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3.0 out of 5 stars
From Bellamy's 2000 to Orwell's 1984 via Barnes 1966, October 22, 2007
This volume comprises of three essays (dating from ~1966) from Harry Elmer Barnes (1889-1968) dealing with the historical place of WW2 and cold war revisionist history in the post-war period, specifically from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. It's about the way the new WW2 revisionism was historically received, not (at least not primarily) about the findings and assertions of the WW2 revisionists per se.
Although Barnes was primarily a sociologist, he was also a first class diplomatic historian of the first and second world wars. He was a prominent revisionist historian, challenging the "orthodox" or state sponsored interpretations of the victorious powers. Barnes' revisionism itself was part of his broader "progressive" perspective. He was in many ways an old fashioned Progressive who looked forward to the perfection, or at least, to the radical improvement of, the human condition. All through the application of science, rationality and democracy. Barnes regularly refers to the late 19th century utopia of Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward", written in the year 1888 and set in the year 2000, it presents a vision of a rationalistic scientific utopian America, all based on collectively owned property. Barnes' heart is perhaps in Bellamy's imagined future. It may be that Barnes read Bellamy when still young.
Today we'd probably describe Barnes as a social democrat, a non-marxist democratic socialist humanist. He had a distinctively 'Scandanavian' vision for the future. Yet he was no party line ideologue. His progressivism did not prevent him having productive scholarly and intellectual relationships with thinkers and writers from across the political spectrum, including conservatives (eg the young Murray Rothbard), liberals, ex-liberals (eg the older John T Flynn), socialists and anarchists (eg James Martin). For the most part his non-partisan peers were prepared to repay the compliment, and they often contributed to or supported his work and writing, sometimes even in fields other than their "common ground" in the diplomatic pre-history of the great wars.
Barnes viewed war as not only destructive but regressive in a humanistic sense. An enemy of human progress, both materially and intellectually. Barnes' believed historical revisionism, essentially the application of a skeptical blow torch to the claims of all combatants, victors and vanquished alike, as essential for genuine progress. "My country right or wrong" may make sense in the heat of battle but it's a disastrous approach to apply to historical analysis.
Barnes was no historical relativist, he believed "the truth is out there" and the scholar's job was to look for it. I suspect he would be angry at the apparent strength of "post-modernist" relativism in the current generation of history studies. But perhaps not completely surprised. Perhaps "anything goes" relativism is really the bastardised offspring of a previous generation that failed in their scholarly duties.
Revisionism, to Barnes, is thus "the key to peace." It's an educational process that subjects ones own political system to the acid test of objectivity and truth. Understanding that Barnes has this genuinely progressive outlook, and an optimistic view of what could be, is the key to interpreting his dark view of what has actually come about.
What really engages Barnes in these three essays is the contrast between the relatively open reception to revisionist findings in the post-WW1 period compared to poor reception they received post-WW2. In short Barnes argues that throughout most of the west in the 'revisionist friendly 1920s' the wartime ruling administrations had been replaced. In contrast post-WW2 the wartime administrations were generally replaced by successors of the same political stripe, or by regimes of occupation regimes. Barnes' explanation is not completely convincing and seems to me to be in many ways superficial. However he notes and documents that major players in the US, in government, the great foundations and the academy, deliberately sought to prevent a repeat of the WW1 postwar revisionist 'boom'.
What is convincing, and somewhat depressing, is his detailing of the enormous difficulties the revisionists faced against what he calls "the historical blackout" in the immediate post-war decades. No major publishing houses were prepared to print their work and if it weren't were for a few (only three really) minor publishers their work would have disappeared virtually without a trace. In our now information overloaded age this is hard to imagine, but this seems to have been the case, and not so long ago. What else has gone missing?
Some will, of course, say that is their just deserts, however it is simply a fact that the WW2 revisionist perspective, despite it's modest beginnings, has only strengthened it's influence with time. It's rise has not given it total victory of course, and "Pacific theatre" WW2 revisionism has fared better than "European theatre" WW2 revisionism, so it's slow emergence has been spotty not comprehensive. But still significant. It has even influenced mainstream accounts in subsequent decades. Even FDR hagiographers have been forced to recast his role from Pearl Harbor's innocent victim to a 'far sighted' but 'good' machiavellian seeing a threat his narrow minded countrymen could not. Certainly few now maintain FDR didn't want to go to war, when he said 'time and time again' he didn't.
The three essays were probably published originally as separate pamphlets as there is substantial overlap between them, especially the first two. I found these two, at least when published back to back, overly long. The last essay, Barnes' survey of Orwellian tendencies in (then) contemporary society is actually quite chilling and depressing. And unfortunately it's still relevant. A Harris Poll released 21 July 2006 found that a full 50 percent of U.S. respondents said they believe Iraq did harbour the Weapons of Mass Destruction ("WMDs") the Bush administration and it's allies alleged when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003.
In some ways things have not turned out as bad as Barnes imagined, despite the failure of revisionism to reshape public opinion, we have, perhaps more through good luck than anything else, avoided the nuclear war he feared. Yet despite the end of the Cold War, the power structures he saw as nurtured by WW2 and "World War Three" have not been retrenched. Even the debacle du jour in the mid east seems unlikely to unsettle them. So in a sense Barnes has had the last laugh. And I am sure he would say that was most unfortunate.
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by Patrick J. Buchanan
by Ron Paul
