Harry Elmer Barnes

Who was Harry Elmer Barnes?

Harry Elmer Barnes was an American historian. Described by Anthony Gregory as a "progressive who had some classical liberal impulses," Barnes later became known in the 1950s as a Holocaust Denier.

He was a writer who used his wide reading and photographic memory to summarize vast quantities of information and present histories that would be "usable" to his readers. He published more than 30 books, 100 essays, and 600 articles and book reviews, making him one of the most prolific writers in all the social sciences.

Barnes taught history at Columbia University from 1918 to 1929. After that he worked as a freelance writer and occasional adjunct professor at smaller schools. Through his position at Columbia and his prodigious scholarly output, Barnes was once highly regarded as a historian. But by the 1950s, he lost credibility by his practice of Holocaust denial.