Harry Elmer Barnes

Wikipedia:

Harry Elmer Barnes (June 15, 1889 – August 25, 1968) was an American historian who, in his later years, was known for his historical revisionism and Holocaust denial.

After receiving a PhD at Columbia University in 1918 Barnes became a professor of history at Clark University before moving to Smith College as a professor of historical sociology in 1923. In 1929 he left teaching to work as a journalist, freelance writer and occasional adjunct professor at smaller schools. In 1919–20 and between 1923 and 1937 he lectured regularly at the New School for Social Research. Through his prodigious scholarly output, Barnes was once highly regarded as a historian. By the 1950s, however, he had lost credibility and became a “professional pariah”.

Barnes published more than 30 books, 100 essays, and 600 articles and book reviews, many for the Council on Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs, where he served as Bibliographical Editor.

. . .During World War I, Barnes had been a strong supporter of the war effort; his anti-German propaganda was rejected by the National Board for Historical Service, which described it as “too violent to be acceptable”. After the war, Barnes’ views towards Germany reversed: he became as much of a Germanophile as he previously had been Germanophobic. Barnes took the view that the United States had fought on the wrong side in World War I.

. . .After 1924, Barnes had a close relationship with the Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War, a pseudo-historical think-tank based in Berlin secretly funded by the German government and founded by Major Alfred von Wegerer, the former völkisch activist. The centre’s sole purpose was to prove Germany was the victim of aggression in 1914, and that the Versailles treaty was morally invalid. The Centre provided Barnes with research material, made funds available to him, translated his writings into other languages, and funded his trip to Germany in 1926. During Barnes’ 1926 trip to Germany, the writer was welcomed for his efforts to, as Barnes described it, “clear Germany of the dishonour and fraud of the war-guilt clause of the Treaty of Versailles”.

An excerpt from, “The Genesis Of The World War” by Harry Elmer Barnes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1926, pg. 702 – 706:

The conclusion of these few very casual, desultory and almost platitudinous remarks on the contrast between myth and fact in connection with the World War and after, is that they prove beyond the possibility of contradiction or doubt the highly relevant fact that war cannot be ended by more war any more than a drowning man can be resuscitated by pouring more water down his throat. The type of mind and intellectual attitudes which are developed for and by war are those which bring to the fore practically all of the baser traits of human nature and intensify hatred and savagery, while reducing the potency of those mental operations which are conducive to pacific adjustments and mutual toleration. It is only by attacking war head on, and making clear its multifarious contributions to human brutality and waste, as well as by proving the futile and unnecessary nature of every war, that we can make headway, if at all, against modern militarism and the war spirit.”

It may have been worth while on this basis to point out with more than usual frankness the imbecilities and disasters of the late World War, because this is a particularly instructive instance for those now alive. It was not only a struggle through which we have all lived, but also the one which was most exploited as an example as the one uniquely necessary, idealistic and justice-promoting conflict of all history. If we show how totally we were deluded on all these points, it may help us in the future to guard against being led astray by the same groups when they are interested in provoking another world conflict.

It has doubtless been a consideration of the above points which has led a few courageous spirits among us, like Harry Emerson Fosdick, Sherwood Eddy, Kirby Page and others to express doubt as to whether they would ever again support or sanction another war. But it is necessary to carry this salutary disillusionment beyond the few to the mass of students of the coming generation who will be those who must take the leading part in opposing a military policy and in substituting for savage patriotism a broad international point of view. And if we may judge by the symptoms of the last decade, students will primarily need to look for truth and guidance to themselves rather than to their professors of history and diplomacy, many of whom will probably tenaciously continue to remain devotees of the Rip Van Winkle and Follyanna schools of historiography.

The really important aspect of the above material is not, of course, merely the satisfaction of our curiosity as to the historical facts regarding War origins, but the important bearing which these facts have on public and international policy at the present time. As the prevailing European international policy is still based upon the assumption of unique German responsibility for the War it is evident that the facts in the situation demand the repudiation of this program and the adoption of a more fair and constructive policy. The Dawes Report, and the discussion which it has promoted, in common with most of the analyses of the Reparations problem, rests upon altogether fallacious premises which alike invalidate the content of the proposal and the machinery of enforcement. The whole logical and juristic foundation of the notion of reparations from Germany, in so far as it differs from the age-old policy of punitive levies on conquered peoples, is the assumption of the complete and unique responsibility of Germany for the origin of the World War and the misery, suffering and economic losses which it entailed. This assumption is fully embodied in the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles relating to reparations, and even Poincare was once incautious enough to admit that proof of divided responsibility for the outbreak of the great conflict carried with it a disappearance of the case for German reparations. The Dawes Plan, and any current American and European agreements as to its enforcement, while immensely better than the Poincare policy, are comparable to efforts to reduce the fine of a man, known by all to be innocent.

What we need to do is to adopt a broad, constructive and farsighted policy. The guilt for the World War having been distributed, the expense of indemnifying the sufferers should likewise be distributed. The United States might well use its undoubted financial power to induce France and England (the latter would probably gladly welcome the proposal) to forego all notion of any reparations from Germany and to adopt the program of a mutual sharing with Germany of the burdens of reconstruction and rehabilitation. The United States could with great propriety indicate its good-will and intentions in the circumstances by cancelling the debts of the European powers on the above condition. Once England and France gave some such evidence of international honesty and decency, one of the chief obstacles and objections would be removed to our joining the League of Nations. We may agfree with Fabre-Luce that, though the wartime slogan that America and the Entente entered the War solely for the purpose of ending all war was at the time pure hypocrisy, yet we shall have lost both the War and the peace if we do not take steps to make this constructive slogan an achieved reality. The beginnings of any such move must be found in an appreciation of the facts concerning the origins of the World War. Hence the truth in the following statement by John Kenneth Turner:

Instead of being a dead issue, our late war is the livest issue of the day, and it will remain an issue so long as future war is in the reckoning. Its lessons hold not only the secret of averting future war, but also the solution of other public questions of a pressing nature.

An excerpt from, “Harry Elmer Barnes, RIP” By Murray Rothbard, Left and Right 4, No. 1 (1968): 3-8:

All persons leave an irreplaceable gap when they die; but this gap is truly enormous in the case of Harry Barnes. for in so many ways he was the Last of the Romans. He was the last, for example, of that stratum of rural Protes- tant boys who shed their religion at college and went on to constitute almost the entire foundinggenerationof American scholars and university teachers. More specifically, he was rhe last of the founders of the “New History”, that movement at the turn of the century which, headed by Barnes’ friends and mentors Charles A. Beard, Carl L. Becker, and James Harvey Robinson, virtually founded the profession of historian in America and placed its entire stamp on historiography until the advent of World War 11. And Harry Rarnes was the last of the truly erudite historians. In a field of accelerating narrowness and specialization where thc expert on France in the 1830′s is likely to know next to nothing ahout what happened to France in the 1840′s, Harry Barnes ranged over the entire field of historical study and vislon. He was the Compleat Historian; and it was the historical approach that informed his work in all the other soclal science disciplines in which he was so remarkably productive: sociology, criminology, religion, economics, current affairs, and social thought. Surely his scholarly output was and will continue to remain unparal- lelled, as even a glance at a bibliography of his writings will show. 

The quantity and scope of his productive output would alone stamp Harry Elmer Barnes as a memorable scholar, but this alone barely begins to scratch the surface of how remarkable a man he was. For he was that rarity among scholars, a passionately committed man. It was not enough for Harry to discover and set forth the truth; he must also work actively and whole-heartedly in the world on behalf of that truth. His was theoppositeattitudefrom the detached irony of his friend Carl Becker. He believed, properly but increasingly alone, that it was the ultimate function of the vast and growing scholarly apparatus to bringabout a better life for mankind; that the ultimate function of the scholarly disciplines is to aid in carving out an ethics for mankind and then to help put such ethics into practice. As devoted as he was to the discipline of history throughout his life- time, he was just as devoted to putting its lessons to the service of man. Not for Barnes was the antiquarian “scholarship for scholarship’s sake”; for him the guiding star was scholarship for the sake of man. Hence the appropriateness of Carl Becker’s affectionate label for Barnes: “The Learned Crusader”. 

Video Title: TBR HISTORY HOUR – 1/3/2020 – Tribute to Dr. Harry Elmer Barnes. Source: TBR Radio. Date Published: December 24, 2019. Description: 

In this first broadcast of our new show Dr. Ed pays tribute to our magazine’s namesake, the late Dr. Harry Elmer Barnes. 

Dr. Ed calls former Barnes Review magazine editor Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson and asks him about his study of Dr. Barnes’ works in graduate school and how Dr. Barnes’ writing inspired him not only in the editorship of the magazine but even in his current writing and ministry today.