The term “revisionism” came into use after World War I, when historians like Harry Elmer Barnes, Sidney Bradshaw Fay, and Charles Austin Beard challenged Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, which assigned exclusive guilt to Germany and its Kaiser for the outbreak of the world war, with all its appalling destruction and massacres. It was on the basis of that clause that the Treaty imposed on Germany a Carthaginian peace, memorably condemned by J.M. Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
Barnes and Fay felt a sense of betrayal. They had been roped into Woodrow Wilson’s crusade to “make the world safe for democracy” by the Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel, and a similar body that coordinated the work of American historians. Now they saw the error of their ways.
World War I and the ensuing “peace” settlement paved the way for Hitler. The German people’s justified resentment over their harsh treatment led to demands to undo the Versailles verdict. The great libertarian historian Ralph Raico provides a horrifying example of Allied atrocities: “During the pre-armistice negotiations, Wilson insisted that the conditions of any armistice had to be such ‘as to make a renewal of hostilities on the part of Germany impossible.’ Accordingly, the Germans surrendered their battle fleet and submarines, some 1,700 airplanes, 5,000 artillery, 30,000 machine guns, and other materiel, while the Allies occupied the Rhineland and the Rhine bridgeheads. Germany was now defenseless, dependent on Wilson and the Allies keeping their word.
Yet the hunger blockade continued, and was even expanded, as the Allies gained control of the German Baltic coast and banned even fishing boats. The point was reached where the commander of the British army of occupation demanded of London that food be sent to the famished Germans. His troops could no longer stand the sight of hungry German children rummaging in the rubbish bins of the British camps for food Still, food was only allowed to enter Germany in March 1919, and the blockade of raw materials continued until the Germans signed the Treaty.”
Let’s look at another example of revisionist history, World War II. The war led to even more appalling massacres than World War I, but we were told at the time that America needed to enter the war to prevent Hitler from invading America. Our lying textbooks and the mass media repeat this lie to this day.
The facts are altogether different. Franklin Roosevelt wanted to smash Nazi Germany and provoked Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor, in order to enter the war in Europe through the Japanese back door. One of the greatest American diplomatic historians, Charles Callan Tansill, wrote an outstanding book about this, Back Door to War. (1952) Tansill also wrote the best book about America’s entry in World War I, America Goes to War (1938). The great Robert Higgs succinctly sums up the story: “When Germany began to rearm and to seek Lebensraum aggressively in the late 1930s, the Roosevelt administration cooperated closely with the British and the French in measures to oppose German expansion. After World War II commenced in 1939, this U.S. assistance grew ever greater and included such measures as the so-called destroyer deal and the deceptively named Lend-Lease program. In anticipation of U.S. entry into the war, British and U.S. military staffs secretly formulated plans for joint operations. U.S. forces sought to create a war-justifying incident by cooperating with the British navy in attacks on German U-boats in the northern Atlantic, but Hitler refused to take the bait, thus denying Roosevelt the pretext he craved for making the United States a full-fledged, declared belligerent—a belligerence that the great majority of Americans opposed.
In June 1940, Henry L. Stimson, who had been secretary of war under William Howard Taft and secretary of state under Herbert Hoover, became secretary of war again. Stimson was a lion of the Anglophile, northeastern upper crust and no friend of the Japanese. In support of the so-called Open Door Policy for China, Stimson favored the use of economic sanctions to obstruct Japan’s advance in Asia. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes vigorously endorsed this policy. Roosevelt hoped that such sanctions would goad the Japanese into making a rash mistake by launching a war against the United States, which would bring in Germany because Japan and Germany were allied.
The Roosevelt administration, while curtly dismissing Japanese diplomatic overtures to harmonize relations, accordingly, imposed a series of increasingly stringent economic sanctions on Japan. In 1939, the United States terminated the 1911 commercial treaty with Japan. ‘On July 2, 1940, Roosevelt signed the Export Control Act, authorizing the President to license or prohibit the export of essential defense materials.’ Under this authority, ‘[o]n July 31, exports of aviation motor fuels and lubricants and No. 1 heavy melting iron and steel scrap were restricted.’ Next, in a move aimed at Japan, Roosevelt slapped an embargo, effective October 16, ‘on all exports of scrap iron and steel to destinations other than Britain and the nations of the Western Hemisphere.’ Finally, on July 26, 1941, Roosevelt ‘froze Japanese assets in the United States, thus bringing commercial relations between the nations to an effective end. One week later Roosevelt embargoed the export of such grades of oil as still were in commercial flow to Japan.’ The British and the Dutch followed suit, embargoing exports to Japan from their colonies in Southeast Asia.
Roosevelt and his subordinates knew they were putting Japan in an untenable position and that the Japanese government might well try to escape the stranglehold by going to war. Having broken the Japanese diplomatic code, the American leaders knew, among many other things, what Foreign Minister Teijiro Toyoda had communicated to Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura on July 31: ‘Commercial and economic relations between Japan and third countries, led by England and the United States, are gradually becoming so horribly strained that we cannot endure it much longer. Consequently, our Empire, to save its very life, must take measures to secure the raw materials of the South Seas.’”
The value of revisionism isn’t confined to the past. America now supports Ukraine in a costly war against Russia that threatens the world with nuclear annihilation. Russian President Putin is portrayed as an aggressor, embarked on a massive program of expansion. Yet the facts tell a different story. Russia acted in response to a provocative neocon foreign policy that aimed at surrounding Russia with hostile countries. John J. Mearsheimer, the foremost American political scientist specializing in foreign policy, says; “The alternative argument, which I identify with, and which is clearly the minority view in the West, is that the United States and its allies provoked the war. This is not to deny, of course, that Russia invaded Ukraine and started the war. But the principal cause of the conflict is the NATO decision to bring Ukraine into the alliance, which virtually all Russian leaders see as an existential threat that must be eliminated. NATO expansion, however, is part of a broader strategy that is designed to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Bringing Kyiv into the European Union (EU) and promoting a color revolution in Ukraine – turning it into pro-Western liberal democracy – are the other two prongs of the policy. Russia leaders fear all three prongs, but they fear NATO expansion the most. To deal with this threat, Russia launched a preventive war on 24 February 2022.”
Let’s do everything we can to promote revisionist history. That is the path to peace.
