Talk:Battle for The Hague

Pre-GA Comments

There are a number of issues that need to be fixed before this goes through a GA Review:

• Primarily, large amounts of prose seem to be lifted directly from the website quoted. This is a copyright violation, and needs to be rectified immediately. If this isn't done, it will not pass GA review and may even be tagged for deletion. Obviously we don't want that, so that needs to be changed.
• The article needs a comprehensive copyedit
• There needs to be a background section on the invasion of the Netherlands and why the Germans targeted The Hague. Skinny87 (talk) 22:01, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I've fixed most of the copyied information from the webstie, due to a rule I was unaware of while I was writing this. Red4tribe (talk) 02:56, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Battle for The Hague/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review. There are several major issues with this article, enough to convince me to fail this nomination for GA based on this version that I started writing this review for.

Although the article is over-relying on a single source, this can be ignored as there is no specification in Wikipedia on the number of sources used as long as they are reliable. It does, however, felt weird to me that the article is relying on a review of a reliable source by the Greb Foundation. There is no proof that the Foundation (made up of self-acclaimed experts in Dutch military history) are experts or that the review is in any way an accurate representation of the book's contents. It would be best if the research is directly sourced from the book concerned i.e. The Battle for the Hague 1940 by Lieutenant Colonel E.H. Brongers, ISBN 90-5911-307-1.

The most worrying is the copy violations as raised in Talk:Battle for The Hague#Pre-GA Comments. The structure of the article is close to its source, starting off even with the same context.

Source: "The attack would be carried out as follows. First, the combat aircraft would fly over The Netherlands "

Article: "The plan was not a complex one, and would be carried out this way. First, the combat aircraft would fly over The Netherlands towards Britian,"

The copy violations are blatant in the middle of the article.

Source: "At Ypenburg, the counterattack was initially led by ad hoc groups such as a few men from a training school, a platoon of Grenadiers, a military police detachment, ..."

Article: "At Ypenburg, the counter-attack was at first led by ad hoc groups such as a few men from a training school, a platoon of Grenadiers, a military police detachment, ..."

Even at the end.

Source: "According to Brongers, those losses had several ramifications:

- Some senior commanders began to question the viability of airborne attacks

- German airborne forces available for Operation Sea Lion were greatly reduced

- Shortage of transport aircraft hampered later planning and operations

- In particular, the shortage of transports during the invasion of Crete meant paratroopers had to be landed in waves instead of all at once, contributing to heavy casualties on the island"

Article: "The failure of the operation had a few effects on the German Military;

- Some senior commanders questioned the usefullness of airborne assults

- Germany lost many Airborne troops which caused a shortage for Operation Sea Lion

- Shortage of transport aircraft also hampered later planning and operations

- During the Invasion of Crete, Germany was forced to change it's strategy on how to use airborne troops which resulted in heavy casualties"

Little tweaks and replacement of words with synonyms do not mask a copy and paste job.

Even if we ignore the copy violation, the prose requires a lot of work. The opening statement itself is too fanciful and vague: "The plan was not a complex one, and would be carried out this way." What plan? To do what? Whose plan? Looking on the statement on its own without context, why not "The plan is a simple one."

While there is a lead for the article, generally the start of the main text should ease readers into the topic and not throw them into guessing what is going on. The lead summarizes the article, but the main text should start off introducing and explaining things in general detail. The first section should preferably be a background section that explains why a battle for The Hague came to be.

If there are concerns that this failure should not be, please bring it up at WP:GAR. Otherwise, please rewrite the article and have it proofread, presenting it again at WP:GAC when it is ready. Jappalang (talk) 03:11, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Note: I noticed the article was updated while I was typing up the above, but this version still has much of the above concerns unaddressed. Jappalang (talk) 03:24, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm re-writing the article section by section now. The Battle for the Hague 1940, i s not avalible on google books, and I do not have a copy of one, otherwise I would use that as my primary source. Red4tribe (talk) 03:30, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

~ I wonder how Jappalang would asses the professionalism of E.H. Brongers as a historian ... Talking about self acclaimed historians ... A large portion of the sources used on wiki pages are self-acclaimed specialist, not the least the editors of many articles. By the way, this article was in much better shape when it was basically copy-pasted of War over Holland. At this point the article is incomplete, covering fractions of the Battle of the Hague only. The pictures are copyright infringements, particularly the one top right. Altogether a D minus ... Grebbegoos (talk) 00:47, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Copyright violations

Copyright violation remains extensive within this article. This article is either going to have to be revised to address these or the problematic sections will have to be deleted. As one single example, the section under "German Attack" here currently reads:

“ Ypenburg was defended by the 3rd Battalion Grenadiers and six modern armored cars (Landsverk, armed with one 37 mm turret-gun and three machine guns). One company in addition with the armored cars were assigned defend the platform and the field itself. Most of the heavy and light machine guns had been distributed among the positions of the infantry. They took up positions at the northwest and southwest corners of the field. The second company provided a screen between the three [(cut: the word "adjacent")] cities (The Hague, Rijswijk, Delft) and the airfield. The third company was a relief company. The airfield housed three squadrons of airplanes, two of which were ready for action. The AA units were positioned in a wide circle around the base. Three platoons AA heavy machine guns had taken a position close to the airfield. Two heavy batteries AAA were stationed within 2,500 metre from the base, both equipped with three 75 mm AA guns and heavy machine guns for low flying planes. In the vicinity of Ypenburg (Delft) five platoons with each two or three 2 cm guns had taken positions. Altogether twenty AA heavy machine guns, six heavy guns 75 mm and twelve light guns of 2 cm. ”

I have bolded text that is verbatim duplicated from the source page, at the subpage titled "Friday, 10 May 1940 - The airlanding operation: The airlandings around The Hague: Ypenburg" (here). The only changes in these bolded parts are spelling or minor changes such as amongst becoming among. This is in clear violation of US copyright law. Wikipedia's contributors may use external sources to inspire ideas, but not to contribute sentences or phrases. Material can be duplicated from sources only when clearly marked, as with quotation marks, and even then fair use considerations forbid our duplicating so much text from the source.

This article must be blanked pending resolution of this. If infringing material is removed, the article may be restored. Alternatively, infringing material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source.

Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:28, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Notes on a few other areas of specific concern. I see no reason to believe that these will not continue in other sections. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 01:04, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

• "The battle on the ground...of the airfield. To the North"--whole sentences duplicated from source with only a few words altered.
• "At this stage...defences at the base. The defenders"--two sentences with whole phrases duplicating the source. In one of these sentences, the only change is the word "airbornes" to "airborne troops."
• "Ju-52 transporters...west of the airfield." Sentence duplicated from subpage "Ockenburg" with only a word or two changed.
• "Only a few minutes after...to the entrance of the field." Several sentences duplicated from the same subpage with one section between "Captain Boot" and "ordered his men" cut.

Alright, I guess I copied more from it than I thought, and I apologize for that. I thought I wrote it adaquately. But I am sure the introduction, and probably the ending, are fine. Red4tribe (talk) 03:12, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Do you propose that we restore only the introduction and the ending? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:22, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, including the casualties section. Red4tribe (talk) 15:29, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

All right. I will evaluate those two sections, and presuming that they are, as you feel, probably fine, I'll restore them. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:31, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I have replaced the last version with a summary that should address copyright violations, but still leave room for easy expansion. I did find some sections in the close that duplicated too closely the source text. For example, "Shortage of transport aircraft hampered later planning and operations" ([1]) was almost completely duplicated in the article: "Shortage of transport aircraft also hampered later planning and operations." Please be very careful to completely rewrite source material. Removing a word or two or changing a few words does not satisfy the legal concerns of copyright. I believe that the article as it stands should be copyright violation free, given my revision, and I will mark it accordingly at WP:CP. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:45, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

References

Unclear information

In the section Battle_for_The_Hague#Aftermath, it mentions a certain Von Sponeck and his troops. It is not clear who this man is or what was his role during the battle. Can someone with the necessary knowledge please fix that? Cheers. Chamal ^talk 04:24, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Use footnotes instead?

My apologies, I'm not an expert but I just want to help suggest a possible improvement.

In the "Casualties" section, several times it mentions a number supposedly dead/killed then in parentheses (German Source) (Dutch Source) (German Source 2) or something like that. I think IMHO these should be footnotes instead.

It is conventional in my experience to use footnotes to reference sources. Also, subjectively, visually phrases like "(German source)" feel to me like they interrupt the flow of reading the sentence more than a less obtrusive tiny raised number referring to a footnote below.

Thank you for considering my perspective, I'm more of a reader than an editor but I saw something that I thought would benefit from a more experienced Administrator or Editor taking a look at it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.252.65.65 (talk) 05:59, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

First paratroop assault in history?

Depending on how you define a paratroop assault, I believe the 9th of May 1940 German paratroop assault on Sola airport in Norway predates this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.249.249.5 (talk) 19:04, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

This can't be a phyrric victory

The Dutch scored a tactical if not a strategic victory here and saved their frontline. I don't care if someone "sourced" said this. Common sense dictates the opposite.37.123.151.243 (talk) 18:12, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. It is essential, when trying to qualify for the term Pyrrhic victory, that the 'victory' will ultimately lead to a devastating defeat. The causality of the German paratroopers who at great losses failed to meet their objective, lost 1300-1600 of their troops and were saved only by retreating towards the dunes and hiding there until the Dutch surrender, in the ultimate surrender of Nazi Germany 5 years later is beyond me. This was a tactical Dutch success/German failure to be seen within overall German strategic success. Furthermore; as far as I can see, the Eagle in Flames: The Fall of the Luftwaffe by E.R Hooton only mentions a Pyrrhic victory once, in relation to the assault on Crete. Naturally a full citation is to be given, I'm very curious how this author chose his words; if, for that matter, they're really his of course. Kleinsma80 (talk) 10:54, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Sources

According to the Netherlands Institute for Military History (Ministry of Defence) the involved German 22. Luftlande Infanterie Division (22. L.L. Inf.Div.) counted 10.000 men, of which 5.000 men would land at Ypenburg Airport, 3.500 at Valkenburg Airport and 1.500 at Ockenburg Airstrip. Their objective was not to surround and isolate The Hague, but to conquer The Hague. Main goal was to capture the queen, members of the government and the commanders of the army. This way they hoped to force the capitulation of the Netherlands. This article depends too much on information from a website. I'd rather have the article rely mostly on verified sources like those by the historians Brongers, Portengen and ofcourse De Jong. --oSeveno (User talk) 14:55, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Good point! It is obvious that the numbers involved mentioned in the article do not add up: The given German strength of 3,000 is exceeded by those 1,100 "forced to dig in", 1700 captured, 700 wounded and 400-700 killed. Even if those WIA are included in the captured and surrounded numbers, the total seems still dubious. Koo Kee (talk) 10:49, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

German attack troops not named ?

Unit names are known. Why not mentioned ? It were only two formations, weren't it. 7. Flieger-Division (the "Fallschirmjaeger", luftwaffe paratroopers), and 22. Infanterie-Division (heer air landing troops). --129.187.244.19 (talk) 09:35, 24 November 2020 (UTC)