Revisionist historians - Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Ludvikus (talk | contribs) at 00:03, 24 September 2009 (reference). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 00:03, 24 September 2009 by Ludvikus (talk | contribs) (reference)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) Main article: Historical revisionism Main article: Historical revisionism (negationism)

This article needs attention from an expert in History. Please add a reason or a talk parameter to this template to explain the issue with the article. WikiProject History may be able to help recruit an expert. (September 2009)

Template:Wikify is deprecated. Please use a more specific cleanup template as listed in the documentation.

A designation in American history which includes Gabriel Kolko, William Appleman Williams, Gar Alperovitz, Walter LaFeber, Howard Zinn and others.

The distinction appears to have been introduced into American historiography shortly after World War I (about 1920) to categorize American historians who questioned the alleged "war guilt" to which Germany was subjected for allegedly being responsible for starting said war.

The expression ("American" being understood in context) refers to a collection of American historians who criticized the orthodox version of World War I which blamed Germany for the war; subsequently, the expression refers to American historians of the 1960's mostly, who criticized the orthodox history of the Cold War which made the West, especially the United States, substantially blameless.

It is not known whether these historians themselves produced a distinct historiography. Nevertheless, at least one scholarly work portrays them as constituting a "school."

Subsequently, a group commonly known as holocaust deniers have persisted in calling themselves also revisionists, or revisionist historians, and there is, as a result, confusion.

History of the categorization

According to Deborah Lipstadt, certain American historians were concerned over the involvement of the United States in World War I. These highly regarded scholars called themselves revisionist. The distinction was effectively drawn in 1920 when Sidney B. Fay, a Smith College professor published a collection of articles on the causes of World War I in the prestigious American Historical Review journal. Nevertheless, a connection to the discredit "revisionists" exists - according to Lipstadt - in the person of Harry Elmer Barnes.

Bush's criticism of revision of history

In 2003 President Bush became critical of revision of history. But that discourse involves the criticism of the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan. But these are not the subjects of the earlier "revisionist" whose concerns were focused, initially, on World War I and, subsequently, the Cold War. The Holocaust deniers source of controversy involves, substantially, World War II, particularly denying the Holocaust, and even portraying Hitler in better light. These were not the subjects with which the American revisionist historians concerned themselves.

References

Lynn Boyd Hinds, Theodore Otto Windt Jr., The Cold War as Rhetoric: The Beginnings, 1945-1950
Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Plume (The Penguin Group), 1994.
Lynn Boyd Hinds, Theodore Otto Windt Jr., The Cold War as Rhetoric: The Beginnings, 1945-1950
Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Plume (The Penguin Group), 1994.
Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, (Plume, The Penguin Group, 1994)