results concerning the place of women in history that can be […]
• World War II and Germany’s Invasion Plans The invasion of Great Britain was important to Adolf Hitler because in this way the great air force power of Great Britain would have been destroyed.
• American Culture in the Post World War II Years Further still, the improvisation of Jazz music set a stage for new music culture in the American society that incorporated and appreciated the works of the black population.
• Women’s Role in World War II The significance of this event is not only due to the destruction and the great number of people that were killed in the said conflict but also the numerous precedents that help changed the course […]
• The Nature of the Fighting in World War I and World War II So, the results of this war were awful, but still, speaking about the losses of the World War II, it can be said, that it was the bloodiest conflict in human history. The most obvious […]
• Soviet Strategy Before World War II A closer look at the soviet strategy before WWII reveals that the government has almost destroyed the ability of the people to become the army as the program of collectivism, hunger, and the increasing dissatisfaction […]
• The Influence of the Second World War on the 20th and 21st Centuries’ Cinema The movie follows the lives of a German Wehrmacht infantry platoon as they are shuttled from the North African front to Italy and finally to the Russian front where they find themselves part of the […]
• Anti-Japanese Propaganda During World War II The content of propaganda was much the same as that of broadcast propaganda: emphasis on the Allies’ growing war potential, ridicule of the more preposterous assertions of the National Socialists, evidence of self-contradictions in the […]
• American Economic History After World War II In the beginning, it’s been the United States displacing Great Britain as the world’s largest economy and in the end it’s the globalization that made the biggest noise.
• Politics and Warfare of World War II Realism in the background of international relations includes a diversity of hypotheses and advances, all of which allocate a belief that states are chiefly inspired by the desire for military and financial power or safety, […]
• WWII to 1965: Administration, Policies, Preeminence The legislation that created it aimed to unify and streamline the governance between the whole army while in turn maintaining the individuality of the various army units.
• Issue of World War II Regarding Comfort Women In 1991, the issues regarding comfort women exploded in the public when a woman from South Korea came out to the public and testify the issue regarding comfort women.
• Culture and Customs of Japan After WWII It must be admitted, however, in the interests of truth, that the traditional mode of living and ways of thinking, both good and bad, are deeply rooted in the life of the Japanese people of […]

🥇 Most Interesting World War 2 Topics to Write about

• Impacts of the Pacific War and World War II in Japan Japan surged with the inversion trend undeterred, in 1937, it launched a large-scale inversion of China and four years later in 1941, it attacked the US, triggering the entry of America to the Second World […]
• Could the World War II Have Been Avoided? First of all, arguing on the matters of the inevitability of World War II it is necessary to point out, that the causes of it take the roots at the end of World War I, […]
• Nazi’s Crimes Against Jews During World War II The holocaust of the 20th century was the worst persecution of the European Jews by the Nazis in German between 1933 and 1945.
• Newspaper Coverage of Japan-America Internment in WW2 and the Civil Rights Movement The media covered this because this movement persuaded whites to join them in their mass protests and they were killed in the event.
• Post-World War II Propaganda Art According to Arendt, the “who” is revealed in the narratives people tell of themselves and others. We humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it, and in […]
• The United States From the World War II to the 1990s From the economic boom enjoyed in the 1950s, to the rise of civil rights movement in the 1960s, to the concern about the Vietnam War in 1970s, to the end of the Cold War in […]
• Politics, the Israel-Palestine Conflict, and Oil: After the WWII In retrospect, the current situation regarding the confrontations between the ME and Israel, as well as the tensions in the ME’s political arena, can be seen as the inevitable side effects of the self-determination process.
• Shifting Images of Chinese Americans During World War II Therefore, it is important to elaborate on the history of relationships between Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans in the period between 1920 and 1940. Thus, the tendency for the distinguishing and distancing of the Chinese […]
• World War II and Its Impact on Asian Americans In general, most Asian Americans benefited from war as the Filipino, the Chinese, and Indians were wartime allies of the United States.
• Atomic Bomb as a Necessary Evil to End WWII Maddox argued that by releasing the deadly power of the A-bomb on Japanese soil, the Japanese people, and their leaders could visualize the utter senselessness of the war.
• Women Photojournalists During World War II Her photographs worked as evidence of indignities at the camps, and due to this, her work was greatly censored by the then government.
• The Marshall Plan’ Effects on Post WW2 Design To, some extent, the impacts of the Marshall on design can be explained by the economic situation in Europe at that time, and especially the necessity to reduce the costs of production.
• Deindustrialization After the World War II The battle for equality in different working environments led to the passage of the Fair Employment Practices Commission. The tightening labor market in the country also resulted in new employment patterns.
• “Western Renaissance” in Europe After World War II Modernization in the economical sphere, particularly in trade and agriculture created an opportunity to improve the activities of such countries as Italy, Great Britain, Western Germany, and the USA. However, the problems remained and in […]
• The Major Pivot of Post-WWII American History Nowadays, it became a commonplace assumption among many Americans that the causes, behind the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, during the course of the 20th century’s sixties, had to do with the fact that […]
• World War II Facts in Wikipedia Article This article will use the information from the article written by Harris to evaluate Wikipedia’s article on World War II with the aim of establishing if the information from the site can be regarded as […]
• Civilians as Victims of World War II The aim of this paper is to explore the suffering of civilians in the pursuit of victory in World War II.
• Post-World War II and Modern Women in the US I would be used to the things that, according to Dubois and Dumenil, the society demanded of women at the time, and I would readily stay at home and take care of my children, husband, […]
• Racism in the United States: Before and After World War II The U.S.government went from supporting racism against African Americans in the New Deal era to fight against racism by the 1960s because of World War II.
• World War II: A Very Short Introduction The questions addressed in the book were not very often discussed previously, as the author states in the introduction; Weinberg examines Germany’s responsibility for World War II, the reasons behind the eventual victory of the […]
• Australian Workforce Changes After WWII It should be noted, however, that the Australian male breadwinner model is of particular concern, as in the early fifties the model was totally revaluated.
• Roosevelt’s New Deal and Joining World War II It led to the restructuring of the American economy and the establishment of the new model of relations between business, labor force, and the state.
• American Homefront During World War II The people who remained at home also had to change their lives to suit the war. On the same note, the people left at the homefront had to work together in order to survive.
• France Before World War I and After World War II To overcome the negative consequences of the Franco-Prussian War, France needed to focus on new perspectives for the state’s economic and political development, and such an approach could provide the state with the necessary resources […]
• Hitler’s and British Policies in World War II Britain was among the countries that did not welcome the idea of another war due to the bloodshed that had ensued in the World War I.
• Child Labor, Great Depression and World War II in Photographs The impression is of isolation and yearning for daylight, freedom, and a childhood foregone, in the midst of a machine-dominated world.
• Invasion of Normandy in World War II One of such legendary operations is the one that happened on D-Day, the day that shifted the balance of powers of the whole war, the put the beginning to the victorious march of the armies […]
• World War II in “Our Secret” by Susan Griffin The details she provides about various events and the manner in which she chooses her words clearly points out that this is not a work of fiction.
• Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII Besides, the treatise reviews the historical dynamics that allowed for the internment of Japanese Americans and the impacts of internment in the Japanese American communities during and after the end of WW II.
• World War II in Eurasia and America The war ended with the defeat of the far rights; however, conflicts of interests of the winners led to the tension that persisted for long years after the war.
• The Life of a Freedom Fighter in Post WWII Palestine As World War II was coming to an end, the Zionist Movement leaders were hopeful that the British government would amend the White Paper policy, allow the Jews to migrate to Eretz, Israel, and govern […]
• Has Security Been the Main Driver Behind European Integration Since World War Two? Backed with the spirit of its member states and the United States, the Union has continuously executed its mandate and enlarged in order to advance and augment its efficacy in its operations.
• The Post World War II Nuclear Arms Race Costs The nuclear arms race led to a monumental increase in the military expenditure of the US and the Soviet Union.
• Peace and Normalisation Treaties Signed After World War II The treaty that was signed by Japan and Taiwan and the one between Japan and Korea had the same specificity. Treaties signed between Japan, Korea, Taiwan and People’s Republic of China each have unique characteristics […]
• The Art of Being Lonely: A Portrayal of the Lives of Chinese Women of the Post-WWII Generation. Wang Anyi’s “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” Analysis Because of their being not ready for the shift from a WWII to the post-WWII environment and the change in values, Chinese women were highly susceptible and extremely vulnerable to the lures of the “New […]
• WW II and Hitler’s Army After the massive defeat and deaths of the German army in the war that took place in the eastern side, it was evident that the traditional groups of the army were no longer working as […]
• “The Second World War: A Short History (Struggle for Survival)” by Robert Alexander Clarke The author traces the cause of the war from the Europeans and the Germans who were the key participants in the crisis.
• Was the American Use of the Atomic Bomb Against Japan in 1945 the Final Act of WW2 or the Signal That the Cold War Was About to Begin Therefore, to evaluate the reasons that guided the American government in their successful attempt at mass genocide of the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one must consider not only the political implications behind the actions […]
• Japanese Soldiers in the World War II Japanese recruits were forced to torture and maim their victims by their seniors to display their commitment and loyalty. Japanese soldiers thought they were highly respected by other Japanese civilians because of their willingness to […]
• United States – China Relations During World War II The war involved the greatest number of nations with all the major countries in the world playing a role in the war.
• Military Fascism in Pre-WWII Japan The military fascism was a way of expressing the Japanese economic, power and policy dissatisfaction by the west, and it hence contributed in some ways to the rise of World War II.
• Nazi Germany and Jewish Question The main theme of the entire speech made by SS in which we shall be analyzing in this section of the paper is about this group’s mission and strategies towards the implementation of orders handed […]
• The Influences of Neutral Countries in WW2 The validity of this suggestion can be illustrated, in regards to what historians know about the influences of the mentioned countries on WW2: Sweden Up until the year 1944, Sweden used to be in the […]
• Motivation in Combat: The German Soldier in World War II Omer Bartov’s Hitler’s army: Soldiers, Nazis, and war in the Third Reich represents a good example of such a literature, because in it, the author had made a point in trying to reveal the conceptual […]
• “The Blitzkrieg Myth: How Hitler and the Allies Misread The Strategic Realities of World War II” by John Mosier In order to present a clear picture of German participation in the war and the reasons, which provoked these people to fight and kill, it is necessary to concentrate on various sources and perspectives and […]
• Role of WWII in Shaping America’s History Boost to the Economy The entry of the United States into WWII was a major boost to the economy that was still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression of 1930.
• Controversies of World War II It is believed that Roosevelt wanted to engage Japan in war and the only way to achieve this was by allowing Japan to attack the Harbor.
• Western Women in World War Two The only means to win the war was to involve large population of women in employment since millions of men were at war and the rest of the male population was not enough to occupy […]
• Critical Analysis of “Walking Since Daybreak: A Story of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Heart of Our Century” by Modris Eksteins The author presents a story of a people mixed with fear, anxiety and hope as the main characters of the book are caught in the traumatic experience of the war.
• Development Theories After Second World War Consequently, the rate of growth and development could be measured by the level of savings and investment in physical capital in the country. This theory has included changes in technology into the model of growth […]
• World War II History The consequences of the war had an impact on the political affairs of the world and resulted in a major change of the course of the history of the world.
• New Zealands Diplomatic Relations With China Since World War II The Interaction between China and New Zealand became formal in 1976, as a mechanism for curbing USSR influence.”This event was marked when Muldoon travelled to Peking in 1976 to meet Mao Zedong”.”It was plainly stated […]
• Historical and Geographical Dynamics That Had Shaped China by the End of World War II The end of the World War II was made possible by the initiation of the so-called development processes in the nations that had been involved in the rapid wars, i.e, the implementation of policies that […]
• The Arab States After the Second World War and the Six-Day War The paper will also discuss the events that led to the six-day war, the major events of the war, the outcome of the war and its contribution to the current political situation in the Middle […]
• World War II as the Most Devastating War in World History The devastation of the war was mainly due to the advanced military weapons used, from the infantry on the front line to the ships in the sea and the planes in the sky, these weapons […]
• World War II and Humanism Considering the problem of the effects of the World War II in the long term period it is also possible to find the remnants of the humanistic effect, if it was, or to come across […]
• The Second World War Unrest The Second World War was the greatest world unrest in the history of humanity. The war came at the time in which the global economy was recovering from a deep depression.
• European History During World War II This concept was crucial in the Second World War in Europe as there was a “large-scale mobilization of state resources for war to anticipate the modern concept of total war that was typically associated with […]
• The Major Powers of the Second World War After the First World War, the victors stated that they would do everything to preserve peace in the world. The countries that resisted Hitler’s ambition were referred to as the Allies of the Second World […]
• The Effects of the Second World War on US The war provided Americans with an opportunity to take control of the world and stamp authority in regions that belonged to other world powers.
• Analysis of Some US Documents in the Second World War The importance of this speech is in the statement of the reasons of the war, the development of the USA before its intrusion in the war and the betrayal of Japan which attacked the USA […]
• United States and the Second World War According to article 25-1, the attack on the Pearl Harbor was one of the reasons that forced the US to join the war.
• America in World War II – Experiences and Impacts During the World War II, aggression of Adolf Hitler and Nazi party led to persecution of Jews who lived in Germany.
• American History During World War Two The Nazi under the leadership of Hitler is ready to kill all the Jews as witnessed in the atrocities against them.
• Use of Arts in the Second World War by Nazi The films featured several themes such as the virtue of the Nordic or Aryan, the strength of the military and the German industry, and the evils of those who were perceived to be enemies.
• Second World War in U.S. History Studies on the Second World War have yielded varied perspectives; according to Erdelja, “there is no other experience that was more crucial to the development of the U.S.and Europe in the 20th century than the […]
• Race in World War II During the war and after the incarceration of the Japanese Americans, the American public was shown video footage and pictures that justified the confinement of Japanese Americans in the concentration camps.
• Pearl Harbor in the World War II Pearl Harbor is very significant in the history of the World War II because it is the place where the war started. This was another factor that contributed to the World War II, which began […]
• Political Causes of WWII for America and Germany This paper is an examination of the causes of involvement of America and Germany in the WWII. He is, in fact, said to be the person responsible for the start of the war.
• Thinking Government: Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Post World War II Canada This leads to the second implication which was summarized by political scientists in the following statement: “nothing can be guaranteed in life and that all individuals are also free to fail, to stumble to the […]
• Challenges and Suggestions That British and American Government Faced After the Second World War In order to overcome these problems, the British politician insists on the necessity to singly out clearly the purposes, to grant simplicity of the decisions made, and declare the human rights and freedoms on the […]
• Foreign Policy: What Has Been the Main Emphases of America’s Foreign Policy From World War 2 to the Present Day? The main emphases of the foreign policy of the United States from World War 2 to the present day have been the containment of the Soviet Union and its allies, military domination, expansion of economy, […]
• Baby Boomers After World War II The government is campaigning for extension of retirement age, as this would boost the capacity of the social security trust fund to pay retirees.
• The Bombing of Dresden in World War II The first planes from the Royal Air force started the journey from 1,100 kilometers away and they were tasked with the role of identifying Dresden and releasing Magnesium flares to light up the areas that […]
• Developing Economy in Russian Federation After World War II Despite the presence of the war, Russia was able to sustain production in parts that were not affected by the war and this trend continued even after the war.
• Japanese Internment in the US During World War II The Japanese moved fast to occupy the territories previously in the hands of the US, and the more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry in the west coast raised issues for the president’s cabinet.
• Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During WWII and US Occupation in Japan He is the sole author of five titles, all of which are related to wars of the past and crimes against persons committed during the time.
• Was the Second World War Necessary?
• Why Did the British Government Decide to Evacuate Children From Britain’s Major Cities in the Early Years of the Second World War?
• Was London Prepared for the Outbreak of the Second World War?
• What Role Technology Played in the Second World War?
• How Far Did the Aims of Nazi Propaganda Change During the Course of WW2?
• Was the Second World War Inevitable and What Caused the Second World War?
• How the Relationship Between Australia and Japan Changed After WW2?
• Why Did the United States Fail the Second World War?
• Was Hitler Primarily Responsible for the Outbreak of the Second World War?
• How Did the Treaty of Versailles Help Contribute to the Start of WW2?
• How the Great Depression Ended by United States Entry Into the Second World War?
• How Did WW2 Affect American Society?
• How Did Germany Lose WW2?
• How Did WW2 Start?
• Was the Holocaust Planned During the Second World War?
• What Were the Cold War Fears of the American People After the Second World War?
• How Responsible Was Hitler for the Outbreak of WW2?
• Why Did Germany Lose WW2?
• How Did the Second World War Affect America?
• Why Did Germany Lose the Second World War?
• Was the Second World War a Consequence of Appeasement as an Aggressive German Foreign Policy?
• How Did WW2 Impact Canada?
• Were Japan and Germany Treated Differently by the United States During the Second World War?
• Was the Cold War in Europe the Direct and Logical Outcome of the Second World War?
• Which Factor Was the Most Important in Causing the End of the Second World War?
• How the United States Got Involved in WW2?
• How Did the First World War Set the Global Stage for the Second World War?
• How Did the Second World War Affect Family Life in Britain?
• How Did the Roles of Women Change During WW2?
• Women’s Contributions to World War II
• Battles and Strategies in the War against Japan
• The Complex Factors That Triggered World War 2
• How Technology Impacted Warfare and Military Strategies in WWII
• The Holocaust and Its Horrific Consequences
• How the Battle of Stalingrad Became the Turning Point of WW2 on the Eastern Front
• The Atomic Bomb and Its Impact on the Second World War
• The Nuremberg Trials and the Post-War Pursuit of Justice for War Crimes
• The Role of Propaganda in Shaping Public Opinion During WW2
• The Home Front and Civilian Experience During World War II
• Resistance Movements and Underground Networks during World War II
• The Global Economic Consequences of World War II
• The Strategies of Allied Commanders
• The African-American Experience in World War 2
• Espionage and Intelligence in World War 2
• The Scientific Legacy of Technology Transfer During WW2
• World War II and the Birth of the United Nations
• How Did Civilians Survive the German Air Raids?
• Post-War Reconstruction of Europe and Japan
• The Impact of World War 2 on Art and Popular Culture
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157 World War 2 Essay Topics + Examples

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• Consequences of World War I and World War II
• World War II Was Avoidable
• World War II Was a Continuation of World War I
• Social Changes Caused by World War II
• World War II, Its Origins and Consequences
• World War II: Causes, Objectives, and Lessons Learned
• Pacific Theater of World War II
• Why World War II Was Inevitable The paper states that World War II was the most global war in human history. The war was inevitable and would start sooner or later.
• Japan After World War II: Main Events and Modifications This paper aims to investigate the situation in which Japan found itself after the events of World War II and how it influenced its society, culture and economic development.
• World War II-Occupations: What New Jobs Were Created? This paper discusses occupations in civil activity, in national defense, and to farm labor, and the evolution of unusual occupations from world war II military designation.
• Realist Theory View on World War II From a realist theory perspective, the outcomes of World War II were successful since, over the course of it, the two competing powers, competed for national interests.
• The Battle of Britain During World War II The Battle of Britain was the first large-scale military campaign in history to be fought exclusively in the air. It was part of World War II.
• Political, Cultural, Economic, and Social Implications of WWII for Germany This paper aims to analyze the transformation that happened to Germany after WWII: Political, cultural, economic, and social implications.
• South Africa in World War II The paper states that without South African ports, thousands of Allies’ troops of World War II would not have reached the Middle East theatre.
• The Outcomes of World War II: Impact of Technology World War II’s scientific and technological accomplishments were among the most significant and long-lasting effects of a struggle that affected every aspect of society.
• History of Aviation in World War I and World War II Aviation history has various periods that crafted its unique story. It began before the seventeenth century and is known for several momentous events that led to its development, such as World War I and World War II.
• World War II, Its Causes and Long-Term Effects World War II resulted in a decisive power shift away from the leading European states to the Soviet Union and the United States.
• Fighter Planes: The Role in World War II Fighter planes played the most important role during World War II. These planes were the fastest and easiest to maneuver as they even could be controlled remotely.
• Air Defense Artillery in World War II The history of Air Defense Artillery as an independent branch of the United States Army started on the 20th of June 1968.
• World War II: Why Germans Lost and Allies Won World War II began with Germany’s attack on Poland in 1939 and ended with the attack on Japan’s Hiroshima in 1945 with the atomic bomb.
• Las Pachucas During World War II World War II led to social changes and the destruction of old formations with the subsequent creation of new ones. This tendency may be traced to the example of Pachucas.
• World War II: Maskirovka Military Deception and Denials Operations This paper investigates the impact of maskirovka military deception and denials operations, a component of information warfare. The case study is set during World War II.
• World War II Atrocities: Crimes Against Humanity This paper focuses on the crimes against humanity in World War II. The crimes are not on the battlefield and are unconnected with specific military activities.
• Churchill’s Leadership as a British Prime Minister During World War II The objective of this paper is to analyze Churchill’s leadership qualities, characteristics, and leadership traits that contributed to his success during the Battle of Britain.
• WWII and Iraq War Comparative Analysis This paper critically analyzes the use of theories to compare and possibly contrast the two wars, World War II and the War in Iraq.
• Women’s Representations Before and After World War II This paper analyzes two paintings representing young women performing leisurely activities and shows the differences between the painting, as well as their common theme.
• Japan’s Position Regarding World War II The history of Japan in the Second World War is ambiguous. The main debate in this area is the position of Japan in the conflict.
• The World War II Recruitment Poster Analysis This paper discusses a poster that was created during World War II to recruit men and women for the Women’s Army Corps and the U.S. Marines.
• World War II: The History of Hiroshima and Nagasaki World War II was a global war that perpetrated the greatest struggle for mankind. This paper undertakes a critical review of why the United States deployed atomic bombs on Japan.
• How and Why the US Entered World War 2?
• Cinema During the Great Depression and WWII
• Why Were the Japanese So Cruel in World War 2?
• Jewish Resistance During World War 2
• Relationship Between World War 1 and World War 2
• How the Versailles Treaty Helped Cause World War II?
• Europe After World War 2
• American Foreign Policy Since World War 2
• The Battle Between Russia and Germany During the WW2
• Australia and World War 2
• Crime Rates During World War II
• American Families During WW2
• How Did American Foreign Policy Change After World War 2?
• The Changing Foreign Policy and Alliances During WWII
• Innovations During World War 2
• The Holocaust and the Nazi Regime During World War 2
• Poland Was the Aggressor in World War II
• How Was Air Security Changed After World War 2?
• Women and Society After WWII
• Benito Mussolini and His Impact on World War 2
• The United States and East Asia Since World War II World War II changed the world forever for the key players. While the USA and the Soviet Union fought together against the Nazi regime, the relationship between the two remained tense.
• World War II Role for the United States World War II led to changing the women’s roles in the family and society, the general social pattern, and to worsening the economic situation in the United States.
• Japan’s Transformation After World War II Despite the high technological level and dynamism, the economy of Japan remained as an economy of an industrial country and continued developing based on industrial dominants.
• World War II: The Influence on Japan Japan experienced a major shift in its economy, politics, legal framework, culture, and society as a direct result of World War II.
• Japanese Internment During World War II Japanese-American internment refers to the forced relocation of numerous Japanese Americans to detention camps by the United States Government during World War II.
• World War II Effects on American Women and Minority Groups The Second World War had a mixed impact on women and minority groups while some minority groups became even more oppressed.
• American Women in World War II American women in World War II became engaged in numerous missions that’s why the importance of the role and objectives of American women in World War II should be investigated.
• Effects of World War II on the Economy and Culture of the U.S. The paper states that WWII affected the U.S economy negatively more than it positively contributed to its growth and sustainability.
• World War I vs. World War II Differences The paper states that there is often a discourse among military historians that the First and Second World Wars are one event or two different ones.
• World War II: Holocaust and Discrimination of the Jews The research paper aims to review several primary and secondary sources discussing the World War II and specifically the discrimination faced by the Jews.
• The Role of the Nazi Ideology in World War II World War II is characterized by the growth of the Nazi ideology, which became the primary factor leading to genocide, civilian murders, and violence peculiar to military actions.
• Changes in Practices of Warfare Since World War II The most important and striking trend in the change in the practice of warfare in the world is that the number of armed conflicts has significantly decreased.
• World War II and Communism Impact on the US Over the decades, the central economic policy that contributed to the significant growth index in America has been capitalism.
• “Battle of Tinian” Role in World War II The Tinian Island in World War II represented one of the core strategic areas that were central to the U.S. army’s success in fighting the enemy.
• American Presidency During World War II and the Cold War World War II and the advent of the Cold War taught many lessons regarding the American presidency, especially on matters of foreign military policies and strategies.
• “Children in the Holocaust and World War II” by Holliday The book “Children in the Holocaust and World War II” describes what difficulties a brother and a sister experienced in the Lodz Ghetto in Poland during World War II.
• The United States and the World War II: Fighting on Two Fronts The Second World War became the most significant conflict in human history because more than 50 million people were killed, including civilians and jews.
• World War II in the Pacific Region While it is a belief that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on February 7, 1941, was a massive success for the Axis forces, Imperial Japan failed to achieve all its objectives.
• The Role of American Women in World War II World War II empowered women and opened their liberties as equal citizens of the U.S. Women played a critical effort in the war, reducing the gap in industrial labor.
• The Rise and Fall of Communism After World War II Czechoslovakia’s communism was flawed and destined for failure, being devoted to the Russian paradigm and unsuited for a better-industrialized society.
• Battle of the Midway During World War II The Battle of Midway Atoll was a major naval battle of World War II in the Pacific in June 1942. The victory of the US Navy marked a turning point in the Pacific War.
• Post-World War II Civil Rights Movements The post-war time period was essential for all the minorities who chose to protest for their rights to be established and protected by the US government.
• The United States’ Participation in World War II While the United States had significant resources and influence in the West, the country could not have prevented the occurrence of the Second World War.
• What Effect Did the World War II Wartime Experience Have on African Americans? World War II was the battle of all races: white, Asian, and Black people. This essay will discover whether they were treated differently during and after the initial strife.
• World War II: “Once Upon a Time” Book by Humphrey The paper reviews Humphrey’s book Once Upon a Time: The 99th Division in World War II based on the USA’s patriotism, internal divisions, and unity of purpose themes.
• Divisions Between the Soviet Union and the USA at the End of the WWII The current paper uses examples to present the issues that led to the division between the United States and the Soviet Union after the Second World War.
• Communism in Europe and America After World War II A review of the factors leading to communist growth in Europe and its failure in the United States is valuable for understanding this critical historical period and its outcomes.
• Camps for Displaced Persons After the End of World War II In the years after the end of World War II, there were many camps for displaced persons – the liberated people had nowhere to return, or it was challenging to do.
• Change of Population in the USA Since World War Two The population of the minorities since World War II experienced a notable increase. The minority group is consists of Hispanics, Asians, and the growing American Indian people.
• African Americans During World War II During World War II, African Americans served in every capacity while simultaneously struggling to advance their status in society and gain more civil rights.
• Nazis Prosecution for the World War II Crimes The violence introduced to the world by Nazi Germany deserves a transformation of the war crime notion. It is the only privilege the participants of criminalistic schemes deserve.
• World War II: Impact on American Society World War II had a tremendous impact on people, and its end promoted the middle and working-class Americans to live a better life than they lived before the war.
• Nazi Germany’s Resources and Demise in World War II The efforts of different countries managed to deliver victory after Nazi Germany became unstable and incapable of supporting the ongoing war.
• Atomic Bomb Technology and World War II Outcomes The Hiroshima bombing, the event that ultimately led to the surrender of Japan, was an indication of the level of technological advancement.
• American-Japanese Military and Race Conflicts in the Book “War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War” The issues of prejudice, tunnel vision and inability to see the situation from all sides are described in the present book.
• The Fall of the Grand Alliance Against the Axis Powers Before the End of WWII War is political. International politics have an influence on global wars. The Second War was a war of actions, words, and fierce battles between the UK, US, former Soviet Union and the Nazi rule.
• How World War Two Affected Black Immigration? The black population benefited from World War Two in various ways but they also faced untold sufferings at the hands of people who considered them as none or less human beings.
• Post World War II Artist Big names in the sculpture industry as David Smith of the United States of America also could arguably be named as the most influential artists in the industry general.
• Impact of World War II on Balkan Nationalism, States and Societies To the Balkans, the impacts of World War II were enormous on states and societies. The interplay of military and political events from the war affected the region both positively and negatively.
• Women’s Backlash in the 1950s due to WWII The Second World War provided many horrors of war. The perspective of a woman’s position was changed forever. During WWII many women had jobs and were gaining independence.
• World War II: Internment of the Japanese Americans President Roosevelt at the peak of World War II authorized the internment of Japanese citizens living in the United States.
• Russian Climate and German Progression in WWII The country’s climate is close to generally continental, even though as it rises from west to east, the influence of the Atlantic Ocean reduces.
• Social Effects in the West After World War II The post-war period was marked by changes in all spheres of social life including social security reforms and employment.
• Social and Economic Problems After World War II Having borne the brunt of the Great Depression and World War II, the American people experienced serious social and economic problems.
• Great Depression and World War II Impact on the United States Economy Both the Great Depression and World War II heavily impacted the US economy in the first half of the previous century.
• Battle of the Bulge During World War II In retrospect, the Battle of the Bulge can be seen as one of the largest strategic mistakes made by Germany due to the false assumption of military superiority.
• Great Depression and World War II for Americans The Americans encountered numerous problems during the period of the Great Depression. The Second World War also led to many problems in the United States.
• Escape from Sobibor: World War 2 Holocaust Escape from Sobibor is one of the many movies that focus on the mass murder of Jews in German concentration camps.
• World War II Impact on Racial Issues in the United States The situation with Japanese-American internees during World War II represents a unique and distinctive experience in American history.
• American Women in WWII-Related Film and Poster This paper examines the film “Casablanca” and the poster “It’s a Woman’s War Too!” in the context of determining the role of women, emphasizing contribution during wartime.
• United States-Japan Relations During World War II The development of relations between the United States and Japan, which led to the outbreak of war between the two countries, was a very complicated process.
• American Foreign Policy Since World War II This paper is a book review of American Foreign Policy since World War II, by Hook and Spanier. An acclaimed literary work, researchers have used the book in educational and political fields.
• History: American Foreign Policy since World War II The post-Cold War era in the American society can be deemed as an essential epoch in the U.S. history, as it allowed for retrieving the answers to some of the most complicated questions.
• World War II, The Cold War and New Europe The WWII and its aftermath resulted in the development of another opposition of superstates. The former allies were not able to able to determine the spheres of their influence and make a compromise.
• Women in the Workplace After WWII To understand how the position of women in the workplace changed after World War II was over, it is necessary to understand what conditions there were before the end of this war.
• US – Japan Economic Relations in WWII The paper studies international relations between Japan and the USA, Japanese aggression and its role in World War II, and Japan’s economic growth.
• History of Post WWII Every leader had own plan for the Yalta Conference: Roosevelt claimed for Soviet support in the U.S. Pacific War against Japan, particularly invading Japan.
• The Crete Battle of World War II World War II consisted of various battles among them, the Crete battle in which Germany invaded the territory that was hitherto controlled by the British and Greece troops.
• What Happened in Egypt During World War 2?
• Why Did Japan Get Involved in World War 2?
• Who Defeated Japan in World War 2?
• What Role Did Military Intelligence Play in World War 2?
• Did the Soviets Win World War 2?
• What Are the Roles of African Americans During World War 2?
• How Did World War 2 Change the Attitudes of Women and Minorities Toward Their Status in American Society?
• How Did The Versailles Treaty Help World War 2?
• How Did World War 2 Affect Surgical Procedures?
• What Made Japan Lose World War 2?
• Why Did France Surrender to Germany at the Beginning of World War 2?
• How Did World War 2 Come to an End in Europe?
• What Was the Significance of D-Day to the Outcome of World War 2?
• Did Nordic Countries Recognize the Gathering Storm of World War 2?
• What Effect Did World War 2 Have on Life in Barking and Dagenham?
• Why Did Germany Keep Fighting in World War 2?
• How Did World War 2 Begin and End?
• Were the Atomic Bombs Used in World War 2 Justified?
• How Did World War 2 Affect Women’s Rights?
• What Was the Development Process of Atomic Bomb Which Leads Its Impact on World War 2?
• Was Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki Necessary to End World War 2?
• How Did World War 2 Affect Medical Treatment in Tennessee?
• When Did the Soviet Union Turn Against Germany in World War 2?
• Which Country Won the War 2?
• Was the Cold War Inevitable After World War 2?
• What Country Has the Most Deaths in World War 2?
• Why Were British Troops in Egypt in World War 2?
• Which Country Was the Most Important in World War 2?
• Did the Bretton Woods Conference Help the World Economy After World War 2?
• How Did World War 2 Transform American Society and Government?
• The major battles of World War II.
• The Holocaust during WWII.
• The role of the Manhattan Project in WWII.
• Propaganda in WWII.
• Civilian support during World War II.
• Codebreaking in World War II.
• Resistance movements during WWII.
• War crimes in World War II.
• The Pacific theater of WWII.
• The impact of technology on the WWII course.
• The Battle of Stalingrad—the turning point in the Eastern Front.
• The impact of the Yalta Conference decisions.
• The Battle of Kursk—the largest tank battle in history.
• The challenges of the Allied invasion of Italy.
• The role of African Americans in WWII.
• WWII and the Chinese resistance.
• The costs of the Battle of Iwo Jima.
• The implications of the Tehran Conference.
• Long-term psychological effects of WWII on veterans.
• The Soviet partisan movement during WWII.

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These essay examples and topics on World War 2 were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

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Student Resources

The National WWII Museum is here to help you explore the history and lessons of WWII and to learn how WWII helped shape the world we live in today. Whether you’re looking for resources for a school project or just want to learn more about WWII, check out our list of recommended books and websites, research starters and fact sheets, and annual contests.

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World War 2 Research Topics

February 19 2024 10:29 AM

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They say that it is wise to learn from one's own mistakes. Indeed, analyzing one's past and realizing what went wrong helps avoid making the same mistakes. For this reason, good WW2 essay topics are extremely important, as they deal with a disastrous event in humanity's history. While choosing one of the World War II paper topics, remember that every detail matters, and no place in the world has not been affected by the war.

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List the good World War II research topics you might use to research and compose your paper.

World War II Research Topics

• The history of the creation of The Allies of WWII.
• Zygmunt Berling and his contribution to the anti-Nazi movement in Poland.
• Participation of the U.S. in World War II: ambivalent motives.
• The army of India during WWII: 2,5 million volunteers who fought for freedom.
• The position and participation of Australia in World War II.
• German occupation of Belgium during WWII: how the civilian life was organized.
• The role of Polish military shock troops in the battles of WW2.
• The reasons for Japan's joining the Axis in World War 2.
• Creation and effectiveness of the Korean Liberation Army. How the concept of the Korean army changed after the end of World War II.
• Governments of different countries committed War Crimes during World War II.
• The role of Belgian resistance groups in the course of the war within the country: the impact on nation's views and attitudes.
• The Axis in WWII: Military involvement of different countries during the war.
• The Bretton Woods system was a necessary measure of dealing with the destructive consequences of WWII.
• Changes in the political and economic systems of Yugoslavia during World War II.
• Ideological principles used by the Axis. The literature and philosophy are used as a basis for their actions.
• Norwegian Campaign: the brightest attempt for liberation during World War II.
• Hungarian position in WWII: collaboration with Germany and the attempt to make peace.
• Social and economic conditions in Italy during the years of WWII.
• Polish military forces in USSR: contribution to the course of the war.
• The passive participation of Egypt in World War II: the country's land was used as a battlefield.
• 1943 Bengal famine: the tragic outcome of the war on an unbelievable scale.
• Hitler and Mussolini's debates over Austrian Nazis: the interests of each party.
• The Nazi's extermination camps: organization, activity, importance.
• USSR leaders' intention to join the Axis. Why it did not happen: a research into the details.
• Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and its significance for the course of the war.
• The political and economic changes introduced by Reichskommissariat Ukraine.
• The controversial position of Thailand during WWII: ambivalent values and interests of the country's government.
• List the countries that maintained total neutrality during the war. Is it ethically approvable for you to stay out of a conflict of the world's scale?
• Resistance movement in Denmark during World War II: subtle work on political agenda spreading.
• Joseph Stalin's changing position regarding the Nazis during WWII.
• The idea of the Latin Block was created in Spain during WWII.
• Division of the territory of France during World War II.
• The reasons for the Pearl Harbor attack and its impact on WWII course.
• How the modern world would look if the Axis gained victory in World War II?
• Leaders of the Axis: personal qualities as a key factor in forming the history of humanity.
• The concept of Blitzkrieg, its participants, and philosophy.
• Operation "Barbarossa": How it was organized.
• World War II in the Islamic world.
• How WWII impacted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• Social and economic changes in the British Empire during WWII.
• Shifts in the U.S. social moods during the Great Depression and WWII.
• Forced participation of Chinese laborers in World War II.
• Soviet Partisan movement: subtle fight behind the battlefield.
• Red Army strategies and military innovations.
• Biological weapons developed in Japan during World War 2.
• The economic situation of the opposing parties in World War II.
• Ambitions of Hitler: The goals Fuhrer aimed at.
• The phenomenon of the Holocaust during WW2: geography, scope, numbers.
• European Settlement: the aftermath of the World War II.
• Myths and stereotypes about the Nazis army.
• Shocking stories of the Red Army's interaction with civilian Germans.
• Lithuanian Revolution of 1940: political reforms during the war.
• The impact of WWII on the environment of the Earth.
• The Baltic States in World War II.
• Battle of the Bulge: A detailed analysis of the military episode.
• Europe was a field for Hitler and Stalin's competition.
• The opposition of the USSR and Finland in 1940. The Finnish resolution.
• Hirota foreign policy and its significance in the conditions of World War II.
• Jewish children: destinies of the Holocaust. Analysis of the documented cases.
• Personalities of the generals appointed by Stalin.
• The power of the Third Reich during World War II.
• War design: how Hitler planned WWII.
• 1941 Campaign: a turning point during the war for the USSR.
• The fall of Berlin: reasons, participants, the aftermath.
• The closest circle of Hitler: a view of his plans from within.
• Nazi massacre in Rome: human factor in the global tragedy.
• Pacific War in the conditions of World War 2. Political rearrangements of the participating
• Volunteer armies in World War II: the motivation of civilians to achieve fairness.
• Information encoding in secret messaging during World War II.
• Mussolini's position and motives in World War II.
• Comparison of economic and political powers in Europe before World War II and after the end of the war.
• Is the current conflict between Israel and Palestine in any way rooted in the Second World War?
• The recent rise in Anti-Semitism – Have we learned nothing from World War 2?
• Examine the role of the Secret Service during WW2.
• The role of women in World War II.
• Was the attack on Hiroshima justifiable?
• Rights of African Americans and WW2.
• The impact of World War 2 on ordinary people.
• The effect of WWII on Canada.
• Effect of Propaganda during the Second World War.

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World War II: American perspectives

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Choosing a topic

• Research Starters
• World War II - History.com
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Overview websites

• Guide to WWII Materials A compilation of online resources available from the Library of Congress and from external websites.
• Learn More about World War II A long bibliography of websites and books, to support the PBS documentary The War. There are a number of links to veterans' organizations at the bottom of the page.
• Military Resources: World War II Links to a number of online resources, from the National Archives.
• Refseek Refseek is a document search engine that locates otherwise hard-to-find websites and documents.
• The War in Europe by the Numbers Look here for statistical information about different aspects of the war.
• The War in the Pacific by the Numbers Data about the war in the Pacific, from the National WWII Museum.
• World War II Resources A collection of links to primary and secondary sources from Ibiblio.

Primary sources

• American Presidency Project A comprehensive collection of presidential papers, speeches, executive orders, etc. from President Washington through the current president.
• America on the Homefront Large collection of documents, images and audio files from the National Archives.
• Digital Collections of the National WWII Museum Photos and short video memoirs, from the museum located in New Orleans.
• Digital Public Library of America Large index of digitized materials from many collections and institutions.
• Eyewitness to World War II Memoirs, documents, radio broadcasts, etc. from the US and abroad during World War II.
• Franklin: Digitized Collections Primary source documents from the FDR Presidential Library and Museum.
• HyperWar Links to primary source documents from American and Great Britain.
• The Institute on World War II and the Human Experience Links to digitized collections of letters and memoirs from American servicemen and servicewomen.
• Internet Archive Large collection of historic images, text, sound files and video/film.
• Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives Primary sources related to Japanese internment.
• LoC: World War II Resource Guide The Library of Congress collection of a wide variety of materials related to World War II.
• National Archives World War II Records Collection of primary sources related to WWII from the National Archives.
• On the Homefront Posters and illustrations from WWII, compiled by the Library of Congress.
• Political cartoons research guide A link to the Political Cartoons research guide. Look for cartoons in the relevant time period.
• Roosevelt: A Call for Sacrifice The full text of Franklin D. Roosevelt's April 1942 speech.
• A Visual History: 1940–1963 : Political Cartoons by Clifford Berryman and Jim Berryman Cartoons illustrating issues during WWII and the early Cold War.
• Words of Peace, Words of War Treaties, declarations, words of surrender, etc., organized by year.
• World War II (Docs Teach) A collection of primary sources and lessons to teach analysis of these sources.
• World War II by the Numbers Statistical data on the war.
• World War II Documents A collection of primary source documents from the Yale University Avalon Project.
• World War II Sourcebook Documents from before, during and after World War II. Includes materials from Europe, Asia and the United States.

Jewish immigration to the US

• How Many Refugees Came to the United States from 1933-1945? Immigration data from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Immigration Policy in World War II Data from the Gilder Lehrman Institute.
• Jewish Virtual Library Background information and current news about Judaism and Israel.
• Jewish Women's Archive Use this encyclopedia to find information about Jewish women authors.
• A Ship of Jewish Refugees Was Refused U.S. Landing in 1939 Background information about the St. Louis.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Information about the Holocaust from the museum in Washington DC.
• Voyage of the St. Louis Primary and background information.

Atomic bomb

• Atomic Bomb and the End of WWII A collection of primary sources from the National Security Archive.
• Hiroshima and Nagasaki Large collection of documents related to the Trinity project and later testing of nuclear weapons. Includes government documents, photographs, data charts, and video footage.
• Hiroshima Peace Site Website for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
• Tale of Two Cities US War Department footage of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

United Nations

• Formation of the United Nations Overview information from the US Department of State.
• History of the United Nations An overview of the origination of the UN, with links to important documents.
• UN History Project Educational resources for researching the history of the United Nations, developed by educators at Harvard University.
• United Nations Oral History Audio interviews and transcripts of memoirs important contributors to the work of the UN, including people who attended the 1945 San Francisco Conference.
• United Nations Documents Links to primary sources, from Yale's Avalon Project.
• Dr. Seuss Went to War Political cartoons drawn by Dr. Seuss during World War II.
• Powers of Persuasion A collection of WWII poster art from the National Archives.
• World War II Poster Collection Images from a Northwestern University collection.

African Americans in WWII

• Breath of Freedom A 2014 Smithsonian Channel television program about the post-war civil rights experiences of African Americans, available through a number of TV and online subscriptions.
• History of Black Women in WWII Information from the National Women's Memorial.
• Pictures of African Americans During World War II Images from the National Archives.
• Tuskeegee Airmen Documents and papers about the famed group.
• Why African-American Soldiers Saw World War II as a Two-Front Battle An article from Smithsonian Magazine.

Women in WWII

• Experiencing War: Women at War Audio and video interviews of women who participated in four different wars, including WWII.
• The History of Wartime Nurses Describes the roles of nurses serving in combat arenas from Revolutionary times through the Vietnam War.
• Women Airforce Service Pilots Read letters written by female US military pilots during WWII.
• Women of World War II Describes the roles of women in a variety of military branches.

Mexican Americans in WWII

• Fighting on Two Fronts: Latinos in the Military An article from the National Park Service.
• Hispanics in Service Library of Congress collection of hispanic veterans' narratives.
• Hispanics in the U.S. Army Historical information from the Army website. Scroll down to WWII.
• Mexican American Soldiers In World War Two Fought Abroad To Win At Home An article from the Huffington Post with links to data.
• US Latino & Latina World War II Oral History Project This is an archived copy of an online project. Not attractive but the links work.
• Next: Foreign perspectives >>
• Last Updated: Mar 1, 2023 11:45 AM
• URL: https://library.menloschool.org/ww2

World War II

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Related Research Guides

Kean university history department.

Visit the History Department's web page for excellent "Research Paper" resources:

Subject-Focused Encyclopedias

Need to select a research topic or find background information?  

The Reference Collection includes a variety of different sources, such as: subject-focused encyclopedias, handbooks, almanacs, maps/atlases, statistical compendiums, dictionaries, and more.   Look here to find introductory articles on subject-related topics. The broad perspective offered by such articles often proves helpful for narrowing research topics before pursuing more in-depth information.  

This guide provides some recommendations for encyclopedias and other reference resources that might provide helpful information relating to your topic.

Recommended Subject-Focused Books

Glory in Their Spirit

Electronic Resource

Citizen Internees

Daily Life in Nazi-Occupied Europe

Tragedy and Triumph

Unsung Heroes of World War II

War at the Margins

Rethinking World War Two

The Red Army and the Second World War

Innocent Witnesses

Recommended online reference databases.

The following databases provide access to online encyclopedias covering multidisciplinary topics. Remember, these subject encyclopedias are great sources of background information on countless topics.

Working from off campus?  If so, you will need to log in with your Kean Google username and password.

Recommended Multimedia Databases

Recommended statistics databases.

The following databases provide access to statistics and other kinds of data.

Working from off campus? If so, you will need to log in with your Kean Google username and password.

• Next: Find Books >>
• Last Updated: Apr 19, 2024 3:16 PM
• URL: https://libguides.kean.edu/worldwarII

World War II

Best places to start, world war ii notes.

• Books & Films
• Journal Articles
• Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
• Special Topics This link opens in a new window
• Cite Sources
• Related LibGuides
• WWII Resources
• Encyclopedias & Databases
• Biographical Sources
• Chronologies & Maps
• Research Tips

• Salem History Online This link opens in a new window Full-text access to the Great Lives & Great Events Encyclopedias, which provide overviews of important events and major figures throughout history. Volumes begin with the ancient world and continue through the 20th century.

Provides information and insights into military conflicts, covering all time periods and regions. Includes essays, timelines, images, and primary sources.

• American National Biography This link opens in a new window Read biographies of presidents, military officers, secretaries of state, war correspondents and any other people who have shaped American history and culture.
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window Read biographies of politicians, including prime ministers, military officers, and any other people who have shaped British history and culture.
• Salem History Online This link opens in a new window Provides overviews of the lives of major figures in world history throughout the twentieth century.

• United States Military Academy Atlases Includes atlases depicting individual battles from ancient times through modern Iraq.
• World War II Military Situation Maps "Contains maps showing troop positions beginning on June 6, 1944 to July 26, 1945. Starting with the D-Day Invasion, the maps give daily details on the military campaigns in Western Europe, showing the progress of the Allied Forces as they push towards Germany." (from Library of Congress)

Start with some background reading. 

• Otherwise, identifying books and articles will take longer.

Tip: Use the links and books on this tab to help you locate  names ,  dates , and  keywords .

• Your research will be better  and  take less time!
• Use bibliographies  to locate other books and articles.
• Watch out for authors and/or titles that are cited over and over; they may be important.

Important Names, Dates, & Facts

• World War II is also known as "the Good War"
• Presidents during the War -- Franklin Roosevelt, 1939 - April 1945; Harry Truman, April 1945 - 1952
• Bookends to US active involvement: 12/7/1941 - Pearl Harbor attacked by Japanese; Dropping of atomic bomb on Hiroshima (8/6/1945) and Nagasaki (8/9/1945)
• No armistice for WWII -- allies took the war into Germany to Hitler's front stoop and into Japan and drubbed both into submission
• V-E Day (Victory in Europe) = May 8, 1945
• V-J Day (Victory in Japan) = August 14, 1945 

Important Associated Happenings

• Manhattan Project
• Internment camps for Japanese/Americans
• Nuremberg war crimes trials (also lesser publicized Japanese war crimes trials)

Important Outcomes/Changes because of the War

• United Nations
• Nationhood of Israel -- direct response to world reaction to Holocaust
• Nuclear age
• Integration of armed forces
• Women moved from the home to the work force -- effect on marriage, children, labor...
• Next: Books & Films >>
• Last Updated: Dec 1, 2023 8:19 AM
• URL: https://hbl.gcc.libguides.com/ww2

Understanding the Scope of World War 2

World War 2 wasn’t just a series of battles. It was a global phenomenon that reshaped nations, cultures, and the very fabric of human civilization. To fully grasp the magnitude of this war, students must appreciate the broader picture— from the major events to the aftereffects that ripple into today’s geopolitics.

World War 2 wasn’t just a series of battles or mere dates in history textbooks; it was a transformative epoch that shifted the 20th century. It was a global phenomenon that reshaped nations, cultures, and the very fabric of human civilization.

The stories from the frontlines, while pivotal, are just one dimension. From the intense political maneuvers and espionage missions to the socio-cultural transformations that ensued, there’s an ocean of World War 2 topics to explore.

In my experience, many students get so engrossed in the prominent WW2 research topics that they sometimes overlook the profound societal and technological shifts. The war expedited technological advancements, leading to innovations and even the space race.

Choosing the Right Topic for WW2 Research Paper

The first and perhaps most crucial step is selecting your focus. While there are countless World War 2 consequences topics to explore, choosing one that genuinely piques your interest is essential. From the intricacies of military strategies to the socio-cultural impacts, every WW2 topic offers a unique perspective. According to general IB criteria, aligning your genuine interests with academic standards often yields the best results.

Going Thorough Research for WW2 Research Paper

As I know, thorough research forms the backbone of any compelling research paper. Primary sources, firsthand accounts, and authentic records give a factual foundation. On the other hand, secondary sources provide analysis and interpretation. Be sure to frame some pertinent research questions about World War 2 to guide your exploration.

The list of similar articles:

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Military Topics for Research Paper

How to write an essay on army values, making a strong thesis statement for ww2 research paper.

Every IB student understands the weight of a robust thesis statement. Your thesis should reflect your chosen WW2 research topic and provide a fresh viewpoint. For instance, if your focus is on WW2 project topics related to technological advancements, your thesis might revolve around how these innovations changed the course of battles.

Structuring World War 2 Research Paper

A clear structure is paramount. Start with an engaging introduction where you present your World War 2 research topic. In the body, dissect key events, figures, or consequences in detail. And in conclusion, tie all your findings together, highlighting the broader implications.

Revising and Proofreading World War 2 Research Paper

As any seasoned writer would advise, revisiting your work with fresh eyes can make a difference. It ensures factual accuracy, logical flow, and overall coherence.

Top WW2 Research Paper Topics to Consider

Drawing from my extensive background in the subject, and with a little help from our team of expert History essay writers , here are some intriguing topics to ignite your curiosity:

• Military Strategies & Tactics: The Art of War.
• The Political Landscape: Alliances and Treacheries.
• Women in WW2: Beyond the Home Front.
• Technology’s Role: From Enigma to the Atomic Bomb.
• The War’s Aftermath: The Dawn of the Cold War.
• WW2’s Influence on Modern Pop Culture.
• Propaganda’s Power: How Nations Were Moved.
• World War II’s Unsung Heroes.
• The Evolution of Warfare: Comparing WWI and WWII.
• The Human Cost: Stories Beyond the Battlefield.
• The Home Front: Mobilizing Industries and Morale.  
• Resistance Movements: The Underground War.  Tales of bravery from resistance fighters across Europe.
• The Holocaust: The Darkest Chapter. The most harrowing part of WW2.
• World War 2 and the Global Economy.  Economic shifts and consequences that laid the foundation for today’s economic order.
• Naval Warfare: The Battle of the Seas.  Understand the strategic importance of naval dominance.
• Intelligence and Espionage: Secrets of the War.  Stories of spies, their tactics, and their role in the war.
• Asian Theatre: Japan’s Expansion and its Impact.  Delving into the Pacific battles and Japan’s wartime strategy.
• The African Front: The War Beyond Europe’s Borders.  Exploring the lesser-known battlegrounds.
• Children of the War: Youth Amidst Conflict.  The tales of the youngest affected by the war.
• Medical Advancements and Challenges.  How did medicine evolve in the cauldron of WW2?
• Prisoners of War: Life in Captivity.  Personal accounts of soldiers taken captive.
• Aerial Battles: Dominance in the Skies.  Chronicling key air battles and their significance.
• The Role of Artists and Writers in WW2.  How did creatives contribute to the war effort?
• Allied Powers: Dynamics and Differences.  Delving into the unity and tensions between allies.
• Decoding War Communications.  Understanding wartime coding and the significance of breaking them.

Each of these topics not only represents an interesting WW2 topic but can lead to a nuanced understanding of the broader historical context. The depth and breadth of World War II offer countless avenues for study, and these topics are just the tip of the iceberg. 

World War II remains an inexhaustible reservoir of research topics ripe for exploration. Tapping into this rich tapestry of events, characters, and consequences is more than just an academic exercise. It’s a journey into understanding the human spirit, resilience, and the complexities of global geopolitics. If ever you find yourself lost amidst the vast topics about World War 2, remember: it’s about finding a unique voice in the vast chorus of history.

In all other cases at Writing Metier , there is a team of writers who can help with World War 2 research papers . And always, always keep your passion for learning alive.

Free topic suggestions

Laura Orta is an avid author on Writing Metier's blog. Before embarking on her writing career, she practiced media law in one of the local media. Aside from writing, she works as a private tutor to help students with their academic needs. Laura and her husband share their home near the ocean in northern Portugal with two extraordinary boys and a lifetime collection of books.

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How to Write about World War 2 – Essay Topics & Examples

The Second World War was a turning point in history that changed the world as we know it. Over two thousand days of hardship, courage, victory, and loss still fascinate and influence historians, filmmakers, novelists, and politicians worldwide. You may be asked to write a research paper or an essay on this 20th century conflict as part of your coursework. Our team has prepared several fascinating ideas you may explore in your writing.

• 🎖️ Top 10 World War 2 Topics
• 💡 Interesting WW2 Topics
• 🏆 Best WW2 Research Topics
• 📚 Research Questions
• ✒️ World War 2 Essay Questions
• 📝 World War 2 Essay Examples
• 🪖 General Information about WW2

🔗 References

🎖️ top 10 world war 2 essay topics.

We’ve compiled the topics that can inspire you to write an essay. To make the process simpler, we have included the main messages of each paper.

• Could the Axis powers have been defeated without opening the second front? Explore how the war would have gone without the invasion of Normandy.
• Why did Japan decide to side with Germany and Italy? List the social and political reasons that pushed the Empire of Japan to become an Axis power.
• Explore the impact of the battle for Stalingrad on the course of WW2. Show how the battle of Stalingrad turned the tide of war on the Eastern front.
• What were the causes of Germany’s military success in 1941? Name the main causes of Germany’s successful assault on the Soviet Union.
• Discuss the dissolution of the British Empire after WW2. Talk about the leading consequences of disbanding the British Empire in its former colonies.
• What led to the start of WW2? Explore political and economic factors that caused the start of the Second World War.
• Was the US justified in using nuclear weapons against Japan? Explain the reasoning behind USA’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• Discuss the role of the Munich Agreement in the rise of Nazi Germany . Explain how the Munich Agreement became one of the precursors of WW2 and the occupation of Western Europe.
• Explore the crucial battles of WW2. Discuss the pivotal conflicts of both the Western and Eastern fronts.
• Discuss the initial losses of the USSR in 1941-1942. Assess the reasons behind the colossal losses of the USSR in civilian and military casualties.

💡 Interesting WW2 Argumentative Essay Topics

Look at our list of the most intriguing titles dedicated to the cultural and military developments before, during, and after World War 2. You may find WW2 argumentative essay topics that will resonate with you and help you write an exceptional paper.

WW2 Essay Topics: Culture

Here, we unearth how World War II impacted the world’s cultures, making it a captivating subject for social studies enthusiasts seeking a deeper understanding of this transformative era.

• Explain the cultural impact of WW2 on the movie industry. Tell your readers about how WW2 influenced the American cinematic landscape in movies like Casablanca .
• How WW2 impacted American culture during the Cold War . Explore how the war’s events influenced American society, including its vehement anti-communist sentiment.
• The role of traditional culture in WW2 Japan. Discuss the role of bushido and other traditional elements in Japan’s wartime culture .
• Explore the changes in the USSR’s culture during the war period. Show how WW2 shaped different cultural aspects in the besieged USSR.
• How WW2 influenced the 20th-century music scene. Determine how the war influenced the music scene of the 1940s.
• The cultural impact of WW2 on modern video games. Explore the influence of WW2 on modern video games such as Call of Duty , Wolfenstein , and World of Tanks .
• Art and propaganda in Nazi Germany . Explain how Nazi Germany used art and movies such as Triumph of the Will in its propaganda machine.
• How WW2 changed attitude towards art and architecture. Tell about the main changes in architecture and art in the post-war period.
• Explore Germany’s post-war culture. Explore the cultural landscape of West and East Germany after the war.
• Discuss the cultural differences in North and South Korea after WW2. Show how cultures developed differently on different sides of the Korean peninsula.
• Veteran narratives in WW2 literature: An examination of memoirs and fictional works. Analyze how veterans’ stories, whether based on personal experiences or fictionalized, contributed to the cultural understanding of the war and its enduring impact on society.

WW2 Essay Topics: Military

This section delves into military records. It offers diverse ideas, inviting you to explore the strategic and tactical facets of the Second World War’s unparalleled military campaigns and conflicts.

• Which factors helped launch the German war machine? Explain the laws and decisions that made Germany the military powerhouse of Europe.
• What gave the Japanese superiority in the Pacific Theater? Detail the tactics, strategies, and weaponry that helped the Japanese army wage war in the Pacific.
• How the Lend-Lease Act helped the Soviet war effort. Show the significance of American aid in the USSR’s battles across the Eastern front.
• Explore the main reasons for Italy’s military losses in Africa. Tell about the tactical and strategic factors that caused Italy’s defeat in Africa.
• Compare the Soviet and German military in 1941. Give a rough comparison of the different army types both sides possessed at the start of their conflict.
• Discuss the significance of operation Bagration. Describe the main results of Operation Bagration and its role in the liberation of Belarus and Poland.
• Explore the results of the invasion of Normandy in 1944 . Explore the preparations, execution, and aftermath of D-Day .
• Could Germany have won WW2 with nuclear weapons? Analyze a scenario when Germany got hold of WMDs before the war ended and its consequences.
• Which military innovations spelled the turning point in the war? Tell about the most powerful weapons that helped the Allies win.
• Explore the military tech that was pioneered during WW2. Describe the most remarkable military technology that was developed during the conflict.

🏆 Best WW2 Research Paper Topics

We hand-picked a collection of interesting topics that will make your research paper shine and inspire you to write a great thesis statement . These WW2 research paper titles explore economic transformation and scientific developments during this period.

WW2 Research Paper Topics: Economy

Amid the tapestry of 20th-century wars, World War II emerged as a pivotal economic challenge. We present various research paper topics delving into the war’s economic dimensions. Expand your general knowledge by exploring the profound impact of economics on the global stage during this transformative period.

• What was the economic situation in Europe before WW2? Explore what the economy of European countries was before the war.
• Explore the factors that led to Germany’s economic rise in 1932-1939. Tell how Germany rose to economic power despite the catastrophe of the Weimar Republic .
• Discuss the causes of economic growth in post-war Japan . Describe laws and policies that caused the Japanese economic boom after WW2.
• What were the main factors of US post-war prosperity? Explain how the US enjoyed decades of prosperity post-conflict through generous loans to the suffering parties.
• Assess the impact of the war on the Italian economy. Describe the leading causes of Italy’s economic growth post-WW2.
• Explain the leading causes of industrialization in the pre-war USSR. Tell about the major decisions and policies that led to the USSR’s rapid industrialization in the 1930s.
• Discuss WW2’s impact on the developing world. Explore how the war impacted the developing countries outside the US and Europe.
• Which policies were used to fund the reconstruction of the European economy? Assess policies that led to progress in rebuilding post-war Europe, including the Marshall Plan .
• Explore the impact of war bonds on US military capacity . Showcase how war bonds were crucial in funding the US efforts in the Pacific and other war theaters.
• How the USSR funded its war machine. Explore the sources used for building and maintaining the Soviet military capacity.
• The global economic order and enduring issues: Post-World War II Bretton Woods Conference. Analyze how the decisions made at Bretton Woods, including the creation of the IMF or World Bank, continue to shape global economic policies and financial stability today.

WW2 Research Paper Topics: Science & Technology

Embark on a journey of historical research as we unveil captivating research paper topics in science and technology. You can explore remarkable breakthroughs, like innovations in the construction of planes.

• Could the atomic bomb have been made without WW2? Explain how World War 2 impacted the process of the creation of the atomic bomb.
• The role of German scientists in the NASA space program . Discuss the involvement of German scientists in various NASA projects, including the moon landing project.
• Explore the impact of jet engine development on aviation . Show how the creation of jet engines changed military and commercial aircraft.
• Discuss the impact of the first electronic computers made after WW2. Explore how the first ENIACs were used after WW2 and their influence on modern machines.
• Assess the main scientific breakthroughs of the post-war period. Showcase the main innovations that came around after WW2.
• How did WW2 influence the post-war automobile industry ? Describe the influence of the war on the car manufacturing business.
• What were the leading causes of the American post-WW2 tech boom? Assess the main reasons behind post-war technological advancements in the US.
• Did the invention of the atomic bomb prevent future major wars? Explore how nuclear weapons helped prevent future global wars but still couldn’t stop lesser-scale conflicts.
• Discuss the importance of radar technology during and after the war. Show how radar technology was used during the war and beyond.
• Explore the impact of WW2 on developing body armor technology. Talk about the influence of the war in developing sufficient body protection for police, military, and civilians.
• Naval warfare in World War II: The role of technological advancements in shaping maritime strategies. Discuss how innovations reshaped naval tactics, affected maritime supremacy, and influenced crucial battles in the Pacific and Atlantic theaters.

📚 Top 8 WW2 Research Questions

• Did the US decide to enter the war only after Pearl Harbor?
• Who were the most important political figures during the conflict?
• What were the main events that caused World War 2?
• Which World War 2 battles were the most significant?
• Why is D-Day a significant historical event?
• Which countries participated in World War 2?
• What was the strategic significance of the battle of Britain for the Allied powers in WW2?
• When and how did World War 2 end?

✒️ Top 8 World War 2 Essay Questions

• What are the most impactful technologies that came out after WW2?
• Did the US play a major role in defeating the Axis powers?
• Which countries had the worst casualty rates?
• How were POWs treated by different sides?
• How WW2 changed the world?
• Is there one particular party to blame for the conflict?
• Who lost World War 2?
• How many lives were altered by World War II?

📝 Second World War Essay Examples

We have listed several essay examples to guide you and serve as real examples for your future work. They cover cultural, military, and political aspects in the aftermath of the war for the US and Japan. Each offers an extended response into what post-war societies looked like in these countries.

• Cultural Changes in America after World War II This paper explores several things that defined the 1950s, including the budding civil rights movement, the baby boom, and the rise of anti-communist propaganda. These things shaped the cultural landscape, from arts and literature to music and movies.
• American Power During World War 2 and the Cold War The essay centers around the height of America’s power after the end of WW2 and its inevitable clash with the communist ideology of the Soviet Union. It explores some less reputable tactics the US used to undermine the USSR’s influence on the world.
• Japan and World War II Led by old rivalries with its neighbor China, Japan entered WW2 as a military powerhouse. The paper discusses its initial success in the war theater and the subsequent disastrous results.

🪖 World War 2: General Information You Should Know

Before you start working, it’ll be helpful to learn about the causes and consequences of World War II. These facts will help you better establish the theme of your future essay or research paper. Prepare to dive into one of the most critical periods and learn more about it.

World War 2: Significant Events

World War 2 was the biggest in the history of humankind. During over 2000 days of the conflict, several important events happened:

• September 1, 1939 . Germany invaded Poland and started the war.
• April 9 to June 22, 1940 . Most of Western Europe fell under German jackboots.
• July 10, 1940 . Germany began a massive bombardment campaign in the United Kingdom.
• September 22, 1940 . The signing of the Tripartite Pact and the birth of the Axis Powers.
• December 7, 1941 . Japan launched the attack on Pearl Harbor.
• December 8, 1941 . The US declared war on Japan.
• December 11, 1941 . The US got into military conflict with Italy and Germany.
• June 4 – 7, 1942 . America won the Battle of Midway .
• July 9, 1942. The Allies invaded Sicily.
• September 8, 1943 . Italy surrendered, but its northern territory was still occupied.
• June 6, 1944 . The US launched a landing operation in Normandy.
• August 25, 1944 . Allies liberate Paris.
• December 16, 1944. Germany launched a counterattack known as the Battle of the Bulge .
• February 19, 1945 . US Marines stormed Iwo Jima .
• March 22, 1945 . American troops crossed the Rhine River.
• April 1, 1945 . The US military arrived on the island of Okinawa.
• April 25, 1945 . Soviet and American troops encircled Berlin.
• May 8, 1945 . Germany surrendered to the Allies, ending the war in Europe.
• August 6, 1945 . The US bombed Hiroshima with a nuclear warhead .
• August 9, 1945 . America dropped the atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki.
• September 2, 1945 . The Japanese surrendered to the Allies.

World War 2: Crucial Facts

In this part, we present crucial facts about the war that shaped the world as we know it. Take a look at the most momentous events of this conflict:

• The war involved 30 countries.
• It was the biggest war waged on the European continent.
• Europe was rebuilt through the Marshall Plan, which invested $12 billion in its economy.
• The Holocaust resulted in the death of almost the entire Jewish population in Europe.
• Germany occupied most of Western Europe and a big part of the USSR.
• Stalingrad became the turning point in the war for the Allies.

World War 2: Casualties

WW2 was one of the bloodiest conflicts in history , not even in military casualties. It was the first war that deliberately targeted civilians in various countries. Scientists and historians still can’t determine the exact number of deaths. Several countries paid the most horrific price in this conflict.

World War 2: Causes

Here, we highlighted the main factors that caused the global conflict and launched World War II. Take a look at its leading causes:

• The unjust Treaty of Versailles . The leading cause of the war lies in the humiliating conditions Germany faced after WWI. Part of its territory was annexed, and the country had to limit its army seriously. The following 20 years of economic and cultural downfall became one of the factors for the rise of Nazism.
• The failure of peace agreements. After WWI, there was a lot of hope for the League of Nations organization . Its main goal was ending wars and leading countries to solve their disputes diplomatically. Unfortunately, all of the efforts failed as military conflicts slowly but surely engulfed the world.
• The rise of authoritarian movements. The failures of diplomacy and democracy in Europe made many nations abandon these principles. It caused the rise of many authoritarian governments in Spain, Italy, and Germany.
• The formation of the Axis powers . In 1940, Italy, Japan, and Germany signed a political and military alliance, forming an anti-communist coalition of countries. They were the primary enemies of the Allies formed by France, the United Kingdom, Canada, the USA, and the USSR.
• German aggression in Europe. Even before the official start of WW2, Germany conducted military operations on the continent. In 1938, it fully annexed Austria and took Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in the autumn of the same year.
• The Great Depression . The European economy was highly indebted to the US. Governments in Germany, Italy, and France couldn’t manage economic growth sufficiently. On October 29, 1929, the US suffered the crash of the New York Stock Market and recalled all foreign loans soon after.

World War 2: Consequences & Results

World War II had long-lasting consequences that changed the world. This segment examines the major social, political, and economic transformations caused by this event.

• End of the euro-centric international power structure. WW2 ended the hegemony of Western Europe. The United States became less isolationist and more involved in global affairs.
• Start of the Cold War . After the Second World War, the US and the USSR became the leading political poles of the world. Both sides wanted to curb the spreading influence of their opponent.
• The end of empires . WW2 saw the disbanding of the French, British, Dutch, Portuguese, and Belgian empires. Many of their former colonies became independent states.
• Democratization of foreign policy . After destroying authoritarian regimes, the US turned to a more democratic foreign policy regarding its close and distant neighbors. It was greatly formed by local and world public opinion.
• A movement for independence in many countries . The fall of European hegemony worldwide caused many of its former territories to struggle for independence . Most prominently, it gave birth to the state of Israel.

We hope you found the right topic in the sea of WW2 research paper topics we offer in this article. Be sure to use our examples and short guide. Share this article with friends who’ll find it helpful.

• World War II in Europe. Timeline with Photos and Text. – The History of Place.
• World War II Timeline Experience. – American Battle Monuments Comission.
• Chronological Timeline of the War. – D-Day, Normandy and Beyond.
• War in the Pacific. – Crown, New Zeland History
• 6 Little Known Facts About WWII. – History, AETN UK
• Human Cost of WWII: A Breakdown of Military and Civilian Deaths. – Kane Dane, Southwest Journal
• World War II Fast Facts. – Cable News Network
• World War II Fatalities By Country. – Kiegan Barron, WorldAtlas
• What Caused Germany to Start Another War? – American Historical Association
• International Relations Since 1945 (INTR-5106). Impact of World War II on Global Politics. – Adeel Hassan, University of Sargodha

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Women, gender, and world war ii.

• Melissa A. McEuen Melissa A. McEuen Department of History, Transylvania University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.55
• Published online: 09 June 2016

The Second World War changed the United States for women, and women in turn transformed their nation. Over three hundred fifty thousand women volunteered for military service, while twenty times as many stepped into civilian jobs, including positions previously closed to them. More than seven million women who had not been wage earners before the war joined eleven million women already in the American work force. Between 1941 and 1945, an untold number moved away from their hometowns to take advantage of wartime opportunities, but many more remained in place, organizing home front initiatives to conserve resources, to build morale, to raise funds, and to fill jobs left by men who entered military service.

The U.S. government, together with the nation’s private sector, instructed women on many fronts and carefully scrutinized their responses to the wartime emergency. The foremost message to women—that their activities and sacrifices would be needed only “for the duration” of the war—was both a promise and an order, suggesting that the war and the opportunities it created would end simultaneously. Social mores were tested by the demands of war, allowing women to benefit from the shifts and make alterations of their own. Yet dominant gender norms provided ways to maintain social order amidst fast-paced change, and when some women challenged these norms, they faced harsh criticism. Race, class, sexuality, age, religion, education, and region of birth, among other factors, combined to limit opportunities for some women while expanding them for others.

However temporary and unprecedented the wartime crisis, American women would find that their individual and collective experiences from 1941 to 1945 prevented them from stepping back into a prewar social and economic structure. By stretching and reshaping gender norms and roles, World War II and the women who lived it laid solid foundations for the various civil rights movements that would sweep the United States and grip the American imagination in the second half of the 20th century.

• masculinity
• opportunities
• World War II

The wartime arenas where American women witnessed—and often helped to generate—crucial changes and challenges were wage-based employment, volunteer work, military service, and sexual expression. In each of these arenas, women exercised initiative, autonomy, circumspection, caution, or discretion according to their individual needs and the dictates of patriotic duty.

Wage Work and Opportunity

Economic opportunities abounded for women willing and able to seize them. Wage work in war industries offered hourly pay rates much higher than those to which most women had been accustomed, with the best wages paid in munitions plants and the aircraft industry. Women were encouraged to apply for “war work” after President Franklin Roosevelt created the U.S. War Manpower Commission (WMC) to mobilize Americans in various venues for a total war effort. In August 1942 , the WMC organized a Women’s Advisory Committee to consider how female employees could be used most effectively toward this end. Late in 1942 , the WMC announced a new campaign to recruit women workers after estimating that “the great majority” of some five million new employees in 1943 would have to be women. The WMC also identified one hundred U.S. cities as “Critical War Areas,” with intent to marshal the “widely dispersed” womanpower reserves in these cities. The main targets were local married women who already lived in the designated metropolitan areas, including middle-aged and older individuals who had never worked outside their homes or whose experience was limited to domestic work. A major challenge would be “to remove social stigma attached to the idea of women working,” the WMC literature noted. 1 Since the employment of married women had been a long-standing practice in working-class families and in the middle-class African American community, the WMC propaganda implicitly targeted white middle-class women who had not typically worked for wages.

Madison Avenue advertising agencies designed and produced a variety of propaganda campaigns for the U.S. government, including the WMC’s bold declaration and appeal late in 1942 : “Women Workers Will Win the War.” Local U.S. Employment Service offices coordinated efforts to place women in jobs best suited to their skills and family needs. Mothers with children under fourteen were encouraged not to seek employment outside their homes unless other family members or trusted neighbors could offer reliable childcare. 2 The propaganda campaigns generated posters, billboards, films, and radio announcements urging women to join the work force; some touted their domestic skills as advantageous for carrying out defense work, since women were thought to excel at repetitive tasks requiring small operations with fine details. While the images overwhelmingly featured young, white, married women, an occasional entreaty announced, “Grandma’s got her gun,” referring to an elderly worker’s riveting tool. Several corporations with U.S. government contracts proudly sponsored chapters of the War Working Grandmothers of America. In Washington war agencies, the demographic defined as “older” meant “women over 35.” 3 Women of color rarely appeared in advertisements for industrial work, although their accomplishments and workplace awards were widely reviewed in African American newspapers and journals, including the NAACP’s principal publication, The Crisis , and the National Urban League’s Opportunity . Such coverage constituted a vital part of the “Double V” campaign, an effort launched by the black press to defeat racism at home while troops fought fascism abroad. 4

American women became artillery inspectors, aircraft welders, sheet metal assemblers, gear cutters, lathe operators, chemical analysts, and mechanics of all kinds. Length and depth of training varied according to industry, with many forced to learn quickly if not “on the job” itself. By 1944 , skilled female workers earned an average weekly wage of $31.21. In spite of federal regulations requiring equitable pay for similar work, their male counterparts in similar positions earned $54.65 weekly. 5 Years of experience in specific jobs accounted for some wage disparity between men and women but could not account for aggregate discrimination during the war years. However unequal their wages compared with men’s, women in defense industries out-earned most “pink collar” employees who held retail, service, or clerical jobs. Constance Bowman, a schoolteacher who spent the summer of 1943 working in a San Diego B-24 bomber factory, earned 68 cents an hour. A beginning sales clerk at the upscale Bullock’s Wilshire Department Store in Los Angeles earned about $20 week, two thirds of a factory worker’s salary. 6 If women were able to cross boundaries into the “masculinized” workplaces of heavy industry, they would be remunerated more handsomely than women who remained in safely “feminized” spheres of employment; but they would not always see paychecks matching those of their male co-workers, even when they faced the same workplace challenges and hazards.

The Women’s Bureau (WB) at the U.S. Department of Labor sent field representatives to factories throughout the country to scrutinize working conditions. Among the WB administrators’ gravest concerns were endangered female bodies on factory floors, where safety seemed subordinate to management’s production quotas and workers’ personal style preferences. An alarming New York Times story announced in January 1944 that American “industry deaths” since the attack on Pearl Harbor had exceeded the “number killed in war” by 7,500. 7 The Labor Department tried to convince American women to prioritize safety when choosing work apparel: to wear safety shoes or boots rather than ordinary footwear and to don protective caps or helmets rather than bandanas and scarves. A WB analyst reported that “the most distressing accident” in war industry resulted from long hair catching in machinery. In Rhode Island a woman was “completely scalped” after her hair coiled on an assembly line belt. The Office of War Information (OWI), the U.S. government’s chief propaganda agency, produced documents illustrating proper and improper ways to style and wear hair in industrial jobs. The WB urged factories to adopt rules about head coverings as well as safety shoes and slacks. The Labor Department even designed “fashionable” caps and hats in a variety of shapes and colors, since their research concluded that women did not wish to look exactly like one another in the workplace. 8

More shocking than minimal head protection was the use of substandard footwear, which led U.S. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins to sound a warning bell at a 1943 “Women in War Industries” conference. In her opening address, Perkins noted that most industrial accidents among women were in the “slip, fall, and stumble categories,” leading her to recommend that work uniforms include “shoes devised particularly to help women prevent” such accidents. 9 Perkins and others concerned about occupational safety had to contend with American shoe retailers—and their representatives in Washington—who insisted that women would want to wear their sandals, moccasins, and espadrilles to work. 10 Retail store managers were told they could assist in recruitment and retention of female defense workers by displaying attractive work clothes that promoted safety, neatness, and good health. 11 In spite of U.S. government war agencies’ directives to defense plants to enforce safety standards on all fronts, some Labor Department inspectors found that corporate managers would not comply until threatened with prosecution. 12

Munitions makers and retailers alike were encouraged to take women employees’ “health and beauty” needs seriously, providing them with cosmetics, soaps, and sanitary supplies to use in workplace restrooms and lounges. Such comfort packages would not merely attract employees but also keep them content and more likely to stay after they had been hired. 13 The Labor Department recommended a sufficient number of showers and lockers on site for particular industries, such as shipbuilding, where women preferred to travel to and from work in their “street clothes.” 14 Working women saw magazine advertisements instructing them to pay particularly close attention to skincare and personal hygiene, lest they lose their “femininity” in the much-altered economic and social landscape of wartime America. 15

Job opportunities and steady wages could not offset for many the hardships of fulltime employment: shift work, long commutes, limited childcare options, and inconvenient shopping hours for food and other necessities. Very few grocery and department store owners chose to accommodate women who needed to do their shopping in the late evening or night hours. That women workers got sick more often than men was attributed to the fact that they were doing, “in effect, two fulltime jobs.” 16 U.S. government promises to organize day care centers in war boom areas went largely unfulfilled, meeting the needs of a mere fraction of the large population of working mothers; the public childcare project was not funded until 1943 , and “even then, the centers provided care for only 10 percent of the children who needed it.” 17

While limited training, sore muscles, and exhaustion from the home/work double shift discouraged many women, added burdens for women of color included workplace discrimination and harassment. They endured racial slurs and physical attacks in factories, and disproportionately filled the lowest-paid and least appealing jobs, including janitorial work. The Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC)—created by Executive Order 8802 in 1941 to address racial discrimination in industry—lacked the funds to handle the wave of complaints engendered by rapid wartime mobilization. When FEPC cases faced delays, black women searching for work or seeking promotions in their current jobs suffered the most. But women of color, like all American women, found their greatest challenge to be reconciling home life and work life during the war years. Opportunity magazine noted that black women in defense jobs grew “much more irritated than men by periods of standing around and doing nothing,” since they knew they could use the down time running errands for their second shift duties at home. One commentator suggested release of workers in factory down periods in order to promote “better morale” and to stem the tide of absenteeism, a significant problem among female employees eighteen months into the war. 18

American women were encouraged to consider every job a war job, however irrelevant a particular position might seem with regard to the military effort. Beyond riveting and welding, other tasks required even more hands and minds nationwide. The United States needed farm laborers, telephone operators, laundry workers, food servers, and bus drivers. Three million women cultivated crops in the federal agriculture program known as the Women’s Land Army. And while women had filled clerical positions for nearly half a century in the United States, the war accelerated the trend. Women took certain places as men vacated them, with the U.S. government offering hundreds of thousands of desk jobs to anyone who could file, type, and take dictation. The expanding bureaucratic structure of war was matched by private sector growth, where American businesses were forced to open their doors and offices to female employees. With the military draft taking its share of male, middle-class clerks and salesmen, openings for women abounded in the consumer economy. Radio stations, insurance firms, and advertising agencies hired more women than ever before. Banking, in particular, saw “feminization” in its employment ranks; at the beginning of the war, some sixty-five thousand women worked in banking but by the end of 1944 , approximately one hundred thirty thousand women were bank employees, constituting nearly one half of the industry’s total personnel. 19

Volunteer Work

Beyond those who earned wages, millions of women donated their time, money, or both, especially in the realm of morale work. Those who cultivated a genuine spirit of volunteerism saw their work bear fruit, even though some groups were criticized for their “charity bazaar” approach. Images circulated of the rich snob who sat at a booth for a few hours a week but remained oblivious to real sacrifice. 20 A government handbook for the American Women’s Voluntary Service (AWVS) clarified the organization’s purpose as well its diverse membership in many states, where women carried out “real hard work.” They took classes on home repair and first aid, helped children, and learned practical wartime skills such as map reading, convoy driving, clinical photography, and Morse code. The AWVS affected every aspect of wartime culture, sending its members to assist military personnel, distribute ration books, sell war bonds, and collect salvage, as well as to recruit blood donors, nurses, farm workers, and child care workers, and to knit, sew, and recondition clothes for military families and relief agencies. 21

AWVS chapters took pride in their “non-sectarian, non-political, non-profit-making” status to encourage women from many backgrounds to join their ranks. Across the country the AWVS made strides in several socially sensitive areas including interracial cooperation. Indeed, African American women urged others to support the organization, because it “transcend[ed] any consideration of race, or color, or class, or caste.” The AWVS became a place where, through their work together, women could understand “each other’s problems and shortcomings and consciously or unconsciously, [develop] an appreciation of each other’s virtues,” one member reported. Interracial volunteer activities among women spurred optimism for a more inclusive postwar America while stimulating the growth of similar organizations where women could meet and serve a larger cause. 22

In the realm of “morale,” the presumed purview of women, one group enjoyed the spotlight above all others—the United Service Organizations (USO). In assisting and entertaining U.S. military troops, USO volunteers were asked to consider their work the female equivalent of military service. Through gender-defined actions and activities, USO volunteers were expected to assume particular mental and emotional postures when dealing with soldiers and sailors. The ideal USO junior hostess’s femininity quotient was determined in part by her ability to yield to a serviceman’s wishes within the boundaries of middle-class American womanhood. How she presented herself would determine the reactions of soldiers and sailors, she was instructed. Patience, general optimism, and good listening skills were a good hostess’s requisite qualities. Since many USO sites provided games, women played table tennis, checkers, and cards, and often allowed their male opponents to win. Such “gendered emotional work” meant women were not to appear too smart or too competitive; to challenge a serviceman’s masculinity undermined the organization’s purpose of supporting male service members’ morale. As historian Meghan Winchell argues, “If a hostess made a serviceman happy, then she had done her job, and this, not meeting her own interests, theoretically provided her with satisfaction.” Her selflessness would presumably reinforce cultural gender norms and uphold social order in the midst of wartime crisis. 23

This requisite “cheerful selflessness” was matched by the initiative of women who chose to relocate near their spouses’ military installations. In packed trains and buses, often with young children in tow, they made their way cross-country to visit or live near their husbands. One observer called them “the saddest and most predictable feature of the crowded train stations and bus terminals.” 24 War brides on the move could easily identify each other and found comfort in their shared condition. 25 African American army wives who accompanied their husbands to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, lived in a squalid “unconverted barrack” outside the camp’s gates; during the day they served the base as secretaries, janitors, cooks, food servers, launderers, and maids in white officers’ homes. But their main priority, according to a reporter for The Crisis , was “the morale of their menfolk.” 26

Military Service

Women who volunteered for military service posed a great challenge to the collective consciousness about gender and sexual norms and clear gender divisions, especially regarding who could be considered a soldier, sailor, or marine. The women in uniform closest to the front lines were nurses, government-sanctioned “angels of mercy” whose work Americans more readily accepted because it reflected expectations that women were natural caregivers. Precedent also helped to secure the public’s approval of women serving in this capacity; both the army nurse corps and navy nurse corps had existed since the early 20th century, with more than twenty thousand military nurses serving during the First World War, half of them in overseas duty. But female volunteers in military organizations founded during World War II faced tougher scrutiny than nurses; their womanhood and femininity were questioned by many detractors, even though the idea of national service for women was not new. As early as 1940 , First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had recommended a required service responsibility (although not specifically a military duty) for all young American women. 27 Roosevelt did not get her peacetime wish, but after the U.S. declared war in December 1941 , the mobilization of women as assistants in the army seemed not merely plausible but imperative. U.S. Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers’ bill to that effect had languished since May 1941 , but in May 1942 , Congress approved it and President Roosevelt signed it, creating the all-volunteer Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.

Three additional military units followed the creation of a women’s army. The women’s naval organization, Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), was founded in July of 1942 ; the women’s coast guard, Semper Paratus Always Ready (SPAR), followed in November; and finally, the U.S. Marine Corps Women’s Reserve (USMCWR) was established in February 1943 . All four of the women’s military groups were designed to release men who held military desk jobs and other stateside responsibilities for combat duty, something many men resented. In addition, because of the expansive mobilization of the military for the war, thousands of new clerical positions emerged in all branches of the armed services and this too inspired calls for female military personnel. As one colorful recruitment poster directed at women commanded, “Be A Marine. Free A Marine to Fight.” Recruiters had to proceed cautiously with a message whose logic told women that joining a military service organization would send more men to their deaths. Even so, the message reinforced gender differences—women might wear uniforms, march in formation, and be promoted, but only men could face enemy forces at battle sites. Thus, men continued to dominate the most masculine of human activities—warfare—which was further masculinized by U.S. government propaganda in the 1940s. 28

The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) did not receive military status during World War II, but members participated in the American war effort by ferrying planes from factory sites to defense camps and embarkation points. These female aviators also tested new aircraft, hauled cargo, and assisted male pilots in training exercises. In 1944 , U.S. Army Air Corps General Henry “Hap” Arnold publicly declared WASP pilots as capable as their male counterparts. Thirty-eight women died serving in the WASP during its two-year existence ( 1942–44 ), yet none of the pilots’ families received government support for their funerals because the organization was not officially militarized. 29

Propaganda aimed at enticing women to join one of the military forces touted substantial base pay in addition to food, lodging, clothing, and medical and dental care. But the Office of War Information (OWI) insisted that recruitment messages refrain from appealing “entirely to the self-interest approach.” Women were not supposed to entertain individual needs or wishes, but instead to join for higher, nobler reasons: “patriotism and the desire to help our fighting men,” the OWI instructed. 30 Even so, years later, many female soldiers, sailors, marines, and pilots admitted to volunteering because they wanted an adventure or independence or both. 31

Figure 1. Recruitment poster created by the Office for Emergency Management, Office of War Information-Domestic Operations Branch, Bureau of Special Services, 1944 . U.S. National Archives (44-PA-260A).

In 1943 , the women’s army group discarded its “auxiliary” status to become an integral part of the U.S. Army and was renamed the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), a move that generated an outpouring of criticism, concern, and derision. Male GIs carried out a smear campaign against the organization. They spread rumors that WAC volunteers served as prostitutes for male soldiers, reinforcing a notion that army life encouraged promiscuity. Some wondered whether incorporating the WAC into the regular army meant that its members would—like their male counterparts—be issued condoms. Would army life encourage sexual activity among female volunteers? 32 Viewed not simply in ethical terms, women’s sexual autonomy was considered transgressive behavior that aligned them too closely with men in uniform, whose masculinity was often measured by their sexual prowess and emphasized during the war years. 33 The blurring or crossing of gender and sexual lines in this realm implied a social disorder that many Americans could not abide.

Worries about women’s sexual independence also inspired rumors of a “lesbian threat” in the WAC. In the 1940s, both American medical opinion and public opinion associated female sexual “deviance” as much with a woman’s appearance as her actions. Androgyny or, in wartime language, a “mannish” way, could mark a woman as suspect since she challenged the rules of femininity that grounded heterosexuality and secured a traditional social order. As women stepped into previously all-male venues during the war years, gender “disguise” could be interpreted as dangerous. Acutely aware of this, WAC director Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby ordered army women “to avoid rough or masculine appearance which would cause unfavorable public comment.” 34 In the spring of 1944 , female mechanics at Ellington Air Base, Texas, attended lectures about “proper dress for work” with a warning not to “roll up” the legs or sleeves of their coveralls. One Ellington mechanic wrote to her parents, “We are now buttoned and covered from tip to toe.” The OWI instructed advertisers and illustrators to show female soldiers in “complete G. I. uniform” and never “smoking or drinking alcoholic beverages,” concerns not voiced about men in uniform. These rules of propriety indicated the preeminent role that clothing played in assigning gender and sexual identities during the war. Even the appearance of impropriety could be grounds for dismissal and a dishonorable discharge. 35

Beyond the role of patriotic duty, the U.S. government’s preeminent recruitment message emphasized gender, declaring: “Women in uniform are no less feminine than before they enlisted.” In fact, officials hoped to appeal to women’s sartorial interests by using fashion plate graphic designs in recruitment literature. Illustrations of female soldiers posing as atelier models and department store mannequins displayed the numerous stylish items in a military wardrobe—from foundations to outerwear—together worth about $250. The idea was not only to recruit women but also to counter critics who railed against the idea of women’s military organizations in the United States. The tactics worked; many volunteers admitted joining one organization or another because they liked the uniforms. 36

Enlistment criteria, training, and job assignments varied widely by organization. The WAC accepted volunteers with a minimum of two years of high school, while the WAVES required a high school diploma, with college “strongly recommended.” Female marines in the women’s reserve (WRs) needed at least two years of college credit. Their respective training models also bespoke their differences. While WAC recruits trained, lived, and worked at army camps, WAVES and WRs took instruction on college campuses. As a result of the varying minimum standards for enlistment in the women’s services, the WAC became home to a more ethnically and racially diverse population, and it enlisted women from a wider range of socio-economic backgrounds, including those who could not afford to attend college. More age-diverse as well, the WAC welcomed women between the ages of 20 and 50 who had no children under 14 years, whereas the WAVES, SPAR, and USMCWR limited their volunteer base to women between the ages of 20 and 36 who had no children under 18. Of the four women’s military services, only the WAC allowed its members to serve overseas. 37

To alert women to the army’s variety of needs and encourage them to volunteer, the WAC advertised “239 kinds of jobs.” Many recruits received specialized army training in radio, chemistry, mechanics, and other fields, while others brought previously honed skills, such as foreign language training, into the army. Bilingual Latinas, for example, were recruited specifically for cryptology and interpretation; a special unit comprised of two hundred Puerto Rican WAC volunteers served at the New York Port of Embarkation and other locations dedicated to the shipment of U.S. troops. Nevertheless, some female soldiers were given tasks considered “women’s work” rather than jobs they had been promised or trained to do. WAC officer Betty Bandel discovered low morale among troops whose expectations about their roles were not met. The army had given them domestic tasks, similar to those they had held in civilian life, or it had failed to utilize the professional expertise they brought with them into service. Disappointed at what she and her colleagues interpreted as gender discrimination, Bandel confided to her mother that some Army Air Force units had even requested that Wacs do the pilots’ laundry and provide “troop entertainment.” 38

Women of color who wished to join military units faced steep discrimination. Excluded from the WAVES and SPAR until November 1944 , and excluded from the wartime marines or WASP, sixty-five hundred African Americans joined a segregated women’s army. As one of the first female African American army officers, Charity Adams experienced vicious discrimination at Ft. Des Moines on several occasions. Early in her training, a higher-ranking white male officer—a fellow South Carolinian—excoriated Adams for appearing at the officers’ club one evening. In his lengthy peroration, Adams stood silently at attention while the colonel reminded her about segregation laws, the southern past, racialized slavery, and her “place” in this scheme. 39 Adams persevered at the Iowa base, rising in the ranks to major and commanding an all-black battalion of eight hundred fifty women assigned to a postal unit in Great Britain and France in 1945 . But she spent many hours at Ft. Des Moines tending to “extra” duties that fellow soldiers expected of her because she was black; one of those tasks was cultivating the small Victory Garden at their barracks. Other women of color in uniform were assaulted at southern railway stations, denied access to facilities and dining cars on trains, and treated with disdain in towns near their bases and well beyond. 40

Japanese American women, initially barred from joining the Women’s Army Corps, were admitted beginning in November 1943 , but organization officials preferred that news outlets not publicize the inductions of Nisei women. 41 The WAVES, the second largest women’s military organization, did not accept Japanese American volunteers during the war. The pervasiveness of anti-Japanese sentiment adversely affected U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry, many of whom strove to prove their loyalty in the face of embedded racism and a nationwide hatred that took even deeper root among white supremacists as the 1940s wore on. 42

Sex, Marriage, and Motherhood

Loosening sexual mores, skyrocketing marriage rates, and a burgeoning baby boom characterized the war years. Casual sexual relations among the unmarried startled many Americans, who blamed young women—especially those who worked outside their homes—for shifting standards. Government propaganda associated the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, such as syphilis and gonorrhea, with women rather than men by casting disease carriers as female. 43 Among the most vulnerable to infected women, official media suggested, were America’s men in uniform. Posters warned: “She May Look Clean—But” and, in 1941 , before the United States entered the war, the May Act declared prostitution near U.S. defense camps a federal crime. Yet the vast wartime mobilization effort combined with the cultural politics of the early 1940s provided American women a wide berth to express and enjoy sexual intimacy in the name of patriotism. Many who migrated to war boom cities and military installments left behind constraints on sexual behavior that had guided them in their home communities. As circumstances “opened up new sexual possibilities,” women more freely explored their erotic desires. 44 For example, lesbians socialized, fell in love, and “began to name and talk about who they were,” contributing to one of the war’s significant legacies, the establishment and reinforcement of lesbian and gay communities. 45 At the same time, shifting social standards made more women open targets for sexual innuendo and unwelcome invitations from strangers; San Diego factory worker Constance Bowman wrote about cat calls and whistles and, on one occasion, a marine stalking her down a street with the persistent entreaty, “How about a little war work, Sister?” 46 The intersections of rapid defense mobilization, loosened social constraints, and greater female sexual autonomy created a home front where women became a “suspect category, subject to surveillance for the duration of the war,” Marilyn Hegarty argues. 47

Paradoxically, in the midst of wartime fear and surveillance of women’s sexuality, female allure and glamour were used to sell everything from laundry detergent to soda pop to troop morale. The World War II years marked the heyday of the “pin up girl,” and an unprecedented display of American women’s bodies; movie stars such as Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, and Lana Turner posed seductively for photographers and other artists, whose prints, posters, and calendars were reproduced in the millions and circulated widely. Ordinary American women copied these poses in photographs that they sent stateside to military camps and overseas to battlefronts. 48 And many women took the next logical step by literally offering their bodies—out of patriotic duty, to cap a brief encounter, or to seal a romantic relationship. 49

High U.S. marriage rates during World War II created a “Wartime Marriage Boom.” Between 1940 and 1943 , some 6,579,000 marriages took place, yielding over 1.1 million more marriages than rates in the 1920s and 1930s would have predicted. 50 A “bridal terror” had emerged soon after the Selective Service Act of 1940 initiated the United States’ first peacetime draft, and a rumored “man shortage” took hold of the American imagination midway through the war. Early on it was unclear how marriage and parenthood might affect military deferments, leading couples to tie the knot with expectations of securing extra time. In addition, with the wartime draft extending to males between the ages of 18 and 45, the pool of eligible men for marriage had presumably shrunk. By 1944 , rising U.S. casualty figures also contributed to the alarm. In large cities and defense camp areas, where soldiers and sailors congregated before deployment, “the urge to send men away happy meant numerous intimate liaisons, quick marriages, or both.” Many couples barely knew each other before taking their vows. A 1944 U.S. Census Bureau survey revealed that more than 2.7 million young, married women had husbands away in the armed services. The following year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that more marriages had occurred “in each of the past four years than in any prior year in the history of the United States.” 51 War mobilization encouraged many couples to marry sooner than they had planned and others to marry soon after meeting each other. Many of these long distance relationships unraveled over the war years, with the high wartime marriage rates resulting in the highest divorce rates in U.S. history. 52

A baby boom accompanied the marriage boom, and many young mothers were left alone to care for their children and make ends meet. The more resourceful of them pooled their funds by “tripling up” in apartments, splitting the rent and food costs, and sharing childcare and housekeeping responsibilities. 53 Others found childcare where they could in order to take advantage of defense industry jobs. These working mothers received limited assistance from federally sponsored childcare facilities that had been authorized under the 1940 Lanham Act, an extension of the Depression-era public works projects. Underfunded and concentrated primarily in war boom areas, federal childcare centers served some six hundred thousand children during the war years; yet at their greatest use, they served only 13 percent of children who needed them. Americans’ steadfast belief in a mother’s responsibility to remain at home with her children persisted during World War II; even the war emergency failed to temper this deeply entrenched, middle class standard. 54 The notable exception to otherwise meager organized childcare assistance came on the west coast, where the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company provided its female employees in Washington, Oregon, and California with reliable, well-staffed facilities. The Richmond shipyards in the San Francisco Bay area oversaw approximately fourteen hundred children daily. 55

Figure 2. Josie Lucille Owens, Kaiser Shipyards, Richmond, California.

Working mothers were forced to make difficult choices during the war years. Some chose second shifts or night shifts, so they could be with their children during the day and work while they were sleeping. Others who worked day shifts were criticized for leaving their children. In several defense boom areas, social workers and school staff speculated that women entering the work force were spurred by “additional income and a too great readiness to evade full responsibility for their children” rather than “patriotic motives.” 56 Pressure on mothers to assume full responsibility for their children intensified during the war years, as reports of increasing juvenile delinquency appeared in magazines and newspapers. In A Generation of Vipers ( 1942 ), Philip Wylie criticized “Mom” for many “social discomforts and ills,” particularly the problems of American youth. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover instructed mothers to stop “the drift of normal youth toward immorality and crime,” telling them not to take war jobs if their employment meant “the hiring of another woman to come in and take care of [their] children.” American society, in spite of the wartime emergency, barely budged on its expectations of working mothers. 57

Figure 3. “And then in my spare time . . .” Bob Barnes for the Office of War Information, ca. 1943. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-97636), digital ID: cph 3b43729.

Mobility, Sacrifice, and Patriotic Duty

Women’s growing independence during World War II was visibly characterized by their mobility. The cities, towns, and camps attracting them were located on both coasts and everywhere in between—Washington, DC, Seattle, Portland, Mobile, Detroit, St. Louis, and numerous other places where the prospects of war work, steady wages, or other opportunities beckoned. Some traveled occasionally to see their sweethearts, sons, and husbands, while others took to the road daily or weekly to punch time clocks in defense factories. Extending and expanding the Great Migration from the rural south to urban, industrial America, black women entered shipyards, ordnance plants, and bomber factories in unprecedented numbers.

Industrial growth and military mobilization allowed women to crisscross the nation in trains and buses, but their new mobility caused many Americans a sense of uneasiness and discontent. Women who traveled or lived alone were viewed with suspicion, while those who crowded into teeming defense areas, with or without their families, were often treated with scorn by local residents. In Portland, Oregon, community women criticized female shipyard workers who came into town “dirty and tired” at the end of their shifts. In Mobile, Alabama, a woman berated newcomers as “the lowest type of poor whites, these workers flocking in from the backwoods. They prefer to live in shacks and go barefoot . . . Give them a good home and they wouldn’t know what to do with it.” Many were met with the Depression-era epithet, “Okies.” In addition to the contempt they endured, migrants had to tolerate conditions that posed health risks: overcrowded boarding houses, makeshift accommodations, brimming sewers, limited water supplies and hard-pressed local schools. 58

In the nation’s capital, thousands of women who answered the persistent calls for office workers—a “Girls for Washington Jobs” campaign—created a “spectacle” that “staggered the imagination.” The women arrived in the city to find substandard lodging, if they found it at all. Construction on U.S. government residence halls that had been promised to unmarried female workers lagged months behind schedule, forcing women to find rooms in boardinghouses run by mercenary landlords or strict matrons. 59

Testing a woman’s conscience about her full participation in the war effort was commonplace in home front propaganda. She was supposed to want to undertake defense work, volunteer positions, or join a women’s military organization in order to support combat troops and out of a sense of patriotic duty. To use such positions to launch personal independence of any kind—especially financial—could be viewed as selfish or even reckless. African American sociologist Walter Chivers observed, in 1943 , that black women who thought they had left domestic work behind by seizing defense jobs would once again “have to seek employment in the white woman’s home.” An appeal for more military nurses late in the war asked: “Is Your Comfort as Important as the Lives of 15 Wounded Soldiers?” 60

Women were advised to spend their extra coins and dollars on war bonds or other U.S. government initiatives. The 1942 handbook Calling All Women advised that a ten-cent war stamp would purchase “a set of insignia for the Army” or “five .45 cartridges for the Marine Corps.” The 6th War Bond Drive in 1944 included a “Pin Money War Bond” promotion for women who previously had been unable to afford to buy bonds; whether unemployed or underemployed, they could spend pennies and nickels to fill a “stamp” album that would eventually convert to a war bond. Eleanor Sewall, a Lockheed Aircraft employee whose husband was captured on Bataan, was heralded by the company for her decision to contribute 50 percent of her salary in payroll deductions toward war bonds. Beyond such an investment’s practical value in assisting the government, less disposable income for women would limit paths to financial independence that could be viewed as self-serving. Sacrifice in the cause of patriotic duty would temper desires for—and achievement of—personal autonomy. 61

Among many American women who sacrificed during the war were those who served near the front lines or had family members in military service. The sixty-six nurses who were captured by the Japanese on Corregidor spent three years in Santo Tomas prison camp in Manila. Besides sharing scarce food and limited supplies with three thousand other American and British prisoners, they shared three showers and five toilets with the five hundred other women there. 62 American mothers, wives, sisters, and sweethearts together lost more than four hundred thousand loved ones—the U.S. death casualty count—during the war. The writer Zelda Popkin noted that some women became “widows before they were really wives.” 63

Lasting Changes

Amidst sacrifice and loss, many American women clung to the opportunities extended to them during World War II. Prewar gender expectations had been tested and found wanting. Susan B. Anthony II, great-niece and namesake of the women’s suffrage fighter, argued in 1944 that women had proven their abilities in every field and therefore deserved “equal pay for equal work, a right grudgingly acceded” them during the war. Having worked all three shifts as a grinder in the Washington Navy Yard machine shop, while her fifty-six-year-old mother worked at a Pennsylvania radar factory, Anthony was confident that war’s end would “mark a turning point in women’s road to full equality.” 64

If the Allies’ fight for “freedom” meant personal independence, then American women had embraced it in the early 1940s. Of the “Four Freedoms” articulated by President Roosevelt in 1940 , “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear” went a long way in explaining why some American women enjoyed the financial, social, and emotional rewards of the war years. The large number of those who developed skills and carried out new work, who put on military uniforms, married quickly, engaged in sexual activity freely, or moved several hundred miles away from home—or all of these—did so inside the grander framework of national and global crisis. Out of crisis, the most meaningful transformations emanated from the confidence they developed and the independence they felt and exercised. Many feared these would fade or be retracted after the war, and their fears were justified. From popular culture to social commentary to political leadership, powerful voices urged women to “go back home to provide jobs for service men,” despite the fact that the jobs many held were not available to servicemen before the war and that many returning servicemen had not worked for wages regularly in the 1930s. 65 Numerous surveys and polls of female workers found that most wanted to remain in the work force rather than return to their prewar employment conditions. 66 Efforts to “contain” women during the late 1940s and convince them to embrace a middle-class dream where they would play starring roles as domestic goddesses in their own homes eventually backfired. 67 Their wartime experiences combined with collective memory not only affected their daughters, sisters, and friends directly, but also reinforced the deep foundations of the equality crusades—from civil rights to women’s rights to workers’ rights to gay and lesbian rights—that would take center stage in the postwar generations.

Discussion of the Literature

Women featured in a few early histories of the Second World War, but they did not receive much scholarly notice as a group until the late 1970s, after the women’s movement and the field of women’s history had gained traction. The simultaneous influence of social sciences on history contributed to the heightened interest in women as subjects—they could be counted, plotted on graphs, and studied in the aggregate, especially as war workers. Thus the earliest scholarship highlighted women’s contributions to U.S. success in World War II, particularly through their work as builders and inspectors of military equipment. Leila J. Rupp’s book Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939–1945 ( 1978 ) focused on the U.S. government propaganda campaigns to get women into the factories and other places of employment and to keep them there for the duration. 68

In the 1980s, four landmark works appeared, establishing the vital role of American women in the Second World War and positing an essential question: How did women’s work for wages affect their abilities as wives, mothers, and homemakers? In Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women during World War II ( 1981 ), Karen Anderson focused on three of the fastest-growing industrial areas for war production: Detroit, Baltimore, and Seattle. Anderson unveiled the underside of these burgeoning urban workplaces, with their racial tensions and violence, age discrimination, and unfulfilled government promises to working homemakers who needed assistance with shopping, meal preparation, and child care. Susan Hartmann’s The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s ( 1982 ) launched Twayne’s American Women in the Twentieth Century series, a chronological history organized by decade. That Hartmann analyzed the 1940s, whole and entire, allowed readers to see the social and political forces operating to encourage the maintenance of traditional, clearly defined gender duties in postwar America ( 1945–1949 ), namely homemaking and motherhood for women. 69

In 1984 , D’Ann Campbell published the cleverly titled Women At War With America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era , a work that approached various groups of American women in terms of their roles and resources. Using the rich material produced by social scientists and their organizations during the war, Campbell combined the techniques of both a social scientist and humanist to show that military women, homemakers, stateside service wives, and female industrial laborers, among others, fared much worse on all fronts than one group singled out and heralded because their work fit within acceptable gender parameters: nurses. All of these groups had gone to war, many answering the numerous calls to assist however they could, but Campbell demonstrated that American women remained at war with a nation that extended opportunities to them while simultaneously reining them in. 70

The fourth significant book published in the 1980s, Maureen Honey’s Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II ( 1984 ), revealed how high-circulation magazines aimed at particular audiences sought to appeal to women on the basis of class status and values. In addition to these four important works, Alice Kessler-Harris and Ruth Milkman also conducted studies in the 1980s on the challenges women faced during World War II as laborers. By the end of the decade these historians and other scholars generally agreed that the war had offered myriad and measurable opportunities to women of all races and at all socioeconomic levels, but the options proved temporary, resulting in little significant redefinition of cultural gender norms that had cast women primarily as wives and mothers. 71

This early scholarship was enriched by oral history projects begun in earnest in the 1980s, notably Sherna Berger Gluck’s interviews of southern California war workers in Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War and Social Change ( 1987 ), a collection that encouraged scholars to follow Gluck’s lead in focusing on personal narratives of women who now seemed comfortable talking candidly about their wartime experiences. Oral history projects would flourish in the 1990s, as fiftieth anniversary commemorations of U.S. involvement in World War II not only marked specific events but also prompted an urgency to record aging participants’ stories. Scholars’ concentration on particular locales or geographic regions, as well as specific groups of women or the jobs they carried out became organizing principles for a succession of oral history collections, some available online and others in print, such as Cindy Weigand’s Texas Women in World War II ( 2003 ) and Jeffrey S. Suchanek’s Star Spangled Hearts: American Women Veterans of World War II ( 2011 ). 72

While oral history projects flourished in the 1990s and beyond, Judy Barrett Litoff and David Smith began soliciting, collecting, and publishing as many wartime letters as possible. Their quest, begun in 1990 , continues a generation later, with an amassed total of over 30,000 letters written by women. Litoff and Smith’s edited collections remain a starting point for any scholar pursuing the voices of ordinary American women who corresponded during the war. 73

The emerging field of cultural studies influenced scholarship from the 1990s forward, bringing gender and sexuality to the fore. The questions raised by cultural studies required scholars to consider the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality as central elements in how women were viewed and what they experienced as a result. In Abiding Courage , Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo surveyed African American women who had migrated to northern California’s East Bay area, where employment in the shipyards and auxiliary industries offered economic opportunities unavailable in the Jim Crow south. Leisa D. Meyer’s Creating GI Jane revealed the myriad challenges, both real and imaginary, posed by a women’s army—notably Americans’ views on who could and should be a soldier and what that meant for a social order dependent on clear-cut gender norms; Meyer was one of the first to analyze lesbian Wacs during WWII. Maureen Honey’s edited collection of primary sources, Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II ( 1999 ), investigated how women of color were depicted in popular culture, including the African American press, and how they negotiated these characterizations in addition to the challenges of wartime mobility, displacement, and opportunity. 74

In recent years, scholars examining American women during World War II have synthesized and built on the foundations laid by the previous generation, taking further the equations linking gender, sexuality, personal autonomy, and the media’s role in guiding individual and collective self-awareness, behavior, and cultural values. The historians’ titles reveal not only the characterizations of wartime women but also the pressures brought to bear on them during the crisis: Marilyn Hegarty’s Victory Girls, Khaki-Wackies, and Patriotutes: The Regulation of Female Sexuality during World War II ( 2008 ), Meghan K. Winchell’s Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun: The Story of USO Hostesses during World War II ( 2008 ), and Melissa A. McEuen’s Making War, Making Women: Femininity and Duty on the American Home Front, 1941–1945 ( 2011 ), all pose research questions that uncover uneasy truths about the measured oversight and careful management of American women during a U.S. war inspired by and fought to defend “freedom.” Similar questions remain today as historians still seek to understand how U.S. propaganda agencies, and American media in general, depicted women during the war, and what this meant to them, to those conducting the war effort, and to the nation at large. 75

Primary Sources

Primary sources depicting or targeting American women during World War II—including photographs, posters, cartoons, advertisements, letters, government documents, and oral history interviews—are available in several major collections, most notably at the Library of Congress, the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, and Duke University’s Rubenstein Library.

A good place to initiate any study of women on the home front is with “ Rosie Pictures ,” a selection of images of wartime workers from the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. The representative sampling in “Rosie Pictures” hints at what may be found among the library’s vast holdings of visual images, including the invaluable Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection, comprised of 175,000 photographs taken by U.S. government photographers who traveled throughout the nation between 1935 and 1944 . The collection has been carefully curated, with each item fully described and contextualized, and nearly all of them digitized.

The National Archives Library Information Center (ALIC) has organized information on women topically, so that the subject of war may be pursued from several angles and according to themes such as “women in the military” or “African American women.” Links to a variety of websites containing women’s history materials—though not necessarily items housed in the National Archives—may be found at the ALIC’s reference hub on Women . Millions of the U.S. government’s paper records not yet digitized are available at the College Park research facility, including documents produced by federal agencies created during the Second World War for specific objectives, such as the Office of War Information, the War Manpower Commission, and the War Production Board. At the U.S. Department of Labor, the Women’s Bureau generated countless pages of reports during the war, and all are available to researchers who visit the National Archives.

Duke University’s Rubenstein Library houses a variety of primary source materials in several major collections, including the War Effort Mobilization Campaigns Poster Collection, 1942‐1945 , and the extensive Guide to the J. Walter Thompson Company. World War II Advertising Collection, 1940‐1948 . Additional collections located in the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at the Rubenstein Library offer such resources as roadside billboard advertisements and department store window displays, designed to appeal to female consumers in the 1940s. Finally, among Duke University Libraries’ Digital Collections is Ad Access , a database of magazine and newspaper advertisements that features over 1,700 items from the war years, including official propaganda and many promotions directed specifically at women.

Three other significant primary sources collections deserve attention and offer scholars insight into women’s lives and experiences during World War II. Interview transcripts and video excerpts of interviews conducted for the “ Rosie the Riveter WWII American Home Front Project ” by the Regional Oral History Office at the University of California, Berkeley, are available at the Bancroft Library site. Northwestern University Library’s World War II Poster Collection contains 338 items, thoroughly identified and contextualized and at a high resolution to facilitate close analysis, many of them featuring women. Images are available as high-resolution files for close analysis. For wartime correspondence, there is no better starting point than the U.S. Women and World War II Letter Writing Project , developed by Professor Judy Barrett Litoff at Bryant University, and housed there in 175 boxes. Several hundred letters are available as PDFs on the project site, along with a helpful Finding Aid to the entire collection, prepared by Litoff.

A number of museums and special exhibits devoted to American women’s roles and contributions in World War II contain valuable primary sources and historical analysis. These include: The Farm Labor Project: Brooklyn College Oral Histories on World War II and the McCarthy Era , Brooklyn College; “ Focus on: Women at War ,” See & Hear Collections, The National World War II Museum, New Orleans; National WASP World War II Museum, Sweetwater, Texas; “ Partners in Winning the War: American Women in World War II , National Women’s History Museum, Alexandria, Virginia; “ Women Come to the Front ,” Library of Congress; “ WAVES, World War II, Establishment of Women’s Reserve ,” Naval History and Heritage Command; and “ World War II: Women and the War ,” Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, Arlington, Virginia.

Further Reading

• Anderson, Karen . Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women during World War II . Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.
• Bellafaire, Judith A. “ The Women’s Army Corps: A Commemoration of World War II Service .” U.S. Army Center of Military History, Publication 72–15.
• Bérubé, Allan . Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two . New York: Free Press, 1990.
• Campbell, D’Ann . Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
• Erenberg, Lewis A. , and Susan E. Hirsch , eds. The War in American Culture: Society and Consciousness during World War II . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
• Escobedo, Elizabeth R. From Coveralls to Zoot Suits: The Lives of Mexican American Women on the World War II Home Front . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
• Hartmann, Susan M. The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s . Boston: Twayne, 1982.
• Hegarty, Marilyn E. Victory Girls, Khaki-Wackies, and Patriotutes: The Regulation of Female Sexuality during World War II . New York: New York University Press, 2008.
• Honey, Maureen . Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II . Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.
• Knaff, Donna B. Beyond Rosie the Riveter: Women of World War II in American Popular Graphic Art . Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012.
• McEuen, Melissa A. Making War, Making Women: Femininity and Duty on the American Home Front, 1941–1945 . Athens, GA, and London: University of Georgia Press, 2011.
• Meyer, Leisa D. Creating GI Jane: Sexuality and Power in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II . New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
• Rupp, Leila J. Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939–1945 . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.
• Sorel, Nancy Caldwell . The Women Who Wrote the War . New York: Arcade, 1999.
• Weatherford, Doris . American Women and World War II . New York: Facts on File, 1990; Castle Books, 2008.
• Winchell, Meghan K. Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun: The Story of USO Hostesses during World War II . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
• Yellin, Emily . Our Mothers’ War: American Women at Home and at the Front during World War II . New York: Free Press, 2004.

1. Melissa A. McEuen , Making War, Making Women: Femininity and Duty on the American Home Front, 1941–1945 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 101, 17.

2. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 101–102. See also Sheila Rowbotham , A Century of Women: The History of Women in Britain and the United States (New York: Viking, 1997), 252–253.

3. Office of Labor Production, U.S. War Production Board, “Employment of Older Women Workers,” October 25, 1943, Record Group 179, War Production Board, Policy Documentation File, 241.11, Box 1016, National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

4. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 184–187.

5. Susan M. Hartmann , The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (Boston: Twayne, 1982), 87.

6. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 153.

7. “Industry Deaths Since Pearl Harbor 37,600, Exceeding by 7,500 Number Killed in War,” New York Times , January 21, 1944, A34. This trend held throughout the war, as Renny Christopher notes: “The total of disabling work injuries for the war period totaled 8,730,400, whereas the total wounded, missing, and killed in the war was 1,070,524.” See Renny Christopher , “Work Is a War, or All Their Lives They Dug Their Graves,” in Critical Approaches to American Working-Class Literature , ed. Michelle M. Tokarczyk (New York: Routledge, 2011), 36.

8. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 166–171; see also Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, Safe Clothes for Women War Workers .

9. U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, “Report of Conference on Women in War Industries,” April 1943, p. 1, in Record Group 179, War Production Board, Policy Documentation File, 241.11, Box 1016, hereafter cited as WB War Industries Conference Report .

10. Minutes, Shoe Retailers Advisory Committee, February 16, 1943; April 16, 1943; June 1943, Record Group 179, War Production Board, Policy Documentation File, 545.109 and 545.1005.

11. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 152.

12. WB War Industries Conference Report , 47.

13. “Fawcett’s Winning War Girl,” Advertising & Selling 36 (February 1943), 138; see also McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 6, 58–59.

14. Dorothy K. Newman , Employing Women in the Shipyards (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1944), 57–58.

15. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 14–21, 100–132.

16. Confidential report, “Quits Among Women War Workers,” July 1943, Record Group 179, War Production Board, Policy Documentation File, 241.11, Box 1016.

17. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books), 68.

18. Beatrice Candee , “Women in Defense Industry,” Opportunity (April 1943), 48 ; and McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 192, 206.

19. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 59–61.

20. Dorothy Parker, “Miss Brass Tacks of 1943,” typed manuscript, Record Group 208, U.S. Office of War Information, Records of the Office of the Director of War Programs, Records of the Chief, Bureau of Campaigns, Box 151, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Parker’s essay was condensed and retitled for publication as “Are We Women or Are We Mice?” Readers Digest , July 1943, 71–72.

21. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 200–201.

22. Ruby Bryant Yearwood , “Women Volunteers Unite to Serve,” Opportunity (April 1943), 89 ; and Gladys P. Graham , “The Salvation Army Servicemen’s Club Today and Tomorrow,” [1945] , Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Lot 13110, Visual Materials from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Records, No. 21.

23. Meghan K. Winchell , “Wartime Socializing,” in Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun: The Story of USO Hostesses during World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 76–105 ; quotations, 89.

24. Geoffrey Perrett , Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph: The American People, 1939–1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973), 347.

25. Melissa A. McEuen , “Exposing Anger and Discontent: Esther Bubley’s Portrait of the Upper South during World War II,” in Searching For Their Places: Women in the South Across Four Centuries , ed. Thomas H. Appleton Jr. and Angela Boswell (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003), 249.

26. Thelma Thurston Gorham , “Negro Army Wives,” The Crisis (January 1943): 21–22.

27. Doris Kearns Goodwin , No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 83–84 ; Fay Caller , “Shall It Be Girls in Uniform?” (New York: New Age Publishers, 1941).

28. Christina Jarvis , The Male Body at War: American Masculinity during World War II (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 56–83 ; see also National Archives, “Powers of Persuasion: Poster Art from World War II,” esp. “ Man the Guns .” Wartime propaganda suggested that most men in the military were engaged in combat, but statistics show otherwise: “Of sixteen million military personnel, 25 percent never left the United States, and less than 50 percent of those overseas were ever in a battle zone,” states Michael C. C. Adams in The Best War Ever: America and World War II (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).

29. Susan Stamberg , “Female WWII Pilots: The Original Fly Girls,” Morning Edition , NPR, March 9, 2010.

30. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 190–191.

31. See, for example, numerous oral history collections including Jeffrey S. Suchanek , Star-Spangled Hearts: American Women Veterans of World War II (Frankfort, KY: Broadstone Books, 2011) . Also, Connie Field et al., “The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter” (1980) ; and DVD, remastered edition (Berkeley, CA: Clarity Films, 2007).

32. Leisa D. Meyer , Creating GI Jane: Sexuality and Power in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 33–50.

33. “When Your Soldier Comes Home,” Ladies’ Home Journal , October 1945. The article was reprinted in Women’s Magazines, 1940–1960: Gender Roles and the Popular Press , ed. Nancy A. Walker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 56–62.

34. Meyer, Creating GI Jane , 148–178; Hobby quotation in Meyer, 155.

35. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 147; for a fuller discussion of appearance, propriety, and perceived gender transgressions, including lesbianism, see Meyer, Creating GI Jane , 148–179.

36. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 146.

37. U.S. Office of War Information , Women in the War . . . for the Final Push to Victory (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1944), 6.

38. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 41–42; Judith Bellafaire , “ The Contributions of Hispanic Servicewomen ,” Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, Inc.; Bandel to her mother, July 30, 1943, in Sylvia J. Bugbee , ed., An Officer and a Lady: The World War II Letters of Lt. Col. Betty Bandel, Women’s Army Corps (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2004), 121.

39. McEuen, “Exposing Anger and Discontent,” 245–246.

40. Charity Adams Earley , One Woman’s Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1989), 103–109.

41. Meyer, Creating GI Jane , 67; and Brenda L. Moore , Serving Our Country: Japanese American Women in the Military during World War II (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003).

42. Gary Y. Okihiro , “An American Story,” in Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment , ed. Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro (New York: Norton, 2006), 46–84.

43. U.S. National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine, Visual Culture and Health Posters, “ Juke Joint Sniper ”; and Marilyn Hegarty , Victory Girls, Khaki-Wackies, and Patriotutes: The Regulation of Female Sexuality in World War II (New York: NYU Press, 2008).

44. John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman , Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 260.

45. Allan Bérubé , Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York: Free Press, 1990), 6.

46. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 48–54.

47. Hegarty, Victory Girls , 6.

48. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 81–93; see also Thomas P. Doherty , Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

49. McEuen, “Exposing Anger and Discontent,” 249–250.

50. Wilson H. Grabill , “The Effect of the Wartime Marriage Boom,” Advertising & Selling 38 (May 1945): 153 ; and McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 203.

51. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 14, 203.

52. Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond , 165. Hartmann attributes high divorce rates not only to quick marriages but also to “the new roles and independence each had experienced during the wartime separation.”

53. David E. Scherman , ed., LIFE Goes to War (New York: Pocket Books, 1977), 138.

54. Abby J. Cohen , “A Brief History of Federal Financing for Child Care in the United States,” The Future of Children: Financing Child Care 6 (1996): 29–30 ; see also David M. Kennedy , Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 781, fn48.

55. U.S. National Park Service, “ World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area .”

56. Candee, “Women in Defense Industry,” 47–48.

57. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 187–190. J. Edgar Hoover , “Mothers . . . Our Only Hope,” Woman’s Home Companion 20 (1944): 20–21, 69.

58. McEuen, “Exposing Anger and Discontent,” 238–255; Mary Martha Thomas , Riveting and Rationing in Dixie: Alabama Women and the Second World War (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1987), 12–14 ; and Karen Anderson , Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women during World War II (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), 85, 79.

59. Mercedes Rosebery , This Day’s Madness: A Story of the American People against the Background of the War Effort (New York: Macmillan, 1944), 111 ; and McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 102–108.

60. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 30, 190–191.

61. Keith Ayling , Calling All Women (New York: Harper, 1942), 29–31 ; and McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 190–191.

62. Doris Weatherford , American Women and World War II (Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 2008), 5–7.

63. Zelda Popkin , “A Widow’s Way,” McCall’s (November 1945), 60.

64. Jean Barrett , “Riveter Rosie Going Back to Kitchen? ‘Never’ Says Susan B. Anthony 2d,” Philadelphia Record , September 1, 1944.

65. Arkansas Democrat , “Women in Employment,” August 14, 1945; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , “Rosie Turns Thumbs Down on Housework,” August 18, 1945; see also various documents, clippings, and reports in Record Group 86, Women’s Bureau, Division of Research, Re: Women Workers in World War II, Box 197, National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

66. McEuen, Making War, Making Women , 206–212.

67. Elaine Tyler May discusses domestic “containment” in Homeward Bound , 89.

68. Leila J. Rupp , Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978).

69. Anderson, Wartime Women ; and Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond .

70. D’Ann Campbell , Women At War With America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).

71. Maureen Honey , Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984) ; Alice Kessler-Harris , Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) ; and Ruth Milkman , Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).

72. Sherna Berger Gluck , Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War, and Social Change (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987) ; Cindy Weigand , Texas Women in World War II (Lanham, MD: Republic of Texas Press, 2003) ; and Suchanek, Star Spangled Hearts .

73. Judy Barrett Litoff and David C. Smith , eds., Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American Women on the Home Front (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) ; and Litoff and Smith , eds., We’re in This War, Too: World War II Letters from American Women in Uniform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

74. Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo , Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ; Meyer, Creating GI Jane ; and Maureen Honey , ed., Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999).

75. Hegarty, Victory Girls ; Winchell, Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun ; and McEuen, Making War, Making Women .

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World War 2 Essay: Outline + 100 WW2 Research Topics

This time you have to write a World War II essay, paper, or thesis. It means that you have a perfect chance to refresh those memories about the war that some of us might forget.

Our specialists will write a custom essay specially for you!

So many words can be said about the war in that it seems you will simply get lost in a variety of WW2 research topics and questions.

Still, you do not know what to write about in your World War 2 essay for middle school. Of course, you may look through several free essays in search of ideas. However, you may find our suggestions interesting or get instant writing help right here.

• 🔝 Top 10 Topics
• 🎓 Essay Topics for Student
• 🎖️ WW2 Argumentative Essay Topics
• 💡 More Topic Examples
• 📑 Outline Examples
• 💁 General Info

🔗 References

🔝 top 10 ww2 essay topics.

• Was the battle of Dunkirk a failure? 
• WWII technologies that changed our lives 
• The outcome of the Nuremberg trials 
• Medical experiments during the Holocaust
• Battle of Midway as a turning point in WWII  
• Why is penicillin a wonder of World War 2? 
• Why is the Bataan Death March a war crime?
• The impact of propaganda during WWII 
• Racial segregation in the armed forces during WWII 
• What makes the Battle of Stalingrad the deadliest in WWII? 

🎓 WW2 Essay Topics for Student 

• Contributions of women pilots in World War II  
• “Gesture Life” and “Maus”: post-World War II injuries  
• The federal government’s actions during World War II  
• Rebuilding Europe after World War II  
• World War II in Europe: development and costs  
• World War II: maskirovka military deception and denials operations  
• World War II in the Pacific region  
• The second World War’s historical aspects  
• The rise and fall of communism after World War II  
• South Africa in World War II  
• Battle of the Midway during World War II  
• World War II: the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki  
• What effect did the World War II wartime experience have on African Americans?  
• The battle of Britain during World War II  
• World War II was a continuation of World War I  
• Communism in Europe and America after World War II  
• Camps for displaced persons after the end of World War II  
• Nazis prosecution for the World War II crimes  
• World War II was avoidable  
• Nazi Germany’s resources and demise in World War II  
• The United States and East Asia since World War II  
• Japan after World War II: main events and modifications  
• Atomic bomb technology and World War II outcomes  
• Pacific theater of World War II  
• Impact of World War II on Balkan nationalism, states and societies  
• World War II: internment of the Japanese Americans  
• World War II in “The Rape of Europa” documentary  
• The characteristics of successful warfare after the second World War  
• Great Depression and World War II impact on the United States economy  
• Battle of the Bulge during World War II  
• Escape from Sobibor: World War 2 holocaust  
• World War II: why Germans lost and allies won  
• World War II impact on racial issues in the United States  
• Women’s representations before and after World War II  
• United States-Japan relations during World War II  
• Second World War: cause and technology  
• American foreign policy since World War II  
• World War II, the Cold War and New Europe  
• The Crete battle of World War II  
• Home front of the United States during the second World War  

🎖️ WW2: Argumentative Essay Topics

As it happens quite often, teachers like to ask students to write an essay on World War II. However, don’t expect it to be easy. It should be something more narrow than the essay about the causes of World War II.

You can use some practical techniques to come up with a suitable topic. For instance, some of the most popular ones are mind mapping and brainstorming. Don’t forget to use questions to create a perfect thesis statement.

But we have made your life so much easier and prepared this comprehensive list of WWII argumentative essay topics. There are also short hints to help you start with your paper.

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🔫 World War 2 Essay Topics: Military

• Exploring the effects of WWII on life in Hawaii. Research the impact of those events on the social life of families living there.
• Family memories of the Holocaust . Dig deep and see if you have any (distant) relatives who were the witnesses.
• Something unique about Italy in WWII. Look into some exceptional circumstances that occurred there at the time of the war.
• The origins of the phrase “Kilroy was here.” It is quite a controversial topic, so you might want to study all the sources you can find.
• Nationalist Socialists: examine the importance of the movement in the US. What was its social impact since the war? Describe this in your WW2 essay.
• Write about your town/city. Conduct research to find out about the political changes in your hometown related to war.
• The transformation of the prisoner-of-war camps . Write about what happened to the POW camps after the end of the war.
• The fate of the prisoners of war. Study the documents to get to know what happened to them and whether they continued their healthy lives.
• Describe the spies that participated in WWII . Who were they? What usually happened to those who were caught by different sides?
• The role of women . Discover the contribution of the weaker sex in warfare and write about the most surprising facts.
• How important were the weather conditions for the outcomes of WWII ? Find out which battles were lost or won due to the weather.
• War crimes: consequences. Conduct research to answer the questions about the war crime trials, their outcomes, and the most notorious cases.
• Research the role of the US government in WWII . Compare it to the other governments and analyze the strategies they were using.
• The sense of freedom during the war. For this WW2 essay topic, you would need to look critically at how freedom was suppressed or expanded.
• What was so special about the movements of the troop? Here, you would be expected to provide the answers concerning the secrecy and challenges.
• The experiences of the attack survivors. Find out what was happening during the attack on the military units and the planes.

🤖 World War 2 Essay Topics: Technology

• The role of the submarines in the war. This World War II research topic is all about the importance of the submarines.
• Estimate the destruction in the UK. Find out how many historical places were wiped out as a result of the war.
• Was Winston Churchill prepared for it? Write about the background of that influential leader and how it helped him at the wartime.
• Write about the time the US entered the war . Are there any facts that we still don’t know well enough? What about the timing?
• The miracle of the radar. This WW2 essay topic would be interesting for those who are fascinated by technology. What was the role of that device in WWII?
• Rocket technology and the war. Write about the importance of the rockets and what the moment when they changed the course of the war.
• Building the ultimate warship. What was the driving force of the developments in the field of shipbuilding during WWII?
• Describe the main means of communication during the war. Don’t forget to mention the radio and its impact on the major events in your World War 2 essay.
• The development of bridges and roads. What were the main technological achievements in this field that still impact our everyday life?
• Explain the rise of the popularity of motorcycles during the war. Feel free to mention the folding bikes and their invention.
• The technology we have thanks to the war. Dedicate your WW2 essay to the inventions we can’t live without nowadays that were created during the war.
• What about TVs? You can narrow down this World War II essay question as you wish. For example, write about the shows dedicated to the war.
• The jet engines developed by the needs of war. Look into the reasons why those engines were created during WWII .

💰 WW2 Research Topics: Economy

• What about propaganda ? This WWII essay should describe how people in the US were reacting to the war and why.
• The product of war: pop culture elements. Think about products that became popular and maybe even stayed a part of culture after the war ended.
• Toy story: WWII edition. Find out how the war influenced the toy production and whether it was a part of propaganda.
• The major changes in the job market sponsored by WWII. What new roles suddenly appeared on the job market, thanks to the war?
• The power of advertising . To narrow it down, you can even mention how the food packaging was adjusted and why.

🎨 WW2 Research Topics: Culture

• Discover the world of fashion during the wartime . It is one of the cool WWII essay topics. It should be about the new trends for civilians at the time.
• The analysis of artworks created during WWII. Choose a piece of art inspired by war and analyze it. What is its story?
• New times require new family traditions. How were the customs inside the families changed by the war? What about raising children? Highlight these issues in your World War 2 essay.
• The secrets of the love letters during the war. This short essay would require you to dig into the archives and find out what the letters could tell us about the relationships back then.
• What was the unique role of animals in WWII? Dedicate your writing to some type of animal and discuss how they were used.
• The rights of African-Americans during the time of war . Write about how their civil rights were changed and try to find the root causes.
• Food preservation methods: another revolution. This example is all about food and how it was packed and preserved during the war.
• The cases of domestic violence during the cold war. Were the rates higher at the time? Did political tension cause it? This is also a great World War 2 essay topic.
• Expanding the vocabulary. Just like any other part of life, the language also went through some changes. What were the new words that emerged?
• The troubled life of housewife during WWII. Describe the work women used to do at the wartime and how it was changed.
• Still resisting: the movements created by families. Here, you should concentrate on the experience of the families that live in the occupied territories.
• Lifesaving food: the role of nutrition in WWII. Try to research and find the battles that were lost or won due to the availability of food.
• The impact of food rationing on soldiers and families. Write your WW2 essay about the struggles of families and different groups of people.
• What were the common sacrifices of families during the war ? In this essay, you would need to look into the negative changes in families’ lifestyles.
• The miracle of penicillin : WWII. This research aims to uncover the importance of penicillin or any other medicine of your choice.
• The clothes that saved lives. Write about different types of clothing and materials that were used to help the soldiers on the battlefield.

💡 World War 2 Essay: More Topic Examples

Below, other suggestions on what you might write about in essays on World War II are presented:

Present in Your World War 2 Essay Alternative Decisions That Could Have Changed the Course of the War Dramatically

Such World War 2 essay will aim to explore some of the greatest decision making mistakes of the world leaders. We do not mean that you should discuss some miraculous history events like “what if Hitler had a heart attack.” In the World War 2 essay devoted to this problem, give realistic alternative decisions that were considered but not realized. Analyze those alternatives that could have changed the end of the war.

“In Your World War Ii Essay, Try to Answer the Question “When Did Hitler Lose the War?”

When did Adolf Hitler lose his chance to win World War II? What was it? These are the World War 2 essay questions you have to answer. Analyze different viewpoints of historians and present your opinion in the essay on World War 2.

Cover the Themes of Atrocity and War-Crimes in the World War 2 Essay

Acts of genocides and atrocity against civil population occurred in such countries as Japan, the Soviet Union , and Germany. Some of them were so horrific and immense that they changed the psyche of many people and different nations. When disclosing this theme in the Second World War essay, tell about Nazi concentration camps, “Death-camps,” the Holocaust , etc.

If you are interested in other  history essay  topics, read our hints for writing terrorism essays . And don’t forget to tell us in comments below your opinion about the World War 2.

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📑 World War 2 Essay: Outline Examples

The next is creating a neat outline, which would become a massive help for you during the process of writing. Find examples of World War II essay outlines below!

Example 1. Analyze how some alternative decisions could have changed the course of World War II

Try to pick something realistic. Merely writing that if Hitler suddenly died and the war had never happened is just dull. Get creative and maybe take as a basis some real facts that were considered but never came into life.

• In your World War II essay introduction , present the chosen decision. Include your thesis statement in this part as well. It should be your hypothesis concerning the topic.
• In the main body , give at least three arguments why and how that decision would have changed things. Here, you prove your hypothesis to be right. You may add one counter-argument if you wish. For instance, include the opinion of a historian saying that it wouldn’t change anything.
• In conclusion , state your opinion once again, which is now supported by arguments.

Example 2. When did it happen that Germany lost the war?

Think about when Adolf Hitler might have missed his chance to win World War II. What was it? Include some details. Once again, do your research and consider the opinions of different historians.

• In the introduction to this World War 2 essay , present your point of view. In the thesis statement, write the answer to World War II essay questions clearly and coherently.
• The main body here is for you to include three to five pieces of evidence that may prove you right. If you decide to write an argumentative essay, you might add some contradicting facts, too.
• In the last part of your writing, focus on paraphrasing your thesis statement.

Example 3. World War II: discuss war crimes and atrocity

This essay title is related to all acts of cruelty against the civil population, including genocides. You may want to narrow it down according to your preferences. For instance, you can talk about how concentration camps created by Nazis have changed the people’s psyche.

• Introduce this WW2 essay topic by stating how people have changed after surviving the Death Camps. It might be a good idea to include a sentence at the beginning that may serve as a hook to make your readers interested.
• In the body , present not less than three examples of what you think might be relevant. Those should be proven historical facts if you want your essay to be persuasive.
• Conclude by providing a summary of the facts presented in the main body. Add the paraphrased thesis statement.

💁 World War 2: General Information

World war ii: timeline.

Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. And on September 3, 1939, France and Britain, fulfilling their obligations to Poland, declared war on Germany and World War II began.

However, the beginning of World War II was preceded by some events, inextricably related:

• September 18, 1931. Japan attacked Manchuria
• October 2, 1935 – May 1936. Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia, conquered and annexed it
• October 25 – November 1, 1936. On October 25, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy concluded a cooperation agreement. November 1 announced the creation of the “ Rome-Berlin Axis “
• November 25, 1936. Nazi Germany and imperialist Japan concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact, directed against the USSR and the international communist movement
• July 7, 1937. Japan invaded China. The World War II began in the Pacific
• 11-13 March 1938. Germany joins Austria (the so-called Anschluss)
• September 29, 1938. Germany, Italy, Great Britain and France signed the Munich agreement obliging the Czechoslovak Republic to cede Nazi Germany to the Sudetenland (where the critical Czechoslovak fortifications were located)
• 14-15 March 1939. Under pressure from Germany, the Slovaks declared their independence and created the Slovak Republic. The Germans broke the Munich agreement , occupied the Czech lands, and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

• March 31, 1939. France and the United Kingdom provided guarantees of the inviolability of the borders of Poland
• 7-15 April 1939. Fascist Italy attacked Albania and annexed it
• August 23, 1939. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact and a secret annex to it, according to which Europe was divided into spheres of influence

Some scientists think that the World War II was a continuation of the World War I ended in 1918.

September 2, 1945, is the date when the World War II ended. Japan, agreed to unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945, officially capitulates, thereby putting an end to World War II.

Get an originally-written paper according to your instructions!

World War II: Key Facts

• Perhaps, the World War II was one the most destructive wars in modern history. About 27,000 people were killed each day from September 1, 1939, to September 2, 1945.
• The primary opponents were Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Imperial Japan on the one hand, and the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France the United States , and China on the other.
• Germany capitulated on May 7, 1945 . At the same time, Japan continued to fight for another four months before their capitulation on September 2. Atomic bombs, dropped by American troops on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were first used against Japan.
• The end of the war was marked by Britain losing most of its empire . At the same time, World War II accelerated the revival of the US and Soviet economies as global superpowers.
• After the end of the World War II, the “Cold War” between the US and the USSR started.

World War 2: Casualties

The exact World War II casualties remain unknown. However, historians name that the total number of victims was over 60 million people including military and civilians killed. Below you’ll find the list of states suffered the highest losses:

• 42,000,000 people–USSR
• 9,000,000 people–Germany
• 4,000,000 people–China
• 3,000,000 people–Japan

World War II: Causes

Perhaps, there were many prerequisites for World War II:

• Japan’s victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) opened the door for Japanese expansion in the Asia-Pacific region
• The US Navy first developed plans to prepare for a naval war with Japan in 1890
• The Great Depression, and the global recession that followed
• The coming to power of Hitler and his statement about the injustice of the Versailles Treaty, signed in 1918
• The creation in 1935 of the Luftwaffe, as a direct violation of the 1919 treaty
• Remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936
• Anschluss of Austria and the annexation of part of Czechoslovakia
• Italy’s desire to create a Third Rome and Japan’s goal to create an independent state with the Pan-Asian sphere of influence

World War II: Results

The results of World War II are not limited to losses and destruction. As a result of the war, the face of the world changed: new borders and new states appeared, new tendencies of social development emerged, and significant inventions were made.

The war gave a strong impetus to the development of science and technology. Radar, jet aircraft, ballistic missiles, antibiotics, electronic computers and many other discoveries were made or entered into widespread use during the war. The foundations of the scientific and technological revolution were laid, which transformed and continued to change the postwar world.

The ideology of fascism, Nazism, racism, colonialism thoroughly discredited itself; on the contrary, the ideas of anti-fascism, anti-colonialism, democracy, and socialism gained wide popularity.

The human rights recorded in the UN Charter are internationally recognized. The influence of parties and groups that fought for democracy and social transformations–communists, socialists, social democrats, Christian democrats and other democratic forces, has sharply increased.

In many countries, significant reforms carried out: partial nationalization of industry and banks, the creation of a state system of social insurance, the expansion of workers’ rights. In some countries, including France, Italy, Germany, Japan, have adopted new, democratic constitutions. There was a profound renewal of the society, democratization of state and public institutions.

The colonial system disintegration was another significant result and consequence of the Second World War. Before the war, the vast majority of the world’s population lived in colonies, the area, and population of which many times exceeded the metropolitan countries: Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, and Japan.

During the World War 2 and after its end, part of the dependent and colonial countries (Syria, Lebanon, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Burma, Philippines, and Korea) declared itself independent. In 1947, India became independent, divided into two dominions: India and Pakistan. The intense process of liberation of the colonial peoples began, which continued until the complete abolition of the colonies in the second half of the twentieth century.

As a result of the war, the balance of forces in the world has changed dramatically. Germany, Italy, Japan were defeated, for a time turned into dependent countries, occupied by foreign troops. The war destroyed their economy, and they for many years could not compete with their former competitors.

Compared with the pre-war time, the positions of France and even Great Britain weakened considerably. The USA came out of the war significantly strengthened. Having surpassed all other countries economically and militarily, the United States became the sole leader of the capitalist world.

The second “superpower” was the Soviet Union. By the end of the war, the Soviet Union had the most massive land army in the world and substantial industrial potential. The USSR Armed Forces were in many countries of Central and Eastern Europe, East Germany and North Korea.

Some countries liberated by the Soviet Union took the road of non-capitalist development. After the liberation from the occupiers in Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, people’s democratic governments were established with the participation or under the leadership of the Communists, who began profound social transformations. By the Yalta agreements , these countries were considered to be the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union and were in fact under its control.

If the United States became the leader of the capitalist world, then the Soviet Union led the social forces that opposed capitalism. Two main poles of attraction of the world forces, conventionally called the East and the West, were formed; began to build two ideological and military-political blocs, the confrontation of which largely determined the structure of the post-war bipolar world.

The anti-fascist coalition split. Its participants came into conflict with each other, and the “ Cold War ” that lasted more than 45 years, until the collapse of the USSR.

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To write World War II essays is very instructive – to know the reasons, the course of war events, the results. These all are necessary to comprehend and debar World War III as humanity won’t go through it!

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144 WW2 Essay Topics & Examples

📝 ww2 essay examples, 🏆 best ww2 research paper topics.

• ⚔️ W2 Topics for Presentation

❓ World War II Research Topics & Questions

💣 world war 2 topics for debate, 🪖 ww2 essay topics, 🎖️ interesting ww2 topics to write about, 📢 world war 2 discussion questions.

World War II, the most widespread war in history, lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved more than 100 million people from more than 30 countries. In a state of “total war”, the participants threw all of their industrial, economic, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the strategic bombing of population centers, it resulted in 50 to 70 million deaths. WW2 had a profound impact on the course of history, shaping the world in ways that are still felt today.

If you’re looking for interesting WW2 topics for your argumentative essay, research paper, discussion, or debate, you’re in the right place. We’ve prepared an extensive collection of World War II research topics that can be used for any project. There also are World War II essay examples written by straight-A students.

• Wars in the USA after the World War II The end of the World War II saw the beginning of other wars in the USA such as the war against racial inequality, male dominance, and the Cold War.
• The First and the Second World War Comparison The similarities in the First World War and the Second World War justify why the events are considered two parts of the same war.
• World War II People in "Hitler's Army Bartov’s "Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich" contains some valid ideas, but overall it sounds significantly affected by author’s political biasness.
• The Treaty of Versailles in World War II History The treaty of Versailles contributed largely to the outbreak of the Second World War. The convention had imposed much restriction on Germany in extraordinary ways.
• The United States in the Second World War The involvement of the United States into the Second World War was evident, despite the strategy of isolationism; however, the American government was waiting for the reason to start the war.
• Minority Civil Rights in the US After WWII After World War II, the minority groups could access employment opportunities and vote. These developments were realized through advocacy for their civil rights.
• Japanese American Life During and After the World War II The Second World War affected every country and nation in the world. Millions of victims of the war suffered from injustice and the aggressive actions of different parties.
• The Second World War Impact on the USSR This paper proves that after the Second World War, the Soviet Union gained economic and political control at the new territories to spread communist ideology there.
• Discrimination in America Essay This essay on discrimination in America compares Irish vs. Vietnamese immigrants in pre-World War II era and African vs. Native Americans in post-World War II era.
• Women in Combat in the United States' History The history of women in combat roles in the United States military takes us back to the periods of the revolutionary war, civil war, WWI, and WWII.
• American Women in History of World War II There is a gap in data concerning the inclusion of American women in military operations during World War II. Approximately 350,000 women joined the Armed Services in 1941-45.
• American Women in War and Society The history of American women in the military is shorter than that of men. Prejudice and physical differences contributed to women’s limited presence in the armed forces.
• Women in History of World War II: Retrospective The role of women in modern history, particularly since the era of industrialization is extensive but remains understudied in academia and underestimated by the broader society.
• World War II: Picking the Pieces of a Global War World War II exposed how the atrocities of war can alter the course of civilization and redefined the political, technological, and social development of the world after.
• Germany in the World War II The World War II was neither political nor economic war. It was the war against people who did not meet the standards imposed by Hitler.
• Impact of the World Wars on Canadian-American Relations Discussing the Canadian – American relations within the time frames of the First and Second World Wars, the issue of the impact of those wars on both countries should be analyzed.
• Happening and Impact of World War I and II to Britain the First World War made Britain more powerful with so many colonies and empires. At this time it was considered to be great imperial power.
• World War II and Situation in Countries-Participants After the War The end of World War II had heralded along and protracted competition for military and economic supremacy between the United States and the Soviets Union.
• Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Purpose and Effect The first purpose of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the US President Harry S. Truman's desire to win the war as soon as possible.
• Roles Played by U.S Foreign Policy in the Outbreak of the World War II This paper shall discuss how the Foreign policy of the United States contributed to the outbreak of World War II.
• Austria and France: Impacts and Causes of World War I and World War II This discussion has clearly indicated that the first and second World Wars had an adverse impact on the social, political, and economic well-being of Austria-Hungary and France.
• Domestic Processes in the US During World War II During World War II in the United States there are various significant events that were a test for the nation and people of color, Japanese Americans.
• The Impact of U.S. Foreign Policy Between WWI and 1950s The shifts from isolationism to interventionism had both positive and negative consequences for American society that will be described further in detail.
• United States’ and the USSR’s Political and Economic Concerns at the End of World War II
• World War II: Pacific Theater Overview and Pearl Harbor
• Industrialization and Social Change During World War II
• Japan and China Relations During the End of World War II
• Concentration and Deaths Camps in World War II
• The Historical and Religious Significance of the Bombing of Civilians in World War II
• Civil Rights Movements During the World War II
• Rise of Fascism and the Nazi Party: World War II
• Soviet Union Totalitarianism and Its Impact on the World War II
• The Air Defense Technologies and Aircraft Manufacturing Industry During World War II
• The European Union-China’s Trade Relationship The study explores the trade relationship between the EU and China with a focus on the existing challenges of making it sustainable.
• National Identity and Immigration During World War II
• Adolf Hitler and His Anti-semitism Campaign During World War II
• Sir Winston Churchill and His Pivotal Role in World War II
• Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party Caused the World War II
• Nuclear Weapons and Its Effects on the World War II
• Nazi Germany and Mussolini ‘S Italy During World War II
• Justifications for the Use of Atomic Bombs on Japan in World War II
• Building Hitler’s Europe: Forced Labor in the Danish Construction Business During World War II
• The Civil Rights Movement and World War II
• Australia and Japan’s Relationship Since World War II

⚔️ WW2 Topics for Presentation

• The Factors Caused Poverty After World War II and the Policies to Address Poverty
• Auschwitz Concentration Camp During World War II
• American-Soviet Relationship After World War II
• Changing World Politics During World War II
• America and Post World War II Era: New Left Versus Right
• African American Ideologies During World War II
• Major Innovations and Occurred During World War II
• American Women and the World War II Factory Experience
• Human Nature and Behavior: Jews and World War II
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin – The Big Three Who Were the Most Powerful Leaders After World War II
• Discrimination and Its Effects on the Military During World War II
• Cultural and Political Revitalization of Post-world War II Europe
• Adolf Hitler and His Influence on the World War II
• Childhood Circumstances and Adult Outcomes: Evidence From World War II
• Nazi Experimentation During World War II
• Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings as the Events That Ended World War II
• Technological Innovations During the World War II
• Atomic Bomb and Its Effects on Post-world War II
• Economic Policies During the World War II and Economic Reconstruction After
• Arab Military Performance During the World War II
• How Was Adolf Hitler Responsible for World War II?
• Did New Deal and World War II Public Capital Investments Facilitate a Big Push in the American South?
• How Did Australia’s Relationship With the USA Develop in World War II?
• Why Were the Major Cities of Britain Bombed by the Germans in World War II?
• How and Why the United States Emerged as the Dominant Global Superpower After World War II?
• How Has World War II Affected the Growth of Information?
• How Did the Involvement of the United States Affect the Outcome of World War II?
• How Did the Corfu Incident Affect the Outbreak of World War II?
• Did the Atomic Bomb End World War II?
• How and Why Yugoslavia, Greece, Poland, and Czechoslovakia Became Involved in World War II?
• Why Was the Versailles Treaty Ineffective at Preventing World War II?
• Why Did the British Government Evacuate Children From Major Cities at the Start of World War II
• Did the Soviets Cause the Defeat of Germany in World War II?
• How Occupied France Financed Its Own Exploitation in World War II?
• How Was America Able to Recover and Rise to Economic Prosperity After the World War II?
• How Lean Manufacturing Evolved After World War II?
• Did Technology and Strategy Affect the Outcome of World War II?
• How Have Family Structures Changed Since World War II?
• How Have the Rights and Freedoms of Women Changed in the Post World War II Era?
• How Did World War II Transform American Society and Government?
• Did the Bretton Woods Conference Help the World Economy After World War II?
• Did Nordic Countries Recognize the Gathering Storm of World War II?
• How the Nuclear Arms’ Race Has Changed the Nature of Warfare Between World War II and Present?
• How Did World War II Change the Attitudes of Women and Minorities Toward Their Status in American Society?
• How the Political and Economic Concerns of the U.S. And the U.S.s.r. Impacted New Governments and Reconstruction in Germany and Japan Post-world War II?
• How Britain Influenced and Shaped Nazi Germany Defeat During World War II?
• Why Did Germany Lose World War II Despite Its Victories Early in the War Term?
• How Did Hitler’s Foreign Policy Lead to the Outbreak of World War II?
• How Europe’s Economy Was in Shambles After the End of World War II and How It Recovered?
• What Role Did the Concentration Camps Play in the Holocaust During World War II?
• The rise of authoritarian regimes in Europe as a cause of World War II.
• The major events and battles of World War II.
• The role of political leaders in World War II: Adolf Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin.
• The Holocaust and extermination of minority groups by the Nazi regime.
• The use of propaganda by the Axis.
• The role of women in World War II.
• The impact of the war on civilians.
• The role of technology in World War II: new weapons and strategies.
• The liberation of concentration camps and the liberation of occupied territories by Allied forces.
• The aftermath of World War II.
• US involvement in World War II
• Soviet Union’s role in World War II
• Japan’s role in World War II
• Decolonization after World War II
• Resistance movements in World War II
• Civilians in resistance movements
• Prisoners of war in World War II
• Economic factors in World War II
• Intelligence gathering and espionage in World War II
• Impact of World War II on cultural movements
• What Were the Main Causes of World War 2?
• How Did World War 2 Start, and Where Did It Begin?
• Who Were the Major Axis Powers During World War 2?
• Did More Germans or Jews Die in World War II?
• How Did World War 2 Impact the Global Economy?
• Why Was Japan So Cruel During WW2?
• Who Were the Major Allied Powers During World War 2?
• Could World War 2 Have Been Won Without the United States?
• What Was the Significance of the Treaty of Versailles in Relation to World War 2?
• How Did Adolf Hitler Rise to Power, and What Role Did He Play in World War II?
• What Was the Battle of Stalingrad, and Why Was It a Turning Point in World War 2?
• Is Germany Still Being Punished in the Present Day Due to World War 2?
• Was It Ever Possible for Germany to Win World War 2?
• How Did WW2 Impact the Home Front in the United States?
• What Was the Role of Winston Churchill in World War 2?
• How Was Japan’s Economy Affected After World War 2?
• Who Were the Worst Generals in World War 2?
• Could Britain Have Survived World War 2 Without the USA?
• What Was the Significance of the Battle of Midway in WW2?
• Which Was the Cruelest Army in World War II?
• Did the USA Cheat in World War 2?
• Why Is World War 2 Called “World” War 2 if It Didn’t Affect the Whole World?
• Who Were the Big Three Leaders of the Allied Powers During World War 2?
• How Did World War 2 Affect Japan, Both During and After the War?
• Why Did the German Army Fight to the Bitter End in World War 2?
• What Were the Major Consequences of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings in World War 2?
• Why Did the US Enter World War II?
• How Did World War 2 Impact the Art and Culture of the Era?
• What Was the Role of Espionage and Spies During World War II?
• How Did Stalin’s Purge Affect the Red Army’s Efficiency in WW2?

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History of World War II: Articles

• Encyclopedias
• Primary Sources

Introduction to Finding Articles

The library subscribes to a number of research databases (Ebsco, JSTOR, ProQuest) to find journal articles on history.  Articles from a scholarly journal typically include a bibliography, a list of sources cited by the author about a topic that often mention primary sources.  The following research databases are either general or subject specific.  All of them can help you identify articles for research on topics in military history.  

General Sources

• EBSCOhost Search across all Ebsco academic databases
• Gale Resources Search multiple Gale collections of journal and academic content
• JSTOR Find broad scholarly coverage in humanities and social sciences
• ProQuest Search various research and social science databases

Discovery Tools

• EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) Search across multiple databases to find journal articles and more
• eJournal Publication Finder in EDS See if library has access to a journal title in electronic format
• Google Scholar A discovery tool to find articles beyond USAFA

Journal Titles

Our research databases provide access to a wide selection of history journals, many with a focus on military history, such as the Journal of Military History, Military Affairs, Military History, and War in History. 

The library also has bound print journals for historical research that are arranged alphabetically by title on the 4th floor.  Some titles and issues are not available electronically.

Examples of bound journals include: 

Air Force: Official Journal of the U.S. Army Air Forces (1942-1961)

History of the Second World War (v.1-6)

Military Review (1941-2014)

U.S. Air Services (1923-1956)

World War II (1986-2003)

Military History

• Air University Index to Military Periodicals (AULIMP) Article citations from military journals starting from 1987 to present more... less... Muir S. Fairchild Research Information Center (formerly Air University Library) began indexing subject terms to military journals in 1949; these versions are in print and available at the McDermott Library. Pre-1987 indexes can be searched online from Haithi Trust. Look for links from this website.
• America: History & Life with Full-Text (Ebsco) Journal articles in the field of American and Canadian history
• DTIC: Defense Technical Information Center Historical documents, military research studies, technical reports
• Historical Abstracts with Full-Text (Ebsco) Journal articles in the field of world history from 1450 to present
• JSTOR Search collection of authoritative history journals
• Military & Government Collection (Ebsco) General and scholarly articles dealing with the military
• Research Library: History (ProQuest) Articles on US and world history, military history and much more

Specialized Bibliographies

• Oxford Bibliographies: International Relations Includes some quality resource guides related to WWII more... less... Bibliographies include: Germany in World War II Soviet Union in World War II World War II Diplomacy and International Relations
• Oxford Bibliographies: Military History Resource guides on military history including WWII more... less... Bibliographies include: World War II and the Far East World War II in the Mediterranean and Middle East World War II, Russo-German War Also bibliographies on: Aerial Bombardment Britain and the Blitz Campaigns in South West Pacific 1941-45 German Air Forces German Army 1871-19456 Hiroshima/Nakazaki The Imperial Japanese Army in the WWII Era Kursk, Battle of Midway, Battle of Military Intelligence Montgomery, Bernard Law Nimitz, Chester Occupations and Military Governments Patton, George Russian Military History Sino-Japanese War 1895-1945 Stalingrad, Battle of The Allied Bombardment of Occupied Europe during WWII Zhukov, Georgii
• US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Bibliographies Guides to materials on various Holocaust-related topics
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• Next: Books >>
• Last Updated: Sep 6, 2023 12:44 PM
• URL: https://usafa.libguides.com/historywwii

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World War II Research Paper

View sample World War II research paper. Browse other  research paper examples and check the list of history research paper topics for more inspiration. If you need a history research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our custom writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

World War II (1939–1945) is regarded as the most widespread and deadliest conflict in human history. The war involved many nations and was fought on battlefronts in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific. Led by Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States, the Allies emerged victorious over the major Axis powers, Germany, Italy, and Japan.

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World War II developed, in part, from the resolution of World War I. The peace conferences ending World War I resulted in a victor’s peace, and the vanquished harbored a sense of unfair treatment. The worldwide economic depression that began in the 1920s and continued into the 1930s helped bring about totalitarian regimes in Italy, Japan, and Germany. When democracies could not agree on a forceful, common program to halt aggression in the late 1930s, war began; it expanded with the inclusion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the United States in December 1941. When the fighting finally stopped in September 1945, tens of millions of people had died worldwide; the great European colonial empires in Asia and Africa soon would end; and two great powers, the USSR and the United States, found themselves unable to bridge the divide between them and plunged much of the world into a Cold War that lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.

The Build-Up to World War II

On 18 September 1931, the Japanese Kwantung Army claimed that Chinese bandits had blown up the main track of the South Manchurian Railway, and, within a year, Japan seized control of Manchuria and created a puppet regime, Manchukuo. Japan then moved into Inner Mongolia and the Chinese provinces outside the Great Wall. In July 1937, minor hostilities expanded into war. Within several years, the conflict settled into a strange, three-sided affair, as Chinese Nationalist forces, Chinese Communist guerrillas, and the Japanese army faced one another, with Japan largely controlling populated eastern China and the Yangzi (Chang) River valley, the Communists in their base area at Yanan, and the Nationalists at Qongqing in Sichuan Province.

Japanese aggression in Manchuria may have encouraged other dictators to disregard the League of Nations and to challenge the entire Versailles Peace Treaty structure. In January 1933, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) became chancellor of Germany, and he expanded the army and navy, established an air force, and reoccupied the demilitarized Rhineland without serious protest from France or Great Britain. In March 1938, Hitler forced a unification of Germany and Austria—the Anschluss—and in September 1938 signed a peace accord with France and Great Britain that handed him the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. In March 1939, German forces seized Memel in Lithuania and took control of the remainder of Czechoslovakia. During the summer of 1939, France and Great Britain approached the Soviet Union to assure Poland’s territorial integrity, but the USSR shocked the world when it signed a treaty with Nazi Germany in late August.

Hostilities Begin

Hitler turned to war. On 1 September 1939, the Germany army unleashed a blitzkrieg against Poland, crushing the Polish army in three weeks. After a winter pause, Germany attacked Norway and Denmark on 9 April 1940, securing Norwegian ports and Swedish iron ore shipments. On 10 May 1940, Germany threatened a wheeling movement through the Low Countries and then struck through the supposedly impassable Ardennes forest, unleashing its panzer forces behind the advancing army, driving to the English Channel in several weeks. Only the valiant effort of British seamen lifting more than 300,000 British and Allied soldiers from Dunkirk prevented a complete German victory. Germany turned south against France and forced the French surrender. Hitler apparently wanted to invade Great Britain, in Operation Sea Lion, and the Luftwaffe fought for control over the skies of Britain. Germany’s air force was designed for tactical support of advancing ground forces and not for a strategic air campaign, and it changed objectives too often—from coastal radar stations to fighter air bases to industrial factories, to terrorizing cities. By late summer 1940 the air offensive had failed. Strangely, from late summer 1940 until spring 1941, the German army launched no new offensives; this perhaps represented a major opportunity lost.

Germany next turned east. On 7 April 1941, Germany attacked Yugoslavia and Greece, and quickly conquered both countries. On 22 June 1941, Hitler sent more than 3 million German troops; 3,300 tanks; 7,700 artillery pieces; 2,500 planes; and forces from satellite countries into the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Germany lacked accurate information on its enemy and greatly underestimated the challenge. But, in early summer, it appeared Germany would land the knockout blow: as its Army Group North drove on Leningrad, Army Group Center pulled off several huge encirclements of Soviet troops on the way to Moscow, and Army Group South neared Kiev. In late summer, the troops rested, and Hitler ordered the panzer forces of Army Group Center to turn north and south to help these peripheral drives. Turning south, tank forces of Heinz Guderian helped surround 665,000 Soviet troops near Kiev, the largest prisoner-of-war capture in history. When Germany resumed the advance on Moscow, the Soviet Union was ready. Operation Typhoon failed within sight of the Kremlin, and the Soviets counterattacked, catching the German army desperately unprepared. When the Soviet attack petered out in late winter, Germany had suffered grievous losses, and it seemed the Soviet Union could survive.

World War II in the Pacific

The Japanese defeat by the Soviets at the Battle of Nomonhan (Khalkin Gol) on the Mongolian border in August 1939 caused Japan to look south for raw materials; Japanese military leaders settled on a centrifugal offensive centered on the destruction of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked, and thereafter gained a series of striking victories, including capturing Hong Kong, the Malay Peninsula, and the British stronghold of Singapore, the Mariana and Gilbert Islands, the Philippines, Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, and other island groups to secure a vast resource area and territory behind which to defend these gains.

Japanese leaders, however, suffered from “victory disease,” and instead of building up their defenses in depth to withstand the American counterattack, they continued their offensive. They tried to isolate Australia and threaten India. The result was the fl awed Japanese attack against Midway in early June 1942, which led to the destruction of four fleet carriers, fatally weakening the Japanese navy.

Soviet Union Fights Back

Hitler returned to the offensive on the eastern front in summer 1942, but only had strength to attack to the south, aiming for Stalingrad and Soviet oil facilities by the Caspian coast. The distances exceeded German logistical capacity, and General Friedrich Paulus made a fateful decision to commit the German Sixth Army to a fight for Stalingrad. Under General Vasili Chuikov, the Soviet Sixty-second Army engaged in a valiant, desperate defense featuring house-to-house and even floor-to-floor resistance.

As the battle for Stalingrad raged from summer into the fall of 1942, General (later Marshal) Georgi Zhukov planned for a riposte, positioning vast Soviet forces on the vulnerable flanks of the German position at Stalingrad; the Soviets intended to crash through Romanian and Hungarian positions, race around the German Sixth Army and Fourth Panzer Army, and effect a double envelopment. The Soviets struck on 12 November, and several days later the spearheads met at Kalach and cut off the Germans; in early February 1943, the last survivors surrendered. The Soviets followed this victory with an offensive that pushed the Germans out of Caucasia.

When the spring thaw halted operations, there was a bulge into German defenses around Kursk, and Hitler planned for a double envelopment to destroy Soviet positions after which, presumably, he would go on the defensive. But Hitler delayed the start of Operation Citadel many times, waiting for the new, heavy German tanks, and this delay allowed Zhukov to plan for the expected German advance. The greatest tank battle in history began on 5 July 1943, and the German pincer effort from the north quickly stalled; however, the attack from the south, featuring the cream of the German ground forces, made some headway before Hitler suspended offensive operations owing to the Allied invasion of Sicily. Thereafter, the Soviets seized the initiative and by early fall 1943 freed the eastern Ukraine of German forces; they continued advancing into winter 1943 into the western Ukraine, creating a huge bulge on the southern flank of German Army Group Center.

The force and space ratios on the eastern front clearly favored the Soviet Union. Had Germany not attacked at Kursk and had it dedicated its limited productive capacity to defense, German tactical superiority might have withstood Soviet logistical superiority. But Hitler threw away precious panzers and artillery at Kursk, and the Soviets halted operations only when their supply lines ran out.

On 20 June 1944, the Soviets launched Operation Bagration. The Soviet military achieved a great surprise, fooling German commanders in the east into believing that the attack would go south; the Germans concentrated their limited panzer resources there, largely leaving Army Group Center without tanks. The Soviets attacked, and surged past German positions before the infantry could react or retreat. The advance carried from pre-1939 Russia all the way to the Vistula River and Warsaw in August, when Soviet forces outran their supply lines and halted.

In Air and at Sea

Meanwhile, on other fronts, the Axis powers retreated. To respond to Soviet calls for a “second front,” the United States and Great Britain opened a strategic bombing campaign. Before the development of long-range fighters, the U.S. Eighth Air Force, bombing in daylight, suffered heavy losses, while the nighttime Royal Air Force did little damage against German industrial targets. But Hitler wanted to maintain home front support and gradually withdrew fighter squadrons from the eastern front, and later from France and Italy, to defend Germany. After mid-1943 and the appearance of long-range American fighter planes, the outcome began to favor the Allies.

Similarly, the United States won the Battle of the Atlantic. At first, German U-boats enjoyed great success against the vulnerable American East Coast, and later in Caribbean and South Atlantic waters. Soon the United States constructed more cargo ships than the Germans could sink, and they built escort aircraft carriers, which accommodated only twenty airplanes. The U.S. Tenth Fleet, organized around these carriers and their support ships, hounded German submarines, denying them open areas in which to operate and to surface for battery recharging. The Allies sank more than 80 percent of German submarines.

The Ground War

Finally, the Western Allies began to contest the German army. In November 1942, they launched Operation Torch against French northwest Africa to complement the British Eighth Army’s attack on Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps positions near El Alamein in the Western Desert of Egypt. By early May 1943 they forced the Axis surrender in Africa. On July 10, they launched Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, and after a six-week campaign crossed into Italy. The Italian government surrendered in September, and most Italian army divisions melted away. The Germans under Field Marshal Albert Kesselring defended well, and progress up the Italian peninsula was slow and costly, but the drain on German resources meant that German commanders could not count on reinforcements from other theaters. On 6 June 1944, the Allies launched Operation Overlord, the invasion of France, commanded by U.S. army general Dwight Eisenhower. Three airborne divisions landed during the night, and five infantry divisions assaulted five beaches: Gold, Sword, Juno, Omaha, and Utah. Despite the difficulty of the hedgerows in Normandy, the Allies brought men and equipment ashore in the expanding beachhead. In late July 1944, the U.S. army launched Operation Cobra; as American forces moved down the Cotentin Peninsula to Avranches and broke out and around the German defense, the U.S. Third Army under General George Patton became operational, and it quickly spread west into the Brittany peninsula and east toward the Seine above Paris. German troops were surrounded near Falaise, and an invasion in southern France, Operation Dragoon, sent American and Free French troops up the Rhone River Valley to meet Patton’s forces near Dijon, cutting off German forces in France.

After Midway, the United States seized the initiative against Japan. At first, it was the desperate fighting on Guadalcanal from August 1942 to February 1943, and then the U.S. advanced on two axes. Admiral Chester Nimitz led the navy advance to the Gilbert Islands and Tarawa in November 1943, to the Marshall Islands and Kwajalein in February 1944, and then to the Marianas in June 1944, and the invasions of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian along with the Battle of the Philippine Sea (also called the Marianas Turkey Shoot). Army general Douglas MacArthur commanded a mixed force that moved up the Solomon Islands chain and leapfrogged Japanese strongpoints on the New Guinea coast, while isolating the 100,000-man Japanese Army in Rabaul in New Britain. In October 1944, MacArthur invaded the Philippines, although fighting would continue there until war’s end. Meanwhile, the Central Pacific offensive moved to Iwo Jima in the Bonin Islands in January 1945 and Okinawa in the Ryukyus in April 1945.

The attack on the Philippines cut off Japanese forces in Southeast Asia, and an Anglo-Indian offensive pushed the Japanese through Burma, though progress, owing to the difficult terrain, was slow. Meanwhile, Chinese government forces managed to occupy a great many Japanese divisions while conserving strength for the expected renewal of the civil war with the Communists.

Victory in Europe

In fall 1944, the pressure on Germany continued. Strategic bombing of Germany caused many casualties, although Albert Speer achieved a production miracle for war goods. The Red Army paused in the center, sweeping into the Balkans and trapping the Germans along the Baltic. By December 1944, the Soviets were at the 1939 German-Polish border and near Budapest in Hungary waiting to resume the offensive. In the west, Eisenhower ordered a halt in operations for winter, owing to supply difficulties. In late December 1944, Hitler launched a desperate gamble, an attack against weak American forces in the Ardennes, hoping to drive toward Antwerp, cut off the British, and force the Americans to surrender. But the German attack lacked sufficient fuel reserves; the Americans, especially around Bastogne, defended fiercely, and when skies cleared Allied airpower battered German formations. As the Soviets launched a winter offensive, the Allies drove to the Rhine and in March 1945 crossed, first at Remagen, and then along the upper Rhine and finally to the north. Meanwhile, the Red Army drove on Berlin, and Soviet forces under Zhukov and Marshal Ivan Koniev engaged in a race to Berlin, which was won by Zhukov’s men at terrible cost. In late April elements of the U.S. and Red armies met at Torgau on the Elbe, and Germany was divided. Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker in Germany, and on 7 May, German commanders surrendered to Eisenhower in Rheims, France, followed on 8 May 1945, with a surrender to Soviet commanders in Berlin.

Japan Surrenders

The Japanese continued to resist, and American experts predicted a bloody and costly attack on the Japanese home islands. However, in July 1945, at Alamagordo, New Mexico, scientists exploded the first atomic bomb, and several weeks later the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima (6 August) and one on Nagasaki (9 August), compelling Japan’s surrender on 2 September 1945 in Tokyo Bay. World War II ended.

The Aftermath of World War II

The end of World War II brought with it a wide range of significant consequences, many of which were aimed at preventing similar conflicts in the future. War crimes committed by the Axis powers, including the Holocaust, were addressed at the Nuremberg Trials and the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. The United Nations was established with the explicit aim of maintaining international peace and security. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was instituted as a guarantee of the rights for all human beings. The international economic and financial architecture was overhauled and increasingly managed and regulated by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization (formerly the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). The state of Israel was established. Many former colonies won their independence, while other states such as Germany and Korea were divided ideologically and politically. Women began to find new and expanding roles in society on the back of their important contribution to the war effort. War-time technologies, innovations, and management systems were put to good peacetime uses, few more important than the jet engine and the now indispensible computer. Particularly important, learning from the mistakes of the interwar period, Europe (including Germany) was rebuilt under the Marshall Plan, as was Japan, which would soon modernize and rise to major economic power status.

Bibliography:

• Crozier, A. J. (1997). The causes of the Second World War. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
• Delaney, J. (1996). The Blitzkrieg campaigns: Germany’s “Lightning War” strategy in action. New York: Sterling.
• Donnelly, M. (1999). Britain in the Second World War. New York: Routledge.
• Dupuy, T. N., & Martell, P. (1982). Great battles on the eastern front: The Soviet–German War, 1941–1945. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.
• Glantz, D. M. (2001). Barbarossa: Hitler’s invasion of Russia, 1941. Stroud, U.K.: Tempus.
• Glantz, D. M., & House, J. M. (1995). When titans clashed: How the Red Army stopped Hitler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
• Hart, B. H. L. (1971). History of the Second World War. New York: Putnam.
• Howard, M. E. (1968). The Mediterranean strategy in the Second World War. New York: Praeger.
• Hoyt, E. P. (1993). 199 days: The battle of Stalingrad. New York: Tor.
• Iriye, A. (1987). The origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific. New York: Longman.
• James, D. C., & Wells, A. S. (1995). From Pearl Harbor to V-J day: The American armed forces in World War II. Chicago: Ivan Dee.
• Keegan, J. (1990). The Second World War. New York: Penguin Books.
• Kitchen, M. (1990). A world in flames: A short history of the Second World War in Europe and Asia, 1939–1945. New York: Longman.
• Levine, A. J. (1995). The Pacific war: Japan versus the Allies. Westport, CT: Praeger.
• Morison, S. E. (1963). The two-ocean war: A short history of the United States Navy in the Second World War. Boston: Little, Brown.
• Overy, R. (1995). Why the Allies won. London: Jonathan Cape. Smith, E. D. (1979). Battle for Burma. New York: Holmes & Meier.
• Spector, R. H. (1985). Eagle against the sun: The American war with Japan. New York: Free Press.
• Tucker, S. C. (2004). The Second World War. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
• Weinberg, G. L. (1994). A world at arms: A global history of World War II. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Williamson, M., & Millett, A. R. (2000). A war to be won: Fighting in the Second World War. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• Wynn, K. (1997). U-Boat operations of the Second World War. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press.
• Zapantis, A. L. (1987). Hitler’s Balkan campaign and the invasion of the USSR. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Ziemke, E. F. (1968). Stalingrad to Berlin: The German defeat in the east. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
• Ziemke, E. F., & Bauer, M. F. (1987). Moscow to Stalingrad: Decision in the east. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

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Research Paper Assignment 

Battle of Britain Alan Turing: WWII Code Breaker Battle of Stalingrad Auschwitz Kristallnacht Medical Experiments at Dachau Your final product will be a research/argument paper in which you discuss the impact of a figure or event on Western Civilization. You must cite THREE sources within your paper.  

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• Formative 3.1 – A third source with a brief explanation on how it will help your paper and why it is a credible and reliable source.

Due end of class_________________

• Formative 3.3--Typed outline with thesis statement, sources cited, section on opposing viewpoint/rebuttal
• Formatives 1.1 & 3.4--Typed draft of paper and works cited page

***Drafts will be graded formatively and reviewed between 4/17-5/1, and will then be handed back for revision***

***Second draft with revisions will be due one week from the date the first draft is returned.   This will potentially be your final summative assessment for this project.  In the event that further revision is needed, you will be required to submit a third draft for your summative assessment***

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English Learning Targets Addressed:

1.1 I can write a multi-paragraph exposition with introduction that ends with a thesis statement, body paragraphs with evidence and elaboration, paragraph unity, transitions, and a conclusion.

3.3 I can integrate evidence selectively to maintain the logical order of ideas including considering opposing viewpoints, providing appropriate rebuttals and effectively answering a research question.  3.4 I can document sources using proper internal citations and a works cited to avoid plagiarism.

Western Civilization Target Addressed:

2.6 I can analyze the key events that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany.

4.6 I can analyze how the Nazi use of terror, ideology and propaganda led to the process of dehumanization that culminated in the Holocaust.

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A list of archival materials and collections related to women's service in the armed forces, both at home and abroad, during World War II. 

• Jane Barton (1918-2005) Jane Barton attended officer training for the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) at Mount Holyoke College. She was stationed in Washington, D.C., where she coordinated housing for WAVES officers and oversaw public relations for the Potomac River Naval Command and the U.S. Naval Barracks. She was editor of two newsletters for WAVES personnel, The Havelock and Scuttlebutt , and in 1947 initiated the first reunion of WAVES personnel. She served in the U.S. Naval Reserve until 1968, where she trained women recruits and oversaw public relations in the Albany, New York, area. During her naval service, Barton rose in rank from an Ensign to a Commander. This collection includes correspondence, scrapbooks, clippings, printed material, radio scripts, photographs, Naval Reserve recruiting brochures, and issues of The Havelock and Scuttlebutt. The collection documents her years as a WAVES officer during World War II, her role in organizing later reunions of the WAVES, and her service in the USNR from 1948 to 1968.
• Ruth P. Boehner Ruth P. Boehner, a teacher from Webster, Mass., enlisted in the Women's Army Corps in 1943. This collection consists of a typed letter from Boehner describing her first months in the Women's Army Corps; also a note concerning Boehner's subsequent career.
• Nona Baldwin Brown (1918-2014) Nona Baldwin Brown received an advanced degree in journalism from Columbia University (M.S. 1940) and was immediately hired by the New York Times . Brown temporarily left her job and joined the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) in the United States Naval Reserve, serving from 1942 to 1945 as a public relations press officer. In 1944, she married Clinton Bleecker Duma Brown in New York City, both in their military uniforms. Brown left the WAVES and returned to the New York Times Washington Bureau in 1945.
• Bertha Marie Strittmatter Clark Corporal Bertha Strittmatter enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), later known as the Women's Army Corp (WAC). She was stationed at Stout Field, Indianapolis, Indiana. Strittmatter was a columnist for Wactivities and the Fielder . This collection consists of When WAC Was a Dirty Word, a personal account of Strittmatter's experiences as a WAC. Anecdotes illustrate unfavorable attitudes toward WACs, problems they encountered in their personal and work lives, and how sentiments changed with increasing recognition of their contributions to the war effort.
• Winifred Quick Collins (1911-1999) Navy captain Winifred Quick Collins was commissioned as an ensign in the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) in August 1942, and in 1948 she was in the first group of women commissioned in the United States Navy. In 1957 she was appointed Chief of Naval Personnel for Women, the most senior position for which women were eligible; she was the only woman line officer with the rank of captain. She retired in 1962 and was active in a number of organizations, including the National Navy League, in which she was the first woman elected vice-president and director (1965).
• Ernestine R. Etienne (1921-1996) Ernestine R. Etienne was an African American member of the Women's Army Corps during World War II. Etienne, from New Roads, Louisiana, enlisted in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in Houston, Texas, on December 17, 1942, when she was 21 years old. She trained at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, and worked as a baker for the 1550th Station Complement at the Women's Army Corps facility at Fort Knox in Kentucky. This collection includes a service record book with entries from Etienne about her personal experiences, a United States Army Separation Qualification Record, and photographs primarily depicting African American military members.
• Vivian M. Gammons (1922-2000) Vivian M. Gammons lived in Quincy, Massachusetts, and joined the Women's Army Corp (WAC) in 1943. She served in France and was promoted to sergeant. The collection consists of a wooden WAC box with Okerfelt's name and identification number stenciled on it; letters to her, mostly from her boyfriend Joseph Wisnowski, a soldier stationed in the Pacific; photographs; and other materials from the war.
• Marjorie B. Healey Marjorie B. Healey served in Europe during World War II with the Army as a dietitian. This collection consists of letters, mostly to her parents, from Healey's service abroad.
• Harriet R. Hulett Harriet R. Hulett joined the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in 1942 and was sent to Des Moines, Iowa, and Nacogdoches, Texas, for training. This collection consists of a (disassembled) scrapbook including WAAC brochures and memoranda, programs, photographs, postcards, and clippings.
• Katherine M. Keene (1919-2013) Katherine Mildred Keene enlisted in the U.S. Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in December 1942, and in the Women's Army Corps (WAC) in August 1943. From September 1943 to May 1945, she was stationed in London, England, working for the secret intelligence and research and analysis branches of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Following Victory in Europe Day, Keene became secretary to the head of the OSS Research and Analysis Branch in the European Theatre of Operations and served in briefly in Paris, France, before being stationed in Germany. She was demobilized in October 1945 and returned home to Seattle. This collection contains correspondence, diaries, photographs, a WAC uniform, and ephemera documenting Keene's service.
• Harriette Gould Myerson (b. 1919) Massachusetts native Harriette "Hat" Gould Myerson entered the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in August 1942, reporting to the Training Center at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. In 1943, she went to Adjutant General's School at Fort Washington, Maryland, and after completing her training was sent to the Army Administration School in Richmond, Kentucky, to be a Classification and Assignment Officer. Myerson worked at various posts before she was discharged from the Army in 1946. She later attended Radcliffe College, graduating from the Management Training Program in 1947. This collection includes photographs, WAAC graduation programs, military decorations, correspondence between Myerson and fellow WAACs during World War II, and her military personnel file.
• Ruth Thompson Peirce (1911-1994) Peirce, a native of Boston, Mass., was recruited by the FBI in 1941 to work as an undercover agent. She joined the Women's Army Corps in August 1942 and was one of the first women intercept operators for the Boston Intercept Command. She was later stationed as a flight dispatcher in Bangor, Maine, and at Mitchell Air Force Base, Long Island, New York. She was discharged from the military in 1945. Throughout her life she retained an avid interest in women in the military, collecting clippings and other information on the subject.
• Radcliffe College Archives War Records This collection includes information about Radcliffe College students who served in the armed forces in World War II. It is arranged by class (1936-1943) and by individual, and includes clippings, photographs, certificates, newsletters, postcards, correspondence, and a reminiscence by Mabelle Gertrude Lutze (1983).
• Elizabeth Reynard (1898-1962) Elizabeth Reynard was assistant director of the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) during World War II. This collection includes correspondence, articles, reports, newsletters, manuals, photos, clippings, phonograph records, and other material reflecting Reynard's career in the Navy, including her assignments with the WAVES at WAVES training school, the Naval Training School, and on the U.S.S. Hunter. It also includes information about WAVES personnel and organization regulations, and about other units of military women in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain.
• Josephine Biase Schinto [in Jeanne Schinto] Josephine Biase Schinto served with the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) during World War II. This collection includes documents and photographs pertaining to her service.
• Lavonne Shand (1910-1997) Lavonne (Howerton) Shand was a telephone operator in Longview, Washington, when her husband enlisted in the Navy in 1943. She signed on with the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and was trained at the U.S. Naval Training School in the Bronx. Other postings were in Rhode Island; Milledgeville, Georgia; Camp Parks, California; and Camp Douglas, Utah. The collection consists of one scrapbook documenting her time in the WAVES and includes newsletters, programs, correspondence, photographs, clippings, cartoons, sheet music, and other memorabilia.
• Ruth Streeter (1895-1990) In 1943, Ruth Cheney Streeter became the first woman to attain the rank of major in the United States Marine Corps and became the first director of the United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve. She retired in 1945 as a colonel. This collection contains a typescript copy of History of the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve: A Critical Analysis of Its Development and Operation, 1943-1945 , written for the Department of the Navy by Streeter and Colonel Katherine A. Towle, assistant director and later director of the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve. Also included is a 1981 article about Streeter and two images from Streeter's self-published book, Tales of an Ancient Marine .
• Katharine Wolcott Toll (1913-2007) Katharine Wolcott Toll was a social worker and lieutenant in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). While the bulk of her World War II material is housed in other archives, the collection does contain some correspondence pertaining to her service in the WAVES.
• United States Naval Reserve Women's Reserve The Women's Reserve of the U.S. Naval Reserve, formerly known as the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), was established on July 30, 1942. This folder contains biographies of Captains Winifred Redden Quick and Louise K. Wilde; a history of the WAVES; and papers of a conference of women District and Air Command Assistants.
• Dorothy Warren (1905-2008) Dorothy Warren served as Director of Training and Records Officer for the United States Women's Army Corps (1942-1946). The collection includes a copy of Dorothy Warren's birth certificate, resumes, letters of recognition, correspondence, and manuscripts of an article Warren wrote. Most of the collection relates to Warren's military service, and includes clippings, orders, memos, training manuals, photographs, and printed material.
• Hazel Hitson Weidman (b. 1923) Medical anthropologist Hazel Marie Hitson Weidman joined the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) in 1943; she attended boot camp at the U.S. Naval Training School at Hunter College, Bronx, New York. After taking aptitude tests during boot camp, Weidman was sent to the Atlanta Naval Air Station to learn to instruct pilots in celestial navigation, which encompassed instrumental flight and radio navigation. During the war she served at several naval air bases including the New Orleans Naval Air Station and the Alameda and Livermore Naval Air Stations in California. Included in the collection are love letters received by Weidman during World War II, which offer glimpses into the lives of Navy and Army pilots during the war and the difficulties of maintaining long-distance romances during wartime.
• Women's Overseas Service League Transcripts Founded in 1921, the Women's Overseas Service League (WOSL) is a national organization of women who served overseas with the United States Armed Forces. In 1983 WOSL began a project entitled "Carry On: An Oral History of Women's Overseas Service League Members." This collection consists of transcripts of seven interviews as well as one publication regarding the WOSL.
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• These are written by experts and scholars, and reviewed by other scholars in the same field (peer review)
• They are published in journals which usually are focused on one topic (example:  American Studies  is a journal focused on American culture)
• They provide in-depth analysis on a specific topic (often quite narrow!)
• They can be used to help you build an argument in a research paper

You can search for scholarly articles in two ways. First, via a general search over all library holdings. If performing a general search, it is important to use specific keywords to limit results to only those closely related to your topic (see tips below). Second, you can choose a subject-specific database and perform your keyword search there. When using a database, topics unrelated to the discipline of your interest have already been filtered out; you will receive fewer (but hopefully better!) results when searching.

1. Put phrases in quotes

If you are searching for a phrase, such as spontaneous combustion or greater rice weevil, put the entire phrase in double quotes. This will tell the search engine to only find results that contain the exact phrase, rather than one or two of the individual words.

• "spontaneous combustion" rather than spontaneous combustion
• "greater rice weevil" rather than greater rice weevil

2. Use AND to narrow your search

If you have two or more words or concepts that you want to find, use AND (must be capitalized) to tell the search engine to only look for items that contain both words.

• wheat AND allergen
• "carbon emissions" AND farming

3. Use OR to expand your search

Often, there is more than one way to talk about your topic. For example, if you are looking at the study habits of college students, you could look for "study strategies," "study habits," "ways of studying," "study methods" etc. Some phrases might be better than others. If you want to try looking for multiple variations of the same word or phrase in a single search, use OR (all capitals) to tell the search engine to find material with any of the words you've included.

• phone OR smartphone OR telephone
• "study habit" OR "study strategy"

You can even get fancy and use both AND and OR:

• "college students" AND ("study habit" OR "study strategy")

The following three databases are commonly used by James Madison students.  All three include full-text articles as well as citations to other articles that may be pertinent.  If you can't find the full-text of an article, let me know & I'll help you figure it out!

Covers the history and culture of the US. It provides full-text coverage for 200+ journals and citations for articles in many more.

Includes academic humanities journals with full-text for many and citations for more. Several types of materials are included such as articles, interviews, bibliographies, and reviews.

Includes social sciences academic journals, includes full-text and citations.

**Tip**   All three of the above databases use the same interface (i.e. they all look the same).  At the top of the page, above the search box, you'll see "Searching: ..." with the name of the database.  To the right, you can click on "choose databases" and then you can choose to search all three in one search.  

For the experienced researcher, using databases offers advantages over a generic article search. Databases narrow the range of articles to the more specific subject area the researcher wishes to focus on. MSU Libraries subscribes to more than 1100 databases, but below are a few that may best focus the research you do for this course.

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• Last Updated: Mar 5, 2024 6:29 PM
• URL: https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/worldwarII