Archives West Finding Aid

This collection has been organized alphabetically by country of origin or subject and then chronologically when feasible. Although the grouping has been categorized and sorted at the folder level, item-level descriptive information has been drawn from records available in WorldCat.

Note that entries exist for the United Nations. This part of the collection contains information which was used to educate the American public about the purpose of the U.N. There are also many periodicals from special interest groups or government departments, most of them published in the United States.

Some of the periodicals were mailed directly to the University of Montana Kaimin newpaper, and others were mailed directly to the University of Montana’s then-president, George Finlay Simmons. Items of particular note include four pamphlets written in German and published in Great Britain. These pamphlets were part of Great Britain and America’s propaganda campaign against the German army. Other items of interest are “Make and Mend for Victory”, a book of Victory hat and clothing patterns; “News from Germany” cartoons satirizing Winston Churchill; and the “Japan-China Pictorial Primer”, in which Japan defends its military occupation of China.

Many of these materials cover a wide variety of information with no one categorization; they have been put under the most likely subheadings possible. Some of the periodicals are filed under a subject heading if they fit; otherwise, they are organized under the “News Coverage” heading. Atrocity literature has been grouped under the source country of the allegation rather than the subject country; e.g., atrocities alleged by Belgium against Germany would be found under Belgium. Other propaganda may be found under its source if the subject is primarily of national concern to the originating nation, such as a national issue like U.S.’s neutrality during the first part of the war which was of particular concern to Great Britain.

Because of the peculiar role played by the United States before its entry into the war, much of the English literature in this collection could be categorized as propaganda that was aimed at the U.S. In particular, most of the items published by the British Library of Information and British Information Services were expressly written for an American audience. Although much of this literature has been filed under “Propaganda: Aimed at the United States”, in some cases, certain pamphlets have been filed under other categories or subheadings to promote ease of searchability; e.g., pamphlets about the British Royal Air Force would be filed under “Military”.

Although India was a British colony during the war, the country has its own section because of the amount of literature on India. Also, pamphlets published by Serbians are located under Yugoslavia since Serbia did not become a nation until 2006.