[image error]
The Jooos! The Joooos!





Revisionism. Revisionism is one of those handy blanket accusations thrown around by many without any idea about what they're actually decrying. Scientific progress, however, is dependent on constant revision, on new approaches and the questioning of familiar perspectives and established models. Of course, not every revision, regardless of the scientific discipline, is useful just because it is one such. It must be compatible with the existing data or source materials and its explanatory power should at least equal the established theoretical paradigm.



Unfortunately, for historical research and its public perception in general, the image of historical revisionism is a tarnished one, and one doesn't have to search long for reasons for that sorry state of affairs. To explain it a bit I'd like to draw the distinction between actual historical revisionism and what I call "Big R Revisionism". And the latter one somehow always ends up taking on the members of a certain Abrahamic religion...



Let's take The War That Had Many Fathers as an example. The broadly generalized view that the popular understanding of history (in Germany) is based on resembles this narrative:

Already the German Empire sought the German domination of at least Europe and, if possible, the whole world. After the defeat in the Great War, this desire, supported by a Social Darwinist ideology, was the program - moderate and radical variants - of the German Right, most radically embodied in Hitler and his Nazi party. Hitler from the beginning sought to extend Germany's power base through the successive elimination of neighboring states to gain the strength to fight  against Great Powers, to disable France and Great Britain, to destroy the Soviet Union, thereby gaining "Lebensraum" for Germans and perhaps to create the basis for a war against America and thus finally push forward to world domination.

Against which Schultze-Rhonhof places his own interpretation (sourced with around 1,000 foot notes, in the majority primary sources from diplomatic archives) that is both common-sensical and thoroughly heritical at the same time: that, contrary to popular belief, Europe in the 1930s wasn't comprised of an active Germany with the rest of the nations posing as merely re-acting extras. Rather, Europe's nations were all actors, all working towards their own goals and desires to the best of their abilities. Germany just happened to make the correct choices at the correct times, and often did so on a whim rather than based on some long term plan (which is very well represented by transcripts of conversations and notes on the same topics, ie. the Anschluss of Austria, from the archives of several nations). And yet, the author does not excuse Germany. In the end, Germany started the war. What he does is document that what preceeded that declaration of war was far, FAR less black and white than the common narrative wants us to believe.



That is why genuinely well-researched and documented works like that of Schultze-Rhonhoff as well as polemical but thoroughly justified positions as that of Nigel Knight are so reviled. Not only because they question what may be comfortable myths, but because of the miserable, loud-mouthed company they unwillingly find themselves in. You may not agree with what they write - hell, I certainly don't agree with all they write - but they do raise sensible points that warrant discussion and possibly a re-evalution of how we - the public - see our past. That's historical revisionism. The one with the small "r".



David Irving.

But where does the "Big R" begin? Well, I'm not too deep into that part (because, as you'll see later, it invariably ends up courting a certain type of denial), but maybe lets start with a well known name: David Irving.





Okay, I admit it: I've read a book by David Irving. Yes, that David Irving. The one accused of holocaust denial. The one put in jail in Austria on charges of Wiederbetätigung, IIRC. Why? Because once in a while I like to know what I'm talking about before I pass judgement on someone, that's why. And, quite honestly, I was simply curious.



What did I read? Parts of his Churchill biography. In and by itself its a rather intriguing read. Irving has the advantage of being fluent in both German and English, which certainly helped him alot in his work. He certainly isn't a bad writer. He's just not a good historian. I'm aware the man never studied history in the sense that he participated in university courses and got a degree. Now, getting a degree is one thing. It certainly looks nice on your CV. But ironically the other part is way more important: learning how to do scientific research and present your findings is something everybody who does some serious writing should have learned at some point. 



David Irving is a revisionist in the bad sense of the word, and he apparently didn't learn this type of scientific handiwork. He claims using only primary sources - most the time its diaries - for getting to his conclusions, and these conclusions usually aren't very close to the orthodox view of history. That, in and by itself, isn't really a problem: a new point of view, new data, new results. Cue a discussion. That's the way all science basically ought to work.




Matters become problematic when one makes statements based on unreliable sources, or based on pure hearsay. It gets worse when the conclusions one draws are obviously flawed. For example Irving's opinion that Churchill was a coward, which is based on, I think, supposedly some driver's diary (or was it one of Churchill's bodyguards?) stating that whenever the British got an early enough indication that the Luftwaffe would bomb London Churchill would leave the city. 



You know what I call that?  



Prudent behavior. 



Just imagine the scenario: the Russians are bombing Washington, D.C.. I sincerely doubt the Secret Service would be thrilled with the idea of the President staying in the White House! And anyone who's read about Churchill in the Boer War, or how FM Alan Brooke had to keep him from getting into danger pretty much all the time during WW2 will find the accusation of cowardice to be pretty misplaced.





But even if we assume that all he writes about Churchill is true - and I extremely doubt that - it doesn't stand up to the kind of serious historical debate and actual process of scientific revisionism depends on. Why? 




Because it's not sourced.





Everybody who has ever written a paper on anything knows that scientific peer review is based on you laying open your sources for others to check them. Not only do you have to be able to explain why you came to conclusion A (for example, "Because of Data B"), the explicit idea is that others can with a reasonable effort gain access to these sources as well. It's not made better by the fact that he conveniently ignores contrasting data. In fact, like everybody who's primarily occupied with pushing a point of view and not just with presenting what he or she has found out, it's unlikely Irving acknowledges these views exist. If your sources are diaries not accessible to your peers you have to provide these sources - in full. Otherwise what you claim are just that: claims. Unsubstantiated ones.



That Winston Churchill threw the Empire into a war because he was bought by a Jewish-dominated lobby group called The Focus (which is so likely given the man's stubborn character /sarcasm off) is the equivalent of you running nakedly out into the streets at night with one hand around your penis, yelling that the Jews stole your mojo. You might think you look awesome and have a point. But trust me. You really don't.



And somehow we always end up with the Jews. Isn't that a funny coincidence? That's the great difference between actual revisionism and the "Big R" type. Whatever it is that happened, the "Big R" always finds a way to link it all back to the Jews. Usually in a way that manages to unravel even the best argument made earlier.



It's what I would call the "Reverse Godwin's Law" or maybe the "Stormfront Syndrome". Stormfront is essentially a US-Nazi webforum (so I won't link there). If you dare do so, google Stormfront, steel yourselves, and check out a few threads. Like on every webforum you'll get absolute crap, and you'll get a lot of offensive material (comes with the environment), but you'll also get a handful of threads making coherent and sensible points. But just as with Godwin's Law, even the most useful thread in such an environment at some point slams into the "It's the Joooos' fault". Hence, the "Stormfront Syndrome". Unemployment, bad weather, your milk turning sour? You got it, it's got to be them evil Joooos and their inherent anti-lactation vibes...



The ironic thing about these people's efforts is that they are so utterly futile.



Let's assume for a moment that there really weren't any gas chambers at, say, Auschwitz (and even that assumption for the sake of the argument might put me on thin ice). Does that really make a difference? What about the hundreds of thousands that starved to death, or were rounded up from their homes only to be mass executed a mile down the road and thrown into ditches? What about the thousands mutilated and tortured for "medical" experiments? The hundreds of thousands that were dehumanized and herded together like cattle? Fact of the matter is that at the end of WWII there were several million fewer Jews and other ethnic minorities in Europe than before the outbreak of the war - up to eleven million -, and only a small percentage of those was able to emigrate/escape. Something must have happened to them; people don't dissolve into thin air (well, these did - ja, ja, bad pun, but it's the truth, isn't it?)!





An actual Aryan. Any questions?

At some point the intent and the "quality" of the crime become more important than the quantity of the victims. Nothing would wash away the monumental stain on Germany's reputation, nothing extinguish the guilt if it wasn't five or six million murdered but, say, "only" a hundred thousand. And I think that's what that breed of "revisionists" doesn't get. They are so mired in pointing fingers and in whitewashing some kind of mythical "Aryan" reputation that it is their kind of race-based skullduggery that makes actual historical revisionism as I outlined it above so hard for those conducting it and so reviled by the public. If your only conclusion to very complicated historical problems and chains of events boils down to "The Joooos did it!" for whatever reason the biggest favor you can do the world is to just shut up! That's not history. That's not historical revisionism. It's antisemitism wrapped in a time line.