Studying the World War II Home Front is a springboard for multidisciplinary content still relevant today. The introduction of RADAR and the mass production of penicillin are just two examples of technological innovations that America and her Allies advanced out of necessity during the war.

As war production on the Home Front rapidly expanded, women entered the labor force at factories in large numbers as men went off to war. Millions of families moved to take advantage of jobs with high wages at defense factories from coast to coast. It was a time of unprecedented challenges but the nation rose to those challenges to defeat the Axis Powers – Germany, Italy and Japan that sought to create a new world order through force, violence and genocide.

The Redwood Learn WWII Home Front Resource Trunk, with its tightly aligned, complementary digital content and multimedia, outlines that story through books, artifacts, multimedia, and hands-on activities. Each Trunk contains:

1. Trunk (wood): handmade in the United States
2. Map of Europe in 1937 (laminated and removable from inside lid of Trunk)
3. Three books (customized from a selection of more than 25 books)
4. Introduction to the Holocaust through the story of Irene Hasenberg Butter, a Holocaust survivor. Her 2017 book, Shores Beyond Shores: From Holocaust to Hope, My True Story is included in every Trunk along with a Teacher's Guide developed and written by Judith Stanford Miller, Redwood Learn editor
5. Timeline on magnetic paper with magnets
6. An original copy of LIFE Magazine from 1939-1945 (publications will vary)
7. Copies of the original sheet music of the song, Rosie the Riveter
8. Original WWII ration book
9. Copy of a 1944 ad in LIFE Magazine for penicillin as the antibiotic became available to civilians
10. Hands-on activity: "Candy Bomber" parachute to tell the story of the Berlin Airlift after the war
11. Map of Europe in 1937

If you would like more information and are interested in purchasing a trunk, please fill out the form below.