James J. Martin (1916–2004) was an American historian and author known for espousing Holocaust denial in his works. He is known for his book, American Liberalism and World Politics, 1931–1941 (1964). Fellow Holocaust denier Harry Elmer Barnes called it "unquestionably the most formidable achievement of World War II Revisionism."[1] [2]
After a teaching career at Northern Illinois University, San Francisco State College, and Deep Springs College, he took a job teaching at Robert LeFevre's Rampart College, assuming it would be a full-time job. This was not the case as Rampart College was not yet really a college but only a series of workshop/lectures on libertarian political economy. That led to an eventual falling out between Martin and LeFevre[3] when Rampart College went out of business three years after Martin was hired, with Martin charging LeFevre with a breach of his five-year contract.[4]
Martin, a disciple of Holocaust revisionist Harry Elmer Barnes, "lacked his mentor's prestige and reputation but had important contacts in the libertarian right", according to the historian John P. Jackson Jr.[5] In the 1950s and 1960s, Barnes and Martin corresponded about how to "debunk" the number of six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
From 1979, Martin began to associate with the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a Holocaust denial group, writing for the IHR journal, The Journal of Historical Review. Brian Doherty notes in Radicals for Capitalism: "Martin, in his attempt to adjust standard historical understandings of war and war guilt, shifted into questioning the veracity of standard anti-German atrocity stories, including the standard details of the Holocaust", calls it an "unfortunate shading over into Hitler apologetics", and that Martin stated as early as 1976 "I don't believe that the evidence of a planned extermination of the entire Jewish population of Europe is holding up."[6]