Editing Holocaust denial (section)

===Harry Elmer Barnes===
[[Harry Elmer Barnes]], at one time a mainstream American historian, assumed a Holocaust-denial stance in his later years. Between [[World War I]] and [[World War II]], Barnes was an [[anti-war]] writer and a leader of the [[historical revisionism]] movement. Starting in 1924, Barnes worked closely with the [[Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War]], a German government-funded think tank whose sole purpose was to disseminate the official government position that Germany was the victim of Allied aggression in 1914 and that the [[Versailles Treaty]] was morally invalid.{{sfn|Herwig|1987|pp=22–23 & 26}} Headed by Major Alfred von Wegerer, a {{lang|de|[[Völkisch movement|völkisch]]}} activist, the organization portrayed itself as a scholarly society, but historians later described it as "a clearinghouse for officially desirable views on the outbreak of the war."{{sfn|Herwig|1987|pp=21–23 & 26}}

Following World War II, Barnes became convinced that allegations made against Germany and [[Empire of Japan|Japan]], including the Holocaust, were wartime propaganda that had been used to justify the United States' involvement in World War II. Barnes claimed that there were two false claims made about World War II, namely that Germany started the war in 1939, and the Holocaust, which Barnes claimed did not happen.{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=75}}

In his 1962 pamphlet, ''Revisionism and Brainwashing'', Barnes claimed that there was a "lack of any serious opposition or concerted challenge to the atrocity stories and other modes of defamation of German national character and conduct".{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|pp=73-74}} Barnes argued that there was "a failure to point out the atrocities of the Allies were more brutal, painful, mortal and numerous than the most extreme allegations made against the Germans".{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=74}} He claimed that in order to justify the "horrors and evils of the Second World War", the Allies made the Nazis the "scapegoat" for their own misdeeds.{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=75}}

Barnes cited the French Holocaust denier [[Paul Rassinier]], whom Barnes called a "distinguished French historian" who had exposed the "exaggerations of the atrocity stories".{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=74}} In a 1964 article, "Zionist Fraud", published in the ''[[American Mercury]]'', Barnes wrote: "The courageous author [Rassinier] lays the chief blame for misrepresentation on those whom we must call the swindlers of the crematoria, the Israeli politicians who derive billions of marks from nonexistent, mythical and imaginary cadavers, whose numbers have been reckoned in an unusually distorted and dishonest manner."{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=74}} Using Rassinier as his source, Barnes claimed that Germany was the victim of aggression in both 1914 and 1939 and that reports of the Holocaust were propaganda to justify a war of aggression against Germany.{{sfn|Lipstadt|1993|p=74}}