From the Editor

With the appearance of this first number of Volume Eight, The Joumal of Historical Review ends its “sabbatical,” and resumes its vital mission of revising and correcting propaganda untruths disseminated in the name of history to the woe of men and women of good will everywhere. In its first seven volumes. The Journal established itself as the world's leading scholarly voice against the gas-chamber hoax and the other falsehoods and legends associated with the Holocaust story. The Journal was also able to revitalize and carry forward the program of Harry Elmer Barnes and his school reviewing the diplomatic history of the twentieth century, examining the largely veiled war crimes of the victors, and debunking atrocities falsely ascribed to the vanquished.

This issue builds on and advances the tradition established by its predecessors. As befits The Journal's primary focus, contemporary history, the articles are timely indeed, from Henri Roques' account of the imbroglio that erupted in France two years ago when he dared subject the “confessions” of Kurt Gerstein – until then regarded as a key “proof” of the gaschamber story – to a close textual examination, to the latest news from Germany and Austria regarding Judge Stäglich's efforts to regain his duly earned doctorate and the explosive revelations of the Müller document The essential characteristics of Historical Revisionism, i.e., a commitment to a spirit of critical doubt and an obligation to truthfulness as a component of personal honor, shine through in Clarence Lang's study of the background to the Stuttgart Declaration of German Guilt as well as General Otto Ernst Remer's account of his role in suppressing the July 20, 1944, anti-Hitler putsch, whose authors for some time have been objects of a virtual state cult in West Germany. Dr. Alexander Berkis reminds us of the many crimes of the Soviet Union in Latvia and the other two Baltic states, crimes that advocates of glasnost are all too willing to sweep under the rug in exchange for promised Soviet amity, often sought by dusting off Soviet atrocity stories directed not only at Germans but at Balts, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and other subject peoples of Eastern and Central Europe. IHR Editorial Advisory Committee member Martin Larson reports on the latest developments in the ongoing attempts to force publication of the long since deciphered and translated, but curiously withheld, Dead Sea Scrolls.

As always, The Journal helps readers stay abreast of historiographical developments in its Review and Historical News and Comment sections, which in this issue feature the incomparable Robert Faurisson on Shoah, Dr. Stäglich's report, and reviews from IHR Editorial Advisory Committee member Georg Franz-Willing and other contributors. Readers will notice a somewhat smaller overall trim size in this issue. Previous issues were six inches by nine, but softcover book printers are beginning to favor dimensions of one-half inch less each way, rendering the earlier size economically impractical. The already more common 5½ by 8½ inch format is the “wave of the future,” so we're told. We at IHR, who print and publish in forward-looking California, hard by the Pacific Ocean, wish to be in disharmony with the future and the present no more than with the past. Thus, we have consented to this minor abbreviation in size, with no sacrifice in text, but with slightly thinner margins. From here on in – with your approval, we trust – the new trim size will be standard for The Journal and its annual bound volumes. We sincerely hope that the return of The Journal of Historical Review, together with the advances Historical Revisionists are making around the world, signals the onset of a tidal wave of historical truth, a revisionist tsunami, which will sweep away decades- and age-old falsehoods, a wave that revisionists and their supporters will ride high, wide and handsome to victory.

– Theodore J. O’Keefe