World War II Documents Found Recently

It seems there is no end to documents being recently discovered about World War II.  There is my mother’s diary, of course, now published as Home Front Girl:  A Diary of Love, Literature, and Growing Up in Wartime America.  I found it after her death in a file cabinet long ignored. And it enables us to see what a real-life American teenager felt and thought in the lead up to World War II.

The New York Times recently reported how a transcript was found of the Bretton Woods conference.  At this 1944 conference, 44 Allied nations gathered together in the town of Bretton Woods in  New Hampshire.

Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson, standing at center, and representatives of 28 Allied nations met in Washington in 1945 to sign the pact reached at the Bretton Woods conference. From The New York Times article by Anni Lowrey, Oct. 26, 2012.

At this conference, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were created.  So the impact of this conference is huge down to today.

John Maynard Keynes addressed the Bretton Woods conference, where the International Monetary Fund was created. From The New York Times article by Annie Lowrey, Oct. 26, 2012

You’d think that in this modern age such a transcript would have easily been retained.  But that wasn’t the case.  The writer of the article, Annie Lowrey, quotes a historian from the University of California, Davis, as saying, ““It’s as if someone handed us Madison’s notes on the debate over the Constitution.”  That’s similar to how I felt on finding my mom’s diaries–as though I were handed a key to her teenage years.