Editing Historical revisionism (section)

===Cold War===
{{main|Historiography of the Cold War}}
Historians debate the causes and responsibility for the [[Cold War]]. The "orthodox" view puts the major blame on the [[Soviet Union]], while a "revisionist" view puts more responsibility on the United States. <ref>{{Cite thesis |last=Morris |first=Saga Helgason |date=2018 |title=The Evolving Interpretations of the Origins of the Cold War: Have Historians Reached a Consensus on the Origins of the Cold War? |url=http://hdl.handle.net/1946/31413 |format=PDF |journal=University of Iceland - School of Humanities |hdl=1946/31413 |type=Bachelor's thesis |language=English, Icelandic |via=Skemman}}</ref>

====Vietnam War====
''[[America in Vietnam]]'' (1978), by [[Guenter Lewy]], is an example of historical revisionism that differs much from the popular view of the U.S. in the [[Vietnam War]] (1955–75) for which the author was criticized and supported for belonging to the revisionist school on the history of the Vietnam War.<ref name="tri"/><ref name="reverse">{{cite journal| first1 = Robert A.| last1 = Divine|date=September 1979| title = Review: Revisionism in Reverse| journal = [[Reviews in American History]]| volume = 7| issue = 3| pages = 433–438| doi = 10.2307/2701181| last2 = Lewy| first2 = Guenter| last3 = Millett| first3 = Allan R. | author3-link =Allan R. Millett| jstor=2701181}}</ref> Lewy's reinterpretation was the first book of a body of work by historians of the revisionist school about the [[geopolitical]] role and the U.S. military behavior in Vietnam.

In the introduction, Lewy said:

{{Blockquote|It is the reasoned conclusion of this study ... that the sense of guilt created by the Vietnam war in the minds of many Americans is not warranted and that the charges of ''officially, condoned'' illegal and grossly immoral conduct are without substance. Indeed, detailed examination of battlefield practices reveals that the loss of civilian life in Vietnam was less great than in [[World War II]] [1939–45] and [[Korean War|Korea]] [1950–53] and that concern with minimizing the ravages of the war was strong. To measure and compare the devastation and loss of human life caused by different war will be objectionable to those who repudiate all resort to military force as an instrument of foreign policy and may be construed as callousness. Yet as long as wars do take place at all it remains a moral duty to seek to reduce the agony caused by war, and the fulfillment of this obligation should not be disdained.|''America in Vietnam'' (1979), p. vii.<ref>Guenter Lewy, ''America in Vietnam'', p. VII.</ref>}}

Other reinterpretations of the historical record of the [[U.S. war in Vietnam]], which offer alternative explanations for American behavior, include ''Why We Are in Vietnam'' (1982), by [[Norman Podhoretz]],<ref name="tri">{{cite web| website = Reviews in History| date = February 2007| first = Ian| last = Horwood| title = Book review: Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965| publisher = [[Institute of Historical Research]]| url = https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/horwood.html| archive-url = https://archive.today/20121223110521/https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/horwood.html| url-status = dead| archive-date = December 23, 2012}}</ref> ''Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965'' (2006), by [[Mark Moyar]],<ref>{{cite book |author=Mark Moyar |title=Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965 |year=2006 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-86911-0}}</ref> and ''Vietnam: The Necessary War'' (1999), by [[Michael Lind]].<ref>{{cite book |author=Lind, Michael |author-link=Michael Lind |title=Vietnam: The Necessary War |year=1999 |publisher=Free Press |isbn=978-0684842547 |url=https://archive.org/details/vietnamnecessary00lind}}{{page needed|date=September 2014}}</ref>