Cold War: Primary Sources

The Atomic Heritage Foundation (AHF), founded by Cynthia Kelly in 2002, is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in Washington, DC, dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Age and its legacy.

CIA Library - This collection provides interesting Agency insights on this post-WWII spy case. Documents cover, among many other topics, US intelligence activities, including FBI-CIA cooperation; USSR intelligence activities; the Rosenberg espionage network's collection against the US atomic energy program; their attempts to protect the network as US authorities closed in on it; their arrest; Soviet propaganda; the Soviet's protest of the Rosenberg's sentencing; and Moscow's reaction to the execution of their spies.

Yale Law School - Documents in law, history, and diplomacy

Hoover Institution, Stanford University - Collections are from US secretaries of state, individual activists and propagandists, and many émigré groups involved in the ideological struggle. Important subsets are collections relating to “citizen diplomacy,” in which individuals and organizations acted to defuse international tensions, particularly the danger of nuclear conflict; records of organizations on the front lines, such as the Free Europe Committee (later RFE/RL), involved in broadcasting and other activities aiming to penetrate the Iron Curtain; and papers relating to the role of the Third World in the confrontation.

US National Archives and Records Administration - Contains links to NARA resources and other government and educational sites.

Wilson Center Digital Archive - Since its establishment in August 1991, the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) has amassed a tremendous collection of archival documents on the Cold War era from the once secret archives of former communist countries. CWIHP has become internationally recognized as the world’s preeminent resource on the Cold War.

Discover 29,505,026 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States.

Online documents on a number of topics related to the Cold War (i.e., McCarthyism, Rosenbergs, Sputnik & the Space Race, U-2 Spy Plane Incident)

Explore 58,246,083 artworks, artifacts, books, films and music from European museums, galleries, libraries and archives.

This five-volume collection of Senate hearings is available online (in PDF format). Volumes 1-4 cover the 1953 hearings, and 1954 hearings are found in volume 5. Also available in print: Young Library, U.S. Government Publications (5th floor), Y 4.G 74/9:S.PRT.107-84/V.1-5

The FBI has converted many FOIA documents to an electronic format (PDF), and they may be viewed here. In the case of voluminous pages, only summaries or excerpts from the documents are online. Subjects are sorted alphabetically by first name. You can also use your browser's find feature to locate subjects on the page.

This collection focuses on the ideals that formed the basis of American policy toward the Soviet Union during the early years of the Cold War. The collection includes 57 documents totaling 681 pages covering the years 1945 through 1952. Supporting materials include photographs, oral history transcripts, biographies and a chronology of events. Related collections available from the Truman Library include subject guides on the Berlin Airlift, Korean War, Marshall Plan, Truman Doctrine and United Nations.

Locate physical copies and online access to government documents created by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Excerpts from the actual hearings, interviews outside the courtroom, and from eyewitness accounts.

Search & browse for documents, photographs, audio, film & video, and oral histories.

View the National Security Council document of April 1950 that set in motion the massive military buildup of the Cold War.

US National Archives and Records Administration - Court records of Rosenberg Trial

February 9th, 1950: McCarthy “discovered Communism the way Columbus discovered America.” Here is a record of McCarthy’s infamous interrogations of accused “communists,” with commentary from Emile de Antonio describing how in fact the junior Senator from Wisconsin perfected “the big lie technique” that basically resulted in witch hunts persecuting, in particular, academics.

In this oral history website Brooklyn College students narrate two historical episodes: their experiences of working on farms during World War II, and the events surrounding the suspension of the Vanguard, the student newspaper in a postwar McCarthy era climate.

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum - Read formerly classified documents and listen in on secretly recorded ExComm meetings during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Wall Street Journal Eastern Edition and Online Edition

For more than 60 years the University of Kentucky Libraries have preserved Kentucky newspapers, making them freely available to researchers, genealogists, and the general public. Today, the Kentucky Digital Newspaper Program (KDNP) brings those newspaper collections to a global audience through an online interface that's fully keyword searchable, replete with color page images, calendar browsing, and web-based html newspaper content alongside traditional print media.

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service is a federal agency that monitors and translates foreign media into English. FBIS Daily Reports are translated transcripts of foreign radio and television broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements. The reports contain political, military, economic, environmental, and sociological news and information. To locate and access the full-text translations use the Index to the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) daily reports.