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WW2 Total WW2 Total Vol. XII · Est. 2014

A Research-Grade WWII Archive

A serious free archive.
A complete premium one.

WW2 Total opens 38,000+ primary documents to anyone with an email address. A Premium account unlocks the full 184,732-document collection, all 2,400 interactive campaign maps, and the complete 1,100-hour library of veteran oral histories — searchable in twelve languages.

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No payment information required for the free tier. Cancel anytime.

Archival researcher's hands turning the page of a 1944 military dispatch log
Capt. R. Halverson's unit dispatch, 12 March 1944. U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD.

Three Plans, Plainly Labeled

Choose the depth of access your research requires.

Every plan includes full-text search, citation export, and personal reading lists. The difference is what is unlocked inside the archive.

Free

$0/ forever

For the curious reader and the undergraduate.

  • 38,000+ primary documents — full-text searchable
  • One curated map collection (The Western Front, 1944–45)
  • 120 hours of edited oral history excerpts
  • Personal reading lists and bookmarking
  • Citation export (Chicago, MLA, APA)
  • Search across 12 languages
Start Your Free Account

No credit card. Email verification only.

Premium Most Researched

$14/ month

For the working historian, journalist, and serious autodidact.

  • All 184,732 primary documents — letters, dispatches, after-action reports, SIGINT transcripts
  • All 2,400 interactive campaign maps with quarterly georeferenced overlays
  • Full 1,100-hour oral history library, 62% unique to WW2 Total
  • Citation export with verified archival source codes
  • Document workspaces, annotation, and side-by-side comparison
  • OCR-verified transcriptions, 9-day average turnaround from acquisition
  • Offline document bundles for fieldwork
Subscribe to Premium

Billed monthly. Annual billing saves 20%. 94% subscriber retention, year-over-year.

Institutional

Custom

For universities, archives, libraries, and documentary teams.

  • Site-wide access for the full institution — typically $4,800–$18,000 / year
  • IP-range authentication and SAML/Shibboleth sign-in
  • Bulk export for archival ingest (METS/MODS compatible)
  • Dedicated curator liaison from our 19-historian editorial board
  • Statement of provenance for every document, signed by an archivist
  • Preferred partnership track with the Eastern Front documentation project
Talk to Our Institutional Team

Currently serving 312 universities and 47 national archives.

Educators at accredited K–12 and community college institutions receive a 40% Premium discount. See verification requirements →

What Premium Unlocks

A catalog of research capabilities, not an abstract subscription.

Every panel names a specific capability — what you can do with the archive that you cannot do without it.

  1. 01

    Full-text search across 12 languages

    Search 14.2 million transcribed pages — German Fraktur, Cyrillic, Japanese kana, Polish, French, Dutch, Italian, and more — from one query box. Documents load in under 380 ms via our custom Elasticsearch index.

  2. 02

    All 2,400 interactive campaign maps

    Pin a unit's morning report to its position on a map of the Eastern Front, 1943. Every map carries quarterly georeferenced overlays from open-source intelligence teams — and every pin links back to its source document.

  3. 03

    Uncut veteran oral histories

    1,100+ hours of unedited testimony. 62% appear in no other public archive. Listen to a full eight-hour interview with a Normandy medic, then jump to a transcript moment synced to the audio.

  4. 04

    Citation export & saved workspaces

    Export verified citations with archival source codes — box, folder, folio, and transcription reviewer initials. Build persistent workspaces for a thesis, a chapter, or a documentary treatment; share read-only links with collaborators.

Cited By

The institutions that already trust WW2 Total.

  • U.S. Army Command and General Staff College

    Listed as a primary source for the Advanced Operational Studies reading list.

  • King's College London, Department of War Studies

    Integrated into the second-year undergraduate historiography seminar.

  • Australian War Memorial — Research Wing

    Cited in the 2024 Pacific Theater monograph series as a primary reference.

  • 312 universities & 47 national archives

    Across 28 countries, including a 2022 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

2023

Digital Humanities Award

Best Reference Resource

2024

The Atlantic

"Tools That Changed How We Read History"

2025

Apple Podcasts

New & Noteworthy — History (×3)

2022

NEH Grant

Eastern Front Documentation Project

Questions Researchers Actually Ask

Practical answers before you subscribe.

Is there a free trial of Premium?
Yes — every new account receives a 14-day Premium trial automatically, with no payment information requested at sign-up. You decide whether to add billing details when the trial ends. If you do nothing, the account reverts to the free tier with all your bookmarks and reading lists intact.
How do I cancel?
From your account dashboard, in two clicks. Cancellations take effect at the end of the current billing period; we do not pro-rate refunds for partial months. Your saved workspaces, annotations, and reading lists are retained indefinitely on the free tier.
Can I download documents for offline use?
Premium subscribers may export up to 250 documents per month as watermarked PDFs for personal research and teaching use. Bulk export (METADATA only, no full text) is available on the Institutional plan for archival ingest. Documents remain under the copyright status of their holding institution; redistribution requires that institution's permission.
How does institutional billing and licensing work?
Institutional subscriptions are invoiced annually and accepted by university procurement, including POs and wire transfer. IP-range authentication and SAML/Shibboleth sign-in are standard; usage statistics are reported quarterly to your library liaison. We complete RFPs for most major university systems within two weeks.
Does WW2 Total permit educator discounts?
Yes. Accredited K–12 teachers, community college faculty, and adjunct instructors receive a 40% discount on Premium. Verification is handled through SheerID and typically clears in under an hour. Adjunct faculty may submit a department letterhead request if SheerID cannot verify their institution.

Begin Reading Tonight

Start with a free account.
38,000+ documents are waiting.

Full-text search, one curated map collection, and 120 hours of oral history — open to anyone with an email address. No payment information required.

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Founded in 2014 by former combat historian and archivist Daniel H. Kessler. WW2 Total Historical Research, Inc. · 1411 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20004.