Modifying the History - Git Recipes - page 289

Reverting the Merge branch ' feature ' commit can lead to a snapshot that is
composed of revisions:
m1, m2, m3, m4, m5, m6
or to the snapshot composed of revisions:
m1, m2, m3, f1, f2, f3, m6
The decision is up to you. You make your decision with additional parameter -m
passed to the $ git revert command. If you want to keep the history stored under
the first parent of the merge commit then use -m 1 parameter, such as:
$ git revert --no-edit -m 1 HEAD ∼
The above command will produce the snapshot composed of revisions m1 , m2 , m3 ,
m4 , m5 , m6 . This case is illustrated in Figure 8-10 .
Figure 8-10 . The snapshot obtained with $ git revert --no-edit -m 1 HEAD ∼