World War Two (junior)
Where can I find information about World War Two?
(Years 1-4)
Image: Military Service, World War II; artillery; 3.7-inch anti-aircraft gun by Eric Wood. Collection: Upper Hutt City Library Heritage Collections.
Entry last updated: 2/12/24
Introduction
World War Two (WWII or WW2), also called the Second World War, took place between 1939 and 1945. It is called a world war because most of the world's major countries were involved. It was also a very destructive war and more people were killed in this war than any other. New Zealand took part in the war, on the side of the Allies.
General websites
Here are some popular sites that have information about World War II, how it started, where the battles were fought and what it was like for soldiers.
Ducksters is specially put together for primary students with information on history topics like the World Wars. They use headings to group information. This makes it easy to find what you are looking for.
Look for the subject called 'History' and then find World War 2.
Use the headings like Overview, Battles, Leaders and Events as a guide to learn more about this event.
Tips: Websites that have .com or .co in the address can have good information, but you need to assess how reliable it is. Check the About us link on the website, if you can find one. That can tell you what the company’s mission and values are.
Britannica School is part of a collection of reliable databases called EPIC. They cover lots of different topics, and are put together especially for New Zealand school students.
Enter the search words 'world war II' into the search box at the top of the page.
Select the article called World War II (1939-1945).
From the results page you can choose to look at the causes, the different battles, the end of the war and its results.
Tips: To get to the EPIC resources you will need a password from your school librarian first. Or you can chat with one of our AnyQuestions librarians between 1 and 6 pm Monday to Friday and they will help you online. Some EPIC databases may also be available through your public library
Tips: Search words, or keywords, are the most important words in our question. Usually it’s better to leave out small words like ‘the’, ‘a’ and ‘of’ and just choose the main ones, eg world war II. We can always change our keywords or add more if we need to.
New Zealand websites
These websites have stories, images, videos and audio on New Zealand's role in World War II and the impact it had back home.
Te Ara: The encyclopedia of New Zealand
Te Ara is a great place to start for information about Aotearoa New Zealand. If we go down to the bottom of the page we can see that the website belongs to the Ministry for Culture & Heritage. This means the information is safe and reliable.
Enter the keywords 'second world war' into the search box.
Select Second World War from the results.
This first page is a short story of what happened from a New Zealand point of view.
You will also find here links that will take you to pages about different times or events of the war, for example the North American campaign.
Tips: We like sites like this because they’re reliable. You can tell because of their web address – they have either .govt or .ac, meaning they are from government or educational organisations. They’re also New Zealand sites, so relevant for us.
This is another website with lots of information about New Zealand history. It also belongs to the Ministry for Culture & Heritage so we can trust the information to be safe and reliable.
Go to New Zealand at War
Select Second World War.
Second World War - Overview has some interesting facts and figures about World War Two.
Māori and the Second World War has some great information about Māori involvement in World War Two.
Books
There have been many books written about World War Two - check out your local public or school library to see what they have.
Some suggested titles are:
The Usborne introduction to the Second World War by Paul Dowswell.
Going to war in World War Two by Moira Butterfield.
World War II by Andrew Langley.
World War II by Tony Robinson.
SCIS no: 1908749
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