WWI&II Study Resources
We understand that the WWI&II Tour covers a lot of history in a very short time. It can be overwhelming to take in everything. You may want to explore some of the places you will visit prior to your trip. The interactive study guides we will provide participants will help ground you as to the timeline and what was happening politically, economically, and socially surrounding the areas that we will visit. On this page, we offer some resources that may help orient you to the places we will visit.
Take a virtual tour of Corrie Ten Boom's home and listen to a digital guide. You can view 360 degrees around you at 19 locations, while the digital guide tells the story of Corrie.
If schedules align, Dale Booth will be one of our guides in Normandy. During his career, he has met and talked with many surviving veterans. He donates royalties from his books to support D-Day related charities.
This free, online course includes 7 lessons (7.5 hours) on World War II. If you would like the DVDs for the course, you can make a donation to receive them. They also have courses on Winston Churchill and C.S. Lewis.
Download a path of remembrance guide for Operation Dynamo. You can also download Leon's Journal. It recounts the story of a young 11-year-old boy, a resident of Dunkirk, at the outbreak of the Second World War. His story is also the story of his family and friends. It describes daily life, school rooms, classwork and comic-book heroes of this era. But it also describes the painful moments experienced by the inhabitants of Dunkirk: the fear of being bombed, the occupation by the German army, hunger and oppression. Our town was almost completely destroyed during the war. In fact, there were only several hundred residents left. At the war’s end, the Glacis district was the site of emergency wooden barracks for the thousands of refugee families returning to Dunkirk.
On June 6, 1944, more than 150000 Allied soldiers landed on the beaches of Normandy in a military operation codenamed Overlord. Sainte-Mère-Église, a few miles from Utah Beach, held strategic importance. The town lay on the road to Cherbourg, a vital port for Allied supplies. Its liberation was therefore crucial to the success of the D-Day landings.
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Explore the "Longest Day." You will even find a downloadable escape game for Android and IOS to explore the emblematic places of the landing in Sainte-Mère-Église.
Bletchley Park & How the Enigma Work
The Enigma machine consisted of a keyboard of 26 letters in the pattern of the normal German typewriter, with no keys for numerals or punctuation. Behind this keyboard was a "lampboard" of 26 small circular windows, each bearing a letter in the same QWERTZU pattern, which could light up, one at a time, from bulbs underneath. We will visit the site of the Codebreakers of Bletchley Park.