The Genesis of the World War: An Introduction to the Problem of War Guilt

by Harry Elmer Barnes

Excerpt from The Genesis of the World War



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Genres: World War I

785 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1928

Reviews

[Andreas · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book H. E. Barnes shifted the war guilt off the Triple Alliance and onto the Entente Cordiale. The main culprits are Serbia, Russia and France rather than the usual suspects. He showed that Germany and Austria-Hungary had no agendas that could only be achieved through a European War while the goals of Serbia, Russia and France could only be achieved through the defeat of Germany and the destruction of Austria-Hungary. His writing style is clear and precise and he supports his conclusions with an abundance of international documentary sources. The book ends with an overview over the so called revisionist literature with books from France, Germany, England and America. All the titles are no longer in print and I haven't read any of the mentioned titles yet. Oddly enough though I have come to the same conclusions as Barnes did after reading roughly two dozen other books on the topic.

[Stanley Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This should've been taught in high school history class, although the government wouldn't want to...

[Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://archive.org/details/genesisof...

[JW · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic of World War I revisionism. Barnes blames France and Russia for turning the Austro-Serbian conflict into a European war. He emphasizes individual actors – Poincare, Izvolski, Grey, Sazonov – as manipulators of the nationalistic, militaristic templates undergirding the European state system of 1914.
Published in 1926, this work should now be in the public domain. An annotated edition identifying the references that would have been common knowledge back then would be useful. Otherwise it might be best to read it as a PDF where you can look up obscurities on line.

[John Geddes]

"Best survey of the subject for the general reader, with useful annotated bibliography"

IHR Revisionist Bibliography 1981
https://archive.is/LWkOQ