Revisionism and Brainwashing: A Survey of the War-Guilt Question in Germany After Two World Wars by Harry Elmer Barnes examines the historical debate over responsibility for the First and Second World Wars and argues that postwar Germany was prevented from freely reconsidering the origins of the 1939 conflict. Drawing on Barnes's involvement with historical revisionism since the 1920s, the book contrasts the vigorous German reassessment of First World War responsibility during the Weimar Republic with what he describes as the intellectual conformity imposed after 1945. Barnes discusses the work of revisionist historians, the Versailles war-guilt controversy, the origins of the Second World War, German and Allied diplomacy, Hitler and the Polish crisis of 1939, and disputes among American, British, and German scholars. He contends that occupation policies, political pressure, academic hostility, publishing restrictions, and prevailing historical narratives produced a form of "brainwashing" that discouraged investigation of alternative interpretations of war responsibility, and calls for unrestricted historical inquiry based on documentary evidence rather than national or political orthodoxy.