The surprise Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, is regarded by most persons who recall it at all as an isolated dramatic episode, now consigned to political and military archeology...
Harry Elmer Barnes
Harry Elmer Barnes (1889-1968) was a pioneer of historical revisionism, meaning the use of historical scholarship to challenge and refute the narratives of history promulgated by the state and the political class, or as Barnes himself termed it, “court history.” Long regarded as a progressive intellectual leader of the American Left, Barnes became associated with the Old Right for his opposition to the New Deal and to American entry into World War II. His work has had a profound influence on New Left historians such as William Appleman Williams and Gabriel Kolko, as well as on the historical writings of Murray Rothbard and other libertarians.
See Murray Rothbard’s obituary, “Harry Elmer Barnes, RIP.”
Latest work
[Chapter 1 of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, 1953] The First World War and American intervention therein marked an ominous turning point in the history of the United States and of the world. Those...
In 1947, historian Charles Beard told Harry Elmer Barnes that the foreign policy of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman could best be described by the phrase “perpetual war for perpetual peace.” Barnes used the phrase as the title of his 1953 collection of essays by the leading revisionist historians of the era. This article is excerpted from the final chapter.
