World War II set the stage for well over 60 million deaths. Why focus on harmless letters that happened to be written during this period? Much of the importance of understanding history is ensuring that it is not repeated. Every year, the number of living World War II veterans continues to dwindle. These are the last first-hand accounts of the war and what it was like to be there. However, letters can last forever as a primary source of the events that occurred all over the front lines of the war. By analyzing letters from the soldiers to family, spouses, friends, and more, we begin to piece together the life stories of the brave people who fought for their country during the war. Our archive includes stories such as a young man, Sgt. Kibbe, who was writing to his wife back in Pennsylvania while he was serving in England, a Ph.D. student’s thesis document on the contents of war letters, and more examples of censorship in the letters coming home from the war. Though many of the writers had perished during the war, their letters will live on forever as a reminder of who they were and what they were experiencing on the front lines. Additionally, understanding the political and social climate of World War II offers insight into the causes and effects of World War II. These letters, especially the ones that were censored due to the information they contain, are some of the only first-hand accounts that remain from World War II. Preserving and understanding these archives offer a new point of view on the entire war. This archive serves as a reminder of the struggles that all those who were involved in World War II endured. We cannot truly understand what these people were experiencing, but we can preserve these first-hand accounts to be further analyzed. These stories cannot be forgotten, even though there are not many World War II veterans alive to tell them.
