The Fate of Jews in German Hands
An Historical Enquiry into the Development and Significance of Holocaust Revisionism
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 thesis 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 thesis — even when referring to the subject matter of literature published prior 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 Barn's (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 subjectively-edited 'official' documents which the various governments had published during the war (the so-called colored books). Their research and 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 thesis.
Notes:
[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. Kormam The Holocaust in American Historical Writing
, Societas 2, Summer 1972, pp. 251-270