The Cardinal Sin of “Revisionist” Books on Nazi Germany

The cardinal sin (which is very literally deadly to the historical Truth) of the so-called “revisionist” books on Nazi Germany is even worse than the cardinal sin of the “official” (“mainstream”) books about the Third Reich.

For starters, the term “revisionist history” is fundamentally misleading. Because there is no such thing as “mainstream” (“official” or “professional”) and “revisionist” history. There is only genuine history – and propaganda (either anti-Nazi or pro-Nazi/neo-Nazi).

In the latter respect, just about all “revisionist” books, articles, blog posts, etc. are fundamentally the same as the “mainstream” ones. Actually, they are even worse – for two fundamental reasons.

First, although the “mainstream” historian are not competent enough (due to lack of expertise in knowledge management and systems analysis) for developing an accurate picture of the Third Reich and its environment, the “revisionist” histories are even less competent.

Like their “mainstream” counterparts (and rivals), the “revisionist” historians have no training or experience in knowledge management or systems analysis. Unfortunately, their training (and experience) in “classic” historical research is way, way below the ones of their rivals (and often just plain non-existent). Which results in books and other deliverables of a far lower quality than the ones produced by the “mainstream” historians.

Second, while “official” (“professional”) historians are driven primarily by the very deadly (to the historical Truth) sins of pride (which prevents them from even considering a radically different view of Nazi Germany and its environment), fear to lose their jobs, income and status in the “community of mainstream historians” and sloth (they are just too lazy to look for the historical Truth), the “revisionist” historians are consumed by a far more destructive sin.

Hatred. Which is almost exclusively hatred for the Jews. In other words, virulent (and sometimes even violent) Judeophobia. Just about all “revisionist” historians (most of which are diehard “Holocaust deniers”) are driven not by love for Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich (of which they know very little) but by hatred for the Jews.

Consequently, the so-called “Holocaust revisionism” (which in reality is nothing but a Holocaust denial) is nothing but a hate speech directed towards the Jews. And must be treated as such. Which (IMHO) means that it was (and is) a good idea to make Holocaust denial a criminal offence.

There is an important exception to this “revisionism rule”. In Russia, there is a whole school of historic revisionism (represented by mostly amateur historians such as Viktor Suvorov, Mark Solonin, Vladimir Beshanov, Igor Bunich, Mikhail Meltiukghov and others) that uses a highly professional methodology (and none of them is a “Holocaust denier” or an anti-Semite).

However, they write and publish books, papers, articles and other content exclusively on the history of the Soviet Russia, Soviet Union and the so-called Great Patriotic War (the Second World War after June 22^nd, 1941 when the Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union). They have published virtually nothing on the Third Reich; consequently, the “revisionist history” of Nazi Germany looks pretty much like I described above.