Revisionism

December 3, 2001

REVISIONISM

Is the history of our culture accurate? Or is history just the point of view of the writer? There are people who believe that certain events in the world's history have been passed down from generation to generation falsely. These people are called revisionists. The terms revisionist and revisionism have become, for the most part, a derogatory term especially when the subject being debated is the Jewish Holocaust of World War II. In addition to the Jewish holocaust there is the history of the Native Americans, history of public education and the origins of the cold war. Is there any truth in the revisionists' theories?

Revisionism has been a very vital step into forging our country's history. Revisionists research the written or oral history of an event or period of time. Revisionism and revisionists are relatively new additions to most dictionaries. These terms were added in the early 1900s. The term revise has been in the dictionaries since the late 1500s. Revisionism is defined as "advocacy of revision (as of a doctrine or policy or in historical analysis)." (Merriam-Webster, 2001)

Revisionism was very prevalent in the United States immediately following World War I. The majority of the people who were involved in this movement were historians. They spent their careers researching the history of the United States and the world. They were seen as correctors of our history. They were seen as being very wise individuals After the end of World War II, the terms revisionist and revisionism were used in ways that became increasingly derogative. People became skeptical of the authenticity of the information that was being published as accurately revised history. The detractors of revisionism say that the revisionists of today base their views and research on their own personal bias. The majority of revisionists today are not historians; some of them do not have college degrees.

The information age, that we are very much a part of today, has opened up access to a sundry of new information. The vast expansion over the past few years of Internet use had led to a magnitude of information that is accessible across any country's borders. The publishing of information is no longer dependent on who has the most money and prestige. Anyone who wants to publish his or her views only has to create a web page. This information needs to be evaluated on its accuracy to the details of the facts. "However, now that the world is shin bone deep in a computer sparked revolution called accurately by some 'The Information Age', establishment control of what the public can read is suddenly faced with a wide open window where heretofore no more than a crack had been permitted. To be sure, probably 85% of what is coming thru that window ranges from the insipid to pure intellectual and moral sewage." (Hall, 2001)

Use of Public Schools to Educate America's Children

School attendance was required of children in Massachusetts in 1664. They were the first colony to require all children of school age attend school. It was not until five years later that each town and city provided schools and school superintendents to fulfill these requirements. (Greer, 1972:14) The goal of these schools was to provide equality of opportunities to all children. This was the first social agency set up to support traditional parental responsibility. "Increasingly, the school was expected to replace the family as the institution which would guarantee social stability and underwrite the national promise of self-improvement." (Greer, 1972:14) The goal of providing education to every child is to provide upward social mobilization.

During the late 1800s, the immigration was at the highest the United States had ever seen. During this period, there was a migration from rural areas to the more densely populated urban areas. Schools had the added burden of socializing all of the children. The immigrant children needed to learn not only a new language, but also the norms and mores of their new society. Psychologists and sociologists say that schools have helped immigrants achieve great upper social mobilization. When comparing the second generation of immigrants to be educated in the United States, there is a noticeable upward mobilization. Usually the second generation has achieved the middle class status.

It is also during this same period of time that schools were segregated. Children of former slaves were not allowed to attend the same schools as the children of the white slave owners. The children of the former slaves had the added burden of being the first in their families to be taught how to read and write. When they struggled in school, they were not able to get help from their parents. These former slaves did not achieve the same upward social mobilization as that of the immigrants. The segregated schools were for the most part used to keep the African Americans from bettering their lives and those of their families. There some African Americans who found a way to achieve higher education, but those were the exceptions and not the norm.

When evaluating the effectiveness of schools for providing the opportunity to children for upward social mobilization, revisionists look at the historical effectiveness and the effectiveness of schools today. Today, although schools were forced to desegregate, the schools that are in the central urban areas are poorer achieving than those that are in further outlying areas. The further outlying areas are populated by the more upwardly social mobile. Former inner city residents are abandoning the neighborhoods for the more affluent outer city neighborhoods as soon as it is economically feasible. Therefore, the effectiveness to educate all of today's children in our school system is failing.

Schools today have moved away from teaching the history of old. History textbooks were written about what the male founders of the United States accomplished. There was little mention about influential women, African Americans and Native Americans. The National Standards for United States History has in outlined a new curriculum for students. Today's history lessons include teaching how Harriet Tubman organized the pre-Civil War Underground Railroad that helped African Americans escape slavery in the South. There have been several voices that have been neglected in the education of Americas' children for centuries. "One problem, however, is that National Standards is so insistent on resurrecting neglected voices that it becomes guilty of what might be called disproportionate revisionism." (Elson, 1994)

The revised history as taught in schools today have achieved more balance, but there is still room for more revision. Children are still taught that Christopher Columbus is a national hero. They are not being taught that he almost decimated the natives that he encountered in his settlement of the Americas. United States history books tell about the atrocities of the Nazis in World War II, but there is barely a mention of the interment of the Japanese here in the United States during the same period.

Pearl Harbor

When asked about the date of December 7, 1941, the vast majority of Americans will recall the event that has been seared into United State's history. Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese military. The disabling effect on the United States military stationed and moored in Pearl Harbor was profound.

There is no doubt that this event happened, but the events and decisions that led up to this moment are not as universally agreed on. The position of the United States' government is that Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was unprovoked. The position of some revisionists is that the United States' government chose to take actions and inactions to provoke Japan into attacking. There are differing opinions as to whether the attack on Pearl Harbor was a backfire of the provocation. Some revisionists believe that Roosevelt's government was aiming to have some decoy ships attacked; therefore, the ships moored at Pearl Harbor would be ready for an immediate reprisal on the Japanese.

There were nine different hearings that were held from December 1941 to May 1946. The conclusion of the majority of the hearings is that Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short were responsible for the lack of defensive actions taken by the United States military on that fateful day. Their inaction on orders and warnings directly led to the mass destruction of Pearl Harbor and other military installations on Oahu Island on the morning of December 7, 1941.

The evidence and conclusions that came out of the Roberts Commission were used in the hearings that followed. The finding of the Roberts Commission is that Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short had the means and the opportunity to defend Pearl Harbor and the island of Oahu on the morning of the Japanese attack. The destruction was a direct result of each officer's inability to properly evaluate the seriousness of the breakdown in negotiations between the United States' government and the Japanese's government. They had been warned that Japan has a history of attacking before a declaration of war.

As a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Kimmel was demoted to Rear Admiral and Lieutenant General Short was demoted to Major General.  They were both relieved of their respective duties. This action was taken without a court marshal hearing of any kind. They were both listed on the retired officers list as early as January 1942.

In 2000, the Congress of the United States once again held hearings on the responsibility of Kimmel and Short. Their findings are as follows: "Section 537 POSTHUMOUS ADVANCEMENT OF REAR ADMIRAL (RETIRED) HUSBAND E. KIMMELL AND MAJOR GENERAL (RETIRED) WALTER C. SHORT ON RETIRED LISTS This section would request the President to advance Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel to admiral and Major General Walter Short to lieutenant general on the retired list with no increase in compensation or benefits. The provision also expresses the sense of Congress that both officers were professional and competent, and the losses incurred during the attack on Pearl Harbor were not the result of dereliction in the performance of duties in the case of either officer." Spense. 2000:367)  President William Clinton signed the House Resolution 616 bill on October 30, 2000.

During the time between the hearings that concluded that Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short were responsible for the lack of defense of Pearl Harbor on that fateful day and the exoneration of their guilt in 2000 there were and are a vast number of historians debating as to where the blame really lies. There are two main theories that have been debated.  The first is that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his cabinet along with his top military advisors provoked Japan to specifically attack Pearl Harbor. The second theory is that the United States government and military officials knew of Japan's plans, through the encoding of secret communications of Japan, to attack Pearl Harbor and chose not to give ample warnings to the commanders of the impending attack until it was to late.

Jewish Holocaust

During World War II, the German government under the direction of Adolph Hitler put European Jews into prisoner or concentration camps. The official German classifications of their internment camps are prisoner of war camps. They classified Jews as dissidents of the National Socialist party. The belief was based on the assumptions that Jews would not agree with the new policies that were being instituted; therefore, they would voice their dissatisfaction causing a debate that the National Socialists did not want to participate in. Jews were not the only groups that were given this classification. Other groups that were put into these prisoner camps were gypsies, handicapped, German communist, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic clergy, homosexuals and captured military personnel of their enemies.

There is probably no better example of revisionism of history that the history that has been taught in Germany since 1945. The separation of Germany into the communist East Germany and capitalist West Germany led to two different systems applying their views of the policies of Hitler's Nazism. Both sides were trying to achieve the same goal. They did not want a resurgence of Nazism. Both sides chose to create heroes of two separate underground organizations during the period that Hitler was the leader of Germany. The communists stressed the bravery of the communists that fought Hitler from inside Germany. The capitalist stressed the importance of the fight by everyone who was not a communist against the Nazis.

Since the reunification of Germany in 1989 the school systems have had to struggle with the decision of which version or a collaboration of versions to teach. The publication Hitler, a printed animated look at Nazism and the holocaust has been used as a pilot program to teach 10th grade history. This book depicted the leaders of Nazism as being racist and hostile to non-aryans.  The distribution of this comic book was halted in 1993 because of fears that it would be used to propagate the Neo-Nazi movement among the youth in Germany. This curriculum was revised and reinstated in 1995 with stricter guidelines for teachers to follow.

Today Buchenwald, a Nazi internment camp, is being used as an educational tool. The idea is to provide the youth with a more direct opportunity to confront the history. This program was inspired by the education program started in the 1970s at Auschwitz in Poland. It is called Aktion S�hnezeichen (an active program representing a sign of atonement for the past). (Hein, 2000:239) Reports that were filed with the commission in charge of this program felt that the generational timing was very important. "The changed experiential horizons of youth, at this point a third post war generation without a direct witness to the era of National Socialism or an immediate connection with the postwar years, necessitates new methods in the museum-pedagogical work of the memorial. The confrontation with the historical place or the identification of past events alone is no longer sufficient. Only in association with sensible, solid historical political education will it be possible for young people to feel sadness, repulsion, or compassion in this place as well as to understand its history. Buchenwald as a place of human suffering and human greatness, next to it's meaning as a place of commemoration, must be increasingly understood as a place of learning." (Hein, 2000:240) The objective of this and other educational programs is to explore the possibilities of creating a tolerant and just society. Hopefully this program will encourage youth to rethink their own cultural assumptions and seek out answers to the questions that may arise as to how their grandparents' generation made Nazism possible. (Hein 2000:240)

Could parts of this curriculum be effective to educate the youth in the United States? It would be harder to achieve unless there was more money put into the education system for education trips to the sites of these internment camps. Maybe the educational system here should institute a program that would teach about the Japanese internment camps here in the United States.

One issue that has been left out of the history books in most countries, including the United States, is how corporations in Germany profited from the slave labor provided by the Nazis from the internment camps. Some corporations decided to build factories adjacent to the camps. This allowed easier access to the slave labor. Some, but not all, of these corporations were extensions of United States owned corporations. One corporation, I. G. Farben used the inmates for medical research. "Soon after I. G. Farben received the inmates, the SS was informed that the first round of experiments had ended successfully and that all the 'objects for experimentation' were dead. II. G. Farben then requested a meeting with the SS in Auschwitz to transfer yet more inmates for other lines of experimentation." (Hein, 2000:233) There is a movement today to have these corporations provide reparations to the surviving laborers.

I have chosen not to debate whether the Jewish Holocaust happened. In my research on this topic, I found it very hard to find a source that did not use personal bias to form their basis for the debate. There are very few sources that actually provided factual information to back up their opinions. This does not constitute actual revisionism, as I stated in my opening. This is an example of picking and choosing the facts that you will acknowledge as truthful. There are some revisionists that believe that the term "Revisionism" has been kidnapped and is being held hostage by the holocaust deniers. This is how the term revisionism became the derogatory term that many believe that it is today.

Revisionism plays an important part in understanding history. It can be as simple as the fact that George Washington's false teeth were not actually made of wood, but were actually ivory. Or the revisionism can be as important as the redefining of who was at fault for the lack of defense against the Japanese in the attack against Pearl Harbor. The media has also been involved in revisionism. In the movie Forest Gump, the main character is portrayed as being involved in or being a witness to influential events as they take place. The media has also been involved in propagating information that governments want their populations to believe are facts. If revisionists did not question history then we would never have a chance to learn from the mistakes of the past or learn the truth about how events really happened.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Department of State Bulletin. 1941. "Japanese Note to the United States December 7, 1941". Volume V, Number 129.

Department of State Bulletin. 1941. "United States Note to Japan November 26, 1941". Volume V, Number 129.

Elson, John. 1994. "History, the Sequel." Time. Volume 133, No. 19.

Greer, Colin. 1972. The Great School Legend, A Revisionist Interpretation of American Public Education, Basic Books, Inc., Publishers,

Hall, Marshall.  2001. "Historical Revisionism: A Quest for Many Truths." http://www.fixedearth.com/HISTREV.HTM.

Hein, Laura and Selden, Mark. 2000. Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States. M.E. Sharpe.

Ibiblio. 2001. "The Nine Investigations." http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/pha/invest.html.

Kimmel, Leigh. 2001. "Pearl Harbor Revisionism." http://www.geocities.com/athens/3682/phrevisionism.html

Lazarus, Neil. 1999. " The Holocaust as History and Memory." http://www.jajz-ed.org.il/juice/media/week3.html.

Lutton, Charles. 1991. "Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy." Journal of Historical Review. Volume 11, Number 4.

Merriam-Webster. 2001. Collegiate Dictionary. http://www.m-w.com/dictionary.htm

Mintz, Frank P. 1985. Revisionism and the Origins of Pearl Harbor. University Press of America, Inc.

North, Gary. 2000. "Pearl Harbor Historiography: A Lesson in Academic Housecleaning." http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north26.html

Roberts, Owen J. 1942. "Attack Upon Pearl Harbor By Japanese Armed Forces: Roberts Commission." 77th Congress Second Session Senate Document 159.

Spense, Floyd D. 2000. "National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001." House of Representative 106th Congress

Vidal - Naquet, Pierre. 1992. Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust. Columbia University Press.

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