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Need more help with your research? Feel free to contact Celestina Savonius-Wroth, history librarian, cewroth@indiana.edu any point.
On this page: Places to start - Journals/magazines/newspapers - Government Documents - Finding sources on the (free) internet
Places to start
Credo Reference, Blackwell Reference Online and Oxford Reference Online are online sources for background information. They are more reliable and scholarly than Wikipedia, but Wikipedia can also be useful--just be sure to check that the footnotes go to real sources, and don't rely on a Wikipedia article as a definitive source for any statement.
IUCAT is the online catalog of the Indiana University Libraries. Use the Basic Search to look up authors or titles mentioned in your other readings, or use the Advanced Keyword Search to search for both primary and secondary source materials on your topic. Hint: try some of the terms below as subjects. Germany (West) History
Germany (East) History
Denazification
Germany (East)
German reunification question (1949-1990)
Germany History 1945-1955
Germany History 1945-1990
Germany history unification 1990
Germany Social conditions 20th century
Germany History 20th century
Germany Social conditions 1990-
Germany Politics and government 1945-1990
To find primary sources in IUCAT, use the Advanced Keyword Search, some of the subject terms above, limit your results to English, and see this guide to primary sources for tips on search terms that describe primary sources (such as sources, personal narratives, interviews). OR, if you're interested in primary sources that were originally published in English, limit your search by date of publication.
Use WorldCat to expand your search to other libraries besides IU's. Use the Request materials from ILL link to borrow items you find in WorldCat.
OneSearch@IU is meta-search engine for books, journals and magazines in many fields of study. Use the peer reviewed limiter to find articles in scholarly journals only.
Historical Abstracts covers scholarly journals in history. This is the core resource for secondary sources (= what historians have written about your topic).
International Political Sience Abstracts and PAIS International are good places to go for secondary sources in political science and related fields of study.
Depending on your topic, you'll also find useful resources on the library web pages for Gender Studies, Film Studies, Music, Germanic Studies (eg, for German literature) and Political Science.
Journal, magazine and newspaper articles as primary sources
Try AltPressIndexArchive for non-mainstream (for example, socialist) views of German history (1969-present).
British Humanities Index is a online index of newspapers and other publications from the UK (1962-present).
IBZ - Internationale Bibliographie der Zeitschriftenliteratur covers a range of German and other European publications but note that the search interface and most of the results are IN GERMAN.
JSTOR and Periodicals Index Online are two resources on the fuzzy line between primary and secondary sources. Use them either to find recent scholarly research on your topic, or, by setting date limits, find out what issues were debated in the time period you're writing about.
Lexis-Nexis Academic and Factiva can be used for up-to-the minute news but also for contemporary news coverage back to the 1980s, including some German publications. ProQuest Historical Newspapers is a digitized archive of major US newspapers covering all of the 20th century. Also available [London]Times Digital Archive.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports 1941-1996 is an archive of transcripts of foreign news broadcasts, translated into English.
US Government Documents as primary source materials
US Government publications are a rich source of English-language primary sources. You'll be able to find these through your searches in IUCAT, and some are available fulltext online (see links in IUCAT to HathiTrust Digital Library). For example:
Reports of the military government for Germany, U.S. Zone, 1945-53
(Wells Library, Microforms, DD257 .R46 1983) MICROFILM
Records of the United States Information Agency. Research reports, Part 2, German public opinion, 1945-1970
(Wells Library, Microforms, DD257.4 .R43 2006) MICROFILM
Documents on Germany, 1944-1985 (online through HathiTrust, print copy available in Wells Library Research Collections, E183.8.G3 D62 1985)
Declassified Documents Reference System (DDRS) and Digital National Security Archives are two digitized collections of government materials, with many Cold War-related materials.
Proquest Congressional is a digital archive of publications by and for the US Congress, including many documents relating to Germany and the Cold War.
For more resources for US government documents, see this resource page for a J400 on Foreign Relations.
Finding primary sources on the (free) internet
There are many excellent collections of translated, digitized, primary sources on the internet.
German History in Documents and Images (GDHI) is a collection of translated primary source documents, plus images and maps, published online by the German Historical Institute. EuroDocs: Germany Divided and Reunified (Brigham Young University) provides links to full text of primary source documents (most in English).
German Propaganda Archive and GDR Photos are smaller collections on specific topics.
You'll find many more in your own internet searches. Please remember, though, that anyone can use the internet to express his or her views, no matter how absurd, hateful or bizarre (eg, Holocaust-denial sites like this). Any source you find on a web site needs to be carefully investigated. Look for a clear statement of the author's identity and credentials, such as affiliation with a university, museum, library or other cultural institution.
last updated February 12, 2013
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