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.”
Hellbound and Down 