Harry Elmer Barnes - Early Career

Early Career

In 1925 he edited A Manual of Universal History, a revision of William H. Tillinghast's A Handbook of Universal History. This work's organizational structure was the outline used in William L. Langer's An Encyclopedia of World History.

During World War I, Barnes had been a strong supporter of the war effort with the anti-German propaganda he had written being rejected by the National Board for Historical Service describing Barnes's writing as "too violent to be acceptable". After the war, Barnes views towards Germany underwent a volte-face with Barnes becoming as Germanophile as he previously had been Germanophobic. Barnes took the view that the United States had fought on the wrong side in the First World War. In the 1920s, Barnes was noted as a vehement advocate that Germany had borne no responsibility for the outbreak of war in 1914, and had instead been the victim of Allied aggression. In 1922, Barnes was arguing that the responsibility for World War I was split evenly between the Allies and the Central Powers. By 1924, Barnes was writing that Austria was the power most responsible for the war, but that Russia and France were more responsible than Germany. By 1926, Barnes argued that Russia and France bore the entire responsibility for the outbreak of war in 1914, and the Central Powers none. In Barnes's view, "vested political and historical interests" were behind the "official" account that Germany started World War I.

Barnes's research on the origins of World War I in the 1920s was generously funded by the German Foreign Ministry, which wished to prove that Germany had not started World War I as a way of undermining the Treaty of Versailles. In his articles on the causes of World War I in The Nation, Current History, Christian Century and above all in his 1927 book The Genesis of the World War, Barnes portrayed France and Russia as the aggressors of the July Crisis of 1914, and Germany and Austria-Hungary as the victims of a Franco-Russian plot. After 1924, Barnes had a close relationship with the former völkisch activist Major Alfred von Wegerer's Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War, a pseudo-historical think-tank based in Berlin secretly funded by the German government, whose sole purpose was to prove Germany was the victim of aggression in 1914, and hence the alleged moral invalidity of the Versailles treaty. 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's 1926 trip to Germany he received a most friendly welcome for his efforts as Barnes described it in "seeking to clear Germany of the dishonour and fraud of the war-guilt clause of the Treaty of Versailles". During his European trip, Barnes met with the former Emperor, Wilhelm II at his estate in the Netherlands who told Barnes that he "was happy to know that I did not blame him for starting the war in 1914", but that "He disagreed with my view that Russia and France were chiefly responsible. He held that the villains of 1914 were the international Jews and Free Masons, who, he alleged, desired to destroy national states and the Christian religion". Besides meeting Wilhelm, Barnes during his trip in 1926 met all of the surviving German and Austrian leaders of 1914, whose statements to Barnes had the effect of confirming him in his belief that Germany was not responsible for World War I. To assist Barnes with his writings against the so-called Kriegschuldlüge ("war guilt lie"), the Germans put Barnes into contact with a disreputable former Serbian diplomat living in Berlin named Milos Boghitschewitsch, who in exchange for German gold provided false testimony about the actions of the Serbian government in 1914. In his 1926 book, The Genesis of the World War, the first American book written about 1914 based upon the available primary sources, Barnes argued the First World War was the result of a Franco-Russian plot to destroy Germany. Wegerer himself wrote about The Genesis of the World War that it would "scarcely possible to provide a better book than this one".

Barnes was opposed to the idea of World War I as "just war", which he believed to have been caused by the economic imperialism of France and Russia. In 1925, Barnes wrote:

If we can but understand how totally and terribly we were "taken in" between 1914 and 1918 by the salesmen of this most holy and idealistic world conflict, we shall be the better prepared to be on our guard against the seductive lies and deceptions which will put forward by similar groups when urging the necessity of another world catastrophe in order to "crush militarism", "make the world safe for democracy", put an end to all further wars, etc.

In his preface to The Genesis of the World War, Barnes called World War I an "unjust war against Germany". Barnes wrote in his preface that:

the truth about the causes of the World War is one of the livest and most important practical issues of the present day. It is basic to the whole matter of the present European and world situation, resting as it does upon an unfair and unjust Peace Treaty, which was itself erected upon a most uncritical and complete acceptance of the grossest forms of war-time illusions concerning war guilt.

Barnes said when writing The Genesis of the World War, he compelled by "an ardent desire to execute an adequate exposure of the authors of the late World War in particular". According to Barnes, the responsibility for World War I was as follows:

In estimating the order of guilt of the various countries we may safely say that the only direct and immediate responsibility for the World War falls upon Serbia, France and Russia, with the guilt about equally distributed. Next in order—far below France and Russia—would come Austria, through she never desired a general European war. Finally, we place Germany and England as tied for last place, both being opposed to war in the 1914 crisis. Probably the German public was somewhat more favorable to military activity than the English people, but ... the Kaiser made much more strenuous efforts to preserve the peace of Europe in 1914 than did Sir Edward Grey.

The German government so liked Barnes's writings on the causes of World War I that it provided free copies of his articles to hand out at German embassies around the world. Though most German historians in the 1920s regarded Barnes merely as a propagandist whose work was mainly meant to appeal to a mass as opposed to an academic audience, the right-wing German historian Hans Herzfeld called Barnes's work "a document in the struggle against the war guilt thesis whose noble spirit cannot be appreciated enough". The German-Canadian historian Holger Herwig has commented that Barnes's work on the origins of World War I together with others of a similar bent did immense scholarly damage as generations of university students accepted Barnes' "apologias" for Germany as the truth. In 1969, the British historian A. J. P. Taylor called The Genesis of the World War "the most preposterously pro-German" account of the outbreak of war in 1914.

In 1926, the American historian Bernadotte Schmitt wrote about The Genesis of the World War that:

It must be said that Mr. Barnes' book fall short of being the objective and scientific analysis of the great problems which is so urgently needed. As a protest against the old notion of unique German responsibility for the war, it will be welcomed by all honest men, but as an attempt to set up a new doctrine of unique Franco-Russian responsibility, it must be unhesitatingly rejected. The war was a consequence, perhaps inevitable, of the whole system of alliances and armaments, and in the origin, development, and working of that system, the Central Powers, more particularly Germany, played a conspicuous part. Indeed, it was Germany that put the system to the test in July 1914. Because the test failed, she is not entitled to claim that no responsibility attaches to her.

In 1980, the American historian Lucy Dawidowicz attacked Barnes and contrasted his work with the German historian Fritz Fischer's book Griff nach der Weltmacht (Grasping at World Power).

Barnes's very public attacks on the idea of World War I as a just war, and his thesis that the United States should not have fought in the war won him the admiration and friendship in the 1920s of many people in the United States such Oswald Garrison Villard, the Socialist leader Norman Thomas, the critic H. L. Mencken, and the historian Charles A. Beard. Long regarded as a leader of the progressive intelligentsia, Barnes joined many of its intellectual leaders such as Charles Beard in opposing from the left the New Deal and, at the price of their reputations, American entry into World War II. In the years following the war, he argued that Adolf Hitler did not want to go to war with the United States and that President Roosevelt had deliberately provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor. He also contested many aspects of the Holocaust, claiming death figures were far lower, arguing that all sides were guilty of equally awful atrocities.