THE MISSION OF THE George C. Marshall Research Library is to collect, preserve, and make available to scholars a documented record of the life and public service career of George Catlett Marshall. That mission includes a variety of military and diplomatic history issues between the years 1900 and 1960. Many of Marshall's contemporaries have donated their documents in support of the library's mission.

The Research Library's main holding is the George C. Marshall Papers.  

The Marshall Papers project is a seven-volume selected letterpress edition published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Five volumes have been published and work on the sixth is underway. These volumes average over eight hundred pages each. For example, the fifth volume (covering January 1945 to January 1947) includes 886 pages, 508 documents, 190 editorial summaries of meetings, 19 editorial headnotes, 64 illustrations, and 9 maps. The documents in volumes 1 through 5 are accessible via a free, searchable, on-line database. The sixth volume will be put on-line shortly after publication of the letterpress edition in 2010.

With a few exceptions, documents included in the Marshall Papers edition are written by or dictated to a secretary by Marshall. Documents by other people are generally used only for annotation of Marshall documents or because they report in detail Marshall's actions and ideas. Documents chosen for inclusion are usually letters,

We are deeply grateful for significant and ongoing funding from NHPRC (National Historic Publications and Records Commission) and NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities).   

                

                                               

In addition, there are over 145 other collections which are housed in a three-story government security vault which is temperature and humidity controlled to aid in preservation of documents. Collections range from a single folder such as a diary kept by a prisoner-of-war during the Battle of the Bulge to multi-folder divisional histories and newsletters.

The library is open Monday - Friday, 9:00 - 4:30. 

Please contact the library staff in advance if you are planning a research visit.

Staff of the Foundation

Overview of Research Library Collections

Digital Library Holdings

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Search the Online Card Catalog
Search the library's extensive resources by author, title, or subject. Find books, maps, photographs, posters, or other materials available through the George C. Marshall Research Library.

Browse Collections
A subset of the Research Library’s extensive holdings are available to be viewed online, either as web pages or as downloadable PDFs. As with all the library’s holdings, these items relate to military and political issues surrounding the life and times of George C. Marshall. The online collections have been developed around the following topic areas:

• George C. Marshall
  
• The Marshall Plan
  
• Unit Histories: World War I, World War II, the Korean War
  
• The Women’s Army Corps
  
• Biographies of leading military and political figures 1900-1960
  
• The Cold War up to 1960

DOCUMENTS
Selected documents from the library’s extensive collection covering the military and diplomatic history of the United States during George C. Marshall’s career from 1900 to 1960.

MAPS
The library contains over 2,000 maps from World Wars I and II. The collection includes maps from the trenches of World War I, maps documenting the daily progress made during the battles of World War II, and maps from the French and German forces during both wars.

POSTERS
There are over 800 posters from World Wars I and II in the library's holdings. Collections from France, Germany, Canada, Great Britain, Russia, Poland, and the United States are included, specifically a German propaganda poster collection donated by Forrest C. Pogue.

PHOTOGRAPHS
The library has an extensive collection of photographs taken throughout George C. Marshall's career with the U.S. Army and well into his later years. Included in this collection are photographic documentations of WAC activities, prisoner of war camps, soldiers in uniform, the perils of World War II training, and portraits of officers.   

AUDIO/VIDEO

The Library has catalogued over 100 films on World War II and other post-war subjects. Videos referencing all aspects of Marshall's career are available, as well as USIA films documenting the European recovery initiated by the Marshall Plan for Economic Recovery.

The Library holds a collection of recorded Marshall interviews conducted by Forrest C. Pogue. This includes the original recording of the Marshall Plan Speech made at the Harvard Commencement on June 5, 1947. Also available are interviews with more than 300 of General Marshall's associates and friends along with other oral histories from World War II.

ORAL HISTORIES
The oral history collection contains taped interviews of associates of General Marshall conducted by Dr. Forrest Pogue.  This collection also contains notes made by Dr. Pogue during these interviews.  

In addition to these interviews, the oral history collection also includes:

• Taped interviews of General Marshall by Marshall's biographer, Dr. Forrest C. Pogue.  The "interviews" are primarily General Marshall's dictation of answers to written questions submitted to him by Dr. Pogue.
  
• Six interviews conducted with General Marshall between 1947-1955
  
•  Most of the raw tapes of the BBC production of "Spark to Fire the Engines"

 

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