This issue contains five papers and one review by John Wear, who has been one of the major contributors to both The Barnes Review and increasingly also to Inconvenient History. If you subscribe to the former, you may notice that some articles are featured in both periodicals. While The Barnes Review is a subscription-based print magazine, Inconvenient History is an open-access resource not requiring anyone to subscribe to it, let alone pay anything.
We are grateful to both John Wear and team at The Barnes Review that we are allowed to carry John’s articles free of charge, and making them accessible to the entire world, not just the small community of Barnes Review subscribers.
As much and fast as Castle Hill is trying to churn out new books as well as new editions of vintage titles, John Wear beats us with his prolific rhythm of writing a sheer avalanche of historical papers, spanning an ever-increasing range of contemporary historical topics. Such commitment is nice to see. I’m sure we will see many more riveting articles from him in the future.
For the rest of us, John’s hyper-productivity cannot and should not be an excuse to grab a pen on occasion (or rather a keyboard these days) and jot down our thoughts on issues of history, free speech, censorship and the societal and political forces behind it all.
If you have something worthwhile to convey, please feel encouraged to submit it to us.
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Germar Rudolf was born on October 29, 1964, in Limburg, Germany. He studied chemistry at Bonn University, where he graduated in 1989 as a Diplom-Chemist, which is comparable to a U.S. PhD degree. From 1990-1993, he prepared a German PhD thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in conjunction with the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Parallel to this and in his spare time, Rudolf prepared an expert report on chemical and technical questions of the alleged gas chambers of Auschwitz (see The Chemistry of Auschwitz). He conclude in it that "the alleged facilities for mass extermination at Auschwitz and Birkenau were not suited for the purpose as claimed." As a result, he had to endure severe measures of persecution in subsequent years. Hence, he went into British exile, where he started a revisionist publishing outlet. When Germany asked Britain to extradite Rudolf in 1999, he fled to the U.S. There he applied for political asylum, expanded his publishing activities, and in 2004 married a U.S. citizen. In 2005, the U.S. granted him an immigrant visa based on his marriage, but seconds later arrested and subsequently deported him back to Germany in crass violation of U.S. law. In Germany, where he was put in prison for 44 months for his scholarly writings, some of which he had published in the U.S., where they are perfectly legal. Since not a criminal under U.S. law, he managed to immigrate permanently to the U.S. in 2011. Rudolf has published more than 90 books (currently available through Armreg US and Armreg UK), among them the 54 volumes of the Holocaust Handbooks. He has compiled 9 documentaries and authored 20 non-fiction books, among them the bestselling Holocaust Encyclopedia. With a brief interruption, he has managed the free-speech organization Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust since 2014, where we defend free speech at the forefront of corporate censorship and governmental persecution. In 2017, he became chief editor of CODOH’s quarterly periodical Inconvenient History. In early 2025, he launched the Holocaust Academy, dedicated to bringing critical thinking to Holocaust education. In that context, he organized the 2026 Holocaust Summit, dedicated to “Tackling the Most-Harmful Ideology Undermining Peace, Truth and Freedom Worldwide”.
Read more about him here.
