National Security Archive

This archive, based at George Washington University, has a library and archive of declassified U.S. documents.

Avalon Project - Cold War Document Collection

This project at Yale Law School contains a wide variety of document collections. This Cold War collection offers users groups of official US government documents through the 1960s. 

The Cold War Files

This website, maintained by the Wilson Center, contains a wealth of resources, especially primary resources, from political leaders throughout the Cold War era. The most useful tools to researchers will probably be the Entire Document Collection and the Resources section, which has links to further reading.

Truman Cold War Documents

These critical documents, made available through the Truman Library, show the pivotal moments in the early Cold War. The online archive includes presidential memos, letters, official government documents, and photographs.

Eisenhower Cold War Documents

This site contains aerial intelligence from the Cold War, digitized by the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

Kennedy Administration National Security Files

The John F. Kennedy Library maintains an online collection of personal correspondence as well as official government documents relating to national security.

NSC-68

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

Student Voices from World War II and the McCarthy Era

This oral history website offers a case study of the impact of World War II and the domestic Cold War on student life at an urban public college campus. It is based on the narratives of Brooklyn College students that participated in Brooklyn College's World War II Farm Labor Project and the experiences of students who were involved in the student newspaper during the McCarthy Era. The site is maintained by The Center for Media and Learning/American Social History Project at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

The Campus Files: Reagan, Hoover, and the UC Red Scare

This website, maintained by the San Fransisco Gate, holds many FBI documents to show the Bureau's "covert campaign to disrupt free speech." You'll find FBI documents, newspaper articles, photographs, and lots of commentary.

C-SPAN: The Army-McCarthy Hearings 

The transcripts and films from a C-SPAN special on the Army-McCarthy Hearings, including both historical commentary and audio from the hearings.

Newspaper Ads from 1911 to 1955

This site presents consumer culture from 1911 to 1955 through a wide variety of newspaper ads for products ranging from dental supplies to radio tubes.

DOE: Human Radiation Experiments

This website, created in 1994 under the Office of Human Radiation Experiments, tells the agency's Cold War story of radiation research using human subjects with various multi-media sources from declassified government documents, films, soundclips, and photographs.

Atomic Archive

Learn about the development of the atomic bomb in American history. This site provides an archive of historical documents, films, and photographs.

Sputnik and the Space Race

This NASA website provides US and Russian documents chronicling the early policy decisions and reactions to the space race.

Silicon Valley Archive

This archive, from Stanford University and the Silicon Valley Archives Project, describes the birth of Silicon Valley scientific research and development. Unfortunately, the site appears to hold few full-text primary resources.

Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think,” Atlantic Monthly (July, 1945) 

A seminal essay by an architect of the Cold War science complex, Bush proposes a computerized information management system later realized by the Internet.