Shiing-Shen Chern, A Simple Intrinsic Proof of the Gauss-Bonnet Formula for Closed Riemannian Manifolds, Annals of Mathematics Second Series, Vol. 45, No. 4 (1944), pp. 747-752 (jstor:1969302)
Shiing-shen Chern, Differential geometry of fiber bundles, in: Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Cambridge, Mass., (August-September 1950), vol. 2, pages 397-411, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, R. I. (1952) (pdf, full proceedings vol 2 pdf)
Shiing-Shen Chern, James Simons, Section 2 of: Characteristic Forms and Geometric Invariants, Annals of Mathematics Second Series, Vol. 99, No. 1 (Jan., 1974), pp. 48-69 (jstor:1971013)