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History
of Revisionism as of 1993
Yoshua Shalev
GLOSSARY
Anti-Judaism. Most religions – including Christianity, Islam and Judaism – advocate Opposition to
other theological viewpoints. Criticism of the theology of Judaism or those Jews adhering to that
theological system is referred to as "anti-Judaism". Anti-Judaism is not synonymous with
anti-Semitism, although, of course, most anti-Semites are also anti-Judaic and anti-Zionistic
Anti-Semitism. Although Arabs are also "Semites", the present writer will follow common usage and
use the term throughout this study to define the hatred, fear or resentment of persons identified racially or
culturally as Jews.
Anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is opposition to the aims and methods of political
Zionism. Like anti-Judaism, anti-Zionism is not necessarily synonymous with
anti-Semitism. Indeed, many Jews are
themselves anti-Zionistic.
Holocaust. The Holocaust is a theological term with a very precise
meaning. It is derived via the Latin
holocaustum from the Greek 'olokauston' (holokauston), which specifically denotes a
"whole burnt sacrifice". This term was used frequently in the Greek Septuagint and once or twice in the Greek New
Testament texts to describe entirely burnt sacrifices. Earlier this
century, however, the term was used on rare occasions by Christian theologians and historians to describe a variety of catastrophes in which
Christian populations were thought to have been "wholly
sacrificed" for their faith. It was used, for
example, to describe the Turkish massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915-16.[1] Used in
this manner the term was always written "holocaust", with a lower-case "h". Only after 1957 did the term
come into popular use to describe loosely the wartime treatment of Jews by the Nazis.[2] Even in the first
issue of Yad Vashem Studies (the journal of Israel's Yad Vashem, then translated as Yad
Vashem),
published in late 1957, the term repeatedly used to describe the fate of the Jews during World War II was
"the catastrophe". Since around the early 1970s "the Holocaust"
(now with an upper-case "H") has been
used by historians and the general public to define the ordered, planned and systematic extermination of
approximately six million European Jews – the majority in gas chambers and gas vans constructed
especially for the task – as an act of state by the Nazis (with assistance from their
collaborators) during
the Second World War. For want of a better term, "the Holocaust" is used throughout this
study – even when referring to the subject matter of literature published prior
[IV] to 1957 – to denote the Nazi maltreatment of European Jews during the Second World War.
However, its use should not be seen as the present writer's agreement with any fixed
definitions, even the
definition given above. "The Holocaust" is used loosely to denote the ordeal of European Jews without
implying any fixed opinions on the precise nature and dimensions of their
ordeal.
Revisionism. Naturally, every historical event or period has been revised to some
extent, because
historians of each new generation carefully re-examine the past in the light of newly found documentary
sources, by employing a different methodology, or by reconsidering the known data from a different point
of view. Therefore, in one sense almost all histories are revisionists.
However, the terms "Revisionism"
and "Revisionist" have come to be used more specifically. They are now used to denote a distinct group of
people sharing a common set of unorthodox historical approaches, methodologies and
interpretations.
Sidney B. Fay"s ground-breaking articles, "New Light on the Origins of the World War", parts I, II, III,
American Historical Review, July 1920, October 1920 and January 1921) were the first important
examples of Revisionist scholarship. Fay's work inspired many other major scholars – most notably
Professor Harry Elmer Barnes (now considered the "father of
Revisionism") – to re-examine received
opinion on the First World War. They hunted out and used bodies of evidence other than the subjectivelyedited
"official" documents which the various governments had published during the war
(the so-called colored books). Their research
and
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1 / For an example of the word "holocaust" being used to describe the massacre of
Armenians, cf. A.J. Grant and H. Temperley, Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1789-1932) Fourth Edition, 1932 (London/New York/Toronto: Longmans, Green
and Co. First published in 1927 as Europe in the Nineteenth Century 1789-1914), p. 574.
2 / Cf. G. Kormann "The Holocaust in American Historical Writing", Societas 2, Summer 1972, pp. 251-270.
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findings permanently weakened the hypothesis of sole German responsibility for the outbreak of war in 1914.
Revisionism, established by these scholars as a distinct school of historical
thought, flourished
in Europe and the United States during the 1920s and early 1930s. Even the largest publishing houses and
most prestigious periodicals sought Revisionist material for
publication. Amongst the leading
Revisionists were Raymond Beazley, M. H. Cochran, Georges Demartial, G. Lowes Dickinson; G. P.
Gooch, Alfred Fabre-Luce, Hermann Lutz, Maximilian Montgelas, Frederich
Stieve, Joseph Ward Swain;
and Alfred von Wegerer. Turning from the Kriegschuldfrage (war guilt
question), Revisionist scholars –
most importantly Clinton Hartley Grattan, Walter Millis and Charles C. Tansill – also investigated the
entry of the United States into the war in 1917 and other related
topics. These works influenced not only
academia but also the general public. For example, when Millis's Road to War: America, 1914 to 1917
was published in 1935, it was well-received by critics and became one of the best-selling American
history books of the decade.
However, as war in Europe became imminent in the late 1930s, American Revisionists – who were
mostly isolationists – argued against the United States'
intervention. Their views, especially after the
attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the war, became very
unpopular. Their theses on Pearl
Harbor did nothing to check their decline in popularity. Certain Revisionists asserted that that disaster
would probably not have happened had it not been for Roosevelt's policy in the Far East at a time when
Japan's military and civilian leadership would have preferred a peaceful accommodation with the United
States rather than war.
Perhaps because there was far less debate in the 1940s and 1950s on the war guilt question of the Second
World War than there was in the 1920s and 1930s on the war guilt question of the First World War,
Revisionism never regained the popularity it previously had. A. J. P. Taylor's The Origins of the Second
World War was the first major Revisionist work on the causes of World War II, and that appeared in 1961. Some of the
Revisionist books from the postwar period were, nonetheless, generally well-documented and thoughtfully
argued, these include George Morgenstern's Pearl Harbor, Chiles A. Beard's President Roosevelt and the
Coming of the War, 1941 (1948), R. Sanbom's Design for War (1951), Charles C. Tansill's The Back
Door to War (1951) and Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (1953), edited by Harry Elmer Barnes. As
the titles indicate, these works deal principally with Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the war.
Revisionism declined in public popularity after the Second World War, but did not disappear
altogether. Well-known Revisionist books of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s include Taylor's The Origins or
the Second World War, David Hoggan's The Forced War (Der Erzwungene Krieg), David Irving's The
Destruction of Dresden and Hitler's War, John Toland's Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its
Aftermath, and
James Bacque's Other Losses.
A new form of Revisionism emerged in the 1970s, with the Nazi treatment of Jews as its object
of investigation. Holocaust Revisionism is ideologically linked to the Revisionist
"school" founded by
Barnes and others. Like all Revisionists, Holocaust Revisionists are skeptical of the claims of
"establishment" historians, and believe that the wider historical profession generally fails to present the
origins, courses and consequences of wars in an honest and even-handed
manner. Holocaust Revisionists
therefore attempt to re-examine the Holocaust and related social and political events in what they claim is
a dispassionate and impartial manner. The accuracy of this claim will be examined in this
study.
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